How prioritizing play helped me become a triathlete.

One of my favorite aspects of this joyful productivity community is cheering you along to achieve your dreams. I also like to act as a human guinea pig – testing performance psychology on myself and documenting my goal-setting journey. Today I’m excited to celebrate a new life goal with you, one that was a full year in the making:

I’m officially a triathlete!

Why did I want to be a triathlete?

One year ago today I limped alongside an Olympic Triathlon, cheering my friends like crazy while participants whizzed by on their bikes.

Watching the competition was more than exhilarating: it inspired me. I drove straight from the race to my local YMCA to test my freestyle stroke.

Face down in the quiet lap pool I realized

• • Triathlon cross-training would increase my mobility, core strength and coordination

• • An Olympic race would be a good intermediary endurance event before a full marathon

• • Running, biking, and swimming with groups could be a great way to meet new friends

I was hooked. I wanted to become a triathlete.

What actually is a triathlon?

An “Olympic” triathlon refers to a 32+ mile race: 1500 meter swim + 40k bike + 10k run.

Read more: Life Goal: My 1st Triathlon!

There’s also a shorter “Sprint” triathlon distance: 750 meter swim + 20k bike + 5k run. 

Finally there are the infamous 70.3M Half-Ironman and 140.6M Ironman races.

Race Day Recap: Swim 0.9 Miles

The race started with 400 participants lined up on a dock, waiting to slip into the Ohio River. The word “triathlon” conjures images of super lean, high-performance athletes in my mind, but the group of racers came in all shapes and sizes.

At 7:10 a.m. the bugle sounded, starting an hour-long process of sitting on the side of a dock until indicated you could start swimming. Standing outside with my swimcap tight, I couldn’t wait to swim – sweat beaded on my forehead from the elevated heat index.

The quiet morning swim was breathtaking: a surprisingly serene start. Without the usual barge traffic on the Ohio River, the warm, clear water reflected the golden sunrise in sweet hues.

Every six to ten strokes I popped my head out of the water like a turtle to sight the course, which was marked by bright orange and yellow buoys. Twice my gaze lingered across the river, taking in the vista across one of America’s most powerful waterways.

“Turn around!” I didn’t hear him at first, but a kayaker watching the route was speaking a foot away from my face. He made me retrace my strokes to go around a sighting buoy. As a newbie who didn’t want to tread water I felt frustrated, confused, and embarrassed – until the triathlon winner told me he experienced the same problem.

Running out of the water I sprinted to the event I prepared for the most – and counted most with respect to overall time – the bike.

Race Day Recap: Bike 22.5 Miles

The first time I cycled on a roadbike felt completely foreign to me. It took months of training to counteract an intense vertigo sensation every time I lean forward on a bike.

I knew that if I kept practicing, eventually the sensation of fear would fade away. “Here would go!” I started saying aloud to overcome the fear of mounting the bike.

So you can imagine how anxious I was when I first saw the race course… with eight u-turns! (One u-turn on a bike ride is plenty for me, thank you very much).

Running out of transition area, I mentally imagined how easy and fun it would be to hop on the bike with my new clip-in pedals.. and it worked! Before I had time to over think it, a persistent burn in my thighs arose as the wind began to dry my trisuit.

Keeping a watchful eye to cheer on my teammates, all of my energy went towards achieving one goal: navigating the course without crashing.

Riding a bike is a heck of a lot different than racing a bike. Thankfully, triathlon does not allow drafting. Drafting, the practice of getting shocking close behind other bikers to reduce head wind, is allowed in road racing but not triathlon.

My concentration on passing/being passed safely paid off, as I watched a reckless competitor teeter toter until his chain flew off, leaving him with a broken bike on the side of the street.

The hour+ course was punctuated with cheers and shouts from my fellow teammates, inspiring one of my lifetime best bike rides until I finally finished the last painstaking U-turn.

I successfully dismounted before the bright red line – and avoided being trampled by faster competitors – remembering to unclip my helmet only after my bike was safely hanging on its rack. Below my bike lay a brightly colored orange towel with all my transition gear lined-up in a row.

Trading my helmet for a hat and my bike-gloves for a handheld water bottle, I chugged an LMNT electrolyte water and started jogging to the final event…

Race Day Recap: Run 6.2 Miles

Did you know that Triathlon has two strange rules about running? First, you’re not allowed to run with headphones. Second, you’re not allowed to run shirtless.

Both rules weighed me down under the heat of the late-morning sun.

By the time I started the run, the heat index was over 100 and a cup of water dumped over my head barely cooled me off. Other competitors ahead were walking, which made me start singing my favorite pump-up song in my head, wishing I could tear off my top and pop in headphones.

Every half-mile felt like a winged victory until, after a total 2 hours and 44 minutes, I crossed the finish line to find a cold towel, copious water bottles, and the #1 cheer squad to celebrate.

Lesson #1: Prioritize Play, Fun and Flow.

When you were a kid, was going out on a bike ride a chore? Hopefully not. I’m blessed with happy childhood memories of swimming my mom and riding bikes with my dad. Today as an adult, I’m so glad that they instilled in me a spirit of healthy play.

Pavel Tsatsouline, the trainer who popularized kettlebells in the United States, uses the word “training” instead of “work out” because “work” connotes an activity that’s hard, stressful and burdensome. He wants his athletes to train with a more playful, fun mindset.

I didn’t want triathlon training to ruin my enjoyment of the activities. Staying in the flow state of focused enjoyment and the 4% challenge zone, which I explain in my book The Joyful Flow Formula, helped me calibrate my training efforts.

Am I the world’s best swimmer? Absolutely not. My only strength as a swimmer is that I found a way through training to really, really love long distance swimming as a kind of movement meditation.

I found a local bike builder, Tony Kinsel, who customized my bike frame with rainbow colors. Seeing the bright yellow + pink accents put a smile on my face in spite of my fear.

Wednesday nights when I practiced both biking and running, blasting pump-up tunes put a seriously needed spring in my dragging steps.

Lesson #2: Redefine what is ‘impossible’

If you had asked me one year earlier if I could swim a mile without stopping, I would have exclaimed, “That’s crazy talk!”

But sure enough, with enough research and practice swimming went from “I don’t want to step in the pool” to “cannon ball!”

Nothing can compare with the pride of accomplishing something that I previously thought was impossible.

Lesson #3: Know what success means
Racing makes it easy to compare yourself with others, especially for me, since I was racing with a lot of people I’ve come to know and have friendships with through the whole training process!

As a newbie, my goal wasn’t to push myself into exhaustion; I just wanted to complete the race without taking a break: no walking, stopping the bike, or floating. This was my longest ever sports event, and it took me a grand total of two around two hours and 45 minutes.

I didn’t have a podium-worthy race, but I still met my personal success goal.

Lesson #4: Know your Why

I used to pick health goals that were solely based on how I wanted my body to look. I don’t think I was alone in that! 

 

 

My deep why for doing the triathlon is because I wanted to tap into my inner capacity for play by reliving the joy of zipping around backroads on my childhood bike and splashing in the pool on hot summer days. Someday, I hope to have a family of my own and teach my own children to enjoy swimming, biking, and running with confidence. I love knowing that I can use my body in new ways and feel like I’m living with more vitality. 

Lesson #5: Add more prep time than you think!

 

 

The Planning Fallacy is the cognitive bias to underestimate how much time something will take. I found lots of 3-month training plans, but chose a six-month schedule so I wouldn’t feel rushed or behind in case something came up. Thank goodness I counteracted the planning fallacy ahead of time!

I had multiple weeks with essentially zero training because other goals were more pressing, like launching my book and attending conferences. Because I had plenty of margin, I was able to make these trade-offs in time or energy without falling behind.

Lesson #6: Break-up skill building into small, specific drills with ample time.

With the help of my coach, I made easy progressions that helped me through this whole process of learning new skills, little by little, this was, in the end, the most important part of training. Each skill that I learned on the bike, for example, built on to the next. This gave me time to break down my big fears into specific action steps and “stack” new habits together.

Lesson #7: Train with a Team!

 

 

There’s no getting around it: 90% of the fun was being part of a team. I trained with the Louisville ‘Locos’, a silly team name that recognizes how ridiculous triathlons are in the first place. Words cannot express my heartfelt gratitude for teammates who trained alongside me in torrential thunderstorms, snow, mayfly-infested waters, 100+ head index… we’ve been through a lot.

My teammates helped me practice transitions, lent me tire repair gear, and taught me how to swim with a buoy tied along my waist for boat safety. Triathlon is a whole unique culture. I had to step way outside of my comfort zone so many times to ask for help from strangers. Thankfully, people in my triathlon community are incredibly supportive and eager to share their enthusiasm with newbies like me, because its supposed to be fun!