It seems only natural, having been in a nationally ranked track club, for me to begin triathlon training with the national-champion tri club. But it’s so ridiculous, and I’m so pathetic, and I hate it so much. What am I DOING here?

Starting into triathlon training in mid-summer reminds me an awful lot of Day Camp. You get up far too early, it’s summer, you have to go into a swimming pool, nobody respects you, you’re wired and disoriented for most of the day.

I went to three different day camps. The first one was about 120 miles from where I lived, in Connecticut. Yes, it was a day camp. Let me explain:

One spring day when I was six-and-a-half, my father drove me down to Wynnewood, PA for his cousin’s funeral. We stayed at the house of his father and stepmother, slept in my father’s old bedroom (vast luxury-hotel digs with two double beds, desk, dresser, and roomy private bath). I was still so young that I might as well have been a dog, my father had so little self-consciousness around me.

Grandpop liked having me around. He liked having kids in the house. It was mooted that I should move in for the summer. All that was needed was a pretext. Immediately one was found, a stone’s throw from Grandpop’s back porch: the Friends Central School! Yes, Friends Central, the popular Quaker school of the Lower Main Line, had a day camp beginning in July.

I was not privy to the grown-ups’ discussions, so when I got the news it was filtered through my father’s own need for pretext. Grandpop’s desire for the pit-a-pat of little children’s feet was nowhere in play. No, Dad’s selling point was that I was going to “camp” because they would Teach Me to Swim. This seems to have come from his own fond memories of summer camp in Quebec, when he was 15 and earned a Red Cross Junior Lifesaving badge.

Friends Central Day Camp was really very nice, for the most part. Being run by Quakers, it had very little of the contact, weaponry or “ball” sports. A lot of storytelling, arts-and-crafts, nature-hiking, and making killing jars for bugs with plaster-of-paris. We went to the Zoo and the Philadelphia Bulletin plant and the Franklin Institute. That much was fine with me.

However my father, on his infrequent visits to Wynnewood—his job was based in South Bend, Indiana—didn’t want to hear about killing jars or the Philadelphia Zoo. No, it was all: “Did you learn to swim yet?”

Nope. I didn’t. Swim time came twice a day, and was modified hell, in an outdoor pool. There was a doughy-legged Mrs. Campbell in the early morning who was our swimming instructor. She usually gave me an F for the day’s lesson because I refused to put my head under water. She encouraged the nursery-school girls playing in the wading pool to mock me because I could not swim as well as they. Some time after lunch, we had a “free” swim period when we were supposed to go into the pool once more. As a complete non-swimmer, I was made to wear a red poker-chip around my neck on a string. One day I got too embarrassed at this and asked for a white chip (intermediate swimmer). The counselors and lifeguards all called me on the carpet for that one.

I got the sniffles shortly afterwards, and decided I’d use this as an excuse not to go to any more swim lessons. No Mrs. Campbell, no afternoon Open Swim. My camp enrollment was over in a week, and I refused to enroll again. My father came back to visit in Wynnewood and sneered at me. “So! You’re not going to Learn to Swim at all, is that it?” Yes, that was it.

Eventually I learned a little, on my own. Now I have to deal with the triathlon coach, and it’s almost like Mrs. Campbell all over again.

I first wanted to do a triathlon in 1986, about the time I started wearing a Timex Triathlon wristwatch. Never got around to it till a week ago, for the usual reasons. Need better bike; need to swim better; can’t make a fool of myself; what is this ‘transition area’ thing? And I was full of hearty Lets Run contempt, snorting contempt, for triathlons and triathletes. You’ll have to go to letsrun.com and search the message boards if you don’t know what I mean.

As it turned out, the low-key “sprint” triathlon I did was one of the easiest races I’ve ever done. Didn’t even have pre-race jitters, though the adrenaline was going and I had to visit the portaloo three times before going to the swim.

The Swim. I’d made up my mind I would do this at a stately, casual pace. It was only 400 meters, indoor Olympic-length pool. I had to wait over an hour to jump in. 12:45 was what I expected, but I was a little too Holiday Inn, finishing at 14:45. And another :30 was added on because the exit mat was somewhere outside, and I didn’t rush to it.

Made up a little time on the bike (about 45:00 for 13 miles?), though I was pretty beat for the run (over 26:00 for a 5k). Didn’t rush through any transition. I forgot to put on my race bib, but didn’t get DQ’d.

Not sure I’ll ever do this again, but at least I understand the basics: The ‘transition area’ is a vast region where people park their bikes according to numbers. You should swim as fast as you can, and seed yourself in the swim as well as you can, because that gets you out and on the road sooner.  Race organizers are helpful to newbies. If you screw up, nobody notices.

Other lessons learned: a lot of triathlon competitors are extremely casual. They use mountain bikes or hybrids. Astounding. I had heard of this, but imagined it was an occasional eccentricity. Really, there were dozens upon dozens, all pumping along on flat pedals, including nearly everyone I passed along the bike route.

And most of them wear too much clothing for riding or running on a hot summer day. Again, I might not have noticed this had I not swum my way to the back half of the lineup.

All in all, a very nice respite from road and track races. Would not mind doing another few. I mean, it’s a pleasant alternative to a long run or hard workout or junk race on a weekend. Is it a serious sport? Not from my worm’s-eye vantage, but what does that count for?

I haven’t looked for it in a while, but I used to enjoy Toby Tanser’s blog. Toby was (make that is) an elite distance runner who coached various teams in Manhattan and owned part of a running shop.

He posted to his blog just about every day. An aggressively minimalist, style-free blog. Basically, text and pictures. Lots of pictures.

Now I’m looking at it again…no, it hasn’t changed much since 2006. For a while there I wanted to do my own ultra-minimalist blog. Raw text with a few html tags on a text editor…throw in some images, and away we go! Alas, I lacked a certain something, something called “content,” perhaps because I am not a tireless globetrotter raising money to save the Kenyan orphans.

But there was another oddity to the blog, a very innovative oddity, that I do intend to steal. It’s what I call the “blind alias” gambit. Instead of mentioning his friends and coworkers by name, Toby gave them cryptic nicknames. That way he could maintain a free-flowing diary without having to worry about people’s names coming up in search engines.

For example, there was a splenetic, amusing salesman at the running shop who was always telling stories or having mishaps. Toby called him “Costanza,” after the beloved Jason Alexander character on the popular Seinfeld sitcom. The fact that he didn’t look anything like Jason Alexander the alias it even more effective. If you wanted to know who this person was, and you Googled “Costanza,” you’d get absolutely nowhere.

Search Engine Avoidance! A blossoming new field!

We’ll see how it goes here. I have had a hundred blogs and some of them have turned into running blogs willy-nilly, after which they usually died, thanks to oppressive-self-censorship. This is my first attempt at running-only journal, and maybe the “blind alias” will help.

Where to begin. I’ve run almost all my life, usually badly. My 800s at age 14 or 15 were somewhere around 3:40. A good 10k for me when I was 30 would have been 56 minutes. Heartbroken, I’d give up the game, then somehow come back because I got lured into a Corporate Challenge or 200-mile relay in New Hampshire. Years rolled by. Mid-40s, I decided to do a marathon. It was in Paris, where no one would see me. I did everything wrong, and came in at about 4:21. But I was crazy with enthusiasm, so promptly signed up for one in Ottawa a month later, and took a half-hour off my time. I ran a few more in the next year or two, including New York and London and Boston. And about two hundred other races. My 5k time went down from 24 minutes to 21, my 10k from 48 minutes to 45. I seriously expected to be doing 18-minute 5k’s by the time I was 55 years old.

But it’s not going to happen. I stalled out. I lost my mojo. I couldn’t see the point.
There’s more to it than that. Physical illness, boredom, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, anger at the coach: they all took their toll. I started dropping out of races, or not showing up for them, or (in the case of track events) flying into an ungodly panic and running away two minutes before my event was on.

The worst part was that I couldn’t or wouldn’t express my anger and fear to anyone. Running is an intensely social activity. (If you’re a runner you know this; if you’re not, you probably imagine it’s an intensely solitary activity. Non-runners have many weird ideas like this.) An outwardly cheery disposition is expected of you when you show up for your workouts and meets and road-races. This is not strictly a running-club protocol; I think it has a lot to do with the nicey-nicey behavioral trends of recent years, most commonly seen in the workplace (you know what I mean: where you stay off politics and religion, and avoid discussing matters that might be “sensitive” or “depressing”).

Regardless, it’s the sea I swim in, and I find it both alienating and constricting. I have problems and must tell the world. Hey you! Listen to me!

Anger and alienation: sounds like a winner to me!

For some time I’ve been signing up for races and, three times out of four, not showing up for them. Sometimes I just drop out. But today I achieved a new personal record. I was signed up for two different road races, a 5k and a half-marathon. And I stayed in bed for them both. How about that!

New install on WordPress. Thought of doing this as an antiquated 1.2.2 WP version, just to be quirky, but that was too time-consuming. Vitals are ar, Ec1, comme d’habitude.