The Olympic Games.  The World Series.  Wimbledon.  The FIFA World Cup.  The Pohang City Marine Sports and Fireworks Festival.  The Masters.  The Super Bowl.  It is widely agreed that these are some of the finest sporting events around the world.  I’ve written about some of these before in this blog but have been remiss in mentioning others.  Today, I’ll tell you about the Pohang sports festival where, oh hey, I happened to compete in a triathlon last weekend.  Funny that.

For those of you smart enough to stay far away from anything that could be described as an “endurance sport”, triathlon is a multi-sport race consisting of legs in swimming, biking, and running.  The clock is running from the time you begin swimming till the time you cross the finish line at the end of the run.  This means that while you’re changing out of your wetsuit and getting ready to get on your bike, you’re still racing.  The race lengths vary greatly, but are usually one of four standard formats: Sprint (750m swim, 20km bike, and 5km run), Olympic (1.5km swim, 40km bike, and 10km run), Long Course (1.9km swim, 90 km bike, and 21km run) and, most famously, Ironman (3.8km swim, 190km bike, and 42.2km run).  Yes, you’re doing your metric conversions correctly.  In an Ironman race, after a competitor has swum for more than two miles, ridden a bike for 112 more miles, they now must run a marathon.  Noone ever says the name of the race is an inappropriate one.

There are also races called Super-Sprint, which are about half the length of a Sprint race, and are becoming more popular in the US as they are a perfect introduction to the sport for beginners.  I would have been happy to compete in a Super-Sprint or Sprint race, but the Korean triathlon community seems to think those are only for kids and usually limits registration to high school age and below.  So, I was stuck beginning my triathlete career with an Olympic distance race which, not surprisingly, is the same length in which triathletes compete in the Olympic games.  I only discovered the complete dearth of Sprint races about half way into my 12-week training program.  So with just weeks to go, I now found myself training for a 2.5-3 hour, instead of a 1-1.5 h

our, event.  Rather than racing for 16 total miles, I would be racing for 32 miles.  You get the idea.  I was “concerned”.

Triathletes tend to be a nutty bunch, famous for working out six or seven days a week, obsessing about gear, and Spamming themselves--more on that later.  Most athletes seem to arrive at the sport from one of three general backgrounds:  they are a cyclist looking for something a bit sexier, they are an injured runner forced by their orthopedist to do some sport other than running, or, least commonly, they are a bored swimmer tired of staring at a black line in the bottom of the pool.  Each of these backgrounds has distinct advantages and disadvantages.  For cyclists, they are used to long races and comfortable on a bike (duh), which is good, because most of the time spent during a race is during the bike leg.  Runners, meanwhile, gain an advantage over opponents because in triathlon the race is usually won or lost during the run leg.  As it is the end of the race, runners who really understand their body and how fast they can push themselves will race better than those who may burn out early or peak too late.  For swimmers, the advantage is nearly entirely mental.  The swim leg is just too short for most swimmers to gain much of a meaningful advantage over opponents.  But, because most races are held outdoors, the swimming usually takes place on a lake or river or in the ocean.  Many runners and cyclists struggle just to learn proper swimming techniques, let alone develop a real comfort in the water.  These “open-water” venues, where competitors are bumping and swimming on top of each other, with little landmarks to guide them, scare the crap out of non-swimmers--and many veteran swimmers too.  So, those comfortable in open-water swimming, often have the distinct advantage of simply not wasting energy before the race being overly anxious.

I came to triathlon mostly for medical reasons.  I was preparing for a marathon a few years ago and realized about half-way through my training that there was no way my knees and hips were going to survive.  After first being (mis)diagnosed with lyme disease, I came to discover that I have degenerative arthritis.  Counterintuitive as it seems, with this kind of arthritis, the more you seem to exercise, the better you feel--though that is a very hard thing to convince myself of when waking up some days feeling very sore and stiff.  The exercise has to be varied though, in type and intensity, or else I’m left feeling like I have concrete in my knees.  So I’ve learned that while I can’t just run and run for a marathon, I can run as long as I’m also swimming and biking and swimming some more.  Once I started to get better, getting into triathlon happened quickly and naturally.  I competed in a couple when I was very young and swimming competitively.  I don’t remember much about them, other than that I had a good time and seemed to enjoy the variety of it.  As an adult, it has that same appeal.  I desperately wish I was a better runner and cyclist, but I’ll take the mental advantage because if anything, I am comfortable in water.

To help get ready for the Pohang race, I started training with a group of triathletes here called the Busan Triathlon Academy (BTA).  You may recall a blog entry from just after we arrived here where we talked about the polar bear swimming clubs here.  Well, these guys are kind of part of that mess.  My first day out with them, there I was, swimming with all the nut-cases off Haeundae beach.  At least it wasn’t freezing out--though there was quite a storm brewing.  (If you visit the BTA page and click on 이미지모아보기 you may be able to see some of the

pictures from that day.)  Being involved with the group has helped me adapt a little bit to the triathlon culture here.  Though when race time finally came and we got to Pohang last week for the event, a little miscommunication with the BTA guys meant I was going it alone as I tried to figure out the race rules, course, times, bike inspection details, registration procedures, etc.  In Korean.  So much for swimmers’ advantage of staying calm before a race.

The evening before and morning of the race are interesting times.  Everyone is strutting around in their expensive gear, decked out with logos showing off the toughest race they finished, staring at each others bikes.  My training book calls this the “peacock parade”.  Doing it all in a foreign country made it actually a little easier.  I felt a little more detached, able to concentrate in my preparation: water and food for the bike, headbands to change, sunglasses, right shoes in the right place, swim goggles and cap, check.  By the time the gun went off and we were underway, jockeying for a good spot in the water, I remember being surprised that it had actually begun and I hadn’t made any terrible mistakes yet.

No, that isn’t ominous foreshadowing.  I won’t bore you with the details of the race itself, but nothing did really go wrong.  As a first race, I had no time or performance goal.  Just try to finish, and maybe not finish last, I told myself.  I realized mid-way though the biking that I had a choice.  I could keep trying to really push myself hard--I had come out of swim pretty quick and was off to a good start on the bike--or I could try to relax a bit, slow down, and enjoy myself.  I’m very glad I took the latter road.  Hours baking in the sun listening to every single spectator and fellow competitor shout “fighting!” (sounds more like “hwighting”, as they have no “f”) every time I passed and hey, surprisingly, I did have a good time.  After the race, I was soaking wet, sunburned, and exhausted.  So I did what any self-respecting American athlete would do--I went to McDonalds and ate a lot of french fries. 

I just learned today that I ended up finishing fortieth in my age group.  I won’t tell you just how many people were in that group and I’ll trust that your Korean is too crappy to figure it out by googling.  I will say this though, I did beat someone.  And, yes, he may have been one-legged, riding a BMX bike, and running in jeans...