Christine, you are an Ironman!
This is my story about how I got into triathlons and the journey to how I got those hear those precious 5 words on August 26th, 2018 in Vichy, France.
Growing up in Austria, they start you in soccer (Fussball as we affectionately call it) pretty young. I was in cleats by the time I was 5, chasing a white and black ball around in a bee hive of other young girls. We didn’t really know what we were doing but we knew that anytime we touched that ball, our parents cheered….that’s a good enough reason for any 5 year old to chase it around the field for 40 minutes. It developed a lifelong passion for the sport to both play and watch, and I’m lucky that I still get to play soccer to this day.
I started getting into running in 2014 when I moved to Austin, Texas (via Minnesota, then Philadelphia, then New York) and my friend asked me if I wanted her Austin Half Marathon registration bib since she was nursing an old injury. 13.1 miles didn’t sound that bad so I said sure, why not. I ran a 2:25:12…which is a solid 11:05 min/mile pace. Okay, maybe this is harder than I thought, but I thank B to this day for getting me into running.
(Tangent: I kept running that damn Austin Half Marathon every single year since then until I broke 2hr because I just had to. I finally finished in 1:59:23 this year at 9:06 min/mile pace and have made peace with the course.)
I started getting into biking in 2015 when another friend asked me if I had any interest in doing the MS150 Ride from Houston to Austin with her and a bunch of other Indeedians. I loved biking as a kid so I said sure, why not (see a trend?). I bought myself an entry-level road bike, a red-and-black Specialized Dolce Sport equipped with Shimano Sora shifters and accessories (yes, the bottle cages and toolkit came with it!). And I loved it, and I thank C to this day for getting me into biking.
And then my bike got stolen when I moved apartments in 2016 and I was pretty bummed. I took a break from cycling for a while until the itch became strong enough that I decided it was time to buy a bike again. So I bought myself the exact same bike in 2016…a white-and-blue Specialized Dolce Sport equipped with Shimano Sora shifters and accessories. As you can probably tell at this point, the thing that was most important to me was the price tag and I didn’t do a lot of research into the different types of road bikes or components.
I started getting into swimming…kidding, I never got into swimming. It’s the thing I have to do. That’s my relationship with it.
So I was playing soccer, and running, and biking and had some dabbling interests in triathlons but never thought much of it. Then I started dating my boyfriend in 2017 and he had done an Ironman before in Cozumel in 2016 along with his sister and sister’s fiance, and they are triathletes through and through. When I looked at the amount of swim, bike, run gear they had (and still have), I think they could furnish their own shop and still have extra inventory! So I knew that triathlons were in my future, just thought so more from the support crew side.
New Years Eve 2017–2018 would prove to be the beginning of me being a triathlete. While we were sitting there in our kigus playing Dead of Winter and drinking Champagne (yup, wild New Years Eve I tell ya), the three of them were trying to convince me to sign up for the Ironman 70.3 Buffalo Springs Lake in Lubbock, Texas with them. It would be 2 months before their Full Ironman in Vichy, France so a good tune-up race and since I was a cardio athlete already, they said that it wouldn’t be that much harder and it would be fun. Plus I would be the only one left out in the household that wasn’t training. And it was 6 months away. As all Champagne-influenced decisions are made, I agreed a bit too quickly and next thing I knew, I was registered.
I, Christine Luo, was gonna do a Half Ironman on June 24th, 2018 and it terrified me. Here’s how the next 6 months went down:
January: didn’t really do any training, plus I got the flu
February: didn’t really do any training either, but I did sign up for 4 Adult Stroke classes at our local JCC which were a good reminder that at least I wasn’t gonna drown. Oh and I ran a sub-2hr half marathon!
March: I skied a lot…but didn’t do much training
April: I signed up for an Olympic Tri that I bailed out on. And a Century that got cancelled due to thunderstorms so training wasn’t going so hot
May: I did my first triathlon! It’s called the Rookie Tri and it’s the best intro to triathlons for us newbies. It’s got an amazing atmosphere, and it’s only a 300m swim, 11 mile bike, and 2 mile run. Only a 300m swim…that I freestyled for about 5 meters before freaking out in the murky waters and resorting to breast-stroking the entire rest of the distance. I loved it, but it was a far cry from the 1.2mi swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run I had to do in 3 months.
And then I did my first Olympic triathlon (.93mi swim, 24 mi bike, 6.2mi run)! I did the Lifetime CapTex Tri right here in the heart of Austin and man was it a wake-up call. Going from 300m swim to 1,500m swim was no joke, I damn near thought I wasn’t gonna make it. I freestyled to the first turn buoy around 200m out and then breast-stroked the entire remaining 1,300m. It was very humbling and all I could keep repeating was ‘any progress is forward progress’ over and over in my head. Bike and run went fine…but that swim, man. It definitely gave me a renewed rigor to train harder.
June: I trained a lot more, swimming 1,700m regularly and then the full 1.2mi once gave me the confidence that I could do the Half. And then I biked 60 miles a few times. And ran the Lady Bird Lake 10 mi loop too. All in all I felt good. It was time for the race…
I finished the Ironman 70.3 Buffalo Springs Lake in 7:23:36 with a 00:59:48 swim (hit my hour goal!), 3:50:31 bike (those 21 mph headwinds effing killed me, 50 min slower than I wanted to be), and 2:25:12 run (sub 2:30!). It was fun, I enjoyed it hot weather and all!
And then the question came in the 6-hour car ride back…”so, you’re gonna do Ironman Vichy with us, right? You’re already doing all the training rides with us, plus you’d have a built in support group with 5 of us already doing it. It would be so much fun!” Err…I seriously hadn’t considered signing up for the full. There were so many things I was looking forward to now that I was done with training like cutting my hair, and sleeping in, and seeing my friends, and taking the puppy on long hikes.
The biggest obstacle was actually cost…I could do a Half Ironman on all the gear I already owned, but to do a Full, I would want to buy an aero-bike and given that I didn’t really have the luxury of time, I was gonna have to buy whatever it out on the market now since I would have less than 2 months to train on it. Plus the last-minute race registration. Plus new shoes and pedals (my Specialized had mountain biking pedals because they were easier to clip in and out of, and I was a newbie). And shipping my bike to another continent!
After contemplating it for the next 48 hours, I decided sure, why not. When else was I gonna have the opportunity to do an Ironman in a beautiful location with a built-in support crew? This was gonna be my new social life doing bleary-eyed mornings and long rides with my boyfriend, his sister and sister’s fiance, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I made.
