Triathlon

By: Mazias "Neto" de Oliveira III 5/21/25

September 25, 1974 San diego. Jack Johnstone and Don Shanahan organized the first triathlon, 46 competitors and only one of them could win this historical event. BILL PHILLIPS WON with an amazing 55 minutes and 44 seconds. I bet the last minutes that he was running for his victory, all of the memories were washing through his head, the last second he had a strong ending. He swam, then he biked, and lastly, he runned.

Swimming, it isn’t easy. Did you know that water is a whopping 800x more dense than air? Swimming in an olympic triathlon isn’t just like a normal 400 meter, but 1500m. The time for people to swim in a triathlon, average, is around 32 minutes, imagine swimming for around 32 minutes straight. Myles Clark states, “I ran, swam and cycled for fun before. I love swimming the most because there are different types of strokes and styles of swimming.” Myles, more on the swimming side, is interested in triathlon, most people usually like just to do triathlon non-competitively. People who do olympic triathlons have to be really skilled; swimming itself takes around half of a triathlon.

Biking is a lot, I mean you're on a bike but like, doing a 8km bike is a lot, that's around 5 miles of biking. People tend to already be really tired since they did about 1000m of swimming right before. You have to transition really fast and not stay tired even though swimming was already tiring. Biking is a bit easier than running and swimming although because you can sit down, all you need to do is really just pedal 5 miles, there isn’t really high elevations, nor low elevations. Just biking on the straight ground. I'm not saying it's the easiest thing ever and everybody can do it. But it's easier to do than other stuff, but then again, it evened out because you do 5 miles of biking so it's pretty even.

Running, it's probably the hardest thing to do in a triathlon. It's the last part. You are probably saying, “Finish strong, last step, RUN FASTER.” It's probably also where people get emotional. Plus it's where most people give up after all the swimming and biking. Anyways, people are basically really tired, losing their pace, and losing their PLACE. Triathlon is risky, people have literally lost control of their body parts. People have had heat strokes. Weather conditions and setting are really important. It’s not like people have infinite energy, endurance and strength. This is why there are people scattered around the track handing out water bottles. Here is a quote by Conner Vaughn, “I like sports, they make me feel like- adrenalized. I have swam, ran, and biked non-competitively. I think that I would like to join a club. Triathlon is basically all my favorite sports at the same time would probably be way more fun than just playing one back to back.” Mainly good vibes all around triathlon.

All in all, triathlon is a good sport. Swimming, Biking and Running all play a role in this sport. “Tri” meaning 3 and “Athlon,” meaning prize, or contest. 3 sports in one sport is a really cool idea. But a massive set up, wanna know what else is massive???

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