Triathlon Stories

Given that we swim, bike and run and lot it's inevitable that things happen to us that make for good stories. Today was one of those days, so strap in for story time! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hi, and welcome to the Lonely Triathlete. My name is Todd, and I am the Lonely Triathlete coming to you live from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada on this Sunday, March the 8th, 2026. How are you all doing? Welcome to the Lonely Triathlete, where I talk about things related to amateur triathlon from the perspective of an aging age grouper. And I am well aware that there are people listening to this podcast with a lot of different triathlon experiences. Some of you are new to the sport, curious about the sport, veterans of the sport. There are those of you who are very competitive, those who are not, but we all have one thing in common. We like this sport. And because it involves three disciplines swim, bike, run, there is no end to the stories that we can share about our training and racing. So sit back and get ready for story time because I've got a few. Chapter one. That's right. On my long run today, I was bitten by a dog. I cannot believe it happened here in Canada. On the public trail in the middle of the afternoon. I have done a lot of running in Costa Rica, and I should have been bitten many times there. I've been chased by dogs there. I've had to throw food to fend off dogs there. I saw a woman get aggressively harassed by a street dog on the beach. And yes, I ran over to help her. I was ready to throw myself in the path of three dogs that were, I wouldn't say they were attacking her, but they were they were being very aggressive and they were jumping up on her and inadvertently scratching her. So I've seen a lot of dog action, but in Canada? I mean, people here generally control their dogs. And 90% of the time, it's the law to have your dog on the leash. So your chances of being bitten in public by a strange dog is very, very low. But it happened to me today. Now, was it a serious bite? No. Did it draw blood? Well, actually, yes. And did it hurt? Uh yeah. In fact, I'm looking at a pretty nasty bruise on my hand and looking at the site where uh the skin got broken. So, here, let me just tell you the story of what happened. So I was running down the trail. I passed a lot of people, I've passed a lot of cyclists, I've passed a lot of dogs. One of these typical days in Victoria. And I came upon a girl, she might have been 15 years old, 14, 15. She had a very large black, looked like a Labrador, next to her. And I was running from behind them, passing them on their left. And I just remember remarking to myself, oh, that's a real hefty looking dog, and it looked like a puppy. Anyway, I ran past them, no problem. Nothing happens. Not you would expect it to. Well, 30 seconds later, she comes bolting past me. Not like I was going fast myself. I was on a 14K hour and a half run, so I was kind of running less than marathon speed, but she came past me at a sprint with this dog. And I remarked to myself, what a cute dog. It was clearly a puppy, just by the way it was running, and it was looking up at her and looking down and looking up at her. And I thought to myself, I'm gonna catch up to them at some point because there's no way she can run at what looked like a full-out sprint. And she looked, and she was young, so I thought there's no way she will run that fast, that far for very long. And sure enough, she eventually stopped and I started, and they pulled over to the right hand side of the trail. This is a wide trail. And as I was running up on them, I was looking at the dog, and the dog is now facing me. So they're on the right hand side, her back is to me. She's doing something like I think she's adjusting her watch or she's doing something on her phone. Maybe she'd been videotaping their run, I don't know. But the dog was facing my direction, and it wasn't really looking at me, it was kind of looking down the trail, then it would look at her, down the trail, and it would look at her. So I was thinking nothing of it. I just was running by, and that's when it happened. It came out of nowhere, it came peripherally. I actually felt it before I saw it. The dog just decided to lunge at me. And maybe it it thought I had something in my hand, but all I felt was my fist smashing inside a mouthful of teeth. So I actually don't think the dog bit down on my hand. I think the dog bit you know opened its mouth and lunged at my hand, and it was my swinging of my arm that actually caused more of the damage. And I hit one of its teeth, or a bunch of its teeth, but one of its canines like really hit hard in the back of my hand. And I I yelled. I just went like, yeah, that it scared me and it and it really hurt. And in the split seconds that followed, I wanted to know if it bit me, am I bleeding? And of course, I'm about an hour into my hour and a half run, so I don't really want to stop. So as I'm running, I look down. I don't see any blood, I don't see any scratches, I just feel like a throbbing pain, like someone hit my hand with a hammer. I didn't even have a chance to look at her face, although I got the sense that she was surprised. I think she might have like gone, like, oh, but I had earbuds in, so I couldn't hear what she might have been saying. And my my brain just did very, very fast calculations, which was this was a puppy, it was excited, it got something in its head, it jumped at me, and I hurt my wrist or the back of my hand, but I'm not bleeding, and I'm not stopping because what am I gonna do? Like go back and rip her a new one? I mean, I guess I could have, but what would that solve? I th I I've got the sense that she was shocked enough to realize, oh, I didn't know my dog could do this. Um, so yeah, so that's what it was. And as I kept running, I realized, oh, I actually do have some blood on my hand. It was just a little, like a little pinhole amount of blood, not not a tremendous amount of blood. And you know, my hand's a bit bruised, but more shocking than anything, but I'll tell you, for the next for the next few weeks, when I pass dogs, I'm gonna be just a little just a little gun shy, a little uh more aware of what they're doing and who they're looking at. But I tell you, this came out of nowhere. It wasn't like it was looking at me. Anyway, shocking. Okay, chapter two. I found a shoe. I love it that that rhymed. I did not even intend for that. I found a shoe. So 10 minutes after that dog bite, I ran past a blob on the trail. I thought it was like a little bag of something, and I was about to just run past it. Well, I did run past it, and it turned out to be like a little brand new looking little shoe that maybe a two-year-old would wear. And so I stopped, went back, picked it up, looked down the trail ahead of me, and there was a a guy and a girl pushing a stroller. So I thought, I bet you this fell out of their stroller. So I continued on my way running, and within a few minutes I caught up to them. But then I looked at it at the kid in the stroller, and um, I don't know, I'd made an assumption that this little blue, sporty-looking shoe was a boy's shoe, and it was a girl in the stroller, and she had small tan shoes on, so my brain went, oh, this isn't their shoe, which is weird because I would have thought it was. So I kind of started to run by and I just showed the lady the shoe and said, This isn't your shoe, is it? And she goes, Oh yeah, it is. So, oh, okay, here you go. And away I go. So, interesting run. Bitten by a dog, saved somebody a buying another pair of shoes for their kid. Love it. Well, don't love the dog bite, but love the love the experiences. Okay, chapter three. I have a new recovery tool. Now I take my recovery pretty seriously. I've got infrared sauna bag, I've I eat lots of protein, lots of extra protein. I use my massage gun, I've got a muscle scraper, foam roller, you name it. I've got all sorts of recovery gear. Well, I have added yet another tool to my arsenal. Do you want to hear it? Here, I'll move my microphone over and you can hear this new tool. I'm very excited about this. Yep, that is the sound of a brand new singing bowl that I'm gonna use in my meditation practice. I'd love to say it's a Tibetan singing bowl or a Himalayan singing bowl, but I'm actually not sure where it's from. It could actually be from Tibet or India. The shopkeeper didn't know. It could be from either, he said. His supplier gets them from both places, and I guess they doesn't they don't pass on the information. If I look at this thing, it's got inscriptions all over it, could be from anywhere. I don't know, doesn't say like made in anywhere. So there you go. My brand new uh singing bowl, and I'll tell you, uh even sitting here in my office after having washed it really well with soap and water, whoo, it smells like incense. Ooh, we I did not know incense can soak into metal, but apparently it can't. So maybe a question you're asking is, well, how does one use a singing bowl in meditation? Well, I absolutely don't know, but I'm gonna look it up, and I'm sure there's a way. And if not, well, I'm gonna make something up. I've always wanted a singing bowl. Can't tell you why. I think I heard one in a store a few years ago, and I just, I don't know, it intrigued me. I just love the sound. If you close your eyes and you listen to the resonance of the sound, it's very hypnotic. You can hear like the frequency, the wom, wom, woman, wom, woman of the frequency, and I just find it very, very hypnotic. So I finally found one. Now I own one. Okay, chapter five. Let's talk training. Now I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again. One of the best paths that I found to increasing your power on the bike is consistency. And not just consistency, but day in and day out, or every other day, which is probably more accurate, you should be doing a hard bike session. You can call it VO2 max or supra threshold intervals. But if you throw in at least two hard sessions per week to whatever else you're doing, you will cause your body to adapt in ways that I'm telling you will astonish you. Because for myself, I've been doing hard workouts on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I've been subjecting myself to a grueling but doable a 60 to 75-minute cycling session where at the end of every interval, I honestly question why I want to keep living. These are hard sessions. I'm not quite sure at some points if I can if I can do them. And yet I do. So they're they're hard, but they're doable. And I think part of the reason why they're so doable is that the recoveries between the intervals, they're appropriately long. They're generally about equal to the amount of work that I've done. So if I if I do two minutes of pedaling to the metal, then there's two minutes of easy spinning before the next interval. Or if I do 60 minutes of a longer, uh slightly lower power, but certainly sweaty, sweaty interval to rock music, then I get six minutes of easy spinning before the next interval and just repeat on and off for an hour or 75 minutes. And my functional threshold power or my one-hour power right now is currently at its highest point that it's ever been, ever. At 259 watts. And the prediction of my program is that in two weeks it'll hit 269 watts. And to put that in context, um vis-a-vis my weight, my watts per kilogram power is just over three. It's like 3.02 and climbing. Now, these are not amazing numbers. They're they're good, but they're not amazing. And yet, I've hit the podium in the last few years with even less fitness than I have now. So go figure. And this should be encouraging to everyone listening because here's what I've learned. You don't need as much fitness as you might think you do to be competitive. I'll let that sink in for a bit. Yes, you should try to get as fit as you can with your training. Every bit of wattage that you can sustain, every amount of higher wattage you can sustain is going to help you. But uh you may not need as much as you think. But if you do need more power, you can really, you can add it very easily by inserting two hard cycling sessions per week into your schedule. And if you throw in like a hard track running session as well, that's even going to make things happen faster for you. So, you know, take take it from me, an aging athlete, uh, it it the consistency pays off, the hard efforts with a lot of recovery in the in the exercise, and also in the days when you're not when you're not doing hard work, that extra recovery enables you to go super hard a couple days later. And it does not take a long time to suddenly find yourself at a much, much higher um power output than you might have expected. So take that to the bank. All right, that's it from me. Story time is over. I hope you all had a great week, and I'll talk to you again next Sunday. Peace.