Triathlon

According to Wikipedia, the first known swim/bike/run triathlon was held at Mission Bay, San Diego, California on September 25, 1974. It was invented by members of the San Diego Track Club, which sponsored the race. Only 46 participants competed in the race.

Last month, I completed my first triathlon in Singapore. It was sponsored by Tribob Singapore. Nearly 1,000 people entered, and 748 people finished. Technically, the race was classified as a “sprint” distance triathlon, which means it was half the distance of an Olympic triathlon.

The triathlon was the final of a three-race series. They gave me the bib number (374) for all three races:

Aquathlon
Swim: 750m
Run: 5km



Duathlon
Run: 3km
Bile: 15km
Run: 3km


Triathlon
Swim: 750m
Bike: 20km
Run: 5km


Total Combined Distance
Swim: 1.5K
Bike: 35K
Run: 16K

For people participating in all three races, their results are combined for a final overall score. My final position after all 3 races was 60th out of 229 finishers in my age category (men 40-49).

The thing about racing in Singapore is dealing with the heat and humidity. It is pretty much always 80 degrees in Singapore, day or night. And the humidity makes it feel about 5 to 10 degrees warmer still. Obviously this doesn’t much impact your swimming, but once you get out of the water and start biking or running, you really get hot.

A couple of our friends came out and met Deanna at the beach to cheer me on. I only got to see them for a couple of seconds each time I passed the race checkpoints. After the race, however, it was really great to have friends around to congratulate me and buy cold beers.