I’ve always wanted to enter a triathlon, so when Lopez called about this year’s Tritonman, I enthusiastically agreed to join him. The race was a month and a half away, which would be long enough to get some crash training in. Days turned to weeks, and before I knew it there was less than a week to go and I hadn’t so much as dipped my toes in a pool. This is how we do it at Wilderness Innovations.
500 meter swim, 12.5 mile bike, 5K run. Egads, that’s just 1/10th an Ironman!
Ironmen we are not, but I like to think that we have some heart and competitive fire in our bellies. Lopez no doubt has other things in his belly, but that is a topic for another time. As you can tell from these pictures, we really weren’t prepared for this race. Notice the look of dying on my face, as I begin the run. The awkward pink object on top of Lopez’s head during the bike. The mismatched plugs in Ken’s ears, and his broken wetsuit zipper. What a pathetic bunch.
Remarkably, we all finished within a minute and a half of each other. Even more remarkably, we all got beat by a guy in the 70-74 age group, and I clearly remember getting passed by a prepubescent kid as I robot-legged my way to the finish line. In one of the pictures below, you will also find a casual fellow dressed in some sort of novelty 70’s jogger outfit. I think we beat that guy.
Lopez 1:25:16 (195th place out of 242 males, all ages)
Jason 1:25:44 (198th place out of 242 males, all ages)
Ken 1:26:35 (201st place out of 242 males, all ages)
