Hottest Day of the Year

It was the hottest day of the year. The gently rippling water, less than a chip shot from my deck, beckoned. In preparation I dug out my wetsuit, found a cap and goggles. My only race of the year, an Olympic distance triathlon, is a week from tomorrow. I have not been in the water, pool or open, since the same race a year ago. The reason is simple. 

I do not enjoy swimming. 

Sorry, I just don’t. In perhaps a mistaken attempt at balance, I continue to put ten of my allotted dozen fitness eggs into the bike. I ride everyday. That basket is full. The other third of my ‘game’, the run, is in almost as deplorable a state as the swim, this due to what now appears to be chronic inflammation, or worse, of left piriformis, tensea fascia ligament, hip flexor or one of the other major groups responsible for pain-free running. Then there is the well chronicled heart issue, which foot-strike trauma seems to acerbate. It can be painful. 

Obviously being unable, or in the case of the swim, unwilling, to properly train for a multi-sport event requiring their execution, I default to the strategy I have used since the days of ‘serious’ training and Ironman racing, circa 1995-2010:

Make the swim as efficient as possible, conserve energy, flow steady. 

Hammer the bike.

Slug out the run. 

The results of this strategy, and the adjacent tactics employed on demand, in the heart of battle, have been mixed. 

My number one objective over those fifteen years was always to qualify for Kona, the World Championships. In my first Ironman I accomplished that objective finishing third at Vineman. Figuring that if I did this in my initial event, how hard could it be to do it again, I ‘gave’ my slot to the guy who finished one place behind me. Turned out to be a valuable lesson, as the only other time I came close was in Penticton at Ironman Canada in 2002. Both those are great stories that I promise one day to retell. At the other end of the results analysis is the interesting stat that I have won many shorter distance races, halves and Olys. So the data defined as ‘mixed’ is particularly paradoxical due to winning the shorter events when racing with no purpose other than to do my best and have fun - and not achieving my most important goals, Kona qualification, when focused solely on that prize. A point I find most interesting. 

As a coach, taking the lessons from my own training and racing experience, I suggest that one should train their weakness’, instead of simply doing what comes most naturally of the three, in order to better find the balance that will provide the results they desire.  

A perfect illustration of how putting all your eggs (biking) into one basket can fail as a race strategy is, of course, a race day mechanical. If you lose the advantage of a fast bike split and need to finish with a strong run, and can’t, you are, to continue the chicken and egg metaphor, fried, poached and scrambled, sunny side anything but up. 

I could do two things to better my chances. One is to get a solid diagnosis on my hip issues and the other is to join the masters and make swimming as important a part of my training as biking. 

Fortunately I have the overall base fitness to defend my championship next week. It might hurt a little, but me and suffering and not strangers. Should I decide that a return to the long course is in the cards for the future, I age-up in three years, the steps outlined above must be implemented. In a phrase, this difference might be better stated by saying that there is a gigantic chasm between finishing an Ironman, and winning your age-group in a Kona qualifier. I have accomplished the former a dozen times, but never the latter. This haunts me. 

Today I sit on the fence, wetsuit ready, water waiting. On the hottest day of the year.