Swim, Bike, Run — Armenia’s Second Annual Triathlon

Last week­end I par­ti­cip­ated in a triath­lon up in the moun­tains at Lake Sevan, which was organ­ised for the second year run­ning by staff at the US Embassy. Events like this are few and far between in Armenia, as the idea of sport for gen­eral health and fit­ness has not yet gained wide­spread pub­lic accept­ance. I’ve learnt to ignore the snig­ger­ing loons I encounter every time I go out for a ride or a run.

I wanted to be part of the race primar­ily to have fun and meet some new people. Most of the other for­eign­ers I knew here last year have now moved on. I also wanted to see how much of a dif­fer­ence the last months of bicycle travel had made to my over­all fit­ness and abil­ity to cycle at a com­pet­it­ive level, which was some­thing I’d never tried before. I’d never even rid­den a racing bike.

The exper­i­ment was going to be a daunt­ing one — an early-morning 1.5km swim in the fri­gid high-altitude waters of Lake Sevan, up at 2,000m above sea level; a 40km bike ride which I didn’t really expect to cause too many prob­lems, and finally the killer — a 10km run. I’ve never been a run­ner, and hav­ing hit the tread­mill a couple of times in Dubai and felt the after-effects strongly, I fully expec­ted to crumple up in a heap shortly after leav­ing the start­ing line on foot when the day came.

A few days before the race I was invited to join a team who already had a strong run­ner and swim­mer. The team was to rep­res­ent a char­ity called Aquat­ics Armenia, who planned to build the first swim­ming pool com­plex in Yerevan that would be avail­able to the gen­eral pub­lic — rather than just rich kids and expats — and at an afford­able price. It soun­ded a noble scheme to pro­mote health and fit­ness amongst the large sec­tor of soci­ety for whom it is a sus­pi­cious, expens­ive lux­ury. So I aban­doned my plan to flop dis­mally on the road­side in a fol­orn pile of sweaty limbs, and agreed to ride for them.

The morn­ing of the race day was beau­ti­ful, and des­pite the thun­der­storm the night before I was glad to have camped the night a few metres away from the main sta­ging point for the race. I sat and watched the dawn grow­ing behind the moun­tains on the far side of the lake, cooked scrambled egg with my battered old stove, then trudged up the bank to the car park, where the organ­isers had already put up a big tent and sound sys­tem and were organ­ising a pair of industrial-strength bar­be­cues. Clearly this wasn’t a locally-organised event — there were even a pair of Porta­loos on the site!

Bleary-eyed friends, fam­ily and sup­port­ers mingled with com­pet­it­ors spoon­ing them­selves into wet­suits and fluor­es­cent swim­ming hats. A couple of riders took off down the lakeside road for a warm-up, and I decided to join them. A dis­tant horn soun­ded as we rolled down the hard shoulder, and below us, a froth of swim­mers broke into a straggled line as they plunged for the first way­po­int in the half-kilometre loop. The sprint-distance swim­mers would dash out after one lap, and the Olympic-distance remainder would swim another two laps before leap­ing on their bikes or passing the baton to the next mem­ber of their team.

Triathlon-style events — con­sec­ut­ive swim­ming, bik­ing and run­ning — usu­ally come in four grad­a­tions between power and endur­ance. The shortest course, and there­fore the one that requires the quick­est move­ment in order to win, is known as a Sprint course, with a 500m swim, a 26km ride, and a 5km run. The Olympic dis­tance course con­sists of a 1.5km swim, a 40km ride and a 15km run, which is enough to bring a look of hor­ror to most people’s faces. These were the two avail­able courses at the Sevan event.

Way off in the realm of the truly mas­ochistic, two exten­sions of this course actu­ally take place around the world on a fairly reg­u­lar basis — the half-Ironman, and the Iron­man. These races sound on paper as though they are suit­able only for the clinically-insane. The Iron­man race is — get this — a 3.8km swim (that’s 152 lengths of a stand­ard swim­ming pool), a 180km bike ride (Lon­don to some­where near Birm­ing­ham), and a 42km run (Dover to Cal­ais and then some). Back to back. Alone.

Tomor­row, one of my good friends from the States, who I haven’t seen for a num­ber of years, and who I can’t say I expec­ted to hear to be doing this (although now I think about it I can see where the men­tal­ity comes from), is going to attempt to swim, bike and run the Iron­man. She has my full, unadul­ter­ated respect, not only for hav­ing the balls to train for 11 months for the race (let alone com­pete in it), but also for writ­ing one of the most unabashed, enter­tain­ing and crip­plingly funny blogs I’ve ever read about the run-up to the exper­i­ence, and hope­fully her suc­cess in com­plet­ing the course in the next few hours.

Back in Sevan, I would have liked to have rid­den the 40km route, but the team organ­iser and dir­ector of the charity’s oper­a­tions in Armenia had decided that the Sprint course was more win­nable, and that win­ning would be good pub­li­city for his cause. I can’t hon­estly say I attached any per­sonal import­ance to win­ning, but I’d joined the team to help them out and agreed to give it my best shot.

So when the team swim­mer ran drip­ping up the bank to where I was poised in my specially-selected cyc­ling attire, I swung my leg over the cheap, wobbly Chinese con­trap­tion I’d been lent (it had the words ‘racing bike’ splashed all over the frame, so it should be OK, right?), and ped­alled off down the road to the 13km turn­around point.

51 minutes later I arrived back, legs like jelly, hav­ing over­taken my way from 10th to 4th place whilst sim­ul­tan­eously rais­ing the loose seat­post with one hand every few minutes, spent a lot of time fid­dling with the down-tube gear shifters with the other, waved reg­u­larly at fish­er­men selling their smelly catch on the road­side, and attemp­ted and finally failed to stay ahead of the US Army Major who spent the last half of the course draft­ing me whilst singing Nick­el­back songs at high volume (I assume to dis­tract me from the job at hand). I high-fived the team run­ner and col­lapsed in a com­edy fluor­es­cent heap to await the outcome.

It was a jolly atmo­sphere at the headquar­ters, the primary aim of the day being to have fun and get a bit of exer­cise. People flopped pant­ing into plastic chairs, grabbed beers and juices, then went back up to the road to cheer at passing cyc­lists and run­ners on their way to the end of the Olympic-distance course.

Finally the last run­ners were in, and it was time for the awards cere­mony. Amongst the win­ners were the favour­ite for the men’s Olympic triath­lon, former Iron­man com­pet­itor and US Embassy medic, the bicycle-activist’s pet cyc­list Samvel who runs a bike work­shop in Yerevan and occa­sion­ally under­takes aston­ish­ing phys­ical feats, the afore­men­tioned singing Major, and… us! I was more than a little sur­prised to be called up to take first place prize for the Sprint team event, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing I’d watched our run­ner come in a close second…

Most in attend­ance were unaware of the bemused looks that were exchanged between the mem­bers of our team, and those of the team which I had thought had won by a minute or so but who had received second place. It turned out, after a little invest­ig­a­tion, that the other mem­bers of the team I’d joined had accused the win­ners of cheat­ing, and had pho­tos to prove it. I looked at the pho­tos, which proved noth­ing other than that the cyc­list in ques­tion had stayed at the fin­ish line for a few minutes after arriv­ing. Mean­while, an argu­ment broke out over the res­ult. I didn’t want to get involved so I went to pack up my tent and get changed.

It was a slightly sour end to a really pos­it­ive day. Some people seemed to have for­got­ten the point. In the end, I regret­ted hav­ing joined the team, as it turned out that, to a few people, being pro­claimed vic­tori­ous — even undeservedly — was more import­ant than just being a par­ti­cipant. I felt a bit like a chess piece that had been put in place to secure vic­tory for someone else.

But it was a great event over­all, thanks to the hard work of a num­ber of people who gave up their free time to organ­ise it. Par­ti­cip­at­ing also provided extra motiv­a­tion to stay fit and to try some other forms of exer­cise dur­ing my time off the bike. I think I’m going to keep it up, and try it again, alone, in the future.

Com­ing up — return­ing to ‘nor­mal’ soci­ety, some of the most extreme endur­ance races on the planet, and a mini adven­ture. I’m off for a ride.

Thanks for read­ing. You might also like these recent articles:

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