5 years after conquering an Iron Man triathlon, the lessons learned live on

In 2014, my uncle casually remarked that running a marathon is more difficult than completing an iron-distance triathlon.

“No one expects you to actually run it,” he explained of the triathlon distance, which includes a marathon run of 26.2 miles, after a 2.4-mile swim and a 112-mile bike ride.

That was news to me. It made no sense. And yet somehow, it did make sense, and it stuck with me like a song refrain I couldn’t shake.

The idea took root that I might train for and complete an iron-distance triathlon as a newly minted 30-year-old. My race would take place in defiance and celebration of an age that’s somehow feared by many 20-something women.

It all sounded simple on paper, as grand ideas do. Boy, I learned some lessons from my race, lessons that are ingrained in me as muscle memory five years later.

Accept help

Some forms of help were quite obvious — a training buddy, for one. I lucked out with a good friend who embodies the casually hardcore and humble spirit of her Fairbanks upbringing: sure, she said, she’d join me in the race. But first she needed to learn how to swim — she took lessons.

Then, we accepted guidance in constructing a viable training plan. We met with the amazing Lisa Keller multiple times to help us construct and tweak our plan over coffee. Lisa was ambitious, but also a realist. Since we were training over the summer, she rearranged our plan somewhat to accommodate for the day after weddings we both needed to attend. “That,” she marked in pencil as she spoke, “will be a rest day.”

Less obvious help was offered too, often in the form of food. My husband brought me a small plate of crackers with slices of cheese and some kind of dolloped garnish on top — red pepper relish? I didn’t care. I was sitting in the bathtub after an eight-hour workout when the plate appeared; I was moved to tears.

A friend who had completed an Iron Man told us this: salt bagels. He put stars in our eyes, describing the long bike ride with the bagel we’d casually start chewing. It would provide everything we’d need — salt, carbs, maybe some fat if we added peanut butter.

The day before the race when my pal’s amazing parents landed in North Carolina to help us and root us on — another amazing form of help — we put them to task: please Yelp bagel shops and find us four salt bagels.

Plan, plan, plan

An iron-distance triathlon is incomprehensible, just as a marathon was at one time. Before that it was a half marathon. I still remember the first time I ran for a full hour — unbelievable!

What enabled me to go all the way up to what still feels like a pinch-me-is-this-real distance was a plan, on a calendar, with a firm commitment to sticking with it.

Working backward from the goal, the plan laid out ambitious but doable steps that compounded over time, until ultimately we were adequately trained for the real deal. It’s a kind of magic that lived first on paper and then in Google Calendar, and culminated in the race itself.

Training is the worst part

Perhaps it seems that since training is what I did to prepare myself for the race, it would be less of a sufferfest than the race itself. The opposite is true. By the time the actual race took place, I was primed to enjoy it because I’d endured training.

Training is where I figured out the hard way that I need to drink more water during the bike ride to be ready for the run. I still remember gritting my teeth and staggering for an entire long run along the Coastal Trail, cursing myself for not knowing better.

Training is where I became mentally ready to endure the heavy-legged transition from bike to run; where I learned that chocolate milk post-swim is an actual gift from God; and that, believe it or not, lukewarm chicken broth or flat Coca-Cola mid-run is — and I am not exaggerating here — divine.

I fully enjoyed the race, because I’d made it through everything else.

Help yourself

Just 10 miles into the bike portion of my race, a small piece of errant Velcro from my bike’s seat bag had worn a hole in my triathlon shorts. A small bubble of inner, upper thigh popped out, exposed from the Spandex, primed for chafing and ready to command my focus for the rest of the day.

I had 102 more miles of biking and a full marathon left in those shorts. That’s about 14 hours, in my case. I had a choice: despair, or reframe.

I laughed inwardly about it and pulled off at the first support stop, where I re-Velcroed the seat bag and swabbed on a healthy glob of Vaseline.

I did this at every stop throughout the ride. Thankfully, the hole didn’t get any bigger, and it was positioned in a place where it didn’t chafe during the run.

The race is with myself

Ambition means lots of different things. My race wasn’t about competing with others; it was about completing something for myself the year I turned 30. I’ve learned that even though this isn’t the same kind of ambition that drives many others, it’s cut from the same cloth.

Ultimately, the race was about fulfilling something I desired in life. That has translated over, year after year, as I pursue goals that aren’t the scope of an Iron Man, or even physical, but are still monumental.

I may or may not train for another iron-distance triathlon. I put a lot of time, energy and money into that race, and it was worth every moment and cent. I’m very glad I did, and it might be that once was enough to learn what I needed to learn.

Alli Harvey lives in Palmer and plays in Southcentral Alaska.

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