TRI-bulations or Not tonight dear, I'm saddle sore.

Marc Dragan said it so it must be true—triathlons are fun! Mind you, when he said it he was riding a hilly, 180 kilometre course with temperatures in the mid thirties (Celsius, not Fahrenheit), the humidity steaming, and the traffic heavy. What's more, when he put his bike away for the day he still had a forty-two kilometre marathon to look forward to in conditions so extreme that even world number two, the great Scott Tinley, was found walking. But still, if Marc said it I'm prepared to believe him.

Fun is what it's all about. Down in the lower thirty percent of the performance scale where I spend most of my time it's the thing that makes all the training worth while.

There's a lot of camaraderie among triathletes too, and a great deal of satisfaction in finishing a tough event in good style. Penrith's Greg Chapman, who completed the gruelling Great lakes Triathlon in around thirteen hours, said he felt so good when he finished in front of the big cheering crowd that he wanted to run around the block and come in again.

Triathlon came to Penrith in 1982 and I became involved almost by accident. I'd resumed cycling about three years before and one day my seven-year-old, Neil, wanted to enter a local five kilometre fun run. I wasn't sure if he could make it and went along to keep an eye on him. I didn't know that all these runners were infected by a virus and once I caught it I wouldn't be able to stay away.

Then there was the swim. I could just barely make the twenty metres across a pool (and even that was easier if I had a diving start) and every summer for as long as I could remember had I promised myself I would learn to swim. When somebody organised the Nepean Triathlon right on my doorstep I had to stop procrastinating. Mind you it wasn't easy. I remember the day when Neil said, "Your swimming is improving, Dad. Mum only lapped you twice today."

Neil was the first to compare my progress with Lynne's, but he wasn't the last. One year at Lake Illawarra the conditions were at their worst for somebody with the swimming ability of a common house brick. The swim, advertised at 1500 metres was actually about three hundred metres further than that compared to the relatively short (thirty kilometres) bike race and the abbreviated (eleven kilometre) run. The result was that Lynne led me out of the water by ten minutes and increased her lead with a three minute faster bike split.
Now, the god of triathlons has decreed that supremacy in two events isn't good enough—to conquer you must be able to keep up the pressure for all three. So to keep our marriage on a workable basis he has afflicted Lynne with unstable ankles. If she trains, she sprains. That means she has to get through her triathlons with almost no running training and until then I had always caught her along that final leg.
During the chase I fell in with another woman who said, "If we catch your wife, don't think you're going to run in with her," she said. "Don't think you're running in with me, either—we're going to sprint it out.
And so it was. We caught Lynne on top of the last hill with only two hundred metres to go and, remembering Barbara's challenge, I took off like a startled rabbit with a blond and a red-head at my heels.
The crowd went wild, cheering and shouting encouragement—for the two women. Not a single "Goodonyer mate" came my way even though I won in a photo finish.

That's me—nearing the finish

Have you ever been in last place in an event? It happened to me one July at Cronulla. My family always enjoyed the Sutherland to Surf and that particular year it was to be held a week before the Campbelltown Marathon. Since I had entered the marathon I needed a longer training run than the eleven kilometres of the race so when I crossed the line I ran back to meet Lynne.
When I found her she said, "Neil's not well. Can you see if he needs any help?" So off I went.
It's easy to miss a small boy in a big crowd and I went back further and further, taking all kinds of good-natured abuse from the on-coming runners – comments ranging from, "I hate you show-offs," to "You'll keep doing it till you get it right."
It's surprising how far a big field can get strung out over a short course and I must have run more than four kilometres before I ran out of runners, assumed I had missed Neil, and turned back toward Wanda Surf Club.
That's when the nature of the comments, this time from bystanders, changed. "You're nearly there, mate. Don't give up." "You'll be right mate, keep going." And so on. I shut my mouth and tried to look as though I was doing it easily but remarks like that, no matter how well-intentioned, are downright patronising.

Incidentally, the most discouraging remark I ever received was from Bob Talay, owner of Talay's Running Shop, at the end of a half marathon. After twenty kilometres of hills, the last six kilometres climbing steadily at maximum effort and with only one kilometre left to run on legs that were getting wobbly, I saw Bob standing on the footpath. "Congratulations," he yelled. "You've qualified for the final."

Marathons are enjoyable for the first twenty-five kilometres or so. You can expect a field numbering in the hundreds or, occasionally, even in the thousands—and for most of us it's just like a travelling party. Gradually over the last seventeen kilometres the conversation drops off and everybody gets down to the hard work involved in finishing the race. If you're planning to run a marathon for the first time you'd do well to believe all the stories you've heard about them—they're tough!
After my first marathon a friend asked what had been the hardest part. I could remember it only too vividly and said, "Picking my feet up."

Lynne and I often did our cycle training on a tandem. It was never intended to take the place of training on single bikes but it did make a pleasant change.
One afternoon we set out for a 120 kilometre ride, toward the end of which we had a 400 metre climb to the Hawkesbury Lookout, just north of Springwood. Having done this before we packed some eats and a thermos of coffee. We also put in a small container of milk.
When we stopped on top of the climb to have our snack we poured the coffee and opened the milk, only to find a thin layer of natural, fresh butter on top. And you thought they processed all the good out of it!
We decided that day that we didn't own a tandem—it's a twin-engined butter churn.

Any regular cyclist knows that animals are a part of life, especially dogs and magpies. I remember once being attacked by three dogs in a semi-rural area in Sydney's west and, having fought them off successfully, was then subjected to an act of aggression by a kurrawong sitting on an overhanging branch. It made a horrible mess on my shirt and I decided I preferred to take my chances with the dogs.
In nesting season magpies spend a lot of time attacking cyclists. If they hit you in the wrong place it can be a bit painful but mostly, if you keep your cool, there's no problem and you're soon out of their area.
Even so a friend ended up in hospital following a magpie attack. The bird didn't put him there—he fell off his bike while trying to hit it with his pump!

The Royal National Park Triathlon was one of Sydney's best organised events. The swim was 1.6 kilometres, the exceptionally hilly ride was another forty, and it ended with a seventeen kilometre run along a sheltered (from the breeze, not the sun) walking track.
From my point of view it had only one fault. It started at 6.30 am the morning after my son's wedding. God I was sick! With only 2½ hours' sleep and a stomach that wanted to stay in bed for three days, this was the only triathlon I seriously felt I couldn't complete.
Running down the last few kilometres I realised that my race number, 337, was fairly significant: the organisers had obviously rated me 3 out of 10 for intelligence, 3 for ability, and 7 for optimism.
As I approached the second last drink station and one of the volunteers handed me a cup of cold water I said gratefully, "May Allah give you many children."
"May Allah give me many opportunities," she replied.
"See me after."
"Do you feel that good?" she said, with some surprise.
"After about a week," I groaned.
That was when her friend threw a bucket of ice-water over me.

In my quest of triathlons I made many new friendship,s gained fitness, felt exhilarated, found new horizons, and shared it all with my family. On the other hand I had a few disappointments, a spate of injuries, was jeered at by motorists, run down by cars (twice) and was even chased by demonstrators (the day I invented body-contact jogging).
I guess Dragan was right. Triathlons are fun.

Some months after this article was published the editor received a letter from a guy who said that after reading it he decided to do a triathlon. He could swim, he rode a bike casually, and he could run a bit—but he'd never put all three together, and never over the distances we cover in triathlons. Fortunately he picked the shortest race on the calendar to try himself out.
He said by the end of the day the only thing that kept him going was the thought that somehow he'd find me, get his hands around my throat, and slowly squeeze my life away.
So I telephoned him.
It turned out he was a doctor in a suburban practise, and even with his medical background he didn't have enough nous to train properly.
I'm glad I wasn't one of his patients.

Body contact jogging!
I was running in the Sydney Domain (a large park adjacent to the Botanical Gardens) one lunch time when I saw a group of demonstrators who were protesting against visiting American nuclear warships, walking toward me along the path.
I moved to one side to go around them and they crossed to block my passage. So I moved to the other side and once again they blocked me. By this time there was no longer time to dodge so I could either stop or go through them.
I shoulder-charged the guy holding one side of the banner.
He went down and I heard shouts of rage and then footsteps coming after me. They couldn't have been too keen because they never caught up.
It wasn't until the next week that I was told the outcome of the incident by the attendant at the nearby swimming pool. The next person who ran afoul of them wasn't so lucky and when they chased him he ran for the pool and, as the attendant said, "asked for sanctuary."