Next stop - Triathlon???

The last few days, I've been reading about the adventures of my friends Jim and Anne as they bike across the great state of Iowa.   For the past 41 years, a bunch of bike nuts embark on this great journey through the event known as Ragbrai (The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa).  If their blog is any indication, it sounds like they're having a great time.    Good luck Anne and Jim!


When I hear about friends training for bike races and triathlons, I often get the notion that I should train for a triathlon myself.   It's a popular thing out here in Colorado and I know tons of people that have completed them.  Still there are two main reasons why I don't compete in triathlons:




1. I can't ride a bike.

2. I can't swim.

1. I can't ride a bike. 

Ok, it's not totally true, but I am miserable on a bike.   It all began at the tender age of 10, when I fell off my bike going up my steep driveway and chipped one of my front teeth.   I grew up in a super hilly neighborhood, so I wasn't that confident on my bike to begin with.  After the fall, my confidence along with my tooth was shattered.

I never really rode a bike again until I went to Hawaii with my family.   My dad convinced me to bike down Mount Haleakala.   We woke up way before the sunrise and headed up to the top of the volcano where we watched the sun rise over the clouds.  It was pretty surreal.  Then we had to ride down the volcano on these bikes with super fat wheels and very little peddling.  Not sure that really counts as riding a bike.

My biking tribulations continued when I spent two months in Malawi.  We were scheduled to go visit a village 20 km from where we were staying.   Normally when we travelled we would all pile into these minivans and head off down the road.  The catch with this particular trip was that the only real way to get there was by bicycle because the roads were not well maintained.    I didn't want to let everyone down, so I agreed to go on the trip.     The bikes that we rented looked like they were constructed in the  50s and had super thin tires.   They would have potentially made ok road bikes, but as I mentioned earlier we were traveling on roads that were not suitable for cars or I would argue bikes.   The trails we were on would have been beautiful mountain biking trails, but we were not on mountain bikes.   I probably fell over 50 times over the course of the 20 km.   The folks that we were traveling with were super gracious, but I can only imagine what was going on in their heads.   I could blame the bike, but my partner Audra peddled gracefully and effortlessly on a bike that was nearly identical to mine.    We made it (there and back), and there were no broken bones, but it definitely didn't add to my confidence on two wheels.

So, for me to compete in a triathlon, I'm going to need to learn to ride a bike.  Maybe I can learn from my 3 year old Grayson who is already a master on his strider.

2. I can't swim. 

Again, a bit of an exaggeration.  I can definitely stay afloat in the water and have fun in the ocean or pool.  Still, my swimming form is so poor that it quickly becomes an anaerobic endeavor when I swim. After swimming one length of the pool I am already so out of breath that I have to stop and catch my breath.  If I were to swim the distance needed to compete in a triathlon, I would have to stop every 50  yards to catch my breath.  It would make traveling the 1760 yards needed to finish the swimming portion, pretty difficult and the course might be closed by the time I get to the bike.



So for me to compete in a triathlon I need to learn to bike and swim.  If I do . . . I'm sure I'll blog about it.