The Tri-ing Life

In terms of endurance racing, I’ve been around awhile (ok, fine, in terms of age too – thanks for noticing). So I feel very much authorized to make a few, um, observations about the types of people who show up to races. And just so no one gets their undies in a bunch, we all fall into at least one of these categories, if not more.  In other words, I’m at least poking fun on an equal-opportunity basis.

So gird your loins, because here goes…

1. Poser-Man: This is the guy (usually 35-45) who hangs around the pre-race expo for hours on end. He’ll bring his $10k (and nearly illegal) bike into the conference center solely to lean on it in a corner looking bad-ass. The look is usually compounded by compression socks and roughly 3-4 different pieces of apparel sporting various race logos. He generally stands gazing about the room (as if looking for someone) when, in reality, he’s merely giving you the opportunity to notice him.  Poser-Man is often guilty of wearing race gear to a nice restaurant the night before his race.
2. The Race Morning Motor Mouth: An RMMM can be male or female—this person assumes that everyone prepping their gear at 4:30 in the morning wants an overly loud play-by-play of their last three months of training, including a highly-detailed analysis of how they would have qualified for Kona last year if only their left calf muscle hadn’t cramped so badly. While they are generally harmless, you can’t help but hope that a Motor Mouth accidentally gets locked in an overflowing porta-potty.
3. The Alpha Woman:  She has 10 kids, three jobs, a Ph.D. and competes in triathlon. She also looks great in Lululemon, sports some bad-ass equipment (her Garmin could launch a missile) and regularly stays in touch with roughly 3,000 of her closest Facebook friends by posting updates roughly every 10 minutes. (The aforementioned updates usually garner comments such as “OMG—you’re sooooo awesome!”) The back of her car is plastered with enough race stickers that it barely passes annual inspection.
4. The Sandbagger: This is the person (male or female, but usually female) who claims that they “literally” have done no training, have a sore knee, or “totally suck on the hills.” They then proceed to rip the course a new one. People generally want to kick a sandbagger in the shins.
5. The Chief of Staff: Any age grouper who retains a tri coach, strength coach, physical therapist, massage therapist, nutritionist, sports psychologist, run mechanics coach (separate from the track coach), swim stroke coach (separate from the Masters swim coach), VO2 Max tester, gait analyzer, body comp tester, chiropractor, yogi, mind-body guru and an orthopedic surgeon.  If you are a Chief of Staffer and your spouse/partner asks you to track tri-related expenses, run and hide, my friend. Run. And. Hide.
6. The Ironman Man: He has an Ironman tattoo and wears at least 2-3 pieces of Ironman insignia at all times. Wears an Ironman Timex watch and only chooses the Gatorade bottles with “proud supporter of the Ironman Triathlon” printed on the side. Like Alpha Woman, his car is covered with “140.6” and “70.3” stickers. When his children were young, he ran with them in the bright yellow, totally tricked out Ironman BoB stroller. If you have even an iota of comedic sensibility, you want to run up to Ironman Man and say, “Wow! Have you done an Ironman??” This joke is enhanced tenfold when pulled off at an actual Ironman race, surrounded by 3,500 other actual Ironman athletes.
7. The Non-Athlete Athlete: Less common than the other profiles, the Non-Athlete Athlete can take various forms. I have witnessed the following (in no particular order): A man smoking a cigarette while setting up his transition area on race morning; a woman applying mascara in a small mirror in T1 (after the swim but prior to the bike); a man stopping at a road-side hot dog stand during the bike leg of a triathlon (to eat a hot dog); a marathoner running in a Chewbacca costume. You get the picture. I love Non-Athlete Athletes—they buck tradition and march to the beat of their own drummers. It makes me happy to see people just getting out there and trying in all forms. Except cigarette man—that bastard should pay all of our health care premiums.

And there you have it, folks—some race-ial profiling. But let’s not end the fun! If you have a profile (even if it doesn’t have a name), post it on The Tri-ing Life at www.thetri-inglife.com  or at The Tri-ing Life’s Facebook page. If I get enough, I may publish Race-ial Profiling, Part Two in the future. And wouldn’t that just be a hoot.

In the meantime, get out on the race course and be the you-est you you can be—Ironman tat on your forehead and all.

Over the past few years, I’ve coached a few friends as they trained for various races. One couple in particular stands out for me as the perfect examples of how different two athletes can be. Now, I’m not talking personality nor am I even talking about athletic prowess. Instead, what makes this husband-wife team so different is what fuels them to train and race—and what they take away from it. You see, the wife (a friend I’ll call Suzy) is an “experiential” runner. She has numerous marathons under her belt and has stored up so much fitness over the years that she can go from recreational jogging to marathon-ready faster than a fiber addict to a porta-potty. If she wants to run fast, she can. But what really motivates her is the experience of training and racing. For the most part, she runs because she loves to run—not to check mile splits, beat anyone, or qualify for anything. The joy is in the experience of it for her, not in the results.

Now, her husband (who I’ll call CJ) is a whole different ball of wax. Like his wife, he’s a darn good athlete who’s now tackling triathlon. But the fun for him is in the competition more than the experience. Like most competitive triathletes, you’d have to shovel off a layer of various tri-geekery to see what he actually looks like (heart rate monitors, Garmin watches, GU packets, power meters, etc.) And when he goes back to a race, it’s to beat the pants off the results from the first time he raced it. In other words, after any race, you’d find Suzy celebrating with friends and enjoying the post-race after-glow while you’d find CJ making out with a computer in hopes to coax race results out of it more quickly.

Of the two, I identify more closely with CJ. I love results and competition—it’s what fuels me. But lately I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that there’s a bit of a dark side to racing competitively. A sense that if you are competitive versus experiential (or if you transferred from experiential to competitive), it can be quite difficult (emotionally) to go back to enjoying the experience without results. And this, in turn, makes me wonder: do experiential athletes have greater longevity (or a longer shelf life) in sport than those for whom PRs and/or podium finishes reign supreme?

So I sent an email to a handful of my fellow competitive triathlete friends asking this question: If the day comes when you are no longer able to race competitively (due to injury, burn-out, time constraints or something else in your life), would you still be happy participating in the sport or will you walk away from racing altogether?

The answers ranged from “Yes, I’ll walk away” to “I’ll try participating but I know it’ll be depressing to not have the results I’m used to” to “I think it will be okay if I have something else lined up to focus on .” What these answers have in common is an admission that there would probably be some emotional fallout. Whereas for an experiential athlete, the approach is not so “all or nothing.”

Let me offer even more proof. For years I entered races just to complete them. And I was happy, truly happy, when I did complete them. I never looked up my results on line, splits meant nothing and I rarely bothered to check my placement because, well, who cares? I wasn’t competitive and I knew it. So the fun was the experience. Then, four years ago, I decided to “get serious” and connected with a great coach. I trained crazy hard. And I started getting on the podium. It was amazing. It was a rush. But now, as I look forward, I’m not sure how many more years I can commit to “serious” training because it’s at the expense of so many other things. I’m not done yet, but I know the day is coming. And I worry that when that day comes, it’ll be hard to go back to that place where I just enjoy the race and don’t even bother to check splits. It might just be so depressing that hanging it all up would be easier.

So I find myself wondering if it’s possible to get back to being grateful to just experience triathlon without racing it. Rationally speaking, yes, we should be able to do that. But sometimes what the head deems rational, the heart rejects.

But then I think one of my friend’s responses had a good point. Maybe, as competitive athletes, our sense of self gets more deeply embedded in results than our experiential counterparts. And maybe what’s required is a successful transfer of this sense of self into something else before we can happily let go of our racing egos—something different on which to focus. (Hot damn, if Freud were still alive he’d be high fiving me and saying things like, “You go, girl!”) But seriously, maybe competitive athletes do need to have more of a transition plan in place to successfully let go.

Or, perhaps it will be more akin to life with small children. When you’re in the baby/toddler stage, it’s all encompassing and exhausting yet you fear that time is passing by too quickly. Then, when your final kid toddles off to preschool, you shed a small (and genuine) tear, entertain a wee bit of nostalgia and then slam that chapter shut with a very definitive thud.

p.s. Would love your thoughts on this topic! Please visit The Tri-ing Life at www.thetri-inglife.com and leave your thoughts in the comments section.

It’s the plight of the triathlete, isn’t it? That our sport is so much more than the sum of its parts? It’s not just swimming, then cycling, then running. Rather it’s cycling after swimming and then running after cycling, which you did after swimming. What’s the difference? Why, I thought you’d never ask!

See, many triathletes will spend their off season (or early season) breaking the sport down into three distinct parts: the swim, the bike, the run. That’s what this time is for—focusing on mechanics, form and beginning to build base fitness in each discipline. And if you’re a long-course athlete (as am I), then volume is usually relatively low (at least compared to what will come your way when you enter a real race-specific training cycle).

My point is that it’s a time when many of us come out of our caves, spread our social butterfly wings and flit off to join a lot of groups—Masters swim and a local track club. Perhaps a Computrainer class, with a splash of Cross Fit. And we do this with gusto because before long, volume will increase and we will once again become an island—especially when training for long-course races. Because unless someone is training for the exact race as you, few have any interest in a 75-mile ride followed by an 8-mile run just for shits and giggles.

When I join these groups as a triathlete, I recognize that there are many runners, cyclists and swimmers that are really good because they focus solely on that one particular sport (okay, and because they’re really good). But as triathletes, we bring a different kind of running to the track club, a different kind of cycling to a group ride or cycling class and a different kind of swimming to Masters. Personally, that always makes me feel that while I’m reasonably good at these three disciplines, I’m great at absolutely none of them. Oh, dry your tears and halt the violin playing—no one’s asking for sympathy—it’s just a funny observation that reminds me over and over that triathlon is indeed an independent nation. There are exceptions, of course—many athletes transition (pun totally intended) to triathlon from a single-focus sport. Of course. But even these athletes learn quickly that they have to allot their training hours a little differently as a triathlete. For example: my former Masters swim team had some really serious swimmers who average 16,000+ yards a week. And they’re pretty damn fast. However, very few of the age-group triathletes I know get anywhere near that volume (I sure as hell don’t—lucky to get in half of that). And that’s understandable because we only need to be faster than or as fast as other triathletes—not super star swimmers. And any over-focus on one discipline will most definitely come at the expense of the other two. If you’ve ever hung around for the post-race awards ceremony, you will note that those on the podium are winning awards for their rank in the overall race, not in individual sports (although certainly there is overlap).

So, while many of us love this time of season where we can be more social, it requires the embracement of being—gasp—average at times. Of maybe being fast, but not the fastest. Or maybe being downright slow and proud of it. Because I’m convinced that if you multiply “average” by three, you get “above average” by the time race season rolls around. I know this because I majored in legal studies about 17 years ago while mastering the keg stand.

So when you swim, admire the crazy sculpted lats and powerfully broad shoulders of the superstar swimmers around you. And when you cycle, gape in awe at the lithe quadzillas. And when you run, send positive vibes to the wiry, bird-boned butts kicking up dust in front of you. (I know, I know—I’m stereotyping! But I’ve been dying to use the “quadzilla” joke.) But most of all? Be confident that we are a different breed of athlete who just needs a different stage on which to shine.

Several years ago, as I was preparing for a big race, I had one of those weeks where family and training collided head-on. At that time, most of the training happened while my kids where in school and/or while my youngest (then 18 months) napped in the afternoon. But as I headed into the final stages of race prep, I had a few high-volume weeks where a few training sessions just had to slide into the weekend—two days usually reserved for soccer games, church and family time.

One particular week, I accidentally overlooked a 20-mile run scheduled for that Sunday. Holy panic. We (as a family) were booked all day with church, sport obligations and a family gathering. There was not one spare minute in the day, nevertheless multiple hours for a 20-miler. There was no way I could say, “Sorry, guys, have a 20-miler so momma out!”  On the other hand, the timing of this particular run was critical enough that I couldn’t just blow it off either.

Something a bit extreme was in order. So, that cold Sunday morning in October, I set my alarm to 3:00 a.m. and hit the road—running down the middle of the usually busy street because it was dark and the street lamps didn’t illuminate the sidewalks.  In somewhat of a dream state, I ran through three different towns—returning home 20 miles later. By 8:30 a.m., I was sitting in church with my family and my hair was perfectly coiffed (meaning, in this case, a de-greased ponytail free of rogue oatmeal chunks. I have standards, y’all!)

The very next day (Monday) I ran into a friend of a friend. She asked about my training and before I had a chance to respond, blurted, “Must be nice to train all day! Your husband must do all the cooking and laundry, huh? Does he take the kids all weekend or do you have a full-time nanny while you exercise?”

Um, I always hate to let the facts interfere with a good story, but… no, no, no and no. And I don’t exercise, I train. There’s a difference.

Now, I suppose if I hadn’t done the sunrise 20-miler the prior morning, I might have had a more charitable spirit and shrugged it off.  But I was deeply aggravated. Because all those assumptions were wrong. No, I do the cooking and laundry, scheduling, cleaning, chauffeuring, grocery shopping. I’m the primary care-taker of our three young kids. Also, I have a big role in the PTO and volunteer in their classrooms a lot. I chaperone most school field trips. I volunteer my coaching services. And I write. And at the end of each day, the house looks (reasonably) good and everyone has clean underwear in their drawer. And I love it. And my husband is amazing—very hands-on. But no, there is no nanny and he doesn’t have the kids while I train all day because he’s at his office working his ass off in a pretty stressful environment.  That’s not to say that he hasn’t stepped in to allow me to train on the weekend, he has, but we have a nice quid pro quo: I train, he golfs. And we’re both committed to getting it done with minimal impact on family time.  That’s also not to say that I never had babysitting help—I did when my youngest was home all day. Yet the hours I needed didn’t seem all that out of sync with my non-training mom friends. There are other trade-offs that people don’t always see.  I didn’t go to my most recent college reunion because I had exhausted my “personal hours” on training. I can’t remember the last time I’ve done a girls weekend. And all this is perfectly fair—because we all have a choice in how we spend our free time. But I’m preaching to the choir here because you too probably juggle a lot.

The good news is that my friends and family are very supportive, so it’s rare that I run into that kind of attitude. But when I do, I stew. So I’ve been pondering this a bit more, trying to identify what else (other than run-of-the-mill misinformation) was so irksome about that comment. Because I was really irked. (Side bar: don’t you love the word “irk?” So fun to use—irk, irk, irk. Also like kerfuffle, but that’s another blog post.)

Anyway, I think I finally figured it out. It’s insulting. It’s insulting to insinuate that we, as athletes, ignore our family and responsibilities in order to race. It’s insulting to discount our meticulously-honed Martha Stewart-esque time management skills. It’s insulting to assume we never use our passion for sport to reach out to others or be a mentor. It’s insulting to not realize that we are giving our kids an example of hard work, dedication and healthy living (and as a mom of two daughters, a strong female role model). Yes, there are completely self-absorbed, self-centered athletes (and non-athletes) out there, but that doesn’t define most of the people I know.

So now I’m working on the perfect response for next time I get that kind of comment sans supporting documentation. Something like, “Oh, it must be nice that your support staff watches the kids all week so you’re free to pass completely uniformed judgment!” Okay, fine, I won’t say this—it’s immature and catty.

But it might just let off enough steam to avoid a kerfuffle.

I’m going to make a guess about something. I’m going to guess that of all the articles I’ve posted, this one will receive the most hits. Not because what I have to say is profound or offers any groundbreaking insight, but because I used the word “weight” in the title. Come on, admit it, that one little word drew you in faster than a sex addict to the Playboy Mansion. It’s the oldest marketing trick in the book — slap “weight loss” or “melt fat” on the cover of any magazine and you’ve got your readers by the, well, you know. (See? I just used the word “sex” which will probably keep you reading this. Pretty darn tricky, eh?)

I’m also going to guess that this — for lack of a better word — obsession with weight is more common among us women folk. That’s not to say men don’t struggle with body image, but I don’t think an actual number on a scale throws them into quite the same funk. (If you’re of the male persuasion and beg to differ, please give me an earful in the comments section!) Back to us ladies, though.

So here’s a question for you: do you feel anxious about getting weighed at the doctor’s office? Do you find yourself looking away or asking the nurse not to tell you? Or, like me, do you ask to skip the whole weigh-in process altogether? My medical charts show years of height checks, but no weight. (Although I’m happy to report that my height has stayed a very stable 5’ 3” — so put that in your pipe and smoke it!)

Seriously though, here’s what’s stone ass crazy about this: like most athletes, I’m fit and healthy. But one day, someone threw a number at me, and ever since, my self-image as an athlete has been very tied to that number. Sound a bit familiar? As endurance athletes we are the fittest of the fit. The problem is that somewhere along the way, fit became synonymous with skinny and skinny became synonymous with triathlete. And these errors in definition have led us down a very dark and critical path.

To make matters more complicated, there is a lot of focus on achieving an optimal “race weight” or power-to-weight ratio (working weight such as muscle, bone, ligament, tendons and fluids versus weight that’s tagging along for a free ride —adipose tissue, a.k.a. fat). And there’s no denying it – your power-to-weight ratio does play a huge role depending on how competitively you want to race. I really can’t argue against that — I’d get slapped silly by science. But I’m not concerned about a slow movement toward a short-term, race-focused, rationally-planned, lean body composition. What is worrisome is the aesthetic concern about weight that’s completely out of context with both race performance and where an athlete is in a training and race cycle. And I see this evidenced all the time: the athlete who cannot take time off because of weight gain concerns and ends up injured. The athlete who won’t take off their cover-up at the beach because they feel their identity as triathlete will lead to greater scrutiny of their body and — gasp — imperfections. The athlete who gains a few (sometimes much needed) pounds in the off-season and feels “fat” instead of rested and healthy. The athlete who doesn’t have the “typical” super-lean body and feels somehow inferior as a result. The athlete who does have the stereotypical body type and believes it means they work harder than other athletes. Obviously, there are a lot of variations on and attitudes about this theme. And you’re probably thinking that I should cancel my subscription to yesterday’s news: athletes have always been at risk for an out-of-the-range-of-normal weight focus. After all, if you’re wearing the athlete mantel, there’s a boatload of pressure to sport a body that matches.

So how do we stop this destructive thinking, even if it doesn’t lead to destructive behavior (and especially if it does)? Because it’s exhausting to worry about it all the time, don’t you think? I’m going to lob out a theory: I wonder if the people (and not just athletes) who spend the most time obsessing over their own weight also spend a lot of time thinking critically about the bodies of other women. It kind of goes hand in hand. If you’ve set the bar so high for yourself in terms of physical appearance (or body fat percentage or a number on the scale) then you probably need to use other people to measure yourself against. So, ask yourself this: do you ever see another woman in a race and think, “How is she running/cycling faster than me when I’m lighter/skinnier/have lower body fat?” Or, the converse, patting yourself on the back when you are faster than someone who looks like they should mop the floor with you? If this describes you, then I’m going to guess that you probably spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about your own image. And, lest you think me about as deep as a birdbath, I think the vast majority of us have been caught up in this negative thought process at one time or another.

Quick tangent that I promise will lead back to my main point (however convoluted). I love Kristen Armstrong. Yes, Lance’s ex. She wrote a lot for Runner’s World and I would literally jump with glee when her column came out. She has such a nice way of keeping it real — and of keeping it classy at every turn. Anyway, she wrote an article awhile back that was so simple yet so profound. She wrote about dedicating an entire day to replacing the words “I have to” with “I get to.” For example, I get to go to the grocery store (because there is healthy food there I can afford) and I get to go pick up my kids at school (because they are healthy and they’re remarkably lucky to attend a school in a safe, loving environment) and I get to pick up around the house (because I have a house that keeps us warm and safe). Pretty cool how changing that one word can totally alter perspective, huh? I still think about that when I’m tired and rundown and sick of carting small kids all over town. I don’t have to do it, I get to do it. (Although I guess legally I kinda have to feed the kids, but I digress.)

So this has to do with body image how? Well, it gets back to altering our thought patterns. It’s about not only being kind to our own bodies, but appreciating the bodies of other women as well. Because if you’ve been around the sport long enough, you recognize that there is not one triathlete body type. I’ve beaten the pants off of tiny little whippets and I’ve had the pants beaten off me by those who don’t fit the runner/cycling stereotype. So if you feel your thoughts heading towards critical-ville, replace those negative thoughts (a la Kristen Armstrong) with something positive. For example: Wow, that woman is powerful. Wow, she has some serious athletic talent. And as hokey as this might seem, if you change your thoughts about others, your critical thoughts about yourself might — strike that — will change. It’s a win-win for all of us, yes?

Also, just so there’s no misunderstanding, this is not a call to stand down competitively. Oh, no little grasshoppers, indeed not. This is a call to continue sizing up your opponents. Just not based on size. Because fitness is a choice — it’s something you have to go get yourself — and depending on your body type it may or may not correspond with being skinny. Let’s not confuse the two: you can be fit, and not skinny. And you can be skinny, but not fit. And everything in between.

In the end, isn’t it really health and fitness that makes us feel good? Isn’t it really the accomplishment or the competitive experience of the huge physical feat that is triathlon (or whatever your passion is) that really brings us happiness? If you’re looking to be competitive, then knock yourself out and aim for an ideal power-to-weight ratio — but be careful about using others to feel superior. Because Planet Superior is a lonely place. And there are no good restaurants there.