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Ken's Journey...

Friday, 01 February 2019 23:10

By Ken Barrick (usatriathlon.org)

It was March, 2014. I was sitting in an airport in Honduras on my way back from a scuba diving vacation, when a friend of mine handed me a triathlon magazine that was sitting on the chair next to him. He knew I was a baseball player and often made fun of me for how I always bragged about being an athlete at my advanced age of 46. “These are athletes,” he said as he handed me the magazine.

“Triathlon,” I scoffed, “that’s like taking candy from a baby. I can do that easily.” 

“Sure,” he quipped back, “I dare you.”

With that dare, my adventure began. Upon arriving back in my hometown of Baltimore, MD, I began my research. Where was the closest triathlon event to my home and when? I discovered the Baltimore Triathlon was being held in September. I had six months to train. ...

Yes, I’d been an athlete all my life. I played baseball, basketball, football, volleyball and tennis. I was a scuba instructor, which meant I was at least comfortable and somewhat competent in the water. I had done some mountain biking just a few years earlier. How hard could doing a triathlon be? I discovered there were two distances available in Baltimore that year — Sprint and Olympic-distance. I declared I was going to start with the Sprint. My friend told me that was not a triathlon and it did not count. He said anything less than a full Ironman and I’d be a failure. I laughed and said to him, “If you think the sprint is so easy, come on and do it with me.” He declined of course.

The .48-mile swim, 13.8-mile bike ride and 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) run seemed like something I could pull off in my sleep. In May I hired a personal trainer and told him my goals. They were really simple goals. The first goal was to complete the race and the second was to not finish dead last.  READ MORE