Feature
Daniel Carey
“IF God invented marathons to keep people from doing anything more stupid, the triathlon must have taken Him completely by surprise!” So said PZ Pearce, a seven-time finisher of the Ironman Triathlon World Championship. A combination of swimming, cycling and running is not for the faint-hearted, but next Sunday week, July 7, around 200 athletes will head for Ballina to take part in the Powerade Salmon Run Triathlon.
The event, held for the first time last year, runs in conjunction with Ballina Street & Arts Festival, and will run over the same route as in 2006. It consists of a 750-metre swim in the River Moy, a 20km cycle and a 5km run – what is known in the sport as ‘a sprint distance’.
“It’s open for people of all abilities to have a go at it,” explains Tomás Lynn, one of the race organisers. “It’s a fast course and there are no hills of any great note. We decided to make it flat and fast so that it would be accessible.”
The idea for the event came about after a group of local enthusiasts came together to found Liquid Motion Triathlon Club. Many had been doing triathlons all over the country and decided to form their own club. It began almost as a social outlet – communal training sessions helped motivate and improve people who once trained alone. However, last year’s inaugural event prompted a surge of interest among locals who were ‘bitten by the bug’. So what’s the attraction of triathlons?
“I suppose it’s the personal challenge,” club PRO Lynn offers. “It’s an individual sport, so you’ve no one to blame but yourself. Finishing a triathlon is the main goal. Then you check your times and who you beat, but you’re competing against yourself mainly. It is quite addictive, because you are doing three different sports. If you just pigeon-hole yourself to one sport and you’re just out running all the time, or out cycling, it gets quite monotonous. Whereas in triathlon, there’s a contrast, because you can be out cycling one day and running the next.”
The Irish triathlon community is small and tight-knit – go to any race and you’ll see the same faces again and again. The demands of the sport create an empathy between competitors no matter what their finishing time, and swapping war stories is a common part of post-race analysis. Describe a moment from the cycle, or comment on how hard the swim was, and you’ll find a sympathetic ear. Everyone knows what everyone else has been through.
“The camaraderie between the competitors is huge,” says Lynn. “Everyone will cheer everyone else on, and everyone will clap each other across the line. Because we all know how difficult they are. When you’re out there doing one, you’re saying to yourself ‘What am I doing? I’m crazy to be doing this! I could be sitting at home!’ But you push yourself and you drive forward, and other competitors cheer you on. It’s a great feeling when you finish it. When you get across that finish line and you have this sensation of achievement, it makes you want to go on and get it more. It’s like a drug.”
While most competitors tackle all three disciplines one after the other, a small number opt to enter as a team, with one person swimming, another cycling, and a third running. This means that even those who can’t swim get to take part, and through his work at the pool in Ballina, Lynn has seen a lot of people taking lessons to improve their technique in the water, and some who entered the team event last year said they’d love ‘to have a go and do the whole lot themselves’.
“I think you need to be fairly well driven: have a goal in your head and be able to achieve that,” he comments. “Because at times, training and racing can be difficult, and you just have to have that determination to never give up. But I think anybody can do it, at the same time. It’s open to anybody, and most people who do it once tend to come back and do it again and again.”
* For more information and to download an entry form, see the website www.liquidmotion.ie
