One Thing
Last night I watched City Slickers before going to bed. At one point Curly says, 'The Secret of Life is just one thing, next to that everything else don't mean shit.' For everyone that one thing is different. I am starting to think that for me, being fit is that one thing. It may sound silly, but out of fitness flows everything else: health, happiness to some extent (including liberating oneself from destructive thinking and destructive habits), and by pursuing positive habits you tend to find yourself in the company of similarly positive and inspirational people.
Now I don't mean one must become a gym rat or drink vegetable juice. For me it is performing at a fairly high level, and then trying to achieve balance in other things.
This weekend was the Potch triathlon and I have to admit I was thinking of not going since I'd be going on my own. Turns out Potch is only about 130km from Johannesburg, so only about 1 hour's drive. Not the best road, but boy, what a venue.
Roodeplaat outside Pretoria isn't a great venue. The dam is small, the terrain is quite small too so parking is a problem and it was incredibly humid. Potch has a lot of space, so you didn't feel crowded by the 1000+ triathletes gathered there.
The dam is very clean and the right size. The bike is reasonably flat with a few testing climbs and tricky sections. The run is also within the park area, with just a short section on gravel road.
Until I started writing this column I thought I'd had a good race. I thought I did a 1:12 which was 2 minutes shy of my goal - 1:10. The stats are already posted, so I see I went 5 minutes slower than that:
Swim: 11:55
Bike: 37:40
Run: 27:39
My swim was fair, although two guys went off on a tangent right in the beginning. I got into a nice rhythm coming back. 12 minutes for 600 metres is quite slow. A few of the guys said it was long. The breeze blew us slightly of course which would have made it longer still. I'd like to do 600m in under 10 minutes in future.
The bike went well. A Jeppe guy blasted out of the blocks at the start, and myself and a guy wearing a Specialized shirt pulled him back. The three of us then worked together towards the halfway point. Most of the time my heartrate was around 167.
Just after halfway Jeppe went mad again and I had to work quite hard to stay with him. Specialized fell off, and then when I went through to do some work, Jeppe fell off on a drag. Next thing about 6 guys using Zipps flew by, including Mr. Specialized. Fortunately I hooked on, and we motored from there. At about 16km I hit a big stone with my front wheel, which made it bounce about half a foot in the air. Fortunately no puncture.
Then coming around for a tight turn I tried to take it wide, but they'd put cones out, so in slowing down to dodge through the cones I lost touch. I stayed about 50 metres behind them, but it was a frustrating slip-up.
Coming in after the bike I took a sip of water - conditions were damn hot. My heart rate monitor showed it was a maximum of 35. The first 2km were really tough for me. I considered walking. I realised I need to run more and also practise bricks - cycling immediately followed by runs. From about 2.5km I felt better, although the first half of the run is almost all uphill. I got into my stride towards the end, and finished quite quickly.
I am disappointed to see my time was 1:17. I've done very close to 1:00 in the past.
That said, I think I raced fairly well. My average heart rate was 164, which is phenomenally high. Maximum was 176, also very high. To put that into perspective, when I train cycling intervals, for the first 2 I struggle to even get to 165. So to average 164 is working really hard.
The atmosphere at Potch is also laid back and lekker.
I am considering doing a standard race this next weekend. I will see how training goes this week. Otherwise I will do another half standard and try to bring that time down a notch. The weak area of my race was definitely the run, with a lot of guys coming in close to 20 minutes. That said, I'm not too unhappy with 27 minutes given how little I have trained. I did a 27 minutes in the gym and that was hard enough. To have done it in a triathlon isn't too bad. I will definitely be working on my run over the holidays though.
When I left the venue it occurred to me that the people who do triathlons represent a fairly special section of society. If you are overweight, and addicted to something you are going to struggle in the economically difficult period that's coming. But if you're used to performing at a higher than normal level, then more difficult than normal circumstances aren't going to break you as easily as the next person. In this sense, fitness of the body extends to fitness of the mind and spirit. Fitness implies the ability to remain flexible and strong in a diversity of environments. In that sense, I see fitness as my highest priority.
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