by Sahaja Douglass

This morning in yoga class, as I was standing like a mountain, still and focused with weight equally distributed on both metatarsals, my long time yoga pal Leslie whispered, “Hey, Sahaja, did you get a tummy tuck?” Inwardly rejoicing while releasing my shoulders down away from my ears and my thoracic spine in toward my heart, I whispered back, “No, but thanks. I’ve been training for a triathlon.”  Then, baiting another compliment, I said, “I probably need one.” Leslie emphatically shook her burnt orange bob and said, “Nooooo! You don’t.”

While Leslie is the first person who has ever asked me if I have gone under the cosmetic knife, during the past few months many friends and acquaintances have remarked on my physical metamorphosis. Here’s the deal: Just before the New Year, I decided to get fit. I found myself shopping for fabulous designer party dresses that would look great on one of my best friends, and wishing that I could wear the dresses myself.  So, in anticipation of the New Year and resolutions, I ambled over to the Pali High pool.

As fate would have it, at one end of the pool, swimming in lanes 1-5, were the most sculpted athletes I had ever seen. They ranged in ages but they were all adults. I had found my role models.  I slid into lane six and swam laps next to them, trying to keep pace as they raced from one end to the other according to missives from the neatly coiffed coach on deck.  After a few days of eavesdropping on their sessions, talking to the swimmers in the locker room, and meeting the open water icon and Tower 26 coach, Gerry Rodrigues, I signed up for weekly workouts.  That’s when I befriended Nell.

An ironman triathlete whose every muscle is crafted for performance, Nell reminds me of Secretariat, the Triple Crown winning thoroughbred race horse.  She is also a nutritionist and co-author of The Paleo Diet Cookbook, a book of recipes for those who wish to eat like the Paleolithic hunters and gatherers, our ancestors who survived in part by outrunning their prey. While some athletes carefully guard their success strategies, Nell is so enthusiastic about health and fitness that she generously shares her experience.  Soon after joining Tower 26 I read Nell’s book and another by Loren Cordain, a Paleolithic anthropologist and endurance athlete.  The nutritional research was so compelling that I stopped eating grains, dairy and legumes.  My energy and endurance increased and over five months I have lost fifteen pounds.  I recently heard that Nell is one of the fastest amateur runners in the country, so I’m banking on the Paleo edge for myself, too.

My entrance into the world of triathlon has been incremental, subtle and founded on blind faith, determination, self-doubt and God’s Grace. In addition to swimming, each triathlon has a cycling and running component.  For months I listened to Gerry’s swimmers talk about training regimens that I could not imagine for myself. “My running coach wants me to do two two-and-a-half hour sessions in the mountains this week.” “I’m so frustrated-my hamstring has not healed yet and so I can’t run the LA Marathon.” “After the swim we’re doing a short recovery ride to Trancas (about 40 miles round trip).”  Sometimes I do not even understand the language. “I PB’d by 50,” which when translated means, “I ran the half marathon fifty minutes faster than my previous best time.”

At first, most of the triathletes dismissed me.  I was a newbie swimmer and not even a multi-sportsman.  My frequent questions about the sport seemed to annoy them, but over time as I became faster in the pool, and my super-competitive nature surfaced, they would say, “Oh, you could go out and do a sprint (code for the shortest distance triathlon) today, if you had to.” We were definitely living in different worlds, because I knew that I had not run more than a mile since college and I did not even own a road bike.  Their optimism inspired me; if they, experienced triathletes who won medals in their age groups, believed I could complete a triathlon, maybe I could.

For weeks, I ruminated over this challenge. I took baby steps toward the formation of a goal.  I contemplated my ulterior motives for allotting many hours each day in pursuit of athletic prowess.  Why at forty-seven would this be a valuable way to spend time?  The more obvious reasons were to stay healthy and fit so I could hang tough with my children and grandchildren (when they are born in twenty plus years) and to keep my husband’s eye on me for the next few decades.  The deeper reasons related to a mid-life transition ritual - some way to mark the end of my birthing years and the start of the next phase.  I have been so enamored with pregnancy, birthing and raising my children that the intensive training process provides a graphic departure from the softer, slower, dreamier years of my thirties an early forties.  Training also helps soothe the grief deeply encased in my heart from the death of our third child, a beautiful girl named Michaela who died a few weeks before birth for unknown medical reasons.  Completing a triathlon is my quiet ode to her and to the third child for whom I yearned and never had the privilege of raising.

The journey thus far has required steady persistence and dogged determination.  Initially, land workouts were brutal and humbling. I ran/walked several city blocks feeling nauseous after a minute of motion. I checked out road bikes (and gawked at the price tags).  I talked with any triathlete who would talk to me.  I told my husband that I was thinking of training for a triathlon.  His enthusiastic, “That’s great” was the tipping point for me.  As friends, took notice of my weight loss, I started saying, “I’m training for a triathlon.”  The public declaration was strategic-I knew that I would be too ashamed to back out and on some level everyone I told became a spiritual training partner.

I am registered to compete in the Bonnelli Park Triathlon on May 14. My goal is to complete the three events, survive and hopefully finish anywhere but in last place.   Each day I have a training program prescribed by Rom, my running and cycling coach, as well as alternate day water workouts with Gerry.  Today I ran for an hour. (Pinch me.) I did not bonk, nor feel the urge to vomit as I have during many other runs over the last eight weeks.  I ate a home brew endurance concoction (here’s the trade secret: sweet potatoes, cashews, agave nectar, irish moss seaweed, vanilla, pumpkin pie spices all blended in the Vitamix) and three Shot Blocks (glucose sports performance gels by Cliff) before beginning.  My pace is barely faster than a snail’s, but one foot in front of the other I keep on moving. On Tuesdays I ride 20-30 miles along the ocean and on Thursdays I ride at home on a lime green cycle trainer, followed by a transition run.  There is still much preparation and some of it there won’t be time to complete.  I’ll have to wing the transitions and hope that I can remove my wetsuit without falling on my nose.

I have my very own swim coach and a run/bike coach.  I own a new (used) carbon frame road bike that I can carry with three fingers and although my family ate lower on the food chain during the five weeks it took to save up money from our weekly cash, only my husband seemed to notice. I have learned how to change a tire, use a Garmin gadget that records my pace, distance, cadence and many other things for which I have no technological understanding and I log onto Training Peaks every day to record my workouts so my coach can modify them as needed or tell me to eat more.  Yes, I really did write, EAT MORE!

I no longer fear the workouts, nor wonder if I will survive.  I am used to guzzling water from the wake of faster swimmers, and I do not even falter when a swimmer from the adjacent lane accidentally smashes my hand or head.  I love the crazy rush of bubbles in my face when we simulate race starts in the pool and everyone goes for broke. I am learning how to eat for endurance and how to store glycogen in my muscle cells so I have energy reserves.  On a good day I can keep my cycling cadence between 85-95 rotations per minute. It’s all REALLY CHALLENGING and I frequently have self-confidence crises.  I vacillate between wanting May 14th to be yesterday or next decade, not in three weeks from today.

Pray for me!  Cheer me on in your thoughts!  Send me some mental mojo! I’ll let you know how it turns out.