Triathlon Terms / Jargon For the Uninitiated

If you are new to the sport, or want to make it through this blog with your head on straight, there are some terms you need to know. And you should want to know them, because letting them slip at random in front of your non-tri-knowledgable buddies will make you seem infinitely cool.

(Note: There are a gazillion tri-terms to choose from. These are the fun ones.)

Let's start off easy. There are a lot of terms that describe the extent to which a triathlete feels like crud.

A brick (n.) is a bike-then-run workout. It is named thusly because that's what your legs feel like when you run after you bike. Triathletes love bricks.

ex: You: I just went swimming easy this morning 'cuz I have a huge brick planned tomorrow.

Your friend: Woah.

You hit the wall (v.t./n.) when you have nothing left. You gave it everything and you can't make yourself go any harder. Like running into a wall. There's nowhere left

to go. And it hurts.

ex: You: Man, I hit the wall at the end and Carlos kicked it in to the finish ahead of me.

Your friend: Carlos beat you? You wuss.

Maybe you hit the wall because you were about to bonk. You bonk (v.i.) when you screw up your nutrition and your body is eating itself to try to keep you going. Or it will start eating you if you don't eat something, like pure sugar. Avoid the bonk (n.).

ex: You: Man, I just totally bonked and limped home.

Your friend: I know, you were sucking my wheel all the way back and never took a pull. You jerk.

Time for some cycling terminology:

Wheel sucking (n/v) the art of riding with only centimeters between you and the person in front of you.

To take a pull (v.) to ride at the front of the peloton so the people behind you can draft off of you.

To draft (v.) to follow closely behind another cyclist(s) so they block the wind and do all of the work for you. The faster you go, the more you energy you save by making someone else pull you. That's why drafting is illegal in most amateur triathlons. Every triathlete for his/herself!

Peloton (n.) a large group of cyclists.

Tri-ton (n.) a large group of cyclists with aero bars.

Aero bars (n.) those funny things that stick out of some people's bikes where normal handlebars used to be so the rider can (comfortably) crouch down in a more aerodynamic position, thereby looking mean and fierce and letting the rider go all aggro if s/he wants.

Aggro (adv/adj) aggressive. You can go aggro. Or you can be aggro. Or some jerk in your

peloton can go all aggro on you and push you till you puke. In which case, if you can keep up for a few seconds an get alongside him, you can snot on him.

To snot (v.) the art of snot rocketing while on the bike. Cycling makes everyone have a runny nose. It's physics. Place your hand on nostril opposite the snot-loaded one, and blow.

ex: You: Dang it! I just snot on myself!

Your friend: Gross! You gotta work on that.

Your friend then proceeds to snot on you, and in trying to avoid the gelatinous projectile, you swerve and hit something, tacoing your wheel.

To taco a wheel (v/adj.) to whack something in such a manner that you bend your wheel in the shape of a taco. Your wheel is now tacoed.

Neapolitan tan (n.) what happens when you wear 2-3 different length bike shorts on separate rides and wind up with a progressive tan up your thigh. Like the shade gradation of Neapolitan ice cream.

T1 (n.) transition #1. Where you go to switch from swim to bike.

T2 (n.) transition #2. Where you go to switch from bike to run.

T3 (n.) transition #3. Where you go to switch from run to massage or food. This term is not as well-knwn as T1 and T2, but is equally as important.

Transition area (n.) where your stuff hangs out and waits for you while you're doing other things. Sometimes, they're in two places. At an Ironman, your stuff is in bags and thousands of volunteers grab it for you, help you change, put sunscreen on you and hand you your bike. It's like being a tri-celibrity.

Ironman (n.) a triathlon of this exact distance: 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run. AKA an event that you do so you can brag for the rest of your life, and develop an entire wardrobe based on a corporate symbol: the M-Dot. Maybe even get some tattoos. (See below.)

70.3 or Half Ironman (n.) exactly half the distance of an Ironman (140.6). The World Triathlon Corporation (WTC) owns the Ironman and 70.3 names, so if you see a race that's called an Iron-distance triathlon, or a half-iron distance triathlon, it's 'cuz they'd get sued to call it an Ironman. Only official Ironman-distance races can qualify a triathlete for Kona.

Kona. (You know, the city in Hawaii?) The place every triathlete dreams of going. The holy grail of Ironman racing. It's where the Ironman started, and where you can't race unless you qualify by finishing another Ironman at the very tipity top of your age group. (Or you get a media slot, or win in a lottery.)

Olympic distance triathlon: the distance that was used in this year's olympics. This is the exact distance for any triathlon labeled "olympic distance": 1500 meter swim, 40K bike, 10K run.

Sprint triathlon: any combo of swim-bike-run at a shorter distance than an olympic distance tri.

Xterra: an off-road triathlon. They can be all different distances, but most championship races have a 1500 meter swim, about a 20 mile bike, and a 10K run. Just like the Ironman World Championship are in Kona, the Xterra World Championship is in Maui. Unlike Ironman, if you commit a long time in advance to the Maui race, you can race it without having to be the best in the world. ALthough the best in the world will be there, and they will crush you.

USAT: USA Triathlon. The governing body of triathlon racing in the United States.

So now the next time someone says to you: "Dude, I did a brick yesterday morning but I still did the 70.3 today and I went all aggro and hit the wall." You can nod your head in understanding. And not in an eyebrow-raising way as if to say, "Riiiiight. Sure you did."

I think that's enough for now. Let me know if I missed anything! More terms to come: dolphining, chain suck, DNF, mashing, and lube.

Collegiate Triathlon Begins

This quarter marks the beginning of the collegiate triathlon season. I will be covering sports and outdoor adventures from the collegiate angle.

Get ready for some (mostly) non-varsity action, where athletes don't get scholarships to train like pros, but they do it anyway. Sort of.

Just like age-groupers.

Coming up: Injuries that survived the off-season despite great effort to heal, and what to do about them. The self-pity party can only last so long. Look! It's over!

Becoming a Trekkie

A few days after Christmas, I watched the new Star Trek movie with coachubby and our parents. Inspired by J.J. Abrams' camera shaking and directing techniques, we created our own short films.

Et voici, les films:

Heavenly Earthquake

Starring: Me & Coachubby's Mom & Dad

Lurch

Starring: Me, Little Bro, Mom, Dad, Coachubby's Dad

The Original Pain in the Ass

"Turns out this lady was freaky-deaky and hurt her back on a sex swing," says the 5'6", 32-year old, short brown-haired dude who pulled my pants down and was jabbing his thumbs into my butt.

Let's back this up a bit.

I went to physical therapy every day before Christmas with one goal in mind: to fix the pain in my ass.

My left butt started hurting November 6th. By mid-December it still hurt, and stopped me from running the California International Marathon. I was not pleased. The pain in my ass was becoming a true pain in the ass. Something had to be done.

And so for four days straight, I walked over to PT to have my pants pulled down by a brown-haired, lawyer-wannabe-turned physical therapist/bar mitzvah DJ, then have my left bum manipulated, stretched, stimulated with tingly pads, and iced.

Merry Christmas to my butt.

In order to decrease the awkwardness of the situation that broken butt syndrome (aka piriformis syndrome) creates, I tried to chat up Dr. DJ. Maybe it would keep his eyes off of the, um, prize.

"What's the most common injury that you see here?" I asked.
"Oh, usually a lot of lower back pain."
"Do you get a lot of older people with that problem?" It seemed like a logical question. One that would conjure up images of his grandma and keep his eyes off of my left butt cheek.
"Well, this one woman came in when I was an intern."
"Uh huh." Good. Grandma stories. It's working.
"And she told me she was having intense back pain."
"Uh huh." Maybe she hurt it picking up the dog or something.
"So I had to ask her how she did it to get an idea of what I'd do to treat it."

"That makes sense."

"Then she blushed and got all embarrassed."

"Oh God!" I scream.

"You don't even know what happens next!"

"No! Freaking-A! That hurts!" He found the evil spot.

"Oh. Well, it's supposed to hurt."

"OK, continue."

"She tells me she did it having sex."

Holy Lord this is awkward.

"So I go to tell my attending, since I have to ask permission before doing anything since I'm just an intern. He says I have to get more detail so we know how to treat her."

He squeezes out more lotion and jabs his thumbs into my butt. Coachubby is gonna love this story.

"Uh huh."

"So I have her write it down on the treatment form. Turns out this lady was freaky-deaky and hurt her back on a sex swing."

"No way!" I start fiddling with my wedding ring.

"So after she left, we took her name off of the form, and framed it and put it up on the wall."

"Ha. That's...funny," I say.

Dr. DJ pulls my my pants back up over my left butt and begins to stretch my hamstring. That innocent stretch never seemed so awkward. It was a relief when he had his young, blond sidekick take me to the "stim machine", where he wiped my bum down with alcohol and stuck pads onto it.

Maybe it was all done in that order to make "bum stimulation" not seem as embarassing.

Either way, lesson learned: Do not injure your bum. Fixing it is awkward. And a pain in the ass.

A Crashy Christmas Century

What better day than Christmas to ride 100 miles on Pacific Coast Highway? Everyone would be at home, leaving the often creepy road all to me and coachubby and our friend Aaron. I somehow talked them into riding with me.

Little did we know that this Christmas, the battle wouldn't be against cars, but against each other.

Coachubby and I rolled out from our tiny apartment (whose 1920s wiring got so upset the day before when coachubby put oatmeal in the microwave while I blow-dried my hair that it cut the power altogether) at 6:20am to meet up with Aaron at 6:30 by the Hermosa Beach pier.

The only other people awake were the under-10 crowd, who couldn't wait to rip open wrapping paper, and cops. Lots of cops.

To avoid going straight down Pier Avenue as usual, where the cops are most likely to be hiding, I suggested we take 8th street. We didn't want to ride with lights since the sun would be up in 20 minutes anyway, and twilight had already begun.

Coachubby and I turned left onto 8th street. Then, at the next stop sign, with no warning, coachubby turned straight into me and went down. We had been riding for all of 30 seconds.

The next 5 hours of the ride were a battle royale between me and my brain. I didn't sleep the night before because I was congested, but there was no way I was missing my own Christmas Century. I hadn't ridden 100 miles since RAO (Race Across Oregon--in early July) and I would never see such beautiful riding conditions for months to come--50s and perfectly sunny. Add that to the likeliness that very few people would be driving down PCH and I had to make it to Big Rock. (A big rock on PCH just past Point Mugu, exactly 50 miles from Hermosa Beach. See below.)

But my body was pissed. A return to Beefcake spinning on the 24th at Hermosa's 24 Hour Fitness left my legs feeling like jelly, and my sinuses infected. Gyms are gross like that.

It was all I could do to hold on to Aaron's or coachubby's wheel. Yes, I was that guy--I couldn't take a pull if I wanted to, unless the dudes felt like riding 12 mph. But Aaron had a family to get to in Orange County, and my parents were driving to Hermosa from Phoenix and would be at my place in the afternoon. Slow was not an option.

I was elated when we made it back to the strand in Santa Monica. This is where you know you've made it. You're off PCH, you haven't been squished, and most of the ride home is on a designated bike path where the only obstacles are rollerbladers and oblivious powerwalkers--not to be discounted, but still not as scary as 4,000 lbs of rolling metal.

Then it happened.

Coachubby and Aaron stopped at a stop sign in Venice Beach while I was daydreaming in my stuffy head.

I ran smack into coachubby.

It was my first crash ever. (If you don't count when I fell over going uphill.) And a lame one at that. And of course, I had an audience--a young couple on the corner stared in confusion. And yes, I was wearing a Stanford jersey. Way to represent.

I popped my right foot out of the pedal and stepped it down before rolling onto my right side. The Silver Bullet and I were unscathed. The F-Bomb (Coachubby's tri bike) was not. I bent his rear wheel, and his fancy-schmancy aero-positioned brakes wouldn't open up enough so he could ride home without major rubbage. But he still pulled me back to Hermosa. What a perfect husband!

We made it back in 5 hours and 45 minutes. Not too shabby. Aaron made it back without getting run into by coachubby or me. And I made it back just in time to eat all of the appetizers I had set out for my parents' arrival. D'oh!

But there were consequences to be paid for riding sick--even it it was Christmas. Even if it was the most beautiful day ever. Even if I had a fabulous little squad to ride with.

Come time for Christmas dinner, I felt like my brain was trying to pop my eyes out of my head. And so, I write this now from the slopes of Heavenly, while the rest of my family--and coachubby's--tears it up.

Of course, I'll be out there tomorrow. No matter what.

Coming up: The Origins of the Phrase "Pain in the Butt"