Act 17: Don't Tri without the Train... and Magic Drinks

Okay, I’ve done a triathlon before. I trained solidly for a few months and it went really well and it was awesome.

Fast forward two years. I sign up for another triathlon. I don’t train. I run it anyway. This is my new thing that week. Running a triathlon without training. I know, it’s a stretch, but it’s all I had.

Surprisingly, it was not as terrible as it could have been. I could have passed out. Or collapsed from exhaustion. Or fell asleep on my bike, fallen, and broken a bone. Or pulled all of my muscles and been unable to walk for days.

So considering everything that could have happened, the fact that my foot went numb for the last mile of the run and my time was 17 minutes slower than 2 years ago is really pretty good. A little disappointing on the time front but overall I was just excited to finish. Still, I can tell you… I won’t be running many more races in the future without training (hopefully). Maybe it’s a “anything worth doing is worth doing well” mentality, but hey, that’s me!

Oh! So you know those energy gels (GU, Hammer, etc) that are thick and pasty and really hard to swallow but are recommend for all kinds of endurance or multi-sport athletes? I don’t like those. I have found something I do like though! Thanks to my local bike shop I found GU Electrolyte powder and GU Recovery powder. These are powdered drink mixes, meant to be mixed in 16 of 20 ounce water bottles with… you guessed it… water! Two of us put the electrolyte mix in our bike water bottle and drank that on the bike leg of the race and then drank the recovery drink right after the race. Considering my lack of training, this is the only thing I can possibly think of that would explain how I wasn’t terribly sore for days after. In fact, I was never really sore. Tired yes, but my muscles had the best recovery of their lives. I highly recommend this stuff… it’s like magic!