triathlon training camp
Though there was a schedule laid out for the weekend’s activities, I still didn’t really know what to expect. They advertised it as a beginner-friendly event, but I’ve learned over and over again that that could mean anything. I got off the train and met up with two others from our group, and one of them said that they’ve been training since COVID, and the other for over 20 years (and before that she was a runner), so…we were off to a good start. Then we met up with the club leader, Andrea (who is obviously an incredibly seasoned and decorated athlete), and she kindly gave us a ride to the inn (which was honestly so helpful. The bike ride, which I was considering doing, would’ve been truly awful in hindsight).
We reached the inn and it was so gorgeous, situated right on the beach. The price for the whole weekend was so cheap, and it was pretty evident that the entire place was reserved us for this event. I think we got a really good deal because of the event and the inn hoping to establish a good relationship for future potential events. But because of the price, I was expecting like, run-down bungalow or mountain hut conditions, but it was a straight-up ryokan with beautiful tatami rooms overlooking the sea and home cooked meals. We had a little bit of time to unpack, get ready, and change before the day’s events started.
I felt pretty self-conscious because I didn’t have any proper triathlon gear, and I soon discovered that I had packed 3 pairs of shorts (none of which I used) but no extra shirts, so, that was incredibly stupid of me. I was relieved to learn that there was one other beginner who had even less gear than me. He didn’t even have his own bike, so the organizers went and sourced one for him ahead of time. It was his first time riding a road bike.
Throughout the weekend, I pieced together that this training camp (which was the first year they were doing this), was actually meant to be an experiment to see if Kashiwazaki would be a good place to host a proper triathlon. It was co-hosted by my club, Triathlon in Tokyo (TnT), a few other local (Japanese) tri clubs, and someone named Andy, a pro cyclist who has lived in Kashiwazaki for decades - he really loves the place has been trying hard to revitalize it. Throughout my travels this year (most of which I have failed to document), the shift away from rural towns to metropolitan hubs has been very apparent, towns that are beautiful and have so much to offer have been left mostly vacant and unkempt, like semi-ghost towns.
First up was swimming, my most confident sport. As people entered the water, they exclaimed “寒い！！” (it’s cold!) and they were shocked I didn’t have a wetsuit, but it honestly felt so warm to me. The Japan Sea (West coast of Japan) was around 20-22C (70F) but I’ve swum (I had to look up if that was a real word) in the SF bay when it was 11C (52F) without a wetsuit…when I told people, they were horrified. The tides were so low that half of the swim was basically just walking/running. There were about 20 participants, and it wasn’t officially timed or anything, so the energy was pretty great with everyone splashing around in the shallow waters. We swam 1000m, though it probably was more like 500 to be honest, and somehow I wasn’t last for the first time in my life. We waited for everyone to finish, and walked along the beach back to the inn. My feet were so sandy and I was couldn’t stop thinking about putting my sandy wet feet into my socks into my shoes, and needing to bike and run for a few more hours like this.
We got back to the inn, and I was expecting people to do some crazy transition technique, but instead everyone stood in line to rinse the sand off their feet and their wetsuits (one less step for me). Still not sure what would happen in a real triathlon, but I was very glad not to have to put my socks on gross feet. I thought about changing into bike shorts, but since I didn’t bring any extra shirts, I decided to just stay in my swim suit. I now very much understand why a tri suit is a thing. Everyone took a snack break and hung out, and then we started the bike portion. I knew I was going to be slow relative to triathletes, but the hills hit me real bad. I’m very used to taking hills slow and steady, but everyone just zoomed up them. I was already pretty proud of myself for climbing the hills at all, but seeing everyone else’s performance (including the guy who had never ridden a road bike before) made me feel ~bad~ like I had a lot of improvement to go. All the participants were so kind though, and since it wasn’t a real race, people would take turns hanging back with me while I made my way through the course slowly. Andrea stayed with me the whole time and let me draft her, which was a lifesaver. On the schedule, it said the route was 15.5km, and you could choose to do up to 3 laps. After lap 1, we regrouped, and then people were on their own for 2-3. I thought we were going to stop at 2, but Andrea just kept chugging along after lap 2, so I had no choice but to do the whole 47km ride.
I watched one of the other club leaders, Mark (who is 65 but is a legend in the club - he’s a national triathlon champion but is also extremely humble and kind), dismount his bike with his shoes still on the pedals, so at least I got to witness one pro transition. I assume the maneuver is to slip right into running shoes straight from the bike and start running, but we ended up taking another 15-minute break. Ironically, I could’ve had the fastest transitions of the day because I didn’t have bike shoes, so I was already in my running shoes (and yes, still in my swim suit. I felt like an absolute doofus all day but at least a swim suit doesn’t look that dorky amongst all the other spandex tri suits). The planned run was a 10K, but running is my least favorite by orders of magnitude. I’ve done both the swim and bike distances in the past, but I had never run a 10K before, let alone after a bunch of swimming and biking. I decided I’d just do a 5K at my own pace. Andrea said she’d run with me because she had a bad knee, and I had to loudly announce several times that I would be sloooow and would certainly not be able to complete the 10K, and there was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to run at all. We started running and I was quickly left in the dust, of course. Andrea turned around and I think it had only occurred to her then that I was quite serious about my (lack of) running abilities. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, like I have been slower than every single person I’ve tried to run with my entire life (including my 67-year-old mom), looking up stats it honestly feels like I’m somehow below a beginner level runner. Like people who have never trained running in their entire lives seem to be faster than me. Regardless, I told Andrea to go ahead, because I knew if I tried to keep up with the group I’d burn out waaay sooner than 5K.
As I was jogging, I thought to myself, okay I don’t really want the group to wait for me since they’ve done enough of that already today, so I’ll try to time it so that I’ll beat the last person. The run was actually so beautiful - it was along the coast and I actually loved the feeling of running solo, with no pressure to keep up, with nothing to focus on but the ocean. I hit 2.5km and I looked out in the distance to see if anyone was heading back yet (it was 5km out and 5km back), but I only saw someone still running out far ahead. I could probably go for another km, I thought to myself, and ended up turning around after I hit 3km. I somehow returned not completely exhausted and just before the first runner, Mark, so I actually think I could’ve gone farther. The rest of the run was up a massive hill though so I 100% would have died if I kept going.
All-in-all, though the transitions were very chill, I’d say I completed my first triathlon - blew through sprint distance (750m/20km/5km) and nearly hit olympic distance (1.5km/40km/10km). My latest goal was to do a sprint triathlon, but now it seems like that would be a piece of cake, and even olympic distance seems quite achievable at this point. The whole day people were teasing me that I was going to catch the triathlon bug, which I vehemently dismissed at first, but I think they somehow successfully manifested it. It became a meme that I was going to wake everyone up at 6am the next morning for a swim, which was such a joke that I started leaning into it.
After everyone returned from the run, it was onsen time. There is no onsen like a post-workout onsen, and I was at pretty peak grossness having just swum, biked and run in a swimsuit for 4 hours. When we got back, dinner was waiting for us, and it was advertised as a “BBQ”. Since my club is mostly foreigners, I was fully expecting an outdoor grill with burgers, hot dogs, and chicken wings. Instead, a seemingly unlimited banquet of delicious yakiniku and veggies were waiting for us. It was incredible. Everyone was telling me that this was the best triathlon experience ever - the lodging is always far from the race, logistics are a pain in the ass, and the post-race meal is munching on an exquisite konbini onigiri while sitting on a curb. Never having raced before, I fully believed them. From the dinner hall you could see the last of the sunset over the beach - truly breathtaking.
6 am next morning, I woke up like clockwork. There was no way I was going to knock on people’s doors, but it looked so beautiful outside (it wasn’t sunny, but the water looked so calm). I joined an OWS (open water swim) practice with the club once prior to this event, and it takes 2 hours from my apartment to get there. It was a rare opportunity to go swimming right outside my front door. We gathered the crew (almost everyone was up and ready to go) and actually did our morning swim. I was for sure the slowest technically, but people were also trying to give me tips on how to sight. I’ve done 99.9% of my life’s swim practice in the pool, which has lines drawn on the bottom and lane divider buoys to keep you going straight. You might not think you’re following the line consciously, but if you were to swim with your eyes closed, you’d find it’s very hard to swim straight. I was very excited to swim in the Japanese oceans, because back in San Francisco, visibility was basically 0. I was just looking at murky dust the whole time. I might as well have had my eyes closed, because looking at the random dust motion and occasionally the shadow of my own body was freaking me out and leaving me highly discombobulated. Both the Pacific swim at Hayama and now the Japan Sea swim at Ishiji had such amazing visibility, but evidently staring at the wavy sand patterns on the sea floor was also not helping me swim straight. My club mates tried to teach me how to look forward and not just look to the side when breathing. Still requires a lot more practice, but I was grateful for the free advice.
We had breakfast waiting for us after the swim. It was a beautiful teishouku (Japanese-style set meal), with fish, eggs, beans, veggies, rice, soup, etc. I’ve stayed at a few ryokans that have served incredible dinners followed by a ginormous breakfast (and I usually don’t eat breakfast), but this was the first breakfast I felt like I really earned/deserved instead of the usual feeling of being an absolute indulgent glutton, and I savored every bite. It started raining afterwards, and the group was debating whether to go for a bike ride or not. There is a world in which I could’ve been convinced to go if it was sunny, but to be honest, I really didn’t want to get my one shirt dirty since I really didn’t want to be stinky on the Shinkansen (I swear that was my number 1 concern), and there was no way I was getting back into my swimsuit for the bike ride (yes, that was the only other option I thought of). They eventually decided to do the bike, while I took a nice beauty nap. Nap »> bike in the pouring rain. I must not be built for the triathlon life…or maybe, this is just foreshadowing of what my life is about to become, and I’m just savoring the last bit of sanity I can still afford.
Finally, we made it back to the Shinkansen, and learning from the day before’s mistakes, I decided not to take my bike back on the Yamanote line. But I couldn’t for the life of me find a reasonable exit in Ueno station, so I ended up lugging around my bike for like 20 minutes. There is pretty much no arm strength required for triathlon, but what they don’t tell you is carrying your bike is a workout in it of itself. My arms are literally still sore typing this post.
(Whew, that might’ve been my longest one yet. No wonder I missed yesterday’s post…)
post-post update: Mark wrote a blog post about the weekend too, it’s very cool and a bit weird to see the same story told from a different perspective!