First tri race to quit smoking.

Hello my name is Yana, I have been a smoker for 17 years and I've been smoke free for the past 2 months. I know this is not a NA meeting but I just wanted to share that since I wouldn't be able to keep going if it wasn't for Triathlon training. 

Mid-June, I decided to stop for good, to smoke my last cigarette and go cold turkey. I knew it was going to be a challenge and I would need discipline. Training is what I needed to go through withdraw, cleaning the body from the inside, repairing the damage I have done for all this years. Unfortunately, my lungs were not the only part of my body that I've been careless with. Running downhill from the mountain of southern Alps with a 20kg backpack during my youth and having multiple bike accident during the Montreal winters, left my knees with a tear in the meniscus and an inevitable pain. On top of that, being happily married to a brilliant cook made me go from a 170 pounds young man to a Clydesdale format. My rheumatologist and my physiotherapist, although being lovely people, told me bluntly that I couldn't (shouldn't) run anymore.

So here was my dilemma, quit smoking and destroy my knees or destroy my lungs and enjoy my 214 pounds and my full fat cheesecake. 

Triathlon was the answer, cross training, swimming to restore my lungs and strengthen my full body, biking to enjoy central park and avoid shocks, running... running because I had to, I couldn't do just 2 third of the triathlon, and I do love running even if it hurts. Moreover, I am convinced that if I build my muscle around my knee I will protect them during the last, painful but so enjoyable part of the race.

25th of June 2011, I flicked my last cigarette in one of those filthy back street of New York City. I registered for the MadeToTri in Northport in Long Island, a sprint race. It is short enough for my first Tri and hard enough to be a challenge for my so out of shape body.

Since then I've been training everyday beside rest days. At first I couldn't do 100m in a pool without drowning out of breath, I was sweating half of my body after biking one Central Park's loop (3.1mi) and couldn't run 10min without stopping and watch my wife leaving me in the dust. That didn't help my excessive irritability, my nicotine induced hatred of the world and my bottomless lack of self-worth. Today, I can swim 875m straight and feel like a warm up, I just biked today 18.3 miles at a 28.25km/h pace and I run, painfully, but I run 40min without feeling that it will be my last day on earth.

I know it is not a big deal, and I am far away from the Ironman, but honestly I haven't been happier in my life, I haven't felt so full of energy, so ready to take on the world, so creative, so productive at work and so focused. It is not easy everyday but the discipline that a tri training requires,  the focus on the race and most importantly the playfulness and the joy of cross training not only help me but is a decisive factor for my present day happiness and my well being, and, needless to say, for my new, smoke free life.

No matter my position at the finish line on september 25th, I already won. To be who I am today through triathlon training is already an achievement for me, and an achievement that goes way beyond the best performance. It's a simple, personal, radical and a life changing achievement.

yana kehrlein