Summer Triathlon – Part I: Intro

tri3
“I swim in the sea of silver light.
I cycle along the road of gold delight.
I run with the smile of the beyond.”   

– Sri Chinmoy

 

Last summer, I went travelling around Europe after finishing my post-secondary education. This summer, I’ll be competing in my 1st triathlon. I’m all signed up & ready to go!

The race is on May 19th, 2013 and will be at the Genesis Place in Airdrie.

I thought I would share about my journey as I train for this triathlon (tri) and invite those who are interested to come along for the ride – no pun intended!

For this 1st post in the series, I’ll talk about the sport in general and give a high-level overview for those readers who may not know that much about triathlons (I know I certainly didn’t until recently!)

Leading up to the event, I plan on posting other updates, including: Planning for a Tri, What I’m learning, and possibly other topics as they come up.

To start with: Why am I doing this? (You might be asking this – I know I have, especially during some intense training sessions!)

There are 3 reasons:

  1. To challenge myself
  2. My love for sports and the opportunity to try a new sport
  3. I’ve wanted to do a triathlon for a few years, and now is a good time to “get ‘er done!”

To begin with, a triathlon consists of: Swimming, biking, and running (in that order).

There are 2 transitions in a triathlon race:

a. Transition 1 (T1): Swimming to biking

b. Transition 2 (T2): Biking to running

So, there are actually 5 parts of a triathlon (with each part being timed): Swim, T1, bike, T2, run.

As for distances of a tri, there are 5 standard race distances, with the last 4 being the most common:

  1. Try-a-Tri
  2. Sprint
  3. Olympic
  4. Ironman – Half
  5. Ironman – Full

I’ll be doing the Sprint tri distance.

See the chart below for the distances in each type of triathlon.

 

Swim

Bike

Run
Try-a-Tri

500 m

15 km

4 km
Sprint

750 m

20 km

5 km
Olympic

1500 m

40 km

10 km
Ironman – Half

1.9 km

90 km

21 km
Ironman – Full

3.8 km

180 km

42 km

*Check out Alberta Triathlon Association & Total Triathlon for more info.

In Part II, I’ll talk more about “Planning for a Tri”, so be sure to come back!

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