2020 Triathlon (2021 now)

What’s a triathlon?

There are 3 disciplines in triathlon, Swimming, cycling and running. Lets take each in turn in relation to my experience.

Running: I have done a few runs in my time but nothing for about 10 years. Previously I have run two half marathons, the last in 1999! That was a bit of a disaster as I had run the same event the year before. Having trained I and completed it without issue. So the following year I decided I didn’t need to train and ran it with no prior exercise. My rule for running is to never stop, so I didn’t. It wasn’t a great time but I managed it. At the finish I couldn’t find any water so I drank a can of Coke straight down. What followed was projectile vomit and three days in bed with shakes and pain I never thought possible.

Cycling: Well having not learnt my lesson from running, I did complete a huge cycle ride in 2018. The blog is on this site. In short with very little notice and just two test rides I fitted saddle bags to my 10 year old mountain bike and cycled to Italy. Unlike my running it went amazingly well, but it wasn’t a race just a nice ride. I’ve not ridden a road bike since 2006 or any bike since I came back from Italy.

Swimming: If you’ve read the above and are thinking the mans a fool, let me confirm that for you. I dislike swimming quite a lot. I will splash around in a pool and go in the sea but swimming is just not me. I did a starter triathlon many years ago and the swim was 400m. I used three styles of swimming, front crawl, breast stroke and doggy paddle. I was the last person out the pool and the next wave of swimmers clapped me, in a thank god he’s finished type way.

So that’s my fitness history and weirdly I have decided to do it all again. I have a good friend who wants to do a triathlon and we agreed to do it last year but it never happened. So its this years little challenge. It works well for me as I have a trip planned later this year that requires a certain level of fitness to deal with the altitude. I will try to do weekly updates as I try to get from old couch sloth to triath-sloth.