Through a desire for competition, dogged organization, and from the sheer progressive insanity that long, cold nights in winter in my part of the world breeds, my friends on the TRI-DRS e-mail list had organized an event called the "Indoorman Triathlon." There were three distances - Sprint, Olympic, and Half Ironman. It's worth noting that there was an unofficial fourth distance, but only one entrant.

My friend Dave Decker decided that since his wife and kids were out of town that weekend, he'd have some time to kill. Starting at 6:00am and finishing at 5:57pm that same day, he swam 4000 meters in a 25-meter pool, rode 112 miles on a stationary bike, and in a brilliant coup de grace of sensory deprivation - ran 26.2 miles on a treadmill. Counting transitions, he finished an Ironman completely indoors in 11:57. We judged him to be completely insane, gave him an application for the Western States 100, the US Marine Corps, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and promptly staged an intervention and had him committed.

If I tried a stunt like that, they'd be scraping me off the treadmill. Not from speed or physical meltdown, but from boredom. At around mile 11 when I fell asleep, there'd just be this 'thump, thump, thump' as my sleeping figure kept on lapping until someone came and pulled the plug.

I knew my own limits: I opted for the Olympic Distance Indoorman.

It would be my first multisport race since the Reston Triathlon on September 7th of last year. I'd taken the autumn off from swimmi- no, wait, that's not right. Okay - I'd definitely taken some time off from the pool; wait, no. That's a grievous understatement. Since Ironman Lake Placid on July 27th, the only times I'd been wet had been when I was washing the dishes, washing my car, or in the shower: In 5 months, I'd been in the water 6 times.

However, I'd been taking spin classes (crash-free, thankyouverymuch) since November, and I still had some fitness from the Philadelphia Marathon in my legs*somewhere.

I got in the pool and warmed up a bit, mentally getting ready for what would be about three hours of effort. In a way, it was a wonderful throwback for me: Before my first year of triathlon I'd done lots of little quasi-tri's in my gym: A little swim, an hour ride, and a 2-3 mile run to get used to the idea of juggling three sports at once*but I'd never done a full Olympic Distance dance on my own. With little fanfare I pushed off, started the watch, and started counting lengths.

No training - no problem on the swim. I started slow and kept it slow, focusing on turnover the best that I could. Thankfully I was spared sharing the lane with 10-foot wide breast-strokers, wrong-way circlers, and little ones surfing on kickboards. Once every 20 lengths I'd try and peek at my watch to see where I was, but all I managed to do was glide to a halt while squinting through the slow-leak in my goggles. I touched the wall on length 66 in 24:10 - a pleasant surprise!

So with no training I managed a 24-minute 1500-meter. It's worth noting that last year I logged 65,000 yards in the pool and swam a 1:03 at Lake Placid. In 1998 I logged 200,000 yards and swam a 1:03 at IM Canada. Go ahead - try and figure me out.

Transitions counted in the Indoorman, so I hustled out of the water as fast as I could and started to run across the deck to head upstairs. Of course with all the blood in my body located nowhere near my legs when I called out for full-speed shuffle, I looked like a soaking wet, falling statue who's torso was simply daring his legs to hang on. In a tribute to Paula Newby-Fraser's 1995 meltdown at IMH, I sat down in a deck chair and took five to get myself together.

When I got to the locker room I flipped out of my suit and started to find my way into my bike shorts. In this era of DeSoto Power Suits I'd forgotten how hard it was to put bike shorts on a damp body, and I'd gone for extra moron points by electing to bring my bib shorts with me for the bike. As the Lycra managed to stick immediately and firmly to my damp shins, I defiantly pulled the straps up over my shoulders, and simply stood there. The shorts weren't moving, the straps weren't slipping, and that meant that I'd stretched the fabric located below my naughty bits to approximately the same tension as a medieval trebuchet ready to toss a boulder a great distance.

Being a reasonable man, I started jumping up and down in place to try and get the shorts to move. At that point two gentlemen walked into the locker room from whatever it was they were doing, only to be greeted with the sight of a 200-pound, 6-foot, black and white jumping bean.

No words were exchanged. When I stopped hopping about my shorts finally popped into place (thankfully without any real upward velocity), and I headed off to the bikes upstairs.

The bikes at my YMCA are 9 year-old Lifecycles - I knew exactly how to set the seat and bar height from years of riding them during my three-year sentence at the local Bally's gym. Once I had my rig ready I jumped on board, pressed start, and not a damn thing happened. Nothing. No lights, no beeps, nada. I moved onto the next bike - same deal: No life. I was starting to worry - what the heck could I do if none of the bikes worked?

In the middle of the floor an older gentlemen was watching my harried plight, riding a recumbent at 45RPM (I know this - I looked). He asked me, "Are you looking for the easy one?" I chuckled, "No sir - I'm looking for one that works!"

"Ahh." He mused. "Maybe you should try pedaling them, then?" Funny! Everyone's a comedian! With nothing to lose I hopped on a third bike and started pedaling*and the display jumped to life. I'd forgotten that to start this model, you did have to start pedaling. I tipped my bald head to the recumbent wizard, and he replied, "That's why I ride these - I hate those $^%! Damn machines."

I hit my watch as the bike was finally underway: My T1 time was a triumphant 14:46. In real life, Peter Reid would have been over two miles ahead of me. Ack!

Once on the bike, I took my towel and covered up the clock - there was no point in watching the display for any reason. I knew that at 100RPM at Level 5, I would finish the 40KM ride in 1:08:50. I also knew I could finish in 1:08:50 at 95RPM, 90RPM, 115RPM, 108RPM, etc. I'd learned this in 1997 after a year of endlessly trying to get it under 1:05 before I looked at my training diaries and saw that the Lifecycle "fix" was in. Ye Gods.

Regardless, I settled in, drank, and watched coverage of the Australian Open on ESPN. I kept peeking at the RPM's every few minutes to make sure I was keeping them over 105, and willed the time to speed up and get on with it. I took comfort that the bike would be the longest part of the day - the run would be relatively "short" when I finally got off and moved on.

Amazingly, I finished the 40KM in - 1:08:50! What consistency! Mr. Metronome, that's me.

Without any clothing dramas for T2 I hopped off the bike, and zigged and zagged across the floor to the Treadmill Sign-Up area, and the biggest challenge of my day: Not the 10KM run - the need to sign up for a treadmill for around 54 minutes despite a 30 minute limit firmly in place. I found a treadmill with nobody on it, and looked at the schedule - it was free for the next hour! I did the honest thing - I signed up for it using my own name: One 15 minute block was Bob, Then Allen (middle name) took the next one, then Robert took the third, and Mina took the last one.

I refer to that as: Technical Lie - Policy Truth.

I started the run on wobbly legs, not sure at all if I had any hopes of finishing the run in under an hour when the treadmill belt spun up to speed. It was my first brick in 4 months, and it felt just as bad as always! I was panting like a puppy at a 9:40 pace, and I was desperate for some kind of distraction. I looked up at the nearest TV, and thankfully MTV was on and actually playing music (for once). But then, just as I saw a ray of hope before my wasted eyes, some sick bastard had gone for the heart of my deepest fear: He reached up from his slow-motion elliptical trainer and switched the TV to The Golf Channel.

I have nothing against golf. I have nothing against golf on TV. However, when I'm dying a slow death of non-motion-sickness on a dreadmill almost 2 hours into going nowhere fast, golf on television is the slow-leak to my flagging motivation.

I covered the display on the treadmill with my towel, and resigned myself to watching whatever tournament it was for a mere 55 minutes more. I focused on approach shots, bunker misses, and short puts. When they cut to commercial I lifted the towel to check - I had to be almost 5 minutes in, right?

The clock read 2:04. I wept openly, and without shame.

I went to cover the clock again*but somehow managed to miss the entire display/handle setup at the front of the machine, and watched in slow-motion as my towel dropped away from sight headed right for the belt.

I knew not to try and catch it, and in a rare moment of zen-like reflection and cat-like reflexes I waited for it to land on the belt, and with remarkable souplesse jumped over the thing without breaking stride. As the towel passed behind me I yipped out, "NICE!" to nobody in-particular, feeling pretty damn good about my impromptu steeplechase*

*and in doing so nonchalantly completely forgot about needing to stick the landing on a still-moving treadmill.

I knew something was wrong when I was going backwards - rapidly. Knowing that the edge was coming up fast my brain shrieked out, "HAPPY FEET! HAPPY FEET!" I short-strided like Fred Flintstone, and double-timed my turnover to keep from dropping off the back. I slowly crept back up to the front, and tried very hard to not look at the swiveled heads on both sides of me, wondering just wotindahell had made me break out into the high-hurdles while watching golf.

Some poor, unfortunate, but incredibly kind soul saw that I was still running, but without a sweat rag. I wouldn't of done it, but he did - he grabbed it, and handed it back to me. It was the same towel I'd used in the pool, and on the bike, and now weighed about 14 pounds.

I think he was fine until he picked it up. I told him, "You just gave yourself a lifetime of good karma for that move - thanks, bro." He nodded, smiled, and walked off holding his right hand as far away from his body as he could possibly manage.

I'm pleased to report that from that moment on, the run was remarkably uneventful. I finished the 10KM in 55:10, and completed the Indoorman Olympic in 2:47 (2:27 without transitions). Not a bad day at all for no training.

When I was cooling down someone asked me, "Didn't I see you on that bike before? Then you ran?" "Yeah*" I replied. "It was a race I'm having with some friends of mine. Some are in Canada, some in Kansas, some in Michigan, all over. We're racing triathlons indoors on the honor system to see who's the Indoorman."

"Wow. And that's fun to you?" He asked.

You know you're a triathlete when you swim a 1500-meter time trial without training, ride nowhere fast on bikes that won't turn on while watching tennis, then commit an act of sporting fraud while leaping completely soaked terry cloth while watching a definitive breakdown of Phil Mickelson's short game, and you can still answer that question with a smile that leaves no doubt to the truth.

Hurricane Bob
* No brain, no pain. *

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