Relationships key in triathletes’ strategy

By Matt Tasler/sports@trcle.com

If you find yourself chatting with a triathlete, you’ll hear a lot of the same words in the conversation. Discipline. Passion. Hooked. Competitive. Inspiration. Healthy. Driven. Self motivated.

And then there’s the pain.

But for Brannon Potts and the rest of the National Direct Media Racing team, the pain is secondary to the goals they have laid out for themselves daily.

“It’s only about 10 minutes of pain,” Potts said. “When you are racing at that real high intensity, you say, ‘Well, I can handle 10 minutes of pain. That doesn’t seem too bad. I can handle 10 minutes of pain.’ When you’re pushing and your body is about ready to give up, you’re telling yourself, ‘I’ve only got 10 more minutes. I can handle 10 minutes.’ ”

Potts formed the team in September as part of his quest to climb the individual standings in the four-state region of Texas.

He said he was looking for goal-oriented people to motivate each other to reach greater heights than they would have on their own.

The rest of the team includes Cleburne residents Joe Garza and Cody Howell, Erica Fellers of Glen Rose, and Trisha Hohnstreiter and Mike Nadason of Granbury.

Community Bank, National Direct Media, the Cleburne Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Cleburne Fitness Center sponsor the team, which will compete in several events in the coming months.

The team will showcase its abilities locally later this month druing the Cleburne Ironhorse Sprint Triathlon, scheduled for May 31.

The event will begin at 7:15 a.m. at Hulen Park and will involve a 300-yard swim, a 15.2-mile bike ride and a 3.1-mile run.

Last month, the National Direct Media team spent nearly a week in Ruidoso, N.M., for high-altitude training. They biked and ran on the side of the Sierra Blanca mountain range, but it took a little bit of time for their bodies to acclimate to the conditions.

“The first couple of days, all of us were a little oxygen deprived,” Potts said. “When we first went on a couple of rides, we call it sucking wind, but when you were going up those hills, we were breathing pretty heavy. We were having a hard time.”

Wanting to lead a healthy lifestyle

Howell was one of the first to join Potts’ team, with the initial goal of losing weight and getting into better shape.

Howell said both he and Potts have lost about 60-65 pounds during their almost daily training sessions.

Howell said the team has become close because of the countless hours they have spent training and getting to know one another better.

One of the other benefits of training for triathlons, he said, is that it provides a getaway from the daily grind.

“I’ve noticed that the different sports have different disciplines; whether it’s biking, running or swimming, my mind works in different ways,” Howell said. “On the bike, I’m out there just processing things that happened throughout the day and thinking about the stresses and things. On the run, I found out that the creative juices in my brain seem to run a little more. In swimming, I just think about anything and everything. That’s all you have to do in the water. You can’t talk or do anything, Your mind just is running 90 miles a minute.”

All it takes is motivation

Although triathletes typically train six days a week, with one day set aside for recovery, Fellers said the motivation to train harder than the competition is something that pushes all athletes to strive for their best.

She said that because triathlon training is such a time-consuming activity, she spends most of her free time around other triathletes, discussing different training techniques and issues related to the sport.

A drastic event in Fellers’ life motivated her to become involved with the sport, she said, but she hasn’t regretted the decision.

“When my dad passed away from cancer, that just totally changed my life,” Fellers said. “I went ahead and got a gym membership just to be healthy for my girls. One of the spin instructors there did triathlon, and she actually did an Ironman. Every week she would tell us about her races during spin class, and I was so fascinated by that. I kept on asking questions and asking questions, and we finally had a local race, so I signed up. And ever since I did my first race, I’ve been hooked.”

The competitive aspects

The team members said anyone who wanted to participate in a triathlon could do so with little training, but they wouldn’t get much out of the experience because they likely wouldn’t do well.

Howell said he trained for four months to prepare for his first triathlon, and the benefits of the training can be useful for any age group, whether they decide to compete or not.

The National Direct Media team has members ranging in age from 26 through the mid-50s.

Keeping pace with the younger crowd motivates Garza to improve in the sport, he said.

“I started off with a mountain bike on the roads,” Garza said. “I was at least a half a mile behind everybody. I’m a very competitive person, so I wasn’t going to give up. I ended up buying my first bike, and after that I progressed as I went. Then I met Brannon, Cody and all of them, and they inspired me with what they do. At my age, at 53, I can almost hang pretty close to them. That means a lot to me.”

The family atmosphere

Potts said when the team members traveled to New Mexico, they took their families along and made a working vacation out of it.

He said the goal all along was to create a family-type atmosphere for the team, and they have scheduled several training trips over the next couple of months to tighten the bonds among the group.

“We’ve rented a couple of RVs, and we’re going to take the team in June to the Arkansas State Championships,” Potts said. “The reason we’re renting the RVs is so everybody can bring their families. We’ll have a couple of RVs and be able to sleep in them overnight and have all the families there. We can travel as a team together and really get to know each other. We’re going to go up to the Oklahoma State Championships at the end of this month. We’re traveling all over.”

They’ll worry about the pain later.