EPTI had no idea what I was doing. I still don't know what I did. It makes for a great story though.
As I write these words, the bottom half of my body is completely numb and throbbing. I could probably stick a knife in my thigh and not feel it for another hour. I’d try it out but I can’t find my knife anywhere. Maybe later.
The Run-Up
One day in April I wanted to finally figure out how long a triathlon was. And it turns out there's actually a crapload of them, all with their own distances and proportions. The longest I could find was the Ironman triathlon, which goes for 4 km of swimming, 42 of running, and 180 of biking.
Before this I've never run more than a mile without stopping. I think jumping from 1 to 26 isn't the smartest idea, especially since I wasn't going to train for this. I mean after all of this, I'm still an extremely lazy person. I don't want to run.
Luckily Wikipedia told me there was something called the 111. It was shorter. Only 100 kilometers of biking, 10 kilometers of running, and 1 of swimming. Now at this point in time, I haven't touched a bicycle since I was 11, and like I said, I haaaaaaated running. I was just hoping for something I could swim and maybe some other stuff on the side. But that was outweighed by the fact that there was only 10 kilometers of running. So 111 it was. Only 1% was actually swimming, no big deal.
Because I'm not the most avid user of the metric system, I forgot that it was 111 kilometers, and I just replaced all the distances with miles in my head. So in kilometers, 1.6 of swimming, 16 of running, and 160 of biking. And I agreed to it because I thought I always had wanted to run 111 miles. Circular logic is the best motivator. It's how the pyramids got built.
Previous Experience
- Ran a mile in gym class once or twice
- Biked 40 miles for a charity event in April, biked a total of 0 miles in the five years before that
- Expert at ignoring my friend who kept telling me that biking 100 miles without preparation is a bad idea
- Expert at ignoring my friend who kept telling me that he wasn't kidding and I should at least practice for it
- Expert at ignoring my friend who kept telling me that he actually biked a lot and knew what he was talking about and I should really reconsider doing this 111 triathlon without any training, especially since it's all just for weight loss and bragging rights
- I swim a bunch.
The Course
Well I have to end where I started. I'm not getting myself lost and tired 100 miles from home. Also I want to stay away from major roads since I don't want traffic to mess up my time. And after a hundred mile bike ride I'll probably be hallucinating and drive into some lady who's texting at the wheel.
Enter Google Maps, through which I find a figure-8 path around the neighborhood that is exactly 12.5 miles long. So eight times around that.
For the running, my solution is much less elegant. I just back away from my house, use a GPS to find directions to my house, and stop moving backwards when it tells me I'm 1.00 miles away. Then I take off my shirt, tie it around a tree, pray to Zeus that someone doesn't take down the shirt while I'm spending the first half of the day biking, and move on. I’ll run down and back 5 times for a 10-mile running course.
Finally the hard part. Where would I swim a mile? I finally convinced some friends who worked at the pool that was located a stone’s throw from my house to let me in for the race. I haven’t been a member for five years and I didn’t know how long it would take me to accomplish the race. I just told them sometime between 2 PM and 6 PM. I also neglected to tell them that I’d probably be muttering like a maniac and covered in sweat after 110 miles of nonstop physical activity. But hey, I’m not being dishonest. I’m just forgetting to tell the truth. Right?
…Right?
YAAAAAAAAAR
Early he next morning I take off after the healthy breakfast of half a batter of cookie dough. I made chocolate chip cookies for my mom's birthday and they all didn't fit on the baking pan so I just ate the leftover batter. Probably not a healthy food choice.
I have no idea how long a hundred miles is. Doesn’t seem that bad, though. I leave equipped with my bicycle, my phone, and some headphones. These headphones can barely take me headbanging while playing keyboard so I tie some yarn around my head so they don’t fall off.
I leave a stopwatch and a bunch of water at my front door. Also there’s a bumblebee diddling himself on top of the door. I would have to fight him to the death later.
First 12.5 miles went without incident. Seven more of these would be no problem. I get off my bike, shove a water down the hatch, and get back on the bike. The watch says 50 minutes. And then—
If you sit on a bike after a long period of not sitting on a bike, your asshole will hurt. Badly. You won’t feel this until you actually get off the bike, and it doubles in pain when you try to get back on. I think I learned this during the 40 mile ride but conveniently forgot.
Second stretch went like the first except I’m trying to ignore the pain that my ass is wreaking on… my ass? 25 miles down. Now the sun is coming up, about 8 AM. It’s going to get hot out soon, I better rush to finish before the afternoon- oh wait, butt says no.
Another bottle drained into my gullet, onwards into the third section. I’m raising the volume on my phone to try to drown out the pain, and I’m getting desperate here. By the end of the third leg, I’m singing along to Stratovarius in what has to be the loudest voice I can muster just to take my mind off of the pain. Thankfully the yarn is keeping my headphones on my head so I can’t hear myself much, let alone anyone coming outside to shut me up.
Also somewhere in the third leg the waters made their own marathon from my mouth to my bladder, and they were going to cross the finish line too. Thankfully I live in a forest and it wasn’t too hard to stop in an isolated patch of trees and empty my cargo all over an anthill.
I hate insects.
2 hours 40 minutes in I’m finally starting the fourth leg. I’m taking two waters now and sweating like Michael Jackson in a Chuck E. Cheese. At this point I abandon my hopes of becoming a singer and by the end I’m just screaming “FIFTY FIFTY FIFTY FIFTY FIFTY”. I’m jealous of the people living in my neighborhood. They get to watch my antics whenever I do stupid shit like this and I never get a chance to stop doing my antics long enough to watch that lunatic my neighbors are talking about screaming at the top of his lungs, who shows up every hour or so on the street, shirtless and self-unaware.
3:35. FUCK YOU BUMBLEBEE THIS IS MY WATER. GET BACK TO WHERE YOU LIVE. YOU DON’T EVEN LIKE WATER YOU’RE A BUMBLEBEE. Back on the bike, and maybe 5 minutes spent trying to gingerly place myself so my butt hurts the least possible amount. Which is still a lot.
How am I going to poop tonight?
Fifth leg… sixth leg… I’m 5 and a half hours in. 75 miles. This is where I start to realize something’s wrong. I feel parched, even with a good liter of water every hour or so. I guess two bottles aren’t enough? Time to do 4 then.
The ants are still recovering, trying to figure out who would do this to them, but more importantly, how to kill whoever’s doing this to them. Ants running around in frenzy. When it rains, it pours…
I pissed on the anthill a second time. That is the point I am trying to make.
I want to do the last two legs nonstop. My entire lower body has gone virtually numb and I don’t want to get cursed by the nether gods by standing up and taking refreshments.
Whatever I gained by not standing up, I lost by not drinking anything. I think I ended up sweating less simply because my body was running out of water to drain. I wasn’t even happy when I finished the first hundred miles. I just put my bike down and took a nap – oh wait no shit bumblebee’s going to fuck me up if I take nap. Gotta finish the triathlon first.
And so I went to terrorize my second batch of friendly neighborhood inhabitants and other people who wave hello when I walk my dog and it takes a crap on their lawn. Luckily I was out of breath to say things, so unless they happened to look outside, they were missing out.
Five times up and down. Ten miles doesn’t feel like much after a solid seven hours 45 minutes of biking and 15 minute water/pissbreak, but by god do you feel slow. I don’t run very fast, and I slowed down even more to actually run. Why did I sign up for this again? God help me.
I’d take half a bottle every time I got back to my house. On my fifth stretch of running back home, I was supposed to tell my friend at the pool to open the gate for me. Unfortunately my speech skills were sacrificed somewhere on the seventh or eighth leg. I just pointed to the gate and tried to say “gate”. It came out as a sloppy hitler salute and “gaaaaaaaaay” like I was some sort of prejudiced zombie
At least he got the message. I ran in, undressed, and started swimming. Usually when I swim I forget to kick, which was good in this case because my legs were refusing to cooperate and only my arms were still at full integrity.
Now the way I designed this for myself, it was meant to have as simple counting as possible because I’m not going to count to 100 accurately when pushing my body to places it’s never been before, right? Except for this I end up having to count to 70 laps because you can’t really negotiate with the size of a pool.
Somewhere in the middle my right arm decides it’s had too much and decides to quit the party. I think it was in the early 40’s when I feel my right shoulder come out of the socket. It was even more painful than my throbbing fudge chute. Luckily in my panic I stopped stretching and the arm came back in. Silly arm. But I didn’t waste time thinking about it for the count was the most important thing. Not my sanity or well-being. Just the integrity of this 111-mile, single-man race.
Finally I stumbled home, 9 hours and 36 minutes after the start of my race, and collapsed. I hadn’t eaten in 10 hours, but you don’t feel any hunger when you’re that tired. Your survival instincts are kicking in. Then I realized I left my crap at the pool.
Half an hour later I went back, picked everything up, and came home again. I looked up. Bumblebee was waiting for me. No fight to the death, Bumblebee. I’m already dead as it is.
