My First* Sprint Triathlon
Here we go, the first step toward becoming an Ironman. That's what I told myself at the top of a 240-foot waterslide, about to start my second sprint triathlon. Three days earlier, my final training swim had gone so badly I barely made it 350 yards. This is the story of how it all turned around.
I stood at the top of the hill, waiting for my turn to go down the slide, thinking to myself: here we go, the first step toward becoming an Ironman.
I should probably explain how I got here.
My first sprint triathlon took place in June 2025, and I didn't take it all that seriously. Right after finishing, I left on a camping road trip through Canada and didn't think about getting in a pool again for months.
Fast forward eight months: I moved to Kentucky and wanted to "reset" my life, the same way people do when they start college, take a new job, or move to a new city and start thinking about who they want to become. I decided to get more serious about fitness. A real exercise routine, a real diet, not just good intentions.
It didn't take long to learn something about myself: I'm not a workout-for-the-sake-of-working-out person. I need a target, a goal, a deadline, or the motivation fizzles. A bodybuilding competition didn't interest me, but I remembered how much I'd actually enjoyed training for that first triathlon. So I searched for anything happening near me in the coming months, and as luck would have it, a sprint triathlon was coming up in my dad's hometown, billed as the "fun" variety rather than the hyper-competitive kind. I registered immediately!
For anyone unfamiliar: a sprint triathlon is typically a 750m swim, 20K bike, and 5K run. This one had a twist. The race started on a 240-foot waterslide, and the swim was shortened to 450m (about 500 yards). The bike and run stayed at standard distance. That shorter swim worked in my favor, since swimming has always been my weakest of the three sports. I'm self-taught, and the first time I seriously tried to swim laps was while training for my original triathlon.
My only goal this time was simple: beat my previous time. That bar was lower than it sounds. During training for the first race, I was still recovering from meniscus surgery and rehabbing plantar fasciitis, so I'd never really tested what my body could do. This time, I built a real schedule: swim Monday and Wednesday, run Tuesday and Thursday, bike Saturday. Week after week, it stuck, and I felt strong.
Then came my final training swim before the race, and it was, without question, my worst performance of the entire buildup. I barely made it 350 yards. My arms felt heavy, and I couldn't get my breathing under control. Not exactly the confidence boost you want three days out from race morning.
So there I was, standing at the top of that 240-foot waterslide, replaying that disastrous swim in my head, wondering if it was a preview of what was coming.
It wasn't!
I crossed the finish line in 1 hour 28 minutes, a full 30 minutes faster than my first race! I was thrilled. Even better, I didn't feel the soreness or pain that had followed my first attempt, which told me I hadn't pushed past what my body was ready for. It was a sharp contrast to how I'd felt the first time around, and a world away from how I'd felt in the pool just days earlier. I felt so good, in fact, that I signed up for another triathlon less than a month later, in July.
This was technically my second sprint triathlon. But it's the one that counts as my real first: the moment I stopped just "doing a triathlon" and started training for an Ironman!