My first triathlon

In May 2026 I finished my first triathlon, a sprint at Dorney Lake, in 1:31:42.

Why I did it

As a kid I was not a fan of swimming, and my hands are sensitive to cold water, so I mostly avoided it. For my whole adult life I’ve told myself “one day I’ll properly learn to swim”. I decided it was finally time to fulfill that promise I made.

Knowing that deadlines and tracking metrics are incredibly motivating for me, I signed up for a triathlon in May 2026 as a forcing function.

How I trained

Here’s my training in the run-up to race day:

I read all 3 triathlon books by Taren Gesell, which were the perfect minimum knowledge I needed to get into action. I highly recommend these books to get started.

What helped most

Swimming

• Focus on the weakest thing first: for me, that was swimming.
• Spend a lot of time on breathing. The first several times I got into the pool, I noticed a tightness in my chest, a low-level anxiety when under the water, and a shortness of breath, even though I was breathing more.
  • The shortness of breath is not lack of oxygen, but rather too much CO2. I noticed a shift when I was able to start breathing out consistently. A useful primer was to train myself to hum whenever I was underwater - that way I was always breathing out.
• At least at beginner level, the purpose of kicking is just to keep your legs from sinking and maintain body alignment. Almost all the propulsion comes from the arms!
• Body alignment is key.
  • Looking straight down (rather than looking ahead) makes a big difference.
  • Fins and snorkel are perfect to to train body alignment. Taking the breathing out of the picture was super helpful so I could just focus on my kicks, my head position, my arm position, and keeping my torso from wobbling.

Cycling

• The cycling is where the wheat is separated from the chaff. The difference between strong swimmers and slow swimmers isn’t large. But for cycling, there’s a big difference. So if you’re trying to be competitive, it makes sense to focus a lot of time on cycling.
• I started training on an indoor bike (which kinda sucks to be honest), then bought a second-hand gravel bike on Gumtree. I rode it for the rest of my training and on race day.

Running

Before starting triathlon training, I used the Nike Run Club app from April to August 2025 to get comfortable running 10k. I had never run consistently before, so this was my foundation.

• Running is the hardest on the joints and the easiest and shortest distance of the three. Also, improving cycling benefits running, but not so much the other way around.

Gear I used