 |
TRIPLE THREAT: Bell completed
the swim in 10 minutes and the bike ride in 50
(flat tire included). Just over 20 minutes later,
she finished in Stanford Stadium.
Shia Levitt |
"OFF THE WALL,"
the starter yelled to swimmers in the pool at Avery
Aquatic Center, as the clock approached 7:30 a.m. The
30 top-seeded men and women could jostle for starting
positions, but they weren’t allowed to push off
from the wall for the 500-meter race.
“3-2-1-Go!” and the first wave of triathletes
exploded in a fury of white water, kicking toward a
huge orange buoy that floated in one corner of the pool.
No tidy lanes and sleek turns for these competitors.
Instead, they bashed elbows and swam over one another
in all-out pursuit of personal-best times in the first
leg of the Stanford Treeathlon on February 27.
Four laps around four buoys completed, the athletes
hauled themselves out of the water and checked their
watches as they ran toward the transition area. By 7:40
a.m., senior Kristen Bell had strapped on her helmet
and was lifting her Trek off a long rack of bicycles.
Barefoot and dripping, she pushed “Baby Blue”
to the line where cyclists could legally mount their
bikes. Bell leapt onto Blue and started spinning, with
her feet on top of the shoes that were securely clipped
to her pedals. As she neared Campus Drive and gained
momentum, Bell finally had enough balance to slip her
feet into the shoes, then reach down and close the Velcro
tabs. She sized up traffic and shot off on the second
leg of the triathlon—a 20-kilometer bike race
that went out Page Mill Road, across Arastradero and
down Alpine.
“One word that sums it up is ‘perseverance,’”
says Stanford triathlon team co-captain and biological
sciences graduate student Charlie Anderson. “You
keep going even when your body is in pain and you want
to stop.” Anderson looked longingly after the
cyclists, then turned to his task for the day—sweeping
the bike course for accidents and ferrying any injured
riders to a first-aid station. (One rider broke his
wrist, and several suffered scratches and scrapes.)
With 30 of his teammates, plus 110 friends and relatives
of participants, Anderson was working to ensure that
the first-ever triathlon hosted by Stanford went smoothly.
Another 20 teammates competed in the race, which was
sanctioned by USA Triathlon.
As Bell rode back into the transition area 50 minutes
after she’d left, she was off her best time: “Flat
tire on Alpine—drat!” She dismounted on
the fly, racked Blue, pulled on a pair of socks, slipped
into her running shoes, gave the elastic laces a tweak
and was off again—tying her race number around
her waist as she pounded out the final leg, a 5-kilometer
run.
It was 8:30 a.m. under a gunmetal sky, and spectators
dressed for the morning cold in fleece jackets and hats
cheered as Bell tore past in her thin tank top and still-damp
Spandex shorts. “She won the Witch City Triathlon,”
Greg and Marie Bell, in town for Parents’ Weekend,
said proudly. “August 10, 2003—her 20th
birthday.”
Like many students, Bell came to the triathlon team
with experience in other sports—cross-country,
track and gymnastics. Now in its fifth year, the tri
team is part of the Northern California Triathlon Conference,
competing against UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis and Sacramento
State in a spring season that culminates with the Collegiate
Triathlon Nationals in late April. Coach Eric Bean,
MS ’03, puts the triathletes through their paces
each week: four morning swims, two afternoons on bikes,
one speed run and one long-distance workout. “Bricks,”
which involve biking and then running immediately afterward,
are not a favorite regimen. “What happens when
you get off a bike and try to start running is that
every single muscle in your legs has locked up and you’re
kind of shuffling along on wooden legs,” says
co-captain Matt Quigley, ’06. “So you try
to train your body to loosen up faster. It’s still
going to hurt, but it won’t surprise you.”
At the Treeathlon, Ryan Bickerstaff, ’04, MS ’04,
business school student Austin Ramirez and Quigley combined
to win the collegiate men’s team crown with a
total time of 2:58:54. When Bell completed her lap around
Stanford Stadium, the clock read 1:21:26—good
enough for 29th place in the collegiate women’s
division, but she estimates she would have finished
fourth without the flat tire. She had a remedy for the
disappointment, though: a trip with her parents to the
Cheesecake Factory for chicken, biscuits and lemon-raspberry
cheesecake. |
