I just finished peaking for my final bodybuilding show, the INBF Mr. CT Natural, this past June.  For those of you don’t know the final body transformation stats on me I’ll share one riveting stat:  from my first show in May of 2008 to this last show in June of 2009 I had gained 11 pounds of lean body mass.  That’s a very difficult thing to do.  There are those in the bodybuilding community that would kill for those kinds of gains.  Training for an endurance event would most likely undo some of the upper body lean mass gains.  After working 12 months of hard time in the gym and endless nutrition tweaking to get these gains; most people would think me nuts to reverse all of this. 

Leave it to my wife Bonnie to come up with new and exciting challenges.  I guess we needed something new to focus on for our athletic goals.  You know... it’s a pretty natural progression to go from a massive heavyweight bodybuilder to fast, light and quick triathlete.  Am I right?  Yeah.  Simple to connect the dots there.  But you’d have to know Bonnie and I have developed this impetus:  Is there something you think I can’t do?  Let me prove you wrong! Lord knows we both work very hard to continually improve our physical abilities.  The word obsessive may be used in a descriptor for either of us.  I’ll admit that. 

I guess Bonnie has had this goal to compete in a triathlon.  I thought it might be cool to do one day, but pretty much stopped myself short of thinking it possible as I have a knee that blows up like a balloon from running.  But I figured what the heck; let’s give it a shot.  After losing over 100 pounds, competing in bodybuilding, and finishing a century ride (100 miles) I figured anything was possible.  I’d just have to believe it was.

A triathlon is comprised of three events:  Swimming, Cycling and Running.  All in that order.  The lengths for each distance we would need to do are as follows:  swim a half mile, cycle for 14.5 miles and run for 3.1 miles or 5K.  Each task by itself is no small feat, but to do all three on the same day, one after the other and as fast as you possibly can would take a bit of courage and drive.  Having both run and cycled successfully for races in the past, I knew that these two events would not be an issue.  A bit more time in the saddle and on the road logging miles would get us into better shape to do these components.  The swim would prove to be the biggest challenge for both of us.

The last time I was in a pool to exercise I think I was rehabbing a bad knee back in 2002 and prior to that it was college, my freshman year, when I was a PE major at Springfield College in 1990!  Needless to say I am a lead weight in the pool.  I believe Bonnie was no better off than me except she was smaller and lighter.  Our extensive cardiovascular fitness from cycling and weight training did not directly translate into ability in the pool.  But it did help us move up the learning curve faster than most.  My experience is not average.  My first swim in my neighbor’s pool was 5 minutes nonstop before I started to panic and couldn’t breath steadily anymore.  5 minutes!  A conservative estimate of nonstop swimming to complete the half mile is that it would take me, as a newbie, 20 minutes.  5 minutes turned into 20 by the end of week 1.  That is why my case is not average.  Our general cardio fitness carried into the pool quite nicely with 4 days of swimming to engrain the movements and patterns.  So at the end of week 1, with 9 more weeks to train, I knew I could complete the swim.  Bonnie, however; was a different story.  She was swimming for 20 minutes at the end of week one, but it was not nonstop.  It got even more difficult for Bonnie when we went in open water the first few times and she could only go for 10, then 15 minutes without having to get out of the Long Island sound.  It was very difficult for Bonnie to continue on trying to improve.  It was devastating for someone so physically gifted in other areas to be struggling so poorly 8 weeks into the process.  Both Bonnie and I improved exponentially at the end with a few good tips we picked up from friends and experts along the way.  Bonnie finally overcame her open water issues and made the swim distance entirely just in the nick of time; 4 days before the race!  The last week I was practicing “racing” speeds in the water as I knew I would be pushing myself come race day.  I needed the experience of working hard, struggling for oxygen and having to breath smoothly in open water.  It seemed to have paid off.

Race day came and Bonnie and I each had our personal goal times set.  That within itself is crazy as we never did the event!  So how did we have goal times?  We took our best times we performed each event individually and added them together.  We then added a few minutes for transitions, and a few minutes for how much slower we would be doing all three events back to back to back.  Having our goal times to guide us, all we were hoping for was good weather, no accidents and no injuries along the way. 

Pulling into the parking lot and moving our bikes to the transition area brought a rush of excitement.  We had worked hard to get to this point and struggled through a few emotional roller coasters to get Bonnie into and out of the water safely; so I was very excited to be here in the parking lot on race morning!  I can’t put into words how much fun the anticipation of the race is.  For a competitive person it is a rush to have something to really compete in.  It seemed the anticipation of the race, not the race or the results themselves, was the best part of the experience.  The preparation culminated in this few hours before “go time”.  The rest was all just executing what we practiced. 

The only other really cool part was the swim start.  What a rush to be in the water with all those other racers fighting for a space!  You haven’t lived until you have had numerous people swim over you or grab at your feet while you are trying to swim.  It’s not for everyone; that’s for sure.  You need to be calm in the water and know that you’ll be fine.  The swim start is a contact sport; period.  Coming from a background in football and wrestling I had no problems with this concept.  I’m sure it was very daunting for my wife who never really played any sports like that.  My guess is that it is difficult for most swimmers, runners and cyclists.  These are all individual performance sports that do not require contact.  The vast majority of the field would not be prepared or comfortable with the concept of contact in an “individual” sport.  That is, of course, unless they either have played a contact sport or have done a triathlon before.

The experience could not have been better for us.  No injuries, no accidents and we both beat or goal times by three minutes.  Strangely enough we both finished 15th in our respective age groups.  

Anyone fearful of completing a triathlon should just go out there and train for the event and give it a shot!  If you can run and bike and have some basic cardio fitness, you can teach yourself to swim and complete all three.  As a training note both Bonnie and I did not complete a full sprint distance triathlon before the race and we both finished feeling strong.  Not having completed the event in it’s entirety you may not feel confident that you can finish.  I wasn’t sure what we would do either.  In our training, we did complete 2 of the three events at full distance back to back, but never did we attempt all three.  It worked out just fine in the end.

Now that the season is over I will focus my future posts on other training and nutrition topics.  I felt it would be interesting to some of my readers to see that someone with no proficiency in running or swimming could complete an endurance event like this.  It’s not something you would think most bodybuilders would be capable of doing.  The entire point is this:  If you don’t believe you can do something than you never will do it.  Don’t place yourself in a stereotype.  It’s bad enough when others do it to us.  Don’t believe what others think you are.  Defy the critics and do your own thing.    Your accomplishments will be all the more satisfying when you do.