Alligators, Archetypes & Athletes

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The numbers were big, or certainly bigger than anything I’d ever attempted before. A 1.2-mile swim. 56-mile bike ride. 13.1-mile run: 70.3 total - a nice number if measured in Fahrenheit on an outdoor thermometer, but a bit daunting in terms of miles on a race course. I’ve learned that triathletes like numbers, lots of numbers, measured in iotas of seconds. They obsess about them, rattle them off like Al Gore dishing out global warming statistics. Pace, distance, intervals, splits, heart rate, watts, VO2 max - whatever that is. But the really big number that dominated training chat as our town’s inaugural Half Ironman race neared was Four. As in the four-foot alligator that allegedly lived in the campground pond that was to be the triathlon swimming hole. Channel 4 made it headline news, as did Channels 5 and 2. National media picked it up, amplifying the gator buzz. I continued to clock in my training hours, my loud mind racing more than my feet as it repeatedly chided, “I told you this was a bad idea.”

Actually, I’m not altogether sure how I hatched the idea - good or bad - of attempting this feat in the first place. It began as a vague notion when I heard that my city would be hosting its first official Half Ironman this past spring. It’d be nice to support the local effort, I thought, one of those back-of-the-mind thoughts that typically lose steam before anything ever transpires. The registration deadline approached and I glanced at the course map, and at what a training plan might look like, and more or less kinda sorta thought, “Why not?”

When my friend Molly signed on, I had a partner in crime, someone fun to suffer with and to hold me accountable, despite the fact that she could run and bike me under the table. Her husband, Dawson, a former pro triathlete, was our chief cheerleader and trainer, always there to pump up my lagging athletic confidence. My endurance began to improve, if not my speed, and I started to realize that 70.3 miles might, in fact, be doable. Swimming was my strongest leg, but that damn gator lurked. The image of bulbous, unblinking prehistoric eyes hovering hungrily at the water’s surface was a recurrent daytime nightmare. Experienced triathletes were hoping to take minutes or seconds off their personal records; I was hoping not to have my arm taken off.