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My First Year in Triathlon: A Journey of Trusting the Process and Growth

Hey! My name is Elijah Reynolds and I’m a TA coached athlete. After my first season in triathlon, I thought it would be beneficial to myself and possibly others to share some experiences over last 10 months getting into this sport.

My triathlon journey started in December of 2023, a day after the conclusion of my football career playing for the Montana State Bobcats. Playing football for MSU was my dream as a kid come true, but it was time to move into the next sport, and I decided that that next phase of sport for me would be triathlon.

On the field at one of my last MSU football games. Built a little different than your typical endurance athlete.

After building a body suited for football for so long, my first month of transitioning to triathlon was a painful December of reversing the body built for powerful bursts into a build capable of handling long distance running, swimming, and cycling. This consisted of attempts to run a mile and feel strong enough to keep running, spending hours on YouTube looking up how to swim, applying swim techniques to a 15 yard pool where swimming down and back was unthinkable at first, and spending hours on stationary bikes trying to find comfort in sitting on a bike seat for hours.

As fun as it was training and fueling like a barbarian for a few months, it came time when I knew I needed to find a source of coaching that would be willing to take my desire and eagerness to train for triathlon and give me direction and a sense of efficiency. After searching and refreshing “triathlon coaches in Bozeman” for months, I was finally lucky enough to meet up for coffee with TA coach John Kaiser, who was able take me on as an athlete and begin the track of teaching and informing me on what triathlon is, and the reasoning behind the training required to compete in it.

In transition at my first sprint triathlon in Las Vegas. Stoked!!

With a month of training through John’s programming under my belt, it was already time for my first sprint triathlon on April 27th in Las Vegas at the Rage Triathlon. This brought loads of emotions from excitement to fear, and turned out to be a whirlwind of an event for me. Feeling like I would drown halfway through the swim after swimming the wrong direction, to trying to recover on the 12.4 mile bike that felt like a Tour de France route, and then grinding out the 5k to finish. Although major self doubt occurred during my first open water swim at the event, once I found myself on the bike and run building momentum, I can look back on the moment now and confidently say that’s when I caught the ‘triathlon bug’. I found myself having such a great time during the race that I couldn’t help but smile and laugh, cheering on fellow competitors and giving high fives on the run at the end, enjoying the finish line sensation, and then immediately thinking about the NEXT race, and the next block of training John would have dialed up for me.

On the bike at 70.3 Tri Cities - Sending it!!!

This race led into a summer of growth for me in triathlon, taking month breaks between races to continue to build the endurance form and hammer technique through John’s programming and conversion. Learning to simply understand that this growth in each discipline would not happen overnight or in a week’s time was something I had to battle, because as many athletes such as myself can probably relate to, I wanted to see results in training right away. Seeing only small advances for weeks is something that drove me crazy, especially with the swim as a new swimmer, but learned to be at peace trusting the process while the results would someday take care of themselves.

These results did in fact start coming my way once I truly invested in the process, as I was able to secure results such as 2nd place in Coeur d’Alene, and later finishing my first Ironman 70.3 in Washington under 5 hours. These are achievements I would have laughed at if you asked me during my early days of training, and furthermore would not have believed how many amazing people I was able to meet during the 10 month span of starting this sport.

With all that said, looking back on this first season in triathlon only gives me confidence and excitement moving forward into my next season of races, and can’t wait to get back to work with the TA community and keep building on the foundation that was built through this year of process and growth in triathlon!!

Finish line feels! First 70.3 in the books at Tri-Cities!