a congratulations and a non-race report

Last week, my friend Kristin Goff completed the Olympic Distance triathlon at Carleton Place.

It was the culmination of many months of dedicated training and perseverance, and I want to congratulate her on this spectacular accomplishment. If anyone knows how hard it has been, it’s me, because I have been following in her dust. I hope she’ll write her own race report.

As many of you know, because we have big mouths, more than two years ago, Kristin and I made a pact to do an Olympic Distance triathlon together when we both turned 60.

It seemed like such a noble goal, turning a negative into a positive, and it was so very far away, that of course it was easy to laughingly commit.

We continued to do Sprint Distance Triathlons - the Early Bird, Smiths Falls, Brockville, the Canadian, etc. plus myriad running races - and this past year I joined her to diligently train evenings with the Ottawa Triathlon Club.

In the early days of our triathlon career - a few years ago - she was already beating me on the swim and the bike, but I was able to demoralize her by passing at the last minute on the run. Then, her times improved so much that I couldn’t catch up and reel her in.

It didn’t make a lot of difference at awards time, because we were usually either first in the age category or second in the age category, since we were frequently the only two.

And then in the past few months, Kristin really took off, swimming powerfully, biking confidently with her aerobars and clip-in bike shoes, and running faster and with confidence.

By the Riverkeeper, she had time to socialize before I arrived at the finish line.

When we did long swims in Meech Lake on a choppy day, she plowed confidently through the waves, while even in a wetsuit I felt like a bobbing cork and considered climbing up the rocks to the road and walking back.

I was doing the training with her, but I was feeling so bad about becoming the Eddie the Eagle of Triathlon that I broke out in hives and lay sleepless at night as I contemplated what lay ahead.

And then, like a sign from above, I read a book review in the Saturday paper of “The Dip - A Little Book that Teaches You When to Quit.” The book said quitting can be a good strategy.

A dip is the long slog between starting and mastery, the difference between the beginner technique and the more useful “expert” approach, the book says. Winners quit fast and quit often and only stick when they find the right dip to conquer.

I am regularly practically last in the Sprint Distance; if there were cut-off times for the Olympic, I wouldn’t even have been able to consider it. So I chose my own cut-off time, and decided this isn’t my dip.

Despite having done the long slog through the swim and bike and run distances over the past few months, two weeks before the Big Day, I decided that in spite of the happy fairy tale ending it would have created, the Olympic Distance wasn’t for me, for now. I switched my registration to the Sprint.

I suppose it’s actually amazing that I consider a Sprint Tri a letdown, when in my Try a Tri days I figured I’d never be able to do one at all. And I found out when I did the Sprint, that while I wasn't faster than I used to be, it was certainly way more comfortable - so there is value in training for an Olympic and actually doing a Sprint.

Thanks, Kristin, and congratulations! It has been - and will continue to be - great fun.