Since I am going to be on the road to St. George today, I figured I would let Karl entertain you. He is good at that! This is my favorite piece of writing by him and thus I had to share. I just read it again and it still makes me laugh! Enjoy!
How I got into Triathlon
by Karl Jarvis
the fam after a double win back in 2006
Had I not met Sarah, life would have been simpler. Running races is much more straightforward when you don't use up all of your energy beforehand with a big swim and ride. If you haven't already slurped all of your glycogen stores dry before you start the run, it's nice and easy. Relatively. But this crazy triathlete I was dating showed me how to make the simplest of sports ridiculously complicated and much more painful than it has to be. Oh well.
I knew Sarah was into triathlon while were dating, so after discussing it for a while, we decided to do a trade. She had to do my favorite race, which also happens to be one of the best trail running races of all time, the Wahsatch Steeple Chase. For the uninformed, the Wahsatch Steeple Chase is truly awesome - a 17-mile trail run on winding singletrack, ridgelines, jagged rocks to scramble over, cool people, great prizes, not too big, not too expensive. Just way cool. I had done it the year before and knew that Sarah really needed to have the best race experience apart from those multisport dealies. I knew deep down that she would be converted to the one true sport of running on mountain trails.
My side of the bargain was the Salem Spring Triathlon. I looked up sprint triathlon run times and scoffed. Being a runner, I was certain I could blast away the competition, with their wimpy hiking-pace 5Ks. Being a mountain biker, I knew I was tougher than all of those roadie types. Never mind that my last swim workout was 13 years previous to that time, and never mind that this swim workout did not exactly involve swimming in any sort of direction. Imagine a scrawny 11-year-old vainly attempting to remove his jeans under water while also vainly attempting to keep his head above water. Somehow the Boy Scouts of America deemed this action worthy of a glorious piece of cloth we call a Merit Badge. This particular one was called something like, um, Lifesaving. Anyway, I knew I could destroy this triathlon. I did not even have to swim with jeans on.
Salem drew nearer and I dutifully worked out. I did a couple of mountain bike races, I got my cyclocross bike set up for road riding, and I even set a new PR in the half marathon. And every day I worked on swimming, too. Although mental workouts are not quite as effective as actual workouts, I am certain they help. Unbeknownst to me at the time, mental swim workouts help your mental swim racing far more than your actual swim racing. I knew I would be all right, since I had a couple of tricks up my sleeve: 1) I had my Lifesaving Moment, with a piece of actual cloth to prove it, and 2) my friend April knew somebody who could get me a free rental of this cool neoprene thing they call a wetsuit, which keeps you warm and makes you fast.
This race thing did not have anything to do with pride, you know. Well, it was not even an issue whether I could beat Sarah in a triathlon or not. Of course I could beat her. That was beside the point. Nope, no pride was at stake here.
Race day... I get my bike set up, lay out my stuff, go for a little ride, help some people out with their bike problems, put on my race face, and go for a little jog. April shows up with Swim Trick #2. I put on this piece of workmanship and notice it has some great built-in kneepads. It's not restrictive at all on my upper body because of the deep scoop neck, and there are not too many rips in it. It's a little on the large side for me, but I have Swim Trick #1 just in case. Even if my Tricks fail me, I can make up a few minutes on the bike and run and still beat Sarah. But I don't think about that issue, since it is not about pride. I know several swim strokes, too. That's Trick #3! The Three Tricks ball up in my stomach and my smirk of running superiority fades.
Several hours later, I think, I got out of the water with some folks that were born before the Great Depression. That was depressing, but not only because I felt the pain of their childhood. My alternating freestyle, sidestroke, backstroke-type flailing thingy, and the deadman float had not served me quite as well as in my mental workouts. The scoop-neck wetsuit turned out to be excellent as a parachute, but poor as a triathlon wetsuit. I swear jeans would have been more hydrodynamic.
Cruising on the bike felt good, except that I had vertigo from thrashing around in the water all morning. I got up to speed, passed a few people, and started to feel good about myself again. Then a couple of dudes zoomed past me on their second lap. “Oh”, I thought, and I realized that I needed to get into triathlon.
My run wasn't nearly good enough to overcome my Merit Badge-esque experience in Salem Pond. Back at the finish, Sarah looked fairly well-rested. My pride was not at all hurt. No, blast it all. In any case, she wouldn't win something like the Wahsatch Steeplechase, even if she was an excellent triathlete.
Several weeks later, I strut through the finish of the Steeplechase near the front. I'm loving it. I am in my element. I sip my Gatorade gingerly, like a cup of tea. I relax and chat with some friendly folks. I get comfortable, since it will be a while until Sarah the Triathlete comes through. I hardly get a few nibbles into my bagel when she comes through with a big smile on her face. She's had way too good a time. “What are you doing here?” I said, and realized I needed to marry her.
One year and not quite enough training later, I found myself keeled over with stomach cramps in the last part of the marathon in the Quelle Challenge (iron-distance triathlon) in Roth, Germany. The swim and bike had again taken their toll, but this time I had done some actual swim training and had borrowed a much better wetsuit and bike. This race was also the result of a trade – a 50-mile trail run and the Quelle Challenge. Our son, Noah, was on the way at the time, preventing her from doing either race and sparing me additional damage to my pride. Sarah cheered me on, and I jogged with her to the finish. I realized then that I was hooked. And watch our for Sarah when she does do an Ironman!
Well, I guess Karl was not quite as hooked as he thought, since he has now returned to being a trail/ultra runner almost exclusively. The swimming is just not his thing. But he is loving the running more than ever and has had some very impressive results lately. If there were more duathlons around, he would dominate most of them. But there aren't. Unfortunately.
PS: I have done an Ironman since then and you can read all about it here.
PS: I have done an Ironman since then and you can read all about it here.
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