My friends and I are very competitive. We have always tried to beat each other at everything we do, especially tennis. We started to play tennis together every chance we got. I practiced all the time and even took a tennis class. I really wanted to be better than them. But they just had more natural ability and coordination than I did at the sport.

Along came triathlon. I have always mountain biked. I have never competed or anything, it’s always just been a leisure hobby. So, when I bumped into an old friend and he told me about a mountain bike triathlon race in St. George, I was interested. We talked about triathlons and the St. George race for a while and I thought that it would be something cool to try. I went home and looked at the Web site for the St. George triathlon. I looked at the courses and sure enough, they had a mountain bike course. I was excited. I started training instantly and signed up for the race shortly thereafter.

The second I heard about the triathlon, I thought of my friends. This was my chance to beat them at something. For triathlon, it’s all about who trains the hardest, and I can train hard. I called them all up and told them they have got to sign up for this race. Eventually I had four of my very close friends registered. As time went on we found out that they changed the mountain bike course to a road bike course. We kept training and had been biking enough to know we needed to get road bikes for the road bike course. Pretty soon I found out that one of my friends, JD had joined a masters swim team and was swimming everyday. The others were pretty committed as well. They were always telling stories about their fast runs and the rest of their training. This is getting serious. I thought “I don’t know if I can beat these guys after all.”

We called each other almost everyday to talk about each others training, about gear and about eating. Usually a couple of us would get together and train on the weekends. We became even closer as friends and competitors.

We all took the trip down to St. George together for the big race. We discussed our estimates of the results. One friend, Andrew, had always been an incredibly fast runner. My friend Troy seemed to be twice as fast as us when we went biking together and he was also a great swimmer. According to our predictions Troy would beat us all and it would be a close second between me and Andrew.

I remember coming out of the first transition area on my bike and seeing my wife, asking her “Have you seen Troy?” I started biking as hard and as fast as I possibly could. “Whether these guys are in front of me or behind me, I will bike as fast as I can” I told myself.

On my way back, after the bike turn around I saw Andrew. I was ahead of him, I knew I had to keep my lead to beat him.

When I was leaving the second transition to start the run I saw my wife and I asked her “Have you seen Troy?” hoping to get a feel for what I needed to do to catch up. Her answer was “yes.” It told me nothing, I had no idea where he was. The run seemed so hard and long. “Just keep pushing yourself” I said. As I came to the finish line I sprinted as fast as I could. I looked all over to see if Troy was waiting for me. I saw him cross the finish line a little over a minute behind me. Then followed Andrew, a minute behind him.

I DID IT! I couldn’t believe I actually did it. A few minutes later came our friend Paul and then JD crossed the finish line. We all took a little swim in the lake to cool off and I was happy as could be. Everyday for the past six months before the race, I had thought about beating those guys and I did it. I was on cloud nine. That is a race I will never forget.

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