This article was originally posted on Medium - follow Udayan here.
Well, I am not even sure if I can call it a race report, for it is more a journal — a diary entry of my first triathlon experience, meant to serve as a pre-read when I participate in my next and invoke nostalgia years later — from the stage of my preparation, through planning and to the day of the race . It covers how I managed my diet, training, psychology, and sleep. I also realised (much late), that a triathlon is a wealthy man’s sport. And I, not being one, decided to learn the ways of the honey badger and cut out all the unnecessary and the only-mildly necessary expenses during training as well as the actual travel. So I’ve also added a small bit around the expenses of the logistics that surround it in the later part of the write-up.
Being a verbose take on things, I have added a table of contents so you need not peruse through the whole lot of words below.
Index (pending)
About the race - Bergman Mysore 2024
Bergman 113 Mysore is a triathlon organised by the Deccan Sports Club, based out of Kolhapur. While they have been organising triathlons in Kolhapur and Pune, Bergman Mysore 2024 one was their first edition.
The event comprised of 1.9 km of swim, followed by 90 kms of cycling and concluded by 21.1 km of running — the same as any Ironman 70.3 event, with the same disciplinary cutoffs — 1h10mins for the swim, 4h20mins for the cycling leg and 3 hours for the run.
Why am “I” doing this race?
While going through several months of rest and rehab, following an episode of shin splint after my first full marathon prep in early 2023, I had to look for alternatives to running, in order to keep fit. Cycling emerged as one. A borrowed gearless cycle from a friend started it all and soon after I was hitting the street, then the wider roads, the bigger boulevards, the arterial roads and the highways, progressively increasing the distances.
Swimming emerged soon, as my shin injury dragged on, and I went about exploring opportunities to swim in lakes and seas wherever I could and practice drills and laps in the neighbourhood (15 kms away!) swimming pool. As the shin began to show signs of good recovery, it only felt natural to try out an event where I could do all the three. And swimming-plus-cycling-plus-running seemed like an upgrade from only-running.
Why am I doing “this race”?
There were two factors I considered while choosing the triathlon:
Organisers — Triathlons require a higher degree of organisation prowess than say, a run, simply by the virtue of it being a combination of 3 events and 2 transitions. Hence, I felt it was important to choose an organiser who had some experience organising triathlons. Deccan Sports Club has been hosting their Bergman series of triathlons in Kolhapur and Pune and, hence, found my confidence residing in them.
Swimming — I wanted to prefer an open water swimming leg over a pool-based swimming leg. One, because most big triathlons (read IRONMAN) are organised in open waters and, hence, the one I participate in should resemble that experience. Two, open water swimming is beautiful! The joy of swimming in a natural body of water, with its bottomless, cool waters, makes it something to relish and look forward to. The absence of the convenience of holding on to an “end” in the swimming pool makes it all the more enthralling.
Preparation
Well, ideally, it’s simple — you divide your training into practicing basic disciplines — swimming, cycling, running and then some supported activities — strength, mobility, stretching and rest.
But having to adjust all of them in one single week, every week for several weeks felt like a task. I decided to focus on 2 disciplines every week, and keep alternating so no sport was left out for too long. And then there were some added factors too. Swimming being my least strong discipline needed much more focus while having registered for Tata Mumbai Marathon, which was 3 weeks before the triathlon, I also had to ensure getting a good mileage every week, which meant I couldn’t skip or deprioritise running in any of the weeks. Delhi winters are brutal and do not permit just about any swimming pool to go take a dip in. And herein enter the rare and evasive temperature-controlled swimming pools. There was only one such Olympic-sized pool in Delhi, far from my place, with dips allowed in a specified 1-hour slot in the day.
Those are the cards I was dealt with.
1. Training
Swimming
I did know how to swim and could just about swim the length of a full-sized pool. But that was no good when you have to keep going on for 1.9 kms (38 such laps!) without stopping. I decided to go for a coach to develop a good swimming stroke that could see me through the triathlon distance. And so I did! And the results started showing soon and up went my confidence charts.
But I was still in a pool. A pool with the comfort of holding onto the sides when you are tired. Or just the comforting thought of having something to hold on to in case I wanted to. But open waters afford one no such luxury.
I decided to go to Goa and see how my swimming, when stripped of the comfort of ends and a bottom, would hold up. Thanks to a great coach and 4–5 sessions of tirelessly swimming around the shallow shore, I started to move away from the assurance of the coastline, bit by bit, and soon, confidence replaced fear and uncertainty, and I was swimming out in the open waters of the sea.
Cycling
Cycling is different from the other disciplines; in that it is heavily dependent on another equipment — the cycle. And that it costs. A BOMB, if you want to buy a cycle that could last such a race. The stars aligned and I got my hands on a second-hand cycle that could just about do the job and training began. Long hours on the saddle, a couple of times a week, with mostly zone 2 speeds peppered with some bouts of speedwork in between was how most training would look like.
To add mileage, I also tried commuting to and back from the swimming pool on the cycle but soon retired the idea because I would ride conservatively and not try speedwork or add any drills in the commute and it would lead to sub-optimal performance when I swam. I remembered the glorious words of the great sage Ron Swanson, “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing”. Pop culture adages always help.
Running
Ah, the familiar discipline! As somebody who identifies as a runner (recreational*), I had the experience and a reasonable amount of know-how to go about it. And having Mumbai Marathon to prepare for as well, I could plug the same preparation for the triathlon too. I decided to target an average mileage 40–45 kms a week, which is not a lot of kilometres when you prepare for a full marathon but I am not particularly fond of running in training and so that mileage was the compromise my mind and my body arrived at.
As Mumbai beckoned, I had to taper down my running, which allowed the other two disciplines to pick up — particularly swimming — and I felt like that block of two continuous weeks of focus on swimming made a huge difference in how I confident I felt in water.
Post-Mumbai, Pre-Mysore
Well, jump to the third Sunday of January — the day of the Mumbai Marathon. The race went excellent and after the initial celebratory enthusiasm died, I realised that the travel back from Mumbai and travel to Mysore excluded, I had no more than about two weeks to recover, prepare, taper and give finishing touches to my triathlon preparation.
I decided to focus on cycling, since I needed to find and figure pacing, nutrition and the comfort during the four-odd hours which I would have to ride my cycle on the race day. I was able to manage 5–6 cycling sessions — including a few Zone 2 rides, rides with climbs and elevation gain and one full-dress rehearsal — imitating the distance, the pacing and the fuelling that I planned to do on the raceday.
2. Psychology
While I loved working out, swim, run and bike but the strict diet control and fitting in multiple activities during the day meant deprioritising social life and air-quotes “chilling”. As days went by, with train-eat-train-sleep cycle repeating everyday without immediate or even short-term gratification coming by, there were several dry-spells/dips in motivation levels and I had no answer to those but to decelerate the process to somehow make it last till the Mumbai marathon, which could (and did) act as a huge validation of the efforts put in thus far.
What also helped was the fact that the schedule got hardened as a habit and, thus, became difficult to break out of.. Wanting to work out and train became second nature to me, even though there were days when I hated it.
3. Sleep
“Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker, a book I happened to read during the weeks of my training, ended up having a massive impact on how I perceived sleep. I realised the importance of night sleep — and how I skimping out on it and then cover up for the lost sleeping hours was not as simple an arithmetic as it looked to be.
While it was tough to get to bed and doze off by 9/9:30 pm at night, to ensure 8 hours in bed, I tried my best. I would also get sleep pressure in the late mornings, after I was done with the long morning routine of my training and hearty breakfast. This would help cover up for the lost hours of sleep the previous night or help me get some bonus ones as a reward for my morning workout.
But for the most part, I would say that I was sleeping a bit lesser than I should have, so let’s just call it a moderate success and move on.
4. Diet
Training Period
a. Daily Caloric intake
Overall, the average daily caloric expenditure from just the workouts and training amounted to somewhere around 1800–2000 cals. My daily diet comprised of consumption of ~3200 calories a day, with over 500 cals from protein, about 900–1100 cals from fat and the remaining from carbs and dietary fibre.
b. Workout Fuelling
I decided to go for my runs, swims and cycling sessions fasted and stay that way during the activities too — without any fuelling (apart from hydration and electrolyte replenishment). The thought was to try to have better fat-burning adaptation during activities and that a fat-fuelled body cylinder, that fires up over and above the carb-fuelled cylinder, would help me get through hours of continuous activity without the body hitting the wall.
However, as I closed in on the raceday, I started fuelling similar to how I would on the race day — dominated by carbs — including the full-dress rehearsal runs, swims and cycling sessions. These sessions practically culminated my training block for these two races.
c. Out of Bounds
Zero sweets and deserts. No packed biscuits/chips. No soft drinks. No alcohol. No deep-fried food. No saucy/carb-heavy/bread-based portions — pastas or pizzas or risottos or quesadillas et al. when eating out. Eating food coming out of my kitchen, with as much control over the ingredients and cooking method as possible. Those were the rules.
Race Fuelling
a. Pre-race week
Gearing up for the carb loading that I planned from D-2 (Race day minus 2 days), I increased the overall daily intake of foods which were carb-heavy one day at a time, bit by bit — primarily through fruits (bananas!) and an added portion of rice/rotis.
b. D-2, D-1
Decreased the protein intake in-favour of carbs — replaced eggs with more bread/fruits, chicken gravy with potato-based subzi and evening protein bars with sandwiches. Rather than 3 major meals, I split meals into several smaller meals and consumed them every 1–2 hours. It was almost like one single meal spread throughout the day.
Being in Mysore, my usual go-tos for these carbohydrate-rich meals were dosas and idlis and even some biryani.
c. D day
The triathlon was to be flagged off at 7 am in the morning and my first order of business was to top up the carb reserves with a milk-based smoothie with bananas, powdered rolled oats, overnight soaked chia seeds and some protein powder. And this was to be done at least 2–3 hours before the start time so that the blood glucose from its consumption would stabilise before the race.
As a plan during the race, I decided to go for 70–80 g carbs per hour — in the form of bananas, carbohydrate gels, nippattu and kodubale — local savoury snacks I chose, to avoid saturation of taste after having everything sweet — and Fast n Up replenishment. The carb consumption and glucose pattern is detailed in the CGM curve section below.
d. Post-race
I was saturated with having had concentrated carbs for the last 8 hours, I did not feel hungry immediately after the race but after the adrenaline went down I did end up having the rice-rasam meal that the organisers served after a protein bar.
Race Day Breakdown
It was all exciting for the first-time participant in me, to see the start line preparations, the participants going about their pre-race rituals. Finally our group — the 113 distance — was ushered to the start line and the ceremonial countdown started.
1. Swim (Strava Activity Link)
While I had done a mock swim the day before in the very same waters, but my head decided to perceive race day very differently. Seeing so many participants jump all once in the water, competing, all in extremely close proximity — someone to my right banging his stroke on my legs, me bumping into somebody in the front who suddenly slowed down — I started getting the nerves, almost to the point of hyperventilating where I had to slow down and take large gulps of air after every couple seconds. It continued for another couple of minutes and I almost contemplated raising my hand as a signal to the kayak for help and exit from the race. My heart rate rose to the 160s, where in training it would barely go past 110s for similar effort. It was all happening and I wasn’t even past the 100 m mark yet.
I decided to break away from the crowded channel and started swimming wide of them. One stroke at a time, one breath at a time. I could feel my stroke going all wonky — legs sinking, right hand push-behind abandoned midway, but I continued, hoping for things to start turning alright. After some 10–15 minutes of beating the water with the underproductive stroke, my smartwatch chimed and vibrated the completion of 500metres of distance. “Alrighty then!” chimed my mind. And my confidence improved and, subsequently, my speed and the quality of my stroke.
I reached the half-way mark and took the U-turn and continued sticking to my channel. I found my groove (well, almost) and the drive to get done with the swimming leg. I came out the water after 55 minutes — not a great swim but a swim nonetheless and 15 minutes before the cutoff time.
2. T1
I planned the contents and the steps of my T1 bag well in advance and had left a paper with steps in side the bag itself. I knew I would be knackered after the swim and didn’t know if I could trust my brain then to not skip any step. I took the paper out, followed the steps, retraining the instinct to not rush about it and 3–4 minutes later, I was out, decked up in cycling gear, walking my cycle out on to the road.
3. Cycling (Strava Activity Link)
Buoyed (pun intended) by the uplifting swim leg, cycling started like a breeze. I had the task of 3 loops of 30 kms each to cover, ahead of me.
Loop 1
This was like a recce loop — and I discovered the huge stretches of elevation, road quality to watch out for in certain stretches, the rest of the field and what sort of average speed I was looking at. I was able to complete the first loop averaging 24kmph, which was just about in the nothing-to-worry about zone for me. I also tried to get used to the continuous gear changes due to gradient changes throughout the way.
Loop 2
My body slowed down marginally in the second loop, but was still sailing comfortably. I was caught in the juvenile trap of trying to get ahead of the cyclists riding around me at a similar pace, a few times, where I would overtake them on the inclines only to be overtaken by them and their lean powertrain machines on the declines. I had to keep telling myself to maintain a tempo and not push too much right now and lose steam. Oh, and I almost crashed into a dog, who appeared out of nowhere on one of the roads passing through a village. Not a good boi!
Before and After : Avoiding the accident with the dog
Loop 3
Started well but it didn’t last long. I started to require much more effort to maintain the same speed. And then I heard the dreaded flapping noise, every cyclist’s race nightmare — a FLAT TYRE. While I could hear the flapping noise, it was 4–5 minutes later when it became apparent that my front tyre had gone flat. I pulled up by the side of the road, got down and remembered the drill. I had a couple of spare tubes in my saddle bag and started to pull out the punctured tube from the front tyre and replace it. Took me 10–12 minutes to replace it and then inflate it with my pump. I hit the road again.
I hadn’t even finished commending myself for a job well done when I heard the dreaded sound again. The same tyre, with the new tube had punctured again. I had another spare tube but I weighed losing time to changing it again versus going all the way in a flat tyre and not stopping at all. I decided to continue with a flat tyre, and would have to finish the race — the remaining 20 odd kilometres of it — with a flat tyre. Time was catching up with me but I started convincing myself it was one of those times in life where people have to pull through with superhuman strength and deal with the consequences later. It was after riding 10 odd kilometres with the flat tyre — through rolling hills, no less — I stopped at one of the aid stations for a sip of electrolyte and asked them their opinion on my decision to continue with a flat tyre. They suggested I change the tyre now, even through I had only 10–12 kilometres to go. And so I did. Same drill again, as the volunteers on the aid station helped me out by topping up my sippers with electrolyte, as another helped hold my cycle while I pumped air into the newly put tube. And then back on the road again. Feeling a little less fatigued due to the two 10–12 minute pitstops I had made, I finished my cycling leg in 4h 5m, 15 minutes short of the cutoff time. Phew!
4. T2
My T2 bag had the same paper, instructing me the steps to go about to get ready for the 21.1 kms of running. Exhausted from the cycling leg, my disoriented self forgot about the list, and forgot to take off gloves and helmet and started running, only to realise it 50 metres later, come back and calm myself down, take the list out and follow the steps. Now, with the steps checked off, I was off to the concluding leg of the race — the run.
5. Running (Strava Activity Link)
After the eventful swimming and cycling leg so far, it was comforting to get into running, where I felt much more familiarity and control. I had barely trained for running and was doing it on the heels of a great full marathon in Mumbai 3 weeks back.
It was 12:30 pm and the Mysore sun decided to belch out blaze in all its glory. I began my run, pacing myself for a sub-2-hour finish. But the fatigue from the activities before, the heat and the unrelenting elevation gain started thwarting my plan, one kilometre at a time. I stopped at every other aid station for momentary shade and a morale-boosting small cup of Fast n Up, and cold-water sponges in the last few kilometres.
The run was divided into 4.2 km laps and my brain, bamboozled by the fatigue, miscalculated it to be 4 laps instead of 5. As I bid goodbye to all the corners and nooks and bends during the fourth (the mistakenly thought-of as my last) lap as a psychological tactic to keep going, a wrecking ball hit me right about at the penultimate turn when I was made aware of my flawed mental math by the volunteers. As I recalibrated my whole being with the new reality, I continued running, covering the very same corners and nooks and bends I had bid goodbyes to in my previous lap.
After triple checking my calculation to make sure that this, indeed, was the last lap, I took the last turn towards the finish. And through I went, and the RF scanners rang the soothing beep to record my entry. I had finished the run in just over 2 hours and whole thing in 7 hours 18 minutes.
Race Day Data
a. HR
The HR data from the triathlon is pretty consistent and explainable. The initial trough of low heart rate is from the swimming leg, followed the cycling and the running legs, where it stays consistently around 155–160, with occasional spikes and dips.
Notice the uptick right at the start - corresponding to the hyperventilating as I jumped in the water for the swimming leg.
b. Glucose
I have written a detailed article on the blood glucose chart during the triathlon hours, and mapped it against the diet I was taking. The glucose curve fares on how well I fueled during the triathlon — across the 3 disciplines.
Logistics of a triathlon
The biggest differentiator of a triathlon, from a running event, apart from having two other disciplines on top of it, is the amount of planning it takes to get to and through the race day.
a. Checklists and Transition Planning
The two transitions — T1 (swim to cycle) and T2 (cycle to run) are like an F1 pitstop. As the clock decides to keep running, one has to be swift during the transitions and make sure nothing is left out. I, having had no experience of triathlons prior, explored content on the internet through articles and youtube videos to get an idea of how to go about it. I made two lists — a checklist of items to pack in the transition bag and a checklist of steps to follow during the transition — for each of two transitions.
The T1 and T2 checklists in my sweaty pockets
And the outcome was superb. (Except for the minor step of forgetting to put sunscreen before the running leg, there wasn’t anything forgotten or missed out in the leg.)
Great Success! And a practice I intend on following in the future.
b. Cycle Transport
Lugging the cycle from my home in East Delhi to the starting point of the race in the backwaters of the Krishna Raja Sagar Dam in the Mysorean outback needed heck a lot of planning and arrangement. From planned bookings to a gracious friend offering a ride, to fitting it in autorickshaws to riding the cycle itself the journey saw it all.
Waiting for my Uber XL by the roadside
The enormous proportions of the packed cycle box (60L rugsack for scale)
Here is the nostalgic sheet of paper where I first made a rough outline of how the cycle would have to be carried around.
The bicycle experienced a voyage, a journey very few of its contemporaries ever live to see.
c. Expenses
Not going into the expenses incurred during training, this is the split of my expenses directly attributable to the triathlon and the travel undertook for it. Not bad at all!
Race Organisation Feedback
It was my first triathlon and, hence, I do not have a reference point to benchmark it against. But I will still rate things, in absolute terms, as I saw it. The organisers did a good job of it, and below is an objcvtive feedback of it.
Kudos!
The handbook prepared before the race was pretty detailed and gave out a comprehensive view of whatever was needed to be known about the race.
Bib collection was a smooth process with great crowd management.
Helpful staff, telling us when and what to do during the cycle drop-off and route enquiries.
Volunteers along the route were amazing and extremely helpful and reassuring during my back-to-back flat tyres on the way.
The post-run physio/massage was right what the doctor (read, the physiotherapist) ordered and it helped relieving the muscle tightness right after the finish.
Could have been done better.
Expectation setting regarding the route and the conditions (weather and elevation gain) could have been done better. It was marketed as the fastest triathlon course in the country, when it was far from it.
Bib collection and cycle drop-off were different events, one organised in the morning and the latter during the evening. It could have been organised as one single event, to save time of the participants, who might have a routine to follow themselves on the day before the race.
The handbook could also have included places to consider for accommodation nearby to help out the participants, especially ones coming from other states, saving them some effort to look for such places.
What’s next
It was fun to be able to absorb myself in workouts and diet and recovery. It felt great to take care of my body to become more efficient and perform better, but preparation took a toll — physical and mental — as things this immersive usually do. The plan is to NOT participate in any races immediately, and allow the body to recover physically. And to delve into (and not dive head first!), with prudence, into some things I hitherto deemed out of bounds — eating out, alcohol, sweets, desserts and the likes.
And, importantly, look back at the whole experience and ask myself if I would want to do it again.
This article was originally posted on Medium - follow Udayan here.
All Bergman 113 Mysore in-race pictures are owned by Deccan Sports Club.
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