It’s super hot in Shanghai! Temperatures during day time are climbing up to 39C, with ‘real-feel’ at 50-ish degrees! Chinese ladies are wearing all sort of sun protection, they are really creative here! All sort of body covers, umbrellas, hats and masks. Sometimes they remind me of imperial storm troopers.
The streets are mostly empty around noon, I guess it’s a peak season for shopping malls now. Trying to avoid sun and heat and save some money on electricity, shanghainese are spending most of their days in cool, spacious, and ultra modern contemporary temples of consumption; drinking ice bubble tea and eating strange stuff on sticks they call ‘ice cream.’
We are also being lazy, it’s too hot for racing and training.
May and June we spent traveling and racing in sport events every weekend. It was such a great time!!! It was mostly triathlons – 5 weekends out of 8.
We started to do triathlons only last summer, and it’s already feels like we’ve been doing it for years. So what is so good about triathlons? Hard to put it in words, but let me try.
1. You are not doing the same excersize for hours. First you swim, then you jump on a bike and finish running. You never get bored! And you have to stay focused all the time.
2. Even if you are not great in one or even two legs, you can win. Because you can’t swim or run, or bike, you overcome your weakness and as you cross the finish line, you are the Winner. You beat your strongest competitor – yourself. And, of course, you can also win the race.
3. You get stronger. Before triathlons, I was doing some weight lifting trying to improve my body composition. I’m “skinny fat” body type with low muscle mass. Gaining a 100 grams of muscles costs me a lot of effort. Even more to keep it – if I stop eating a lot of protein (around 2.5 grams per 1 KG of weight), I lose it. It was not a fun cat & mouse game. And you know what? Triathlons have somehow helped me improve my body composition! Not significantly, but to the level I was aiming for. Like magic!
4. You learn your limits. And you push them. Step by step. This is, probably, my favorite part. You never know what are you capable of before you try.
5. You make new friends. You’ll be surrounded by people who share the same passion and speak the same language- triathlon.
6. You go to places you’d never even think to visit. Also one of my favorite! You can see the world, meet people and race in the most beautiful places in the world.
7. Waking up at 4am on weekends becomes normal. You’ll be done racing by the the time most of your friends wake up. I love the transition area and all the preparation in the morning. Everybody around is buzzing with caffeine and ready to set new records.
8. Pre- and Post-race meals. Oh yeah, on the day before and the day of the race, my MyFitnessPal app is exploding from food intake and carbohydrates. I love to eat, what can I say 🙂 and it’s necessary, you can’t race without extra glycogen in your liver.
9. Plan, plan and plan! I can’t live without a plan. It’s a fact. I need a plan, even if things are not going to go with my plan, I’d better have one, or two. Plan meals, plan transportation, hotels, training, recovery, how fast or slow I’ll go. And then you can compare you plan with facts. And plan afterwards another plan, “how to improve”.
10. Photos. Yes, you’ll get awesome pictures of you coming out of the water in wetsuit, or looking super fast on a bike, or enjoying your run (sometimes suffering, but it also looking good! So dramatic and powerful, haha)
Can you run? Or jog? Or walk? Are you able to swim at least 750 meters? Do you have a bike? Then you definitely should consider trying triathlon!
You’ll get more benefits than you think!