I’m a week out from my first triathlon. It’s a reverse triathlon, meaning you run, bike, and then swim. Reversed because this particular tri is considered a sprint with each activity shorter in distance than a traditional tri, so they can put the swim at the end. In longer tris, the swim gets you started so that lactic acid doesn’t overwhelm at the end of the race, the event requiring bodies to exert themselves. I entered this event two weeks ago without doing any kind of training beforehand, believing myself able to run 3 miles and bike 13 easily (the last two years, I’ve done the bike-run combo at the Long Beach marathon, biking 20 miles and then running 20). And heck, my parents spent gobs on swimming lessons when I was a kid, my private teacher ensuring I had the four strokes down. That was just 35 years ago or so. It would be simple to paddle my way through four laps of a pool. Right?
The plan was to squeeze in training over the two weeks I had before the race. While my kid practiced volleyball, I’d run for 20 minutes, bike another 20, and do four laps of the pool at the gym, with time to shower and head back to get her with time to spare. After three tries of this, I figured out something about myself: my Black ass can’t swim.
I mean, I can swim. I know how to swim. But it’s hard to keep swimming. Unlike running, though; unlike biking, you can’t just stop. You have to keep swimming. The rules online stated explicitly that swimmers cannot use floatation devices or aid themselves with the use of the pool ledge or lane dividers. And after my two 20 minute run/bike intervals, I’d not the energy to make it more than one full pool length at time. By my third training effort, I’d gotten better. I stopped far few times over the four laps, and my little breaks shrank in time. Still, in the big wide triathlon world, I’d likely drown. I can’t represent my people that way. We already have the “can’t swim” stereotype stamped on our bathing suits. I don’t want to perpetuate it even more in not-so-diverse Los Alamitos by drowning. So I did something I don’t ordinarily do. I quit.
And I have no shame about it. Maybe I’ll try a tri again some other time, with months and months of practice, just to prove something to myself. But for now, bye tri.