Triathlon is the Best Sport

I was a swimmer. When I was nine, my mother gave me three options for getting active and I chose swimming. I couldn't run, couldn't hit, and was afraid of getting a ball to the face. I also didn't like being hot and sweaty. That left swimming. I got over the fear of the ball (mostly) when I took up water polo in high school but, I still proudly claimed that "land sports" were not for me. So how is it that I now do a sport that is two-thirds on the land?

To be honest, it all started out as a bit of a lark. A friend of my husband's was doing the See Jane Tri triathlon and was looking for a training partner. It was a sprint, it was all women, and it was on a Sunday. As a former swimmer, I knew I could handle the 400 yard swim, I'd spent a lot of time on a bike in the past and I figured I could stumble (or walk) through a 5k run. Five years later, I've joined the fabulous Team Sheeper tri-team, get up to swim and 5:45AM, and find myself doing far too many jump squats in coach Tim Sheeper's strength workouts (not to mention regularly running 10k workouts with coach Kirsten).

Whereas some people are daunted by the fact that triathlon combines three sports: swimming, cycling, and running, I think this is what makes the sport perfect both physically and psychologically. I'll leave a full discussion of the various physical benefits to the kinesiologists (essentially, training for three different sports might prevent some injuries from overuse) and focus. Instead, I'll focus on the considerable psychological benefits. Triathlon provides plenty of opportunity to be good at something, at least relatively, and great opportunities for improvement. For example, my training partner was a much faster runner than me. Research by Abe Tesser at the University of Georgia suggests that when people who are close to us are also better than us in an important area of our lives, we either lose the friend or leave that area of competition. There are notable exceptions to this (think of the Williams sisters in tennis or the Hamm brothers in gymnastics), but, in general, most people don't like to constantly be outperformed by a friend. So, according to this self-evaluation maintenance model published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, I could keep my training partner or I could keep my sport. But, this where the beauty of triathlon comes in: my training partner was faster than me on the run, but I was faster than her on the swim. We each had our own area of expertise. We each had a place where we were better than the other (we were about the same on the bike) and this created balance in our relationship and allowed us to keep our sport and our friendship.

On a larger scale, when you complete a triathlon, you are given many ways to measure your success. There are objective standards, but even the points system of USA Triathlon is based on a comparison of your performance with others. More importantly, triathlons provide comparisons that will make you feel good about yourself and comparisons that will inspire you to work a little harder. You can be both pushed and reassured at the same time.

In my case, I have an advantage because I was not only a swimmer in college, but my event was the mile. So, when I go to triathlons or even smaller Splash and Dash events, I know that I'll do fairly well in the swim. In fact, at the Austin Triathlon two years ago, which I completed as part of a Livestrong team, I sprinted far harder than I should have, just to beat a competitor on the swim. My thought was, "This is my leg of the race! No one is going to beat me!" I caught her, but once we made it up the ramp, I never saw her again. I did this again this year, at the famous Wildflower triathlon. I raced to the finish of the swim, crossed the timing line just a hair before the woman behind me, then gasped to her, "That's all I've got" before stumbling into the transition area. Although those awesome athletes beat me soundly, I came away satisfied because I'd achieved relative success in one part of the race - the rest was just iciing on the cake.

This doesn't mean that I give up for the rest of the race, but rather than comparing myself to other runners on the other parts of the race, I compare myself to my past races and my past performances. By the time this part of the event comes around, I'm trying to get in under an hour or meet some other personal goal. I'm still judging myself compared to someone else, but in this case that someone is me. I'm not discouraged because I am getting passed left and right, or because I'm running next to a 68 year old man. I'm excited to see what I can do. No pressure. This mentality helps me get through run workouts, as I am getting lapped on the track, a small voice inside me is saying, "Yeah, well, let's see how you guys do in the pool." True, I have a competitive nature, but it is not a desire to beat others that gets me out of bed, on the road, in the pool. I'm not competing against anyone in particular, and I'm glad to see my teammates succeed. The comparisons with teammates keep me going because their successes tell me that I can do just a little better if I try just a little harder.

Everyone has a strong suit, and everyone has a weak suit. Triathlon is a great sport because you can work from a place of comfort, while also challenging yourself in new and exciting ways. Success is always relative, success keeps you motivated, and triathlon offers many different ways to achieve your success.