To Tri or Not to Tri

**Today’s post is brought to you by McGrew Trainer, Cheri Kendall.

I love to do triathlons. Many times I find myself in conversations with people about triathlons, and every time folks swear they could never do one. Most of the time, the reason given is lack of swimming skills. We can all ride a bike and put one foot in front of the other to run, trot or walk our way through the final portion of the race, but swimming is intimidating to most people. I used to accept that maybe triathlons were not for the non-swimmers, until yesterday's Lanikai Triathlon.

I had neck fusion surgery two years ago, which solved many issues but left me with some range-of-motion limitations. Not a problem unless you can only freestyle breathe on your right with two foot waves coming in from that side, which is what happened to me yesterday. I began to panic (lack of oxygen will do that to you!) and realized if something didn’t change quickly I was done with this race. So I rolled over to catch my breath and decided I’d backstroke until I was calm.  I was making better time and could reverse steer the course by sighting off the buoy I’d already passed before the panic attack. The only down side was that my legs were working harder than when I freestyle, but I figured all those squats had to come in handy somewhere, right? I stayed in the backstroke until the final turn, put the waves behind me, and I free styled to the beach and headed into the bike transition. The rest of the race went smoothly and my finish time was as expected for the race conditions.

I’m really glad I didn’t quit. I firmly believe that any Boot Camper can survive (and even rock!) a sprint triathlon. So the next time triathlons come up in conversation, think about me backstroking through the Lanikai Triathlon and then tell yourself…I COULD DO THAT!