There is a reason why we see advertisements everywhere. They work.
On Friday, March 8, 2019, I was at the convention centre, somewhere in the middle of Paris, waiting in a queue to collect my bib for the half-marathon to be held that weekend. If you are not familiar with how the process of a marathon bib collection works, then let me explain.The bib collection is almost as big an event as the race itself. All the participants, a significant percentage of those who do not even live in the country, gather in a large area, typically open grounds or convention centres, to collect their bibs. When you have a really large number of people in one place, there is no reason why any advertiser won't be interested. So inside the venue, you would have to navigate through a maze of stalls and sales people trying to sell shoes, sports watches, running gear, food, and other events. And no matter how hard I try to stay focused at the job at hand, I would invariably go upto a stall selling shoes or smart watches, just to see what they are selling. I would never buy anything, of course. I am always “just looking”. Not always though.
This time I got sucked into Garmin’s stall. Garmin is a smart watch company, which happened to be sponsoring a triathlon to be held in Paris in June 2019. To me, doing a triathlon always has seemed such an incredible physical achievement, not to mention to get bragging rights of claiming to have completed one. I spent about half an hour reading the pamphlets and talking to the sales dude, who did a decent job of convincing me that i was fit enough for this challenge and should totally register for it. And in case I was interested, they sell an incredible triathlon friendly watch too, only for 300 Euros. Little did he know that I, an MBA student, will never fall for any of this, and hence I did not buy the watch. Ha!However, the idea of doing a triathlon got stuck in my head and I did what anyone would do when faced with a seemingly stupid/awesome idea. I got one of my friends to do it with me. It did not take a lot of effort on my part and my friend Cody was in. We bought tickets to participate in a triathlon!
However, we knew, it is one thing to buy tickets and a completely another thing to participate in it and not make a fool of ourselves. Of the two options, we registered for the harder event offered: The Olympic i.e. 1.6km of swimming, 40km of biking and 10 km of running (for reference, an Iron Man triathlon consists of 3.86km of swimming, 180km of biking and 42 km of running). We were committed to train for it in the best possible way we could and we agreed to meet up specifically to plan our upcoming months.
We started out small, trying to get in a few weekly sessions at the pool. Maybe some short runs around the campus. But the thing about being in a school is that there are a billion things going on around, all of them equally important, and slowly but surely I kept forgetting that we had a triathlon to train for.
You see I am a fitness enthusiast and I really enjoy going to the gym and going for runs and playing football and all of such things. But being a student, I had so many other things to do like travel Europe, spend evenings in Paris, watch movies, play football, all in the middle of completing school work. So there was only very little time for my fitness related activities, and my triathlon training never got a lot of precedence.
In terms of our preparation, we would swim once or twice a week, and maybe run once or twice a week. If that week was good. But it could be one of those weeks, where either of us could be travelling, or occupied with something with really high priority, and we could not get any of the required sessions in.
As you probably know, one of the parts of the race is biking. And it can be really hard to participate in a triathlon, if you do not have a bike. This fact was not lost on us, but we thought, first let's get our other two legs of the race in order, we would think about the biking-bit later.
The “later” came in quite late! We had bought our tickets in March, but we only got around to getting our bikes on 1st June; about 30 days before the event! One of the big reasons for this delay was that we thought that we could rent one of those super-amazing racing bikes that those Tour de France guys use. Obviously, they were grossly out of our meagre budget, so we made do with the most basic bike available at Decathlon. For 150 Euros. Which includes the water bottle and helmet. And the bike stand. And the lock. But now we had bikes. Yayy!
We were committed though. We believed we had swum and run enough in the couple of months, and if we biked enough this month we would be in shape for our first ever triathlon. Be that as it may, I did not train as much as I had expected myself to. Mostly because I was very lazy to take the bike out, in the month of June, when Paris was suffering one of the worst heat waves. I did not train as much as I had hoped to, but once or twice I got in about 20 - 30km bike rides as part of my “training”.
As a side note, I would like to mention that though it may seem (and it partially was) that we did not do justice to how people would actually train for a triathlon, but we both are regular runners and gym goers, so we were in decent shape to begin with. And in between all the chaotic and complex schedules, we both, almost always, would find time to get some sort of a workout in.
Another thing that is usually essential for a triathlon, is a triathlon suit. Being students, we were trying to save money, and we found out that those suits are really expensive. Like 200 Euros expensive. There was no way I was going to buy a suit that costs more than my bike. That was not going to happen. Instead, we decided to carry 3 sets of clothes: a swimsuit, a pair of cycling shorts, and a pair of running shorts. The USP of a triathlon suit is that you don't have to worry about changing clothes during the event. But we were not there to break any records, so we thought the 3 pairs of clothes work for us just fine!
To participate in any sporting event like this, everyone needs to submit a medical certificate declaring that you are in reasonable health and pose no risk to yourself or others while taking part. Without the certificate, you cannot participate. We had uploaded our certificates from our respective physicians on the designated portal. One day before the event you need to verify your medical certificate, collect your bibs and deposit the bikes in the specified holding area.
As we queued to verify our medical certificate, we discussed how amazing it would be to swim in the Seine, run and bike on the streets of Paris, along with thousands of other extremely inspiring people. We were excited, to say the least. At our turn, the lady at the counter told us our medical certificates are not valid and told us to visit another desk for such queries. We were a little puzzled, but we went to the specified person.
Now, everyone is not the same, and I have some great French friends, but that said I am not a fan of the French bureaucracy or their lack of effort in actually trying to help or resolve a situation. And that is exactly what happened. The second lady told us that our medical forms were invalid, because it was not the exact form that they had asked for in the 34th bullet of the terms and conditions. I had taken part in other events, and my current certificate had worked just fine, and nowhere on the website was anything about a specific form mentioned (where people actually could read or find it). So she told us “You can try next year” in the most casual of ways, imagining that we do something like this every alternate sunday. The only way, she said, we could get our bibs is if we got signatures of a doctor on their form.
There was no way we could have found a doctor early in the evening on a saturday. Finding a shop where we could get a printout was already a bit of a stretch in the first place. But we persevered, albeit by doing a few things that we are not proud of and submitted the new certificates to the lady. Even though she did suspect something fishy about us getting another certificate in the span of an hour, she gave us our bibs and we were on our way!
Excited and eager, I packed my bag the night before the competition, checking off everything in my list. Clothes: check, race snacks: check, water bottle: check… But despite all checklists, there is always a fear that hangs about something that you've forgotten. But sometimes it is just nerves. I chose to ignore that and slept on time. We woke up super early, drove to the venue well in time, found a nice place to park our car and were walking back from the holding area after depositing our valuables etc when it struck me. Obviously, I had forgotten the swimming goggles on the desk, thinking I would pack them last. And now I had to buy an expensive pair from the expo. Not a great beginning.
With that minor speed bump taken care of, we walked to the starting point of the swim, in our trunks, and looked quite hilarious in the sea of people dressed in bodysuits. We could have been spotted from kilometers away, the only two dudes wearing swimming trunks to a triathlon event! At the cue, we dived into the water, and the rest is a blurry vision of me swimming for 1.6 kilometers, in waters with close to 0 visibility, putting together stroke after stroke in the hope that I am inching towards the finish. It was a big struggle, I had never before swum in open waters, let alone for such a distance. But something told me to keep my head down in the water, and just keep pushing. After an hour of a laborious, somewhat life-threatening swim, and no setbacks, we were ready to get into the second leg of the race: biking. We quickly changed into our biking gear, and jumped on our rides to finish the 40km as soon as possible.
It started off amazing, zooming into the streets of Paris, especially blocked for us to cycle as if there is no tomorrow. We quickly clicked on to the top most gear, which, because of our budget bikes, was 5. Our efforts notwithstanding, we could see what difference an actual race bike makes. We could see the guys speeding past us, with little to no apparent effort on the pedals. But we weren't there to beat anyone. We were there to complete something we did not think was possible a few months ago. The bike ride took us over an hour to finish, just as the sun was beginning to get hotter. We quickly changed again into our running gear, and set out to finish the last leg.
The 10k was the longest 10km I have ever run. I was tired, and it was blisteringly hot. We continuously kept pouring water over our heads, just to keep our body temp in check, because the last thing we wanted was to get a heat stroke. We plodded along, one step after the other, and managed to finish the race with a total time of about 3 hour 20 minutes. We never had a time in mind, we just wanted to complete it. And here we were, at the finish line, exhausted, but happy, and with a little sense of achievement. It is quite unbelievable that at the movement when you finish any exhausting endeavour, what you feel at the end, is anything but exhaustion. At that time, it was a heady mix of pain, ecstasy, triumph and some endorphins!
This race is memorable for me for a myriad of reasons, but it always reminds me to push just a little bit harder and the finish line would appear in no time.
