yesterday i participated in the helsinki city triathlon. the distances were very short, and when i saw the sign for it a few months ago i thought "well, if i'm ever going to do one, surely i can handle these distances." the swim was 300 meters, the bike was 10K, and the run was 3K. all were easily manageable by themselves, so the challenge was doing them all together.
fortunately, it was pretty well organized. unfortunately for me, all the information was in finnish. it's a funny thing -- i've been here for a year and i've taken a class, and in theory this is a 'language immersion' situation. the thing is that it's really not. firstly, most places (especially websites) have english translations. secondly (and maybe this is the most important), almost every sign in helsinki has swedish translations too. the finnish law on this is interesting: finnish and swedish are both official languages of finland. if a language represents at least 8% (or at least 3000 speakers) of the population of a city, official signs must have that language on the signs. this means that everything (street signs, names of government offices, bus instructions, maps, etc) is in both finnish and swedish in helsinki. i personally find it quite annoying, because it means that signs and labels are quite long, and also maps are much harder to read because of this. and for some reason google maps is mostly in swedish. however, swedish is *much* easier than finnish for an english-speaker to piece together and figure out. i believe it is germanic, so you can see a lot of the english roots. this means that i have unwittingly relied on it as a crutch. for example, to open a tram door, you press a button that has two words on it:
avaa and
öppna. which one looks more like 'open' to you? and here are the finnish and swedish words for 'stop':
pysähtyy and
stannar. the thing is that you can think "hmmm...i'm on a bus, and before each stop the light that says
stannar lights up, and since
stannar looks kind of like
stop, that probably means stop." however, let's say you're just confronted with
pysähtyy. yes, you might be able to figure it out given the context, but the word itself isn't much help. and at first i couldn't even understand how to pronounce that, even with a sort of english-ing of it, so i couldn't repeat the word in my head, and it turns out that this say-in-head thing is important for me for remembering a word.
anyway, back to the triathlon! it was entirely in finnish: the website, the signs at the race, the pre-race instructions. i'm grateful for this because i don't really experience it that often, but it certainly added to the confusion of the day. and it turns out that triathlons require a
lot of coordination.
first, you have to separate your stuff. you have to have your stuff for swimming with you, then a little bag of stuff you'll need for the bike ride, then another little bag of stuff you'll need for the run. i don't know if this is standard, since this was my first one, but it seems to make sense. i got there really early so as not to add a time crunch to the stress of figuring out these logistics in finnish. that was fortunate, because i was able to see a few heats of the men's race and figure out what was going on.
here's a shot of the pre-swim line-up. each group lined up by heats in the locker room, then headed out by the pool. from what i understand, most triathlons in the u.s. have the swim in a lake or bay or even the ocean, but this swim was in the helsinki swimming stadium. it's a beautiful place that was built for the 1952 olympics. i swam here a few times during my training, and it was spectacular to watch the sun rise over the trees while doing the backstroke.
then everyone got in the pool for an in-water start. i was happy i didn't have to dive in, because it was crowded enough and that seems like it would add another element of danger. the pool was set up with 2 long floaties. basically half the heat circled around each, for 3 circles (it's a 50 meter pool). i think this made it a bit shorter than 300 meters, since we didn't actually go all the way to the wall, but it seemed to keep it not-too-chaotic. during the swim i was scratched, kicked, and hit, but just because we were all swimming so close. lots of finns don't swim freestyle well (if at all), so a lot of people swim with the breast stroke with their head above water. not only is this slow, but it takes up more space with that frog kick. most of the kicks were from when i was passing someone doing the breast stroke. another level of organization: note that each heat even has the same color of swim cap!
one of the officials was this scuba diver. i don't know what he does, but he was in the water the whole time watching us. the girl next to me suggested that he was looking for lost earrings. :)
after 3 laps, you go from the pool over to your bike. earlier, each participant had to take their bike for inspection (checking brakes, and labeling with a sticker with your race number), then had to place it at a pre-labeled corral, along with anything they might need for cycling: shoes, socks, biking outfit, helmet, race number. my bag had a helmet, a ponytail holder, barrettes, a long-sleeve shirt, socks and shoes. last year i bought triathlon shorts and shirt, and it was a great investment. the shorts have butt-padding for cycling, but not so much that you can't run and swim in them. and the shirt has enough boob-support for the run, but doesn't hold water like a normal sports bra. i added the long-sleeve shirt in my bag because i thought i might be chilly during the bike, but the sun was out by the time i got out of the pool so i just left it in the bag.
the inspection tent:
getting out of the pool:
one dude took off his bathing suit at the transition (instead of just putting bike shorts over it). sorry, no pic. but here are some guys running from the pool to their bikes:
this next part surprised me. you have to take your bike to the start of the bike area and it's not just a few meters. so you have throw your bike stuff on and you grab your bike and start running. you run around the pool, in front of the bleachers, then out the other side, then all the way to the road. this is just the around-the-pool part:
the next part wasn't so spectator-friendly. the bike route was sort of around the stadium. it felt good, though. i bought a bike from the finnish ebay this summer and i like it a lot. it's somewhere between a mountain bike and a road bike, and it's pretty fast.
and then came the run. i had been thinking that when i got to this part, it would be fine. i ran cross-country and track in high school, and i've done a number of road races. i had never raced with a bike nor in a swimming event, but i feel totally comfortable with road race protocol, and i thought that after the bike and swim the run would be cake and i could go into autopilot (plus, 3K? even though some of my bike training sessions were about the race distance (i have a 10K commute to work) and my swim sessions were also mostly around 400 or 500 meters, my shortest training run was 5K). anyway, i was very very wrong. the swim was okay because i had lots of adrenalin and i was keyed up about finally doing the race i had been training for, and the bike ride felt great -- recovery from the swim, and yet i was still passing a lot of people, but the run hit me like a wall. my legs felt heavy, and my shoes and socks were still wet from all the water dripping off me from the swim. and the finns were not so supportive during the run. it's very american of me to want a cheering crowd, and also i have very supportive parents who *always* came to support me at races and *always* cheered loudly. my dad was even famous for going to a little place in the woods at our usual cross-country course to cheer for the kids and make sure they kept up the pace in the back stretch. but even though the running route goes sort of around the pool and it's right next to spectators, no one cared! i had
experienced this sort of finnish we're-not-cheering-for-anyone-except-maybe-this-one-guy-we-know quiet for the helsinki city run back in may, but i was pleasantly surprised at how the crowd had responded to the swim, and the run-with-bike. however, now i think that finns just think running is boring, which is funny due to finland's olympic distance-running
medal count. in this picture, the guy in the black shorts and white t-shirt is racing. notice the people a couple of feet away from him don't care a bit.
anyway, the run was 2 small loops, and the second loop was much better (i guess i had to get into it a bit). i think i was pretty fast for my heat, because one of the officials thought i was only on my first loop when i was heading toward the finish. i had to pause and have a discussion about how i had already done both loops, which was annoying. after the finish, i went to gather my stuff (all the pre-labeled bags, plus my bike that someone had moved from the bike-run exchange to the bike parking lot).
i finished strong, and i had a lot of fun. i even met a friend! her name is alva, and she helped translate some of the swimming information for me. i am definitely going to try to do another triathlon in the future. and next time i'm going to remember that if i have to put my shoes at the bike exchange point, that means that i won't have any shoes to wear for an hour or so. here are my bare feet on the stadium bleachers, waiting for my heat:
UPDATE: i was disqualified. this is where the no-finnish-skills gets me. you had to do 2 loops on the bike, but i didn't know. maybe there was a sign, but i didn't see it. and since there were so many heats, i 'finished' the biking with a lot of girls in the heat in front of me, so no one really noticed and pointed the other way. i'm upset and embarrassed about this, because i really trained and i could have done the whole bike easily. it's only now that this got posted on the triathlon site.
