Tri, tri again
Today’s the 10th anniversary of our first—and only—family triathlon competition. Though watered down from the real endurance test, it was more than enough for me and my 11-year-old twins.
Visiting my son, Zach, at Indiana University this weekend, I packed a variety of things, including evidence of our sporting bond: tennis racquets, baseball bats, a bucket of baseballs, a frisbee and a mini football.
But perhaps nothing was as bonding as the time 10 years ago, on this very day, that Zach, his twin sister Maggie Rose and an adult family friend, Marshall, together survived a massively watered-down version of a triathlon.1
That’s right: survived is the operative verb. (The smart family member, my wife Bridgett, stayed in bed and skipped this early-morning madness.)
It was a “tri” in the loosest of senses, because it involved a little swimming (200 yards), a little bicycling (about five miles) and a little running (two kilometers). But even getting started was an adventure.
I asked Maggie Rose for her recollection:
Since our last name is early in the alphabet, my dad and I wore bib numbers one and two, so we were the first scheduled to cross the start line at the YMCA pool. Just one hitch: I had gone into the pool locker room to change into my swimsuit, taken a wrong turn on my way back to the pool, and ended up behind a locked door in an unfamiliar part of the building.
For what felt like ages but was probably no more than five minutes, I banged on the door and called for help. At one point, I looked up at a security camera positioned near the door, desperate for someone to be watching the footage and come to my rescue. Eventually, my dad became concerned with how long I was taking and asked a YMCA employee to come check on me.
“You went through the wrong door!” She exclaimed when she found me, which I felt to be an unnecessary and quite obvious observation.
Once I made it out of the locker room—after delaying the entire event at least 15 minutes with my wrong turn—the rest of the morning was comparatively smoother.
Interesting word choice there, Maggie Rose: “comparatively.”
After Zach, Maggie Rose and I did 25 yards of splish-splashing the length of the pool, we were almost ready to call it a day.
I was winded and both my kids gasped for air as they clung to the far end of the pool, their faces stricken with worry. “I can’t do it,” they each declared. Able to stand on the pool bottom, I was less petrified, so I was able to coax them into continuing on at whatever pace they could muster.
Transitioning from the pool to bikes was a study in contrasts.
While other teams (each one consisting of an adult and child) did so with purpose and haste, we took our sweet time. Maggie Rose went into the locker room to change, didn’t get lost this time, and sauntered out.
Together, she and I ambled to our bikes. By that point, Zach and Marshall had forged ahead.
About three-quarters through the bicycling portion, Maggie Rose was feeling quite queasy and wanted to stop. I agreed to pause for a minute or two but—feeling a mix of guilt at pushing her onward and determination that this was a lesson to be gained—I didn’t want us to bow out.
To her credit, Maggie Rose agreed to hang in there. We resumed at a slower clip and were soon onto the last leg: the run.
At this point, we were home free. As recalled by Maggie Rose (who ran cross country in high school and is training for a half-marathon next weekend): “The running event was the only part that I found easy.”
After finishing, Maggie Rose and I discovered that we had finished second-to-last out of the 20 teams in our 11- to 15-year-old category. Imagine that: some poor souls actually struggled more than us.
Not finishing in absolute last place felt like a medal to us.
My PR business was one of the event sponsors and I wrote the wrap-up story on the whole shebang. You can read it here.
United? Divided? What Say You?
There’s more that unites us than divides us.
That’s how I closed my column last Saturday, in the context of the American political scene.
Some subscribers told me they agreed. At least one strongly disagreed.
Of course, there’s no quantifiable way to prove or disprove either perspective. What does the phrase mean, exactly? In our agreement or disagreement with it, are we simply revealing our optimistic or pessimistic leanings?
And what if one person interprets the statement as strictly political while another (like me) takes it more holistically, with an itemized list that could be very long indeed: our shared love for family; our common desire for safety and dignity and economic opportunity; our wide-ranging instinct to help strangers in moments of crisis.
I stand by my contention that there’s more that unites us than divides us.
White Sox & Me: A Winning Combo
Last Saturday night, I joined a friend to watch the historically bad Chicago White Sox play the Oakland A’s. It was a thrilling, rollercoaster game, as the Sox twice gave up three-run leads before pulling it out with a home run off the right field foul pole by Andrew Benintendi to win the game, 7-6.
Including a 7-2 win over the Boston Red Sox on June 7th that snapped a 14-game losing streak and a stunning 12-2 rout of the New York Yankees on August 12th (which I wrote about last month), this marked the third consecutive time the White Sox had won with me as a spectator.
Most seasons, that would be a nice little streak to tout.
This season, as the team contends for the title of Worst Major League Baseball Team Ever, it suggests that I should be offering my spectating services to the Sox.
Between that June win over Boston (also the last time ace pitcher Garrett Crochet was credited with a win, his sixth of the season) and last Saturday night, the White Sox won six times in 42 home games, or one-seventh of the time.
With an overall record of 36-118 after last night’s extra-innings loss to the San Diego Padres, the Sox need to win five times in their last eight contests to squeak ahead of the 1962 New York Mets (40-120) in winning percentage. Don’t hold your breath on that scenario playing out.
Their final home series is coming up Tuesday through Thursday against the Los Angeles Angels. Out of a sense of duty and curiosity—can they win four in a row with me on hand, will this be the one that eclipses the Mets’ 120 losses?—I believe I’ve got to attend at least one of them.
In fairness, Marshall was fine the whole time.
Customarily, the triathlon incorporates swimming, biking and running over a combined span of 15-plus miles (sprint distance) to 140.6 miles (ultra distance, including a 26.2-mile marathon).
I enjoyed the triathalon stories. I've been where Maggie Rose was many a time. I am always in danger of getting lost.
And, yes, I almost can't believe you have a three-game winning streak as a 2024 White Sox rooter. I hope attendance does get a boost with the record coming up. Sarcastic cheers all game long, I imagine. The Angels are pretty ragtag, too.
The way I would try to make sense of the admittedly fraught question about general unity versus division is to think, Do I like people? Do I feel good-natured toward them when I am with them? That, after all, gets at the feeling, not the thought, and closest to the truth. The answer is decidedly 'yes.' But I'm not sure if I don't just like interactions because I like myself. And I definitely feel it's a minority of people I can truly be friends with. Often, the better I get to know someone, the more I feel a divide between me and him or her. I realize we are made up fundamentally differently. And it's painful to realize that. But maybe that's a 'me' thing, and doesn't speak to the general commonality among people.
As a follow-up, if some people are meant to be friends but not others, isn't this a recipe for division? Republicans and Democrats are ostensibly united within their group, right?