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Triathlon Training and Murphy’s Law

Item #1: I ran across a quote the other day that I had filed away sometime ago. The quote was from someone named Kevin Cooper, who happens to be a triathlete. For those of you who have somehow missed coverage of Door County’s triathlon and are generally unfamiliar with these events, allow me to offer some background.

Basically, emotionally devoid, malnourished individuals compete in a race comprised of three stages (hence the “tri” in triathlon). The time duration of a triathlon is something like four months, depending on the number of times the race is interrupted by paramedics.

The first stage of a triathlon consists of swimming 200 miles without pause. Depending on where the race is held, the contestants swim either in a shark-infested ocean or water so polluted that drowning is a virtual impossibility. When I was in Chicago, I personally witnessed the start of a triathlon adjacent to Navy Pier (long before it was remodeled into a giant arcade). From the vantage of my office on the 43rd floor of Lake Point Tower, I watched the 300 contestants gather. Clustered together before the start of the race, these intrepid masochists took up roughly the area of a parking space.

Soon, at the bidding of an individual who alone filled a parking space, the contestants queued themselves along the waterfront between Navy Pier and one of Chicago’s huge water treatment plants. Folks, the water was so foul in this particular inlet that I witnessed, on many occasions, carp hurling themselves onto the shore and resisting with every ounce of their fishy vigor, attempts to return them to their liquid environment.

The second stage of a triathlon (with the field of entrants now winnowed down by approximately one third due to fatality or, in cases where a swim in the ocean precedes, missing limbs) consists of biking across the entire United States. To the casual observer, this might seem like the easiest of the three stages. However, you must bear in mind that though the bicycles used are sophisticated machines and, as a consequence, ultra-lightweight, they still weigh almost triple the mass of any of the contestants. Hence, wind can wreak havoc on the race (and add substantially to the overall length of the triathlon, which I neglected to mention as a factor earlier). It is not uncommon for riders to be blown backward, even when facing a headwind of as little as five mph.

The final stage of a triathlon (with the field again reduced by roughly one third through additional fatalities and those who are blown off the continent) consists of running up the highest available mountain. If the mountain is not high enough to require oxygen supplementation for a normal individual, contestants are required to scale the mountain repeatedly until at least 30 percent of their lungs are hanging out of their mouths. This stage of the race is highlighted by the huge number of people who cluster into cars, vans, and on motorcycles to drive alongside the runners, heckling them and taunting them with ice cold sodas (diet, of course), cold beers, etc.

So with the explanation of a triathlon now out of the way, we return to Mr. Cooper, who was asked how he found the time to train for a triathlon. His answer was simple and succinct: “If you don’t have a good personality, don’t have any friends, that gives you time to do other things.”

Well said, Mr. Cooper. Well said.

Item #2: Those of you who are regular readers may remember a column I wrote earlier this year where I mentioned the American Dialect Society, the esteemed group who each year names the word or phrase of the year. And, if your memories are really good, you may remember that I mentioned that the Society chose “Murphy’s Law” as their word/phrase of the year in 1958, the year I was born.

Since that column was published I know many of you have suffered through sleepless nights wondering about the origin of the “Murphy’s Law.” Thus, so you may return to blissful slumber, here is the story.

Major John Paul Stapp was a biophysicist and medical doctor at Edwards Air Force Base who conducted high deceleration tests on himself. Captain Edward Murphy, Jr. was an engineer working for Stapp on the tests. On one memorable day, Stapp broke his own record of 31 times the force of gravity on a rocket sled. There was a problem, however. Though everyone knew Stapp had exceeded the record, no one was able to say by how much. The recording equipment failed.

Well, “failed” isn’t really the correct word. You see, Captain Murphy gave the equipment a thorough going over and to his (and no doubt, Stapp’s) dismay, he discovered that a technician had installed the gauges, which recorded the deceleration…backwards.

This unfortunate event prompted Captain Murphy to comment: “If there’s more than one way to do a job and one of those ways will end in disaster, then someone will do it that way.”

Obviously, Captain Murphy’s comment has been synthesized over the years. But somehow knowing the origin of the phrase, and what Captain Murphy actually said, does nothing to alleviate the creepy misgivings I have about “Murphy’s Law” being chosen the word/phrase of the year for the year of my birth.