Swim, Run, and Bike for the
Book
By Biff Mitchell
This year, I celebrated my birthday by taking the afternoon off from work and
going for a 40 kilometer bike ride and a 10 kilometer run. No, I wasn't trying
to lose weight as part of some foolish birthday promise to myself and I wasn't
trying to prove that at 58, I was still energetic and far from dead.
I was training for my first ever triathlon. And not just any triathlon. I'd
entered an Olympic level one: a 1.5K swim followed by a 40K bike ride and ending
with a 10K run. I had exactly six weeks to get ready for it.
Obviously, I wasn't going to win, but that's not why I'd entered. I was in it
for the research. I have a novel coming out in October called The War Bug.
It's set 200 years into the future when a war between giant online city states
causes the Internet to collapse. The lead character has to save his kidnapped
virtual wife and daughter before that happens. It's mostly action, and barely
touches on the themes of what makes us human and what would make a piece of
software human.
I saved that for the sequel and that's what I was researching by entering a
triathlon. I usually swim around a hundred laps a few times a week in the
winter. In the spring, summer, and fall, I run 10-15K twice a week. I bike to
work-- about 10K-- on sunny days. It's when I'm swimming, running or biking that
I get some of my best ideas for stories. It's also when I start rising above my
physical and mental self. After a half hour of running on a hot summer day or
after the sixtieth lap at the pool, I tend to blank out and enter a zone where
pain and fatigue don't exist. It's at this point that I feel that my mind, body, and
soul are thoroughly integrated and I'm running on pure spiritual high octane.
I'd been tossing around the idea of a sequel even before I finished writing
The War Bug, but I needed a compelling platform from which to explore and
compare humanness in both my physical and virtual-- but sentient-- characters. I
needed something that would test both life forms to the max, something that
would define their existence.
Two summers ago, I took my daughter swimming at a lake just outside town on the
same day a triathlon was being held there. The instant I saw the last of the
runners crossing the finish line with triumph in their eyes and their bodies
drenched in sweat, I knew that I had my platform: a triathlon run between human
and virtual characters-- both offline and online-- that would pit the two in a
race toward self definition.
But I knew nothing about triathlons. I'd run a marathon in high school about a
hundred years ago, and the most I'd competed in sports during my entire adult
life was air hockey against my kids, and only because they went easy on me.
So I signed up for the Duncan Hadley Triathlon, held at the beginning of July
each year at Killarney Lake, just outside Fredericton, New Brunswick. I had a
choice between the Olympic level (full) event or the Sprint, which is half the
full event. I entered the Olympic level because I was used to swimming twice its
swim distance and the run was my usual distance. I thought it would be a breeze.
I was wrong.
The first time I switched from bicycling to running, I fell flat on my face. My
mind wanted to run, but my legs were still in biking mode. It was like running
on two sticks of jelly. Switching from swimming to biking wasn't so bad until
the skin between my thighs chafed from friction. Most of the time, my legs ached
like hell, more so than I'd ever experienced from just biking or running. But
now, I was doing both in the same day and picking up the pace almost to race
level. I was trying to get my time down each day so that I wouldn't finish last
in the actual event. Research or not, nobody wants to finish last.
I think the best running time I had was the day the world's biggest,
meanest, and most persistent horsefly chased me for over a kilometer. The damn
thing wouldn't give up. I'd already been bitten twice a few days earlier, but
this fly was big enough to throw a saddle on. It would have carried me to its
lair and eaten me at its leisure.
As I finished up the bike leg one day, a wasp flew into my shirt. It stung me
repeatedly as I slowed to a stop and tried to pull my shirt over my helmet. It
wouldn't fit. I had to pull my shirt back down, the wasp still stinging, take my
helmet off, and then my shirt. And horror of horrors, the wasp got away. I
didn't even have the satisfaction of crushing its nasty little life out of
existence.
All that aside, training for the triathlon was one of the most rewarding-- and
at times, beautiful-- experiences of my entire life. I swam through mist on the
lake surface early in the morning. I raced squirrels and chipmunks along the
trail around the lake, and I swear, one chipmunk waited for me each day. He was
fast, faster than me, and he taunted me with chipmunk noises each time he beat
me. But he was a cute little guy and it was all in fun. One day, I came across
fresh bear tracks on the trail. Another day, I raced a beautiful woman on my
bike. Her smile was beautiful as she passed me and disappeared into the highway
distance in front of me.
My daughter commented on how much healthier I looked. In fact, I felt healthy,
healthier than I'd felt in years, especially after five years of not smoking
following a 39-year addiction. During the triathlon training, I started to feel
like I could breathe easily again, like my lungs were finally repairing
themselves. I lost ten pounds. My body hardened and my stomach flattened. I went
from a 34 to a 32 waist. I was doing the Sprint level event twice a week as
practice for the full event.
Unfortunately, I trained almost up to the day of the triathlon. I showed up
close to exhaustion and tired from lack of sleep the night before. I had skipped
breakfast and had nothing in my stomach other than a carbohydrate gel pack.
Seconds before the start of the swim, my goggles broke. I managed to get them
back together about two seconds before the start siren sounded. I'd been warned
to hang back a bit from the start of the swim because the water would be full of
people scrambling for the lead. I was told I would be punched, kicked, swum
over. At the last minute, I thought: "My lead character will be competitive and
get right into the thick of the action." So I ignored the advice and dove into
the water with about a hundred well-tuned athletes all around me. I was shoved
and tossed and almost swum over. People banged into me, and the water that I'd
spent so much time swimming in suddenly seemed alien and threatening. There was
no quiet primordial mist on the surface of this water, just thrashing muscle and
murky brown waves.
It was great! Just the kind of stuff I needed for my sequel.
I'd already gotten plenty of research done, but now I wasn't on my own. I was in
the water with a hundred other people and I had to keep up with them, or at
least try. At one point, I became disoriented and swam into the beach. On the
transition trail from the swim to the bikes, my daughter screamed, "Dad, it's a
race! Stop talking to people and run!" I hope there's some way I can work a
variation of that into the book.
The bike leg was the longest and hardest leg of all. It followed a route fraught
with hills and pavement. I had gel packs taped to my bike, but I ignored them.
Big mistake. After about 20K, I was running low on energy. I drank Gatorade, but
I just couldn't force myself to eat while I was bicycling. I swear, every
bicyclist in the world made a detour to Fredericton that day just so he could
pass me. It seemed like the world was full of rear views of bicycles. But I
finished the bike leg in non-record time.
I'm a runner and I always have been a runner. I love running. I love the high
that comes from out-running the pain in my legs and breaking into a world of
spiritual oneness. On the day of the triathlon though, I was lucky I didn't fall
on my butt every two steps. The only thing that kept me going was my daughter
yelling, "Dad, I'm so proud of you!" after each lap. I definitely have to work a
variation of that into the book.
I didn't finish last. I finished second to last. Talk about a perfect day.
Originally, the triathlon scene was to be one chapter, but it's grown to three.
During the training, I tried to imagine me as the lead character (who will
actually be modeled after my daughter), a piece of sentient software competing
in an online environment that corresponds to a physical environment in which
she's competing against physical people in addition to the virtual competitors.
I took along a digital recorder for the runs and came up with some interesting
characters based on people I met on the trail, including the world's biggest,
meanest, and most persistent horse fly.
As I biked along with the other triathletes, I came up with some great ideas
for tense situations on the bike leg in the novel, even though everybody was
yelling encouragement to each other. This is where imagination comes in and I
think, "What would be the opposite of this?"
In the end, I had notes about the virtual triathlon in the novel; plus, I had
notes about other scenes. By putting myself into the actions of my characters,
they became more real to me, as did the story.
And as a bonus, I learned much about myself, my limits, and my strengths. I
learned much about my own humanity, and that will surely guide me in creating
characters as real as myself, whether they are human or sentient software.
Biff Mitchell is
the author of the world’s first laundromance, Heavy Load (soon to be
released at
Fictionwise.com). His second novel, Team Player (coming from Double
Dragon Publishing in 2006), is a spoof on the IT industry, based largely on his
own work experience. He has two novellas, "The Baton" and "Smoke Break,"
published as Dollar Downloads by Echelon Press. The free version of his book
eMarketing Tools for Writers was download over 10,000 times from his web
site. An expanded second edition will be available soon at
Fictionwise.com.
