triathlon

Sunday, January 30, 2022 was my own personal triathlon day. It wasn't something I had planned, and it wasn't official, yet it just somehow emerged during the month of January, and it was a satisfying personal achievement. It started with an invitation to explore Austin, Texas while dog sitting for my friend. Home base was in South Congress (also known as SoCo), a beautiful neighborhood with shops, restaurants, and beautiful views of the river, downtown, and the state capitol. During my stay, I had a couple goals: live a more active lifestyle and give the dog a high quality life.

Starting with my goal for spending time with the dog. Some prior experiences had motivated me.

This connected with my goal to being more active.

So I began my regular routine, walking or running with the dog four times a day, then biking across town to workout at the gym and pickup groceries, and then back home to work and enjoy meals and hobbies. It had been a while since I had been swimming regularly, so I started working on my form. While I was there, I met a fellow swimmer who had a goal of swimming 80 lengths every day for a whole month! So I was curious if I could do that too. I started incrementally doing a contiguous sequence of lengths (1, 2, 3, ... up to 12). Then one day I was curious if I could do them all at once (78 lengths), and I could! Then I tried 80, 90, and 100, and I could! I was amazed with my progress.

Then one day, it occurred to me, I'm running, biking, and swimming most days. Was I doing the equivalent of a triathlon? I was curious what distances qualified for an official triathlon, and found a Triathlon 101 Guide from Redshift Sports that described the differences between a sprint-, olympic-, half-ironman-, and ironman triathlon. When I looked at the numbers, they seemed doable, so I put together a plan to do it all in one day.

The weekend came:

Estimated totals:

I did learn a few things about skin care from the experience, but I'll save that for another story. Nonetheless...

We did it!

good misfit