cross my mind. I just let ’er rip, then plunged right into running. As you can imagine, my legs didn’t
work right. My mind ordered them, “Run!,” but my leg muscles were on strike. I could see myself
running but had no sensation of running.
Each race is a little different, but the same basic thing happens every triathlon. The muscles I’ve
pushed hard for over an hour while biking, the ones I still want to be open for business when I start
running, just won’t move smoothly. It takes time for the muscles to change from one rail to another.
For the first two miles both my legs always seem locked up, and only after that am I finally able to
run. This time, though, it took a lot longer to get to this point. Of the three events in a triathlon,
running is obviously my specialty, and usually I’m able to easily pass at least thirty other runners. But
this time I could only pass ten or fifteen. Still, I was glad to be able to even out my performance a bit.
In my last triathlon I’d been passed by a lot of people in the bike portion, but this time it was my run
time that wasn’t so great. Even so, the difference between the events I was good at and those I wasn’t had
decreased, meaning that perhaps I was getting the hang of being a true triathlete. This was definitely
something to cheer about.
As I ran through the beautiful old part of Murakami City, the cheers of the spectators—ordinary
residents, I’m assuming—spurred me on, and I wrung out my last ounce of energy as I raced for the
finish line. It was an exultant moment. It had been a tough race, for sure, what with my Vaseline
adventure, but once I reached the finish that all vanished. After I caught my breath, I exchanged a
smile and a handshake with the man wearing race number 329. “Good job,” we told each other. He and
I had battled it out in the bike race, where he passed me many times. Right when we started running,
my shoelaces came untied and twice I had to stop to retie them. If only that hadn’t happened, I know I
would have passed him—or so goes my optimistic hypothesis. When I picked up the pace at the end of
the run, I almost passed him, but wound up three yards short. Naturally the responsibility for not
checking my shoelaces before the race lies entirely with yours truly.
At any rate, I’d happily made it to the finish line set up in front of the Murakami City Hall. The race
was over. I didn’t drown, didn’t get a flat, didn’t get stung by a vicious jellyfish. No ferocious bear
hurled himself at me, and I wasn’t stung by wasps, or hit by lightning. And my wife, waiting at the
finish line, didn’t discover some unpleasant truth about me. Instead, she greeted me with a smile.
Thank goodness.
The happiest thing for me about this day’s race was that I was able, on a personal level, to truly
enjoy the event. The overall time I posted wasn’t anything to brag about, and I made a lot of little
mistakes along the way. But I did give it my best, and I felt a nice, tangible afterglow. I also think I’ve
improved in a lot of areas since the previous race, which is an important point to consider. In a
triathlon the transition from one event to the next is difficult, and experience counts for everything.
Through experience you learn how to compensate for your physical shortcomings. To put it another
way, learning from experience is what makes the triathlon so much fun.
Of course it was painful, and there were times when, emotionally, I just wanted to chuck it all. But
pain seems to be a precondition for this kind of sport. If pain weren’t involved, who in the world