Every year, my local YMCA hosts an indoor triathlon during the month of February. Participants have the entire month to accumulate enough miles to complete the distances designated for each of four categories: Silver, Gold, Ultra and Super-Ultra. The goal is to keep members active through what must surely be one of the most depressing months in Alaska: February days are still dark and cold, there's not a lot of new snow, and everybody's broke and cranky and tired of winter.
And every year, I entertain the notion of participating. I've completed a few actual triathlons and really enjoyed them. They always remind me of the spontaneous games kids play: "OK, you have to run over there to that tree, run around it three times, then hop on one leg to that other tree, run around that one five times, …."
However, I'm not a big fan of indoor sports, in general. For one thing, there are a lot of other people around you, sweating and wheezing and being generally annoying -- you know, being People. But more importantly, it's boring. Like, boring boring. No matter what I do to distract myself, whether it's listening to music or podcasts, or watching TV or movies, the miles tick ever so slowly by, one one-hundredth at a time. I should probably do what other Y-athletes do and cover up the screens with a towel, but I have a perverse fascination in watching the minutes and miles increase, slowly as they do.
Nevertheless, there hasn't been a better Alaskan winter in recent memory to engage in an indoor sports challenge than this year's. Truly, if I would allow myself to dwell on it, I'd surely break down in tears. The snow has been beyond pitiful, with barely three or four inches on the ground. And the chinooks that melted our town in January have left a lovely ice layer under everything, so that a wipe-out virtually guarantees a broken bone or, at the very least, a full-thickness skin laceration.
So I threw my $20 in the ring (to cover the commemorative T-shirt) and signed up. My pride got the best of me, so I refused to sign up for the lowest tier (Silver, with a 2-mile swim, 12-mile run, and 50-mile bike). But looking at the Ultra and Super-Ultra seemed like a lot more work than I was willing to do. Consequently, I settled ever so humbly for the Gold: 4-mile swim, 25-mile run, and 100-mile bike. I did some quick math: a four-mile swim I could do in four sessions -- easy. And even if I only ran three or four miles at a time, that's still just one to two runs per week. And biking? Well, I haven't done a lot of biking indoors, but how long could that possibly take? Ok, no problem.
Come February 1, I showed up with bells on, raring to go! I knocked out my first mile swim, and then was delighted to discover I'd somehow done the math wrong, and a mile in the Y's pool was only thirty laps, not thirty-six (must be a 25-meter pool, instead of 25-yards). Already, I'm ahead! Whoop Whoop!!
The next day, I was gonna pull a double, and knock out a bike and a run: four mile run, and maybe ten to twelve miles on the bike.
I should mention, I suppose, that I've always felt like running on a treadmill is cheating somehow.
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| I'm cheating! |
Nevertheless, it was reasonably fun to log four relatively quick miles while watching "Ghostbusters" or "Gladiator" on my little treadmill TV (though sometimes I was listening to something else entirely, as the YMCA could really use some help in the audio-visual repair department).
(One day I was so desperate to watch any -- anything -- on a screen, that I watched the little "No Signal" screensaver bounce slowly around the screen, like a slow-motion Pong game.)
However, as I moved to the bike, I was disconcerted to discover that the machine didn't really fit my body. Somehow, in spite of an adjustable seat, there was virtually no way for me to get comfortable. The arm handles were set way too widely apart and at an angle paradoxically both too high and too low for my upper body. Similarly, the pedals had a strap to cross over the top of the foot, but not in any way that transfers energy from the upstroke. Also, the pedals were somehow too far apart, as well, with my feet nestled snugly against the innermost part of the pedal, and still feeling like I was dislocating my hip sockets with each crank of the pedal.
And the seat itself deserves its own paragraph. I mean, I know the goal of most YMCA members probably isn't to become a world-champion cyclist (no yellow jerseys that I could see), but the seat on the stationary bikes was easily twice as wide as the seat on my own road bike. It's enormous! This big pie-sized cushiony wide wide WIDE seat, which can neither be perched on top of, nor crunched over the front of (sport-style). In sum, I simply have no idea who that seat (on that machine) was designed for.
So as I mounted up, to the best of my ability, I was dismayed to see the miles tick ever so slowly by. About four minutes per mile. And this is with a pedal turnover of about 105 per minute. So I figured maybe if I increase my resistance (the "level"), I could go "faster." After about five minutes at level ten, instead of level six, I realized, I'd gone exactly the same distance. It was like living a nightmare: no matter what I did, I couldn't make the machine go any faster. I was stuck.
After forty minutes, I dismounted for the day. Ten miles. In my triathlon division, I had to repeat that nightmarish, anatomically punitive workout nine more times. For a t-shirt. Oh yeah, and the glory. Whatever the hell that is.
But, y'know, chin up! I'm a go-getter. I'm perky. I'm chipper. I'm a mover and shaker. I can do it!! So I repeated my hellish run/bike workout two days later. Now I'm one-quarter done with the swim, nearly a third done with the run, and … only twenty percent done with the bike. OK. OK. That's OK. I just need to keep plugging away….
Then I got the flu.
On February 4th. For about a week, I coughed, hacked and phlegmed my way through each day, and NyQuiled my way through the nights.
Work out? I could barely walk across the kitchen floor without erupting into coughing jags severe enough to jeopardize my childhood potty-training achievements. No, no workouts for me.
After a week "off," I limped back into the Y for another workout. Nothing like breathing dry hot air to help heal a respiratory tract! But I got back on schedule and was soon back to halfway done. It's now February 18.
Long story short, after two & a half hours of swimming, just over four hours of running, and nearly seven hours of biking, I'd finished all of my distances, with a few miles to spare here and there (in case I'd done the math wrong, my brain addled with low oxygen intake). There was no ribbon to break, no cheering fans on the sidelines. There wasn't even a free slice of bread from Great Harvest Bread Company. Nevertheless, as I "cycled" across the "finish line", and the LifeCycle clicked over to 10.0 miles, I threw my arms up in victory, no less exuberantly than Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France.
So I did it. Check. And, like an actual marathon, I feel comfortable saying I never have to do it again.
And it turns out I chose wisely. We never did have more snow in February, so I never was tempted to go skiing instead of working out indoors (that would've been tough, and $20 t-shirt notwithstanding, I might've been a DNF. Probably almost certainly.).
But now it's March, and I'm back outside. And the sun is shining. And it's ever so cold, after breathing seventy-degree air for a month. And every piece of clothing I shed, I have to carry with me, instead of dropping it in a pile next to the treadmill. And there's no TV or iPod to distract me.
But my dogs are running, and it's very very lovely. And, while I'm glad I completed the indoor triathlon, I so very grateful to be out here again, where I belong.
