by Jayne Williams
April 2004
Marlowe & Company
Cool Illustrations by Tim Anderson
Oh, my god, she's using the F-word! Is she calling me fat? Is she admitting to being fat herself? Why would she call herself fat? Or slow, for that matter? What is the meaning of this? Relax. Take a deep, cleansing breath. Slow Fat Triathlete is me. I'm a triathlete at a very modest local level. I've been training and racing for two years now. I'm also fairly slow and kind of fat, especially as triathletes go. I used to be a lot slower and a lot fatter, though, and this book is about my journey from injury and obesity to a pretty decent level of fitness using triathlon as my vehicle. It's an invitation to you to come along for the ride, with some tips and encouragement on actually getting started in the sport. My fondest hope is that reading the book will be fun for you, and that you'll close it at the end feeling like you want to go outside and start moving your body around. "Fun" is the f-word that really matters here.
This is not a book about fatties' rights or the politics of obesity or how I'm a victim of the fast-food industry. If you want to read about how overweight folks have a tough time, there are plenty of books out there that can meet your needs. This is not that book. This is also not a book for hard-core lycra-clad tri-junkies who want yet another training book so they can shave 23 seconds off their bike time. If you're one of those people, and you want to read this for fun, that's cool. But don't come back and complain that I didn't make you faster.
This is a book for people like me. Folks who may have struggled with a few extra pounds all their lives, or people who haven't exercised as consistently as they wanted to. Maybe you drive your kids to swim team practice and get a crazy urge to be in that water. Maybe your neighbor did a triathlon and you thought, "Man, you have to be in such great shape to do that." Maybe you're turning 30 or 40 or 50 and you have an inkling that you want to accomplish something you haven't done before. This is a book for the Slow, the Proud, the Possibly Fat, Wanna-be Maybe-Someday Triathlete.
If you don't want to categorize yourself as fat, that's just fine with me. But you know, with all the statistics out there about how 80 percent of all Americans over 25 are overweight and 30 percent of all of us are obese, I figure that not everyone picking up this book is skinny as a rail. If you don't want to think of yourself as slow, then by all means consider yourself fast. But unless you really are one of those elite athletes who can swim like a seal, ride like Lance Armstrong and then get off the bike and run like a deer, you are probably going to be in the middle to back of the pack when you start out on the triathlon road.
But here's the thing - you can do it anyway. You can start out 50 or more pounds overweight, with no experience in any of the three sports of triathlon, and you can get yourself to the starting line and even to the finish. You take it slowly and patiently, you accept your limitations even as you push against them, and you commit to being a total and utter beginner, and you can do it.
Being a slow fat triathlete means being a beginner. It's shorthand for anyone who can find it in themselves to do a little training and take part in triathlon at their own pace, on their own terms, for their own reasons, with a mix of pride and humor. You don't even need to be literally fat to be a slow fat triathlete. It's kind of a state of mind. Even if I ever get skinny (unlikely) and fast (really unlikely), I'll still be a slow fat triathlete at heart.
Slow fat triathletes laugh at their foibles, celebrate every step of progress, and measure their success by how much fun they're having, not by medals, and certainly not by prize money. They wear socks with silly graphics, they don't stress about how they look in their race outfit, and they cheer everybody on, whether they're fast or slow. They don't wait until they lose weight or meet some other precondition to get started doing something they want to do.
Slow Fat Triathlete is not a comprehensive guide to triathlons for beginners. I'm not a coach or a trainer or nutritionist or any kind of expert. I want to make you laugh, make you believe you can become a beginner, and point you on the road to your next steps and your next books about triathlon. Hopefully you'll need a whole shelf full.
Oh, and here's a word of advice: yes, you can hurt yourself doing this stuff. You can get anything from oozing toe blisters to knee problems to a host of nasty injuries if you fall off your bike. If you decide to engage in any of these odd swimming, biking, or running behaviors, do me a favor and check with your doctor, especially if you have some medical condition more serious than a solid set of love handles. And if you fall down and scrape your knee, cause you might, please don't sue me, ok? Get out the Neosporin and the gauze pads, and watch where you're going next time. Learn the rules of the road and the pool, don't swim alone, run smart, be safe. I'll write a little bit more about this later on.
HOW I BOUGHT MY WETSUIT: A CAUTIONARY TALE
It was three weeks before my first triathlon. I had gone down to Lake San Antonio and done a little swim dressed in my finest nylon sports bra, tank top, and tri-shorts, and DANG! It was cold. I needed neoprene protection, prontissimo. I checked out rentals, but I figured I was going to be doing this thing for at least one season, so I started researching the different makers. Orca, Ironman, Quintana Roo, T1, Aquaman: the very names gave off a cold, crisp aroma of aquatic heroism.
A couple of things were immediately obvious, though. These wetsuits were pricey and they were constructed for stick figures. Checking out the sizing for Orca, I determined that ideally, I should be about 6'5" to get a suit that would accommodate my body weight. But I read encouraging online posts about how stretchy the material was, and how people of stature not too different from my own were able to fit into them.
It was time for eBay. I spent a couple of hours over scattered days looking for the brand names that I wanted and finally found a floor demo Orca Speedsuit, size 10, for about $65 off retail. Score! I jumped at it, clicked the "buy it now" icon, and anxiously awaited its arrival. I was a little nervous, but I had already discovered a booming classified market on various tri websites, and I figured I could sell it off to some other sucker.
When the wonderful package arrived, I tore into it like a kid at Christmas. It was beautiful. Sleek and black, with speedy-looking graphics reminiscent of mighty killer whales, it seemed to leap out of the box of its own power. "Look, honey! Isn't this cool?" I shrieked. I started to try it on right there in the living room. Immediately the wetsuit changed from a sleek, efficient killer whale to a sticky, all-engulfing monster from a cheesy science fiction movie. "Slow Fat Triathlete Meets the Pantyhose From Hell."
I got my feet into the legs and embarked on a sweaty wrestling match, wherein the monster continually thwarted my efforts to insinuate my legs into the constrictive casings. I gave a yank to get the suit to inch up over my sturdy thighs, and wow! Look at that. I put a hole in it with my fingernail. I slumped to the floor, cursing. "Um, Jayne ...don't injure yourself," Tim said anxiously. The worst was over though. Once I got the thing up and over my butt, the top half went on with only about half the effort. It was on!
Still, I couldn't really imagine how this process was going to help me be faster, either in the water or anywhere else. It had taken me about a half-hour to get the thing on, it seemed like. Getting it off was easier, but not much. I was exhausted and dispirited, and now I had to find a way to fix the 1/2-inch tear I had put in my brand new toy. This turned out to be pretty easy, using some weird black goo from the dive shop.
When it came to the race, I had been instructed in the fine art of applying PAM to pretty much every surface of my body to help the suit slide on and off. Yes, PAM. Non-stick cooking spray. I also had a stick of an anti-sticking, anti-chafing substance lubriciously entitled "BodyGlide." I covered myself with both, to the point where I couldn't grasp the wetsuit because my hands were so slippery.
So here's what not to do, which I did: