To answer my own question... / New poll

I've been thinking a lot about how to answer my own question, "Why the hell do I do triathlons?". I mean, I can't even stand the name. I hate it when people call it "a tri", or even worse, when they use the verb "to tri" (I'm not even going to get into the cute plays on words and double entendres that this new verb furnishes to millions of recreational triathletes and ammature writers everywhere). One would think that I would get out of the sport just so I don't have to use that word when I talk about it. I mean, no offense or anything... But no, wait, I didn't mean to open this post with a rant that would offend some 70% of my readers. I mean to talk about why I "tri" (* retches quietly *).

After my tête-à-tête 2 weeks ago with the King of the Bike Shop, I've been giving a lot of thought to what the hell I think I'm doing. Why, if I told someone who's just started reading here in the last 6 months that I hate to run, they wouldn't believe me. The other day my dad asked me, "Do you actually like working out?" The first answer that came to mind was, "no". Working out, for me, means intervals, sets, treadmill sessions, and the sound of weights clanking together. What I like are the days when I get out there and push some boundary that's never been pushed before. That's not a workout, that's fun. I like the days when I suffer. Wait... what?! I LIKE suffering? That's a fucked-up thing to enjoy. It looks like all the people around me are right, I really am crazy! I train to be able to suffer new, and more challenging tortures every week, the longer and more painful, the better.

I guess there are as many reasons to "tri" (* retches again *) as there are triathletes. Two of my readers do all 3 because they suck equally at all of them, so while the sweep van would be drafting behind them in any one event, triathlon gives them a chance to suck a little less at putting them together. I definitely fall into this camp. And in trihardest's case, she does all three because she is a top-competitor in transitions. Two people are actually good at all three. Well that does sound like fun. Too bad I couldn't even get a callback for that team. Two people said they get too bored doing just one sport. I agree with this one too. And, like me, 3 people just kind of forget why they do it. It's like smoking, you do it every now and then because all your friends are doing it, and next thing you know you're paying hundreds of dollars a week and going outside on cold, rainy days by yourself to support your habit, while all the sane people stay inside and give you dirty looks for smelling bad when you get back.

And me? Well, I guess the main reason I do it is because it makes me SO happy, all the time! As trigreyhound says, "Life is recess, go play." That sentence is so dead-on I wish I'd thought of it myself. When I think about what I used to do for fun when I was a kid, I realize I was born to do this sport. I was always picked last for dodgeball, but I was so competitive and intense, and I would never give up. If someone ever told me I couldn't do something, I just became more determined to do it. My conversations sounded something like this:
Mini-me: "When I get home I'm going to drink 50 glasses of water."
Molly: "Bet you can't!"
Mini-mie: "Yes, I can! Just you wait and see!"
I didn't make it to 50, but I sure tried.

One summer me and my 2 best friends had a competition to see who could lose the most weight over the course of the summer. We would run laps around the high school chanting, "Pump it, pump it, steam it, work it away," over and over. God knows where we came up with it. To cool down we would do laps in the pool, taking turns inventing strokes and seeing how close we could get to 100 before it was time to go home. We were 9. At the end of the summer the scale was broken, so we never found out who won.

Another summer we had a crab apple eating contest. We all ate bitter crab apples until we got diarrhea. The mothers wouldn't let us pick crab apples for the rest of the summer.

We used to go hiking in the woods, making up names for the different areas we discovered. We were always trying to find the legendary bike path that the older boys told us was on the other side. One day Alexis got a bee sting and ditched me in the woods. I was lost for about 3 hours before one of the older boys found me and brought me home. I'd had fun, but the babysitter was PISSED.

One summer on Cape Cod our rental house was on a different lake than in past years. This one was a little bigger, but I wanted to swim across it anyway. Dad and my little brother came with me, but when my pussy little brother got too tired, I left him in the middle of the lake floating on a boogie board and finished the trip by myself. Then I swam back. Dad had to tow the little cry baby all the way back to shore, floating on his boogie board.

My favorite game to play when I was by myself was that I was a slave or working in a sweat shop. I would shut my door and give myself tasks, and in my head I would yell insults at myself insisting that I work faster. Is that fucked up or what?!

The endurance, neurotic training, and competitive spirit necessary for competitive endurance sports are exactly what I need to feel fulfilled. It's like being a kid forever. In fact, that legendary argument about who was a better athlete that started triathlon sounds more like a pissing contest between three 10-year-olds on a playground than an adult conversation. But why do three sports? Certainly running, cycling, and swimming each have enough challenges on their own to keep me satisfied. But how many times can you run along a lake without thinking, "you know, it would be a lot shorter if I could just swim across." How many times can you bike a certain distance before you wonder, "Do you think I could do this without the bike?"

I could go into more detail about the "challenge", about how "rewarding" it is, about the "confidence" that comes with knowing that "I can", but that kind of talk makes me want to retch more than cute "tri" double-entendres. This post is sentimental and hackneyed enough as it is. In short, I do this sport because (and I've said this before) it makes me feel like a badass mofo.

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This week's question is leading into a post that I will publish later. I'm sure you've all heard of that study several years ago where they asked Olympic athletes, "If you could take a drug that would guarantee you a gold medal, and you wouldn't be caught, but you would die in 10 years, would you take it?" And of course an overwhelming number of athletes said yes. Well here's a question for the ordinary mortal:

If you could eat a diet that would mean that you could compete at a world-class level for the next 10 years, but you found the food tasteless and disgusting, would you eat it for 10 years? No cheating, no deciding it tastes good when you get used to it, no alcohol or ice cream. You're basically eating something that tastes like sand for 10 years, but in those 10 years you get to train at a level that means you can compete with the best of the best. Would you do it?
A) No way. Pizza and I are soulmates.
B) Yes! Without a doubt!
C) Yes, but not so I could be a professional athlete, I just want to lose weight.