Row - Ride - Run Triathlon

OK - So lets' talk bucket lists.
Get born, have a happy childhood...Check
Get educated, complete a college degree... Check
Find a beautiful woman to marry, raise large, happy family... Check
Find a way to finanically support all this and stay happy... Check
Climb Kilimanjaro, highest mountain in Africa... Check 
Climb Rainier, toughest mountain in lower forty-eight... Check
Ride a bicycle across Minnesota West to East and South to North... Check
Run a triathlon... now wait a minute. I may look crazy... but that's for Olympic types. And that's not my type... But the beautiful woman (see item three, above) found a nice triathlon that she was confident we could complete. I think she first brought it up a couple months ago just as I was waking up from my nap. There was fourteen inches of snow on the ground. April was a long way away.

Row - Run - Ride Triathlon elevation profile. Triathlon Tip One: I recommend you always check out the elevation profile of any trialthlon you may decide to run.

The Row- Run - Ride Tri is sponsored by St Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota. OK. We can do this. We'll practice for a month or so and take this one out of the bucket. Check. Winona is a cool place. On the Mississippi River, beneath tall bluffs, lots of nice old homes.  We'd find a nice cozy bed and breakfast and make a weekend of it.

The Carriage House B&B. We thought that was just the name. We didn't know we were actually staying in the carriage house. It's OK - we like carriages.

So, I don't know what your spring was like, but we didn't have one this year. Last Saturday we had four inches of new snow. Practice schedules for our paddling, riding and running kept slipping away, usually on new ice.  We drove down to Winona in the middle of the week to check out the route. The lake where the race starts still had large slabs of ice floating around in it. We watched our e-mail for the cancellation. It never came. It's OK, we live in Minnesota, don'cha know... 

Race Morning. When they saw Linda and I arrive they brought out the rescue boat.

Miracles happen occasionally. I've seen a few. Here's one. One Saturday it snows. The next Saturday it's 60 degrees. That's a miracle in Minnesota. Here's another miracle. Out of over one hundred competitors there is no one there even close to our age. If you had to come up with an average age for the entire group that number would clearly be in the mid-twenties. There were maybe two or three with some graying hair - and these were hardcore 'Olympic' types. They probably flew in from some distant climate where they actually had spring.

Triathlon Tip Two: If the age of most of the competitors is ten years younger than your youngest children, you might want to look for a different triathlon. 

This tri started with a two and a half mile paddle. Down Lake Winona and back. This was when we found out that this triathlon could be run as a 'team' event, where you pick a proficient paddler to run the first link,  a racing rider to do the bike riding link and some superhuman Ninja runner for the final link. Clever. We had signed up to do them all. Pretty smart huh?

It's a tight battle for fifty-second place between us and three kayaks. We were in a canoe. Much safer than a speedy, tippy kayak. Of course, I had to let them get ahead so I could get them in the picture. I'm very thoughtful, that way. We actually were about two thirds of the way back from the leaders at the end of this link. We certainly didn't want to embarrass any of these kids.

Have you ever tried to run up the stairs of seventy-story building without stopping? I don't recommend it. The biking section of the Row - Ride - Run took us up to the prairie above Winona. If that wasn't bad enough, we faced a stiff west wind all the way to the top.

After the paddle before the bike, still smiling. I had not yet seen the hills behind me.

 Essentially, five miles of continuous uphill. I'm a fairly competent bike rider. Last summer I rode over two thousand miles. I was down to three miles-per-hour by the time we got up to the prairie.

Finally, level ground. We actually passed other riders in this part of the race.

Yikes! Downhill. 35 miles per hour and curves.

Okay, The truth comes out. Neither of us are very accomplished runners. We're in our sixties, for Pete's sake. I'd have to say we were feeling pretty good about the paddlers we left in our wake and the bikers we'd passed. Apparently, these people took a bus to the final link and then mounted motor scooters for the run. It got kind of lonely as we'd walk briskly pass the check points and watch the race officials check their watches and yawn.

At least it was a beautiful day and pretty place.

By the time we got to the finish line all the professional cheer-ers were hoarse from cheering everyone else in.  When we were within twenty feet of the finish line there was little girl there who shouted to us "You can do it!" She must have had some doubt in her mind.

Yes, we did do it. Tip number three: Don't worry too much about having to sign autographs.