A few weeks into our dating, Sue was scheduled to do the Half-Ironman 70.3 race in Racine, Wisconsin. Having just gotten to know her by that point, and eager to deepen our relationship, I decided to drive up early Saturday morning. It’s a two-hour drive from Batavia to Racine, so I left at 4:30 a.m. to make it on time for the 7:00 a.m. start that morning.

My familiarity with the triathlon scene was partial at best. At fifty-five years old, I’d never done a triathlon or duathlon at that point in my life other than a team event in Geneva where I did the running and handed off to a cyclist.

The only triathlon I’d seen, but had watched several times, was the small race held in Batavia. That event was conducted by Experience Triathlon, the club to which Sue belonged. It consisted of a short swim in the Quarry Pool where contestants passed through water so shallow they’d stand up and run. The bike course looped west of town on a fifteen mile route and the run circled around downtown Batavia. I showed up each year to watch the race out of curiosity. While I’d flirted with trying triathlon in the early 2000s before tearing my ACL, I never followed through.

Yet by 2012 I’d raced my bike plenty in criterium events, and already had the running part down thanks to forty years of competitive racing. The thing that kept me away from triathlons was the swimming. Again, back in 2003, I signed up for swim lessons thinking about doing triathlons, but the torn ACL put an end to that too.

None of that prepared me for the scale of the Ironman triathlon at Racine. The number of competitors! Thousands. The setup. The logistics. The scope and scale. Ironman does not mess around.

Sue had given me a description of her sister Julie whom I was going to meet for the first time. I drove up through Illinois and southern Wisconsin in the dark and parked the car on the back streets of Racine, trotted down to the start area, or where I thought it was, and wandered around a bit worried that I’d gotten there too late.

“Julie has red hair,” Sue told me. “You won’t be able to miss her.”

And sure enough, I was standing on the street next to the huge Racine beach and Julie came walking up the avenue. “Hi,” she offered. “Are you Chris?”

Learning the ropes

I quickly learned that the start was another half-mile up the beach. Sue had already gone up to the Swim Start. “We can catch her out here,” she said, pointing to the Swim Out arch across the beach.

Teammates from Experience Triathlon were gathered near the swim start and I half-attempted to introduce myself. The head coach gave me a half-nod of acknowledgement and the other guys sort of said their “heys” with that distracted tone people get when there’s an event about to start.

I looked out at the lake in wonder. I loved “swimming” in the sense of playing in the waves. Down at my sister-in-law’s house in Wilmette, our family went to the beach one August day when the waves were crashing onshore at six feet tall. We caroused and body-surfed for an hour or two. On the way home that day I could feel the waves in my blood, the sensation of rolling and tumbling connected to the Lake Michigan we’d just left.

That’s not what you want when swimming for a triathlon. Any degree of chop is an annoyance at best. Waves can fill a swimmer’s mouth with water and make “sighting” an absolute chore. Fortunately, the lake on the morning of Sue’s race was fairly calm. The water temps were in the mid-sixties, a tolerable range for swimming a mile in open water.

We saw Sue climb out of the water and I gave her a big cheer, drawing a smile from her as she pulled off the swim cap and goggles. Then she took a long jog to the transition area. Again, I had no idea about the scale of a typical Ironman 70.3. Bikes upon bikes on racks. I’d never seen anything like it. We watched her strip off the wetsuit and trot the bike out for the 56-mile ride, and Julie said, “We can chill at the ET tent.”

So we parked ourselves in the shade of some oak trees while Julie pulled out a book to read. But we started talking and a fascinating truth emerged. She’d been through some stuff much like my late wife and emerged healthy and strong enough to do triathlons too. Hearing her story and sharing the journey I’d been on with my late wife made me feel a bond with her. We even talked faith a little bit, and previous relationships. Julie had gone through some serious stuff in life just like Sue with her divorce. Already in my relationship with Sue, she’d wisely stated, “We all have our shit to deal with.”

The bike took just under three hours for Sue to complete. Watching her roll out on her Scott tri-bike had made me cheer like a fool. After she was gone, I thought to myself, “I hope I didn’t sound like an idiot.”

Then came the Bike In. As the day had warmed, I watched one triathlete after another trek north on the path along the lakefront. It was going to be a hot 13.1 miles for everyone.

I chatted more with some ET people and got to know some of the other coaches and prime personalities. I think word got around that I was Sue’s “new boyfriend” and people were curious about that. For all its big-time logistics, triathlon is a little world of its own. For better or worse, it serves as a “transition zone” for many people in life. Some get into it for the sport’s sake, enjoying the training and racing for the thrill of it. Others seem to join in as an escape of sorts. Triathlon is a place to work off––or through––some of life’s disappointing aspects. It often serves as an antidote to early or mid-life malaise. Bodies go through changes due to all that training. As a result, so does the mind. That can lead to breaches in relationships and marriages. As people find a new “self” there is a temptation to leave the old one behind. Plus, being around all that fit or visible flesh brings on temptations of lust and adventure. More than one affair has begun in the pool, on long runs or bikes, and interests flow along with sweat. The clingy outfits don’t hide much.

I didn’t know any of this before entering the triathlon world. I only half-entered it as it was. Even as the next few years unfolded, I didn’t fully sign up to be coached, but did join Sue and company on training rides and runs with the Experience Triathlon crew. Some of the rules of membership I found non-sensical. “You can’t come on a paid training ride,” I was told at one point by the head coach. As a longtime endurance athlete, I found that a bit comical. What negative affect could a single rider have on a group of 20-plus cyclists, all of whom ride in aero without drafting according to triathlon regulations? I wasn’t asking to be coached or given any advice. Dumb.

But I could see that the group was passionately supportive of each other. That I liked. When Sue came trotting down the hill on the first run loop at Racine, the ET folks were screaming and she flashed a smile despite the sun bearing down on her back. “Go Sue, go!” I yelled, trying not to sound too desperately eager to be “her man.”

At the finish the crowd lined the course and I’ll admit to relief upon seeing her white knee-high socks come up the path. No matter how you approach triathlon, that last half-mile is a relief for sure. After she finished I walked back to the ET tent where she flopped on the ground with a water bottle in one hand. “How you doing?” someone asked. “Great, now,” she chuckled.

We gathered up all her gear and headed for my car. Her sister would head home to Woodstock and I was driving Sue back to Batavia. “Let’s stop at this gas station and I’ll clean up,” she told me. I sat in the car with the AC on as she carried her tri-bag into the station and did a sink washup. She came back out in the same short white shorts she’d worn in the photo that appeared on FitnessSingles. I was impressed. A low-maintenance woman. She sat back in the car and I could see that the sunburn from the longer bike shorts stopped at mid-thigh. Her shoulders were a bit red too. She plopped into the passenger seat of my Subaru. Then we pulled up to a McDonalds for a cheeseburger and vanilla shake, her fave post-race indulgence. After that she smiled at me and said, “Come on, let’s go home.”

About halfway home, she was getting tired and leaned against the window. A sigh of half sleep emerged from her and I drove along with music playing quietly on the radio. The sun shone down the length of her smooth thighs and flickered across the curls of her hair. “This is good,” I thought to myself. “This is very good.”