Slaughterhouse 36

START TIME: 9:25 PM
END TIME:10:35 PM
WORD COUNT: 565

Each of the last two years at the Chicago Triathlon, you've beaten your goal by seven or eight minutes. What is your goal for next year and how can you accomplish it?


This year the goal was a secret. The prize was not. The prize was the bottle of Veuve Clicquot St. Petersburg that I got when I was in Reims in the Champagne region of France - the only city where it’s available outside of Russia. There aren’t many of them in America right now and it’s probably my favorite champagne. I promised myself I would drink it if I ever accomplished something huge, and I thought that beating a three-hour triathlon time by an even more significant number than I had previously would justify its consumption.

I also vowed I’d never drink champagne alone, and I won’t be doing so this time, either.

But the goal…the goal was to do better than last year. The training this year had gone very, very smoothly. My schedule didn’t have a long midsummer break, so quietly I told myself, “Five minutes.” That would put me at 2:47:51, which I could live with. But I didn’t like saying it out loud, because it seemed like I was tempting fate. Blow out a tire, turn an ankle, get kicked in the face on the swim, and you’re doomed. Last year was everything being amazing – why risk it?

I finished in 2:45:46 – 7:05 better than last year. I had some issues where I could certainly have been faster. So it would just be a matter of sustaining those levels and passing them next year, right?

Well, there are a lot of things that have to break in my favor. All of the things I mention above? They can’t happen. I can’t get hurt during training, or have someone else run into me on the bike. At that point, you hope for the best.

But what’s next year?

Next year’s goal will be 2 hours and 40 minutes, and a swim of less than 30 minutes. This means that I plan to make up most of the time in the water, where I was only better than about 50 percent of the triathletes this year. On the bicycle I was better than 80 percent of the other triathletes, and on the run I was better than 79 percent of the other triathletes.

I arrived at this conclusion based on the issues I had on the bike this year, where I could certainly have been faster had I not had to stop, and the persistent issues I have with open water swimming. I need to make a concerted effort to solve these problems if I want to do better next year.

I’ve had an irrational and persistent fear of real live swimming lessons, despite the fact that I’m acquainted with and train with several members of an area Masters club. I’m relatively competent in the water but have picked up such an accumulation of awful habits that I’m like Elton John going into rehab in Park Ridge. He had so many addictions that it was murder just to unweave them and deal with them one at a time. My swim stroke will require a similar overhaul, but I’m not totally up for it yet. I’d rather convince myself I can squeeze an extra 45 seconds a mile out of my run if I do more brick workouts.

As for prizes, let’s plummet off that particular precipice when we come to it. Stay tuned. For now, the widow awaits.