My First Triathlon: Training Tips and More!

The Audacity to Tri

It's 80 degrees in the oven-dry Nevada desert at just past 8 a.m., and I still have two more miles to run. Problem is, my quads and calves strain against all forward movement. As women around me slow from run to walk, I pass them in what feels like the stop-motion mode of an astronaut jogging on the moon. I ignore my deepest urge to collapse on a roadside curb by dumping a cup of ice-cold water from the nearby aid station over my head.

I didn't come all the way from New York City to become roadkill on the final leg of the Aflac Iron Girl Lake Las Vegas Women's Triathlon. And wasn't I once a kick-butt middle-distance runner in college who flew through a mile in 4:43? I could eat a 5K like this for breakfast -- if it weren't for that 800-meter swim and 30K bike ride that I spent the past hour and a half racing. It's unfair that this last leg, the one I should have in the bag, feels the hardest.

Yet I keep moving. Because the craziest part of this triathlon is not the pain or the fact that I trained three and a half months to endure it, but that despite my exhaustion, I love every second of it.

Back in New York, I'd burned out on competing with my amateur running club and had spent the previous year without so much as a gym membership. Last time I remember swimming was from a sandbar to a raft in my neighborhood lake as a kid, and the one and only bike I'd ever owned had a makeshift second seat for my Barbie. Somehow this didn't stop me from volunteering when FITNESS was looking for a guinea pig to do a triathlon.

Before I knew it, I was posting online polls for readers to pick my coach (Neil Cook at Asphalt Green Triathlon Club in New York City) and everything from my wetsuit to my wheels. I relearned to swim at Friday night lessons, where my sagging legs were captured instant replay-style on video, and to ride a bike while clipped into the pedals -- in city traffic! At the crack of dawn every Tuesday from February through April, I met up with other sleepy amateurs to run sprints across a soccer field on Coach Cook's command. I hauled around sweaty gear nonstop -- to the office, work events, and dinners with friends.

All of which was meant to get me to a starting line some 2,200 miles away on an early spring morning.

Coach's Tip: Begin all training runs with plyometric drills like butt kicks, skipping, and high knees to warm up properly.