Ever since I can remember being in a competitive sport, I've always been involved in several sports at the same time. But currently of course I've been focusing on running as my main sport, but at the same time I do play badminton, I still can hold my own in basketball & of course swimming & weightlifting have been part of my routine.
I'm pretty big & well-built for a runner. In fact, most ppl dun really believe that I run in half marathons. & since I am a pretty good swimmer, ppl thought that I was a triathlete. My previous involvement in cycling made that possibility even stronger. Some of my friends, especially those who knew me as a cyclist before, encouraged me to venture into triathlon. I would've.. & I think that if I hadn't sold my bike back in 2001, I would've been involved in triathlon.
Triathlon is a combo of 3 very challenging events : swim, bike & run. There are several distances for a triathlon event: the sprint, olympic & ironman. The sprint is the shortest distance, 750m swim, 40K bike & 10K run. The Olympic is as the name suggested, is the distance competed during the Olympics : 1.5K swim, 80K bike & 21K run. The Ironman is the most challenging of all, especially since the world championships has always been held in Kona, Hawaii : 3K swim, 180K bike & a full marathon. Just to run a full marathon is an achievement in itself, imagine the what a challenge it would be to run a full marathon after swimming for 3K & being on the bike for 6 hrs... extraordinary.
My weakest leg would be the swimming. While I'm a pretty good swimmer, a strong one I am not. I couldn't last 200m continuously. Maybe with training I can. I dun think the bike leg would give me any problems, but still, I need to train.
Perhaps the biggest problem is I dun have a bike. Bikes nowadays costs an arm & a leg. RM4000 would proly get U a mediocre steel/aluminium frame with entry level Shimano Sora/Tiagra components. If I'm lucky maybe I can find some bikes with SRAM Red parts. I dunno how good the bikes can be & to invest that much on a bike.. well, I need to do some CAF.
Recently though, I've been reading articles about duathlon. This is for me a much more doable sport as it consists of run, bike, run. I was researching about its popularity in the country. The event has the support of a pretty big corporation : Malakoff. Malakoff has been organizing events in th country & the biggest event is the Malakoff duathlon in Lumut. It also organizes the Duathlon University championships, consisting 3 or more events throughout the year. If I wanna invest in a RM4000 bike, I wanna make sure there's enuff events for me. & 4-5 events a year sounds just fine.
What fascinates me about this multievent sports is the ages of the participants. In the recently concluded Ironman World Championships, the winner was 38 years old & more than 60% of the participants are 35 or older. I'm gonna be 35 this year. Of course my target have always been to run in a full marathon by next year, which is a definite possibility, insya Allah. So the question now remains : shud I buy a bike ?
When & if that happens, competing in duathlons are a very interesting & definite prospect.
Livestrong.
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