As a tiny step forward in my goal of joining and completing a triathlon on or before my 40th birthday I did my first serious research on the subject a few weeks ago.
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There are, I learned, three basic types of triathlon:
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IRONMAN Series. This is the mother of all triathlons, at least it is in the Philippines. It starts with a 3.8-km swim, followed by a 180-km bike race, and finally a full marathon (48-km run)!!! Holy cow! I haven’t even completed a half marathon (Btw, another of my life objectives is also to finish a full marathon on or before I turn 40).
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OLYMPIC. 1.5-km swim; 40-km bike race; 10-km run. The last two shouldn’t be an issue for me. I have done several 10-km fun runs and the 40-km on bike should be a breeze. I now just need to work on the 1.5-km swim. At present, I can manage to swim 0.003 kms (3 meters), at most.
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NEWBIE/REGULAR/SPRINT. 0.75-km swim; 20-km bike; 5-km run. Okay, obviously I should be aiming for this. At least I now only need to work on managing to swim another 0.747 km, as compared to another 1.497 kms, or another 3.797 kms, if I would do the Olympic or the Ironman series, respectively. A very comforting thought.
I was just now searching for about this when I discovered your post. I’m only dropping by to say that I truly enjoyed reading this post, it’s really clear and well written. Are you going to write more on this? It appears like there’s more fodder here for future posts.