Sergeant Tony's Blog

(Originally posted on May 18th, 2007)

Remember the last time you learned a “life lesson?”

When we were kids we learned those life lessons everyday. You know the ones I mean, “dirt … bad, ice cream … good,” “cute little dogs will bite,” “cats don’t fetch,” “kissing dogs good, kissing girls better.”

At 24, I ran my first triathlon. I was a rather studly Marine type guy and thought the swim, bike, run thing would be fun. I thought that I’d sort of accumulated most of all the “life lesson” thingies already.

I was wrong.

The lessons began two days before the triathlon. At the encouragement of an older wiser friend, I applied a liberal coat of a new “rubber enhancing” product to my very narrow bike tires. I’d never heard of “Armor All,” but my friend suggested that I put some of this rubber rejuvenator on my tires. He thought it would increase traction and make me faster. Sounded good to me.

I was wrong.

On a short bike ride two days before the race, and with a nice liberal coat of that new stuff on my tires, I leaned hard and fast into a sharp right-hand turn. In a nanosecond my bike slid out from under me and we both were airborne, but only momentarily. My whole right side, from my right ankle to my right shoulder, became a human eraser across the pavement, proving the law of gravity and momentum. Grinding along the asphalt at about 25 miles an hour, small rocks, pebbles, and other “road debris” became embedded into my soft underbelly. This gave me something euphemistically known among cyclists as “road rash.”

Riiiiiiiiiight. Road rash.

I lined up for my first triathlon two days later with my whole right side covered in a liberal coat of Neosporin.

First Life Lesson Learned from First Triathlon: “Armor All on bike tires, bad. Neosporin on road rash, good.”

If you’ve ever done a triathlon you know that the scariest part of the race is the swim start; just too many bodies and not enough water to swim in. It’s just chaos. Back in those early days of the sport, race organizers just aimed us toward a small eddy of water in a lake. Then they’d fire the starting gun sending hundreds of running athletes toward the same little 16 ounces of water to swim in. You ran in the shallow water until it became deep enough to attempt swimming in it.

Then it turned into a thrashing and kicking and slapping and elbowing affair, similar to being married. All of us tried to make some sort of swimming motion; all of us in this little fishbowl flailing about. It was crazy! You kicked others as others kicked you. You gouged others in the head, as others gouged you in the head.

Second Life Lesson from First Triathlon: “Don’t take it personally when others kick you.”

Thankfully, all of that madness at the beginning of the swim start only lasted for a few minutes. About 200 yards into most triathlons, the field of participants starts to spread out and you can find a little pocket of semi-private water to swim in. At that point you can actually start to make strokes that resemble swimming, and not just treading water trying not to drown.

Unfortunately in that initial chaos my goggles had nearly gotten knocked off and were cockeyed on my head. They’d become worthless and filled up with water. Plus the “road rash” stung from the water. And even though the other swimmers weren’t trying to hurt me, every time they kicked or grabbed my right side, it hurt more than just a little.

“Why am I doing this again?” thought I.

Oh yeah, I’m some sort of Marine stud guy.

Riiiiiiiight.

Third Life Lesson from First Triathlon: “Keep swimming forward! You’ll drown if you stop!”

After about 20 minutes of swimming, I saw the finish line coming up. Thank God! It felt great to reach water shallow enough to stand up in and start running to get out of the water. In a mad dash, we were all running around, trying to find our cycling clothes. They didn’t have a place to rack your bike in an organized way. Bikes were everywhere, leaned against trees, bushes, cars, whatever. The whole area looked different now, I was disoriented and desperate to find my clothes and get to the changing tent.

Yes, the changing tent. Singular. One tent.

In those days, we changed out of our swim suits and put on full fledged biking clothes, as if we were going to race in the Tour de France. Nowadays, triathletes in short races compete in one suit, never stopping to change. But that wasn’t the case back in the early 80’s when the sport was brand new and none of us really knew what we were doing. So we changed clothes for every event.

The changing tent was a giant green army tent (think MASH 4077) with very little, if any, light inside. You could barely see inside the tent, with the only light being the early morning light coming in from the front “door.” There also wasn’t a “boy’s side” or a “girls side.” We all ran into the tent and frantically tried to find a place to change. Once inside, my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit conditions and I could actually see the person next to me.

The attractive naked female person next to me.

Ordinarily, an attractive naked woman within arms length of me in a dimly lit room would be cause for celebration and high fives! Such was not the case! I couldn’t have cared less. I was in a hurry to get moving. I hardly paused at all in my frenzied fumbling, trying to change into my Tour cycling clothes and get out of that tent!

Imagine that, ME running away from a naked woman!

Fourth Life Lesson from First Triathlon: “Sigmund, it’s not ALWAYS about sex.”

Once I had changed, gotten on my bike, and was riding down the highway, I found some other guys to group up with. Drafting was allowed in the early days of triathlon, so we formed up like the peloton seen in professional bike races. There were about 10 of us riding together, taking turns at the front of the pack.

Being the lead rider isn’t being “in the lead.” Being in front is a duty. Being in front is doing most of the work. See, the front rider in those groups is working hardest because he’s riding against wind resistance. Everyone behind the lead rider can kind of coast in the slipstream. Group riding etiquette says that everyone takes their turn at the front and it also means that there’s a fresh rider at the front, ensuring that the group will ride faster as a group than a single rider could do alone.

So there we were, riding like the wind on our fancy expensive Italian and French made bikes, wearing fancy cycling shoes, fancy cycling shorts, fancy aerodynamic cycling helmets, and fancy tight fitting colorful cycling jerseys. We were doing our best to imitate those colorful cycling teams seen racing in Europe. And I have to admit, I felt pretty cool, riding fast and looking like a professional rider!

After about 6 miles into this 35 mile bike race, we became aware of a faint mechanical noise somewhere in the distance behind us. Somewhere back there, something was making an awful sounding noise.

It was making a grinding scraping metal mechanical noise. Because we were in a rural area, we thought a farmer had entered the road behind us driving an old tractor, draging an old rusty combine or plow. None of us turned around to look. That would have violated proper “peloton protocol.” And it would have looked uncool too. Looking back was for sissy-boy-bed-wetters, NOT for us cool guys.

And we were all about looking cool and going fast.

As the noise got closer I became aware of a sound that was missing. There was no tractor engine noise. But that sound of rusty, grinding, metal against metal noise kept getting louder and closer. We murmured among ourselves about the noise and the source of it, but none of us looked back.

Finally the noise reached us and was starting to pass our peloton when we got our first glimpse of the old farmer and the rusty old combine. Turns out that it wasn’t a rusty old combine at all. It was a guy on a bike!!

We looked to our left, and passing us, yes PASSING us, was a guy riding a nasty old, rusty, dirty looking 1970’s era Sears Free Spirit 10 Speed Racer. A bike made out of plumbing pipe and sold in a hardware store. None of us would have been caught dead on that bike, much less compete on one! And to make matters worse, he was wearing a ratty old t-shirt, cutoff blue jeans, a FOOTBALL helmet, and Chuck Taylor high-tops that were LITERALLY duct taped to his pedals.

And to make matters even “worser” … he was PASSING US!!!!

Did I mention that he was PASSING US??!!!

Awwwww haaaal nooo!!!

This would NOT do!

So we stood up on our pedals and “dropped” that upstart hayseed racer wannabe! Putting him in his proper place BEHIND us! How DARE he try to pass US!!! But the thing is … he gained on us, he caught us, and the only thing that kept him from passing us was our united efforts to keep him from passing us!

Fifth Life Lesson from First Triathlon (Learned long before Lance Armstrong gave us the phrase): “It’s not about the bike … it’s about the motor.”

The rest of the bike race was finished without incidence. We raced as fast as we could to the end of the bike leg and to the transition of the bike to run. The organizers had porta potties at the transition area, so I ducked into one of them, changed into my running clothes, and took off on the last leg of the triathlon, a 7 mile run up and down some horrible hills.

At about 2 miles into the run I heard another sound. No, not the sound of grinding metal against metal, but the sound of feet. I could hear the footfall of some guy gaining on me. Since I don’t particularly like being passed, I thought I’d better speed up a little. I increased my speed thinking that it would hold him off, but still I could hear the sound of his feet hitting the deck moving quicker than I was. What??? OK, “time to make him hurt,” I thought. So, I sped up a little more.

But nooooooooooooo, this guy kept coming.

“OK, dude … you wanna race? FINE! C’mon then … I’ll let you get up close and then I’ll make you hurt, I’ll start sprinting,” I thought.

That’s what I was thinking right up to the point where SHE got right next to me! That’s right … SHE was PASSING me!!! It was some little 5 ft. nothin’ girl!! WHAT??? It was the first time in my life that a girl ever bested me in a sport of any kind. My Neanderthal ego took a big hit that day as the pitter patter of Little Ms. Speed Demon’s footfall passed me, her cute little ponytail swaying in the wind. I tried to catch her … but … well … she was FAST!!!

Sixth Life Lesson from First Triathlon: “It’s not about gender either.”

By the way, I did this triathlon 4 years in a row and this same girl passed me at the same place EVERYTIME! By the time the third year came, I was paranoid approaching the 2 mile mark. “Where IS she???” Knowing that she was about to appear, like the she-devil she was!

The rest of the run leg of that first triathlon went as expected. Up and down hills in sweltering heat and humidity. The finish line was on a horse racing track inside a fairgrounds. Runners were to enter the fairgrounds, run to the track, and then take one lap around the track to finish. So with “Rocky,” “Chariots of Fire,” and “Eye of the Tiger” blaring from the big speakers set up in the infield, I entered the horse racing track and tried to pick up the pace a bit. I wanted to finish strong.

With about 150 yards to go, I started hearing a wheezing gasping sound from someone behind me. “Good lord, someone is dying,” I thought. But the thing is, the sound was getting closer! What???? The dying guy was gaining on me???? That’s not right!

With about 100 yards left in the race, the “dying guy,” with the gray hair, passed me. PASSED ME! I tried to keep up with him. I tried to stay near him. But I was spent.

The old dude beat me!

I crossed the finish line, proud of my first triathlon. My times were respectable and not bad at all. I was proud. But post-race, all I could think of was finding the “dying dude.”

You know how people linger after races, eating free snacks and gulping down Gatorade. The gray haired gentleman (aka “the dying dude”) was eating a banana when I found him.

“Congratulations on a great race!” I said to the man who humbled me at the end.

“Oh, thanks,” he said, kind of embarrassed.

“You passed me right there at the end … and you were moving pretty fast!” I told him.

“Oh, sorry ’bout that,” he said with a slight chuckle. And then he added, “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Listen, I hope you won’t be offended by my question … but … how old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Sticking his chest out with pride, he said, “I’m 65 years old!”

“You, sir, are my new role model … my goal … my HERO!!!”

And this unknown 65 year old man has been ever since.

Seventh Life Lesson from First Triathlon: “It’s not about age either.”

And those were some of the things I learned in my first triathlon. Not exactly the lessons I thought I would learn, but proof that one of the cool things about life and about sport is that there are lots of things we can learn, with or without the humble pie!

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