Loch Lomond Wee Beastie Triathlon
The Loch Lomond Wee Beastie Triathlon is an event held by the Lomond Swimming and Triathlon Club every summer on the shores of Loch Lomond, Scotland. This is a fantastic entry-level triathlon event that I'd recommend to any first-timer. Entry costs are between $30 to $54 depending on when you book and which race you decide to do. They have three races to choose from:
The Beastie: 750m swim, 17k off-road cycle, and 5k run
The Wee Beastie: 400m swim, 9k off-road cycle, and a 3km run
The Bikeless Beastie Aquathon: 750m swim and 5k run
*For reference, 750m is 30 laps of a 25m pool and 400m is 16 laps.
I decided to choose The Beastie and so began my preparation, or lack thereof. I don’t think I followed a particular training plan for this race. I was a confident runner, having already run a marathon years prior, and I was confident in my cycling ability, so most of my training focused on trying to swim up to 750m in a pool. While I’d learned how to swim as a child and briefly been part of a swimming club, I hadn’t really swum for well over a decade, and so those first few laps in the pool left me exhausted. I remember thinking to myself, how was I going to swim 30 laps when I needed a break after 4? I did some research on YouTube and focused on swimming technique, which I was evidently lacking.
Not surprisingly, in hindsight, I realized I made some major mistakes regarding my lack of preparation for the race. For one, I hadn’t swum with a wetsuit, which was a mandate of the race as the water temperature was below 14°C on race day. I’d known this was a potential scenario, so my dad picked up two wetsuits from Aldi's notorious middle aisle that sells everything. These wetsuits, while cost-effective, were not of the best design; the arms and legs were a good fit, but the stomach and neck areas were designed for someone twice the size. It did make me curious as to what kind of misshapen humans the designers had envisioned when making them, but at the time I didn’t really see this as a problem. I remember that in one of my last swims, I’d turned up to my local pool in my Aldi wetsuit, to the bemusement of the lifeguard on duty. He came over to tell me that normally you weren’t allowed to wear them in the pool, but I think he was amused that I’d turned up to the pool in a wetsuit that looked like I’d stitched it together myself, so he let it slide. My second mistake was that, apart from sharing the swimming lane at the pool with other people, I’d never swum in a large group before. Again, with my lack of experience, I didn’t see this being an issue, but I’d soon come to realize that it would have a big influence on the day. Finally, in the weeks leading up to the race, the event organizers held a few evening swims where you could go swim in the loch where the event would be held. While this was good, it was the only outdoor swimming I’d done, and it was really more of a paddle around to get to know the course than a true swim session. I found it reassuring that you could stand for pretty much most of the courses any nightmares I had of drowning were dispelled.
“Hello, yes, help needed, I’ve no idea what I’m doing.”
Come race day, I was nervous but nothing out of the ordinary; a mixture of nerves and excitement but certainly no dread, probably a result of overconfidence and lack of experience in what was about to happen. I had my running gear, my Aldi wetsuit, and my sister's old mountain bike that she’d bought off Facebook Marketplace for $20.
I was living with my parents at this time, so they both came along to offer support. I'd managed to convince my dad to try the aquathlon event, and it was a nice feeling that someone was in it with me. There was a safety/logistics briefing, held by the organizers, which outlined how the day would unfold and what to do in case of emergencies. After this, my race was first, so I headed down to the dock to line up with everyone else.
With all of us in place, we were given the signal and the race began with everyone diving off the pier and into the water. I very quickly found myself spluttering in a crowd of tangled arms and legs as everyone raced to get ahead. I was immediately uncomfortable with the large number of people splashing around me and with my wetsuit that felt like I was wearing a bin bag designed to collect as much water as possible while suffocating me at the same time; panic stations were setting in. At this point in my life, I’d still yet to rid myself of panic attacks, and so, while they had reduced in frequency, I now found myself in the midst of one—an ideal scenario considering I was partially drowning. To combat my panic attacks, I'd begun meditating, and so I knew that slow and deep breaths were key to calming me down. I rolled onto my back and decided to swim the backstroke so I could catch my breath.
As a side note, during the safety briefing, we’d been told that if anyone was in trouble, we should roll onto our backs and float with our arms in the air, and one of the kayakers that was marshaling the course would come over to help. This meant that once my swimming style had been spotted, I was chaperoned around the course by a perplexed-looking marshal who could see that I was in some sort of crisis but that I wasn’t stopping for help. I managed to focus on my breathing, and though still panicking, I was able to complete the swim. Anyone watching must’ve thought my race strategy peculiar; if only they’d known what madness was going on inside my mind. Soon enough, though, the swim was over, and I was out of the water and onto the bike portion of the race.
The bike and run portions of the race were far easier to manage, and I dare say enjoyable once my panic attack had subsided. Having had them so consistently over the last few years, I knew it would eventually stop, so I kept going, putting one foot in front of the other until my mind was beginning to refocus on the task at hand. Something memorable that has stuck with me ever since is that during the cycling portion of the race, a rather heavy-set fellow as well as an elderly lady both flew past me on their bikes. I remember it distinctly because it was a humbling experience as a 25-year-old guy who had, until that point, allowed his ego to convince himself that he was probably one of the physically fittest people in the race. This was something I’ve never forgotten and was a personal real-life example to never judge people on appearances. It's a lesson I've learned from triathlons—people having varying strengths and weaknesses and realizing that just because you're good at one thing doesn’t mean you're good at them all.
Eventually, my race was over, I ended up finishing 44th out of 93 people, with a time of 54 minutes 47 seconds. I found my mum who told me that my dad was still out on his run. Considering that his swim hadn’t started long after mine and he was a good runner, I was slightly surprised that he wasn’t back yet. After a while, my intrusive thoughts started to tell me that my 63-year-old father had collapsed in a ditch in his efforts to support me. Needless to say, this wasn’t the case, and he came in safe and sound.
Afterwards, I was pumped; I'd just completed my first triathlon event but I was also terrified by my experience in the swim. My plan had been to complete this race mid-summer and then do the Barcelona Triathlon in October. But I'd just had a panic attack for the full duration of a 750m loch swim. How was I supposed to complete a 1500m swim in the sea? This plagued my mind for the next few days, but eventually, I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for the race anyway. I knew I'd made some severe mistakes in my preparation, and I hoped that by correcting these, I’d be in a much better position come the bigger race.
Onto Barcelona…