Tri and Tri Again: How I Survived My First Triathlon
The Day I Stopped Running and Took the Plunge I’ve been pounding the pavement for longer than my knees care to remember—close to 40 marathons deep, with a coveted Boston qualification checked off the bucket list. Running is comfortable territory; it’s my personal default setting. But for the longest time, triathlons remained a distant, intimidating frontier. My friends Nari and Anagha had been living that swim-bike-run life for a while, acting as equal parts inspiration and a constant reminder of my ultimate physical nemesis: open water. While I can clock road miles in my sleep, swimming in anything deeper than my height has always induced a mild existential crisis. Nevertheless, last year my friend Arun and I shared a moment of reckless optimism: "Hey, we can churn out 20 to 30 laps in a 25-meter pool without drowning. Why not just plunge straight into an Olympic distance triathlon?" Logic, as usual, was asked to take a back seat. Treadmill, Chain Links, and Artificial Inte...