This post continues my athletic bio from a few posts ago. In the last post I had finished my undergraduate degree where I swam for one year for the University of Miami and played soccer for three years. I also decided that I was not ready to go get a real job and instead I attended Arizona State University (ASU) and get my Masters in engineering. I did not feel ready to go 9 to 5. I applied for all kinds of scholarships and financial aid and ASU granted me a tuition scholarship for one year and work study for my second year. I went for it. I drove all across the USA on Interstate 10. That was a fun trip. Once at ASU I looked into soccer and ASU did not have men’s Varsity soccer but had a club soccer. This was good for me as I could not play varsity but grad students could play club. I met a whole bunch of great guys. Mark Larter, Scott Melbye, Tony Calabrese, Steve Odinkirk and many others who I can not recall their names. One season we finished undefeated in the Phoenix Division II. We had some great road trips to New Mexico and San Diego.
It took me two fairly easy years to get my Masters and Intel Corporation sponsored my Masters thesis. Intel offered me a job upon graduation but so did the CIA. That is right the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington DC. IBM also offered me a job working on the Space Station program. The CIA job sounded cool but they would not tell me what I was going to do. Only that it was working with computers. IBM just sounded very cool. So off to Houston Texas I went to work near the Johnson Space Center.
Once I got there I found out the Mark Later one of my soccer teammates was also going to come to Houston to work for Exxon. I told him he could room with me until he got settled in town. I joined a local Soccer team but only a few guys showed up for practice and all they wanted to do was get drunk after soccer games. I did not enjoyed the whole thing.
One day in the winter of 1985 I was paging a copy of Sports Illustrated and noticed an advertising for the US Triathlon Series (USTS). One of the races was in Houston and the race site was no more than 15 miles from my house. I asked my roommate if he wanted to do it. He said sure. We started working out together but he eventually decided against doing it. But I was on fire. Being a swimmer I of course swam way too much. I trained ok for the run but my bike training was very inadequate. Of course I did not know what I was doing on the bike. My longest ride before the triathlon was 25 miles. Why ride longer than the race right? There was no blogs or forums where I could find out how to train. I also met a couple of young interns at IBM and I asked them if they wanted to do the triathlon. They decided to not do the USTS Houston triathlon but signed up for the Galveston triathlon two week later. That was good enough. I had some training partners now. One of the guys was Matt Ellis who today is training with MarkAllenOnline and racing his first half in about 10 years in a few weeks. Matt and I did our first brick and I posted about this on this post.
Brick PostAs most triathletes before their first triathlon I was nervous. I felt that I was ready for the race but wish I was faster so I made the number one rookie mistake. I rode a new bike and new bike shoes for the race. I decided to find speed by borrowing Matt’s racing bike for race day. Never mind that it was too big for me.
The night before the race there was a huge thunderstorm and it pushed the swim buoys further out but no one knew until the professionals who started first had not reached the turnaround 20 minutes into the 1.5K swim. I ended up swimming for 53 minutes and I was one of the first guys out. Matt was waiting for me by T1 and shouted “you are slow”. Thanks for the vote of confidence Matt. I will let Matt post about my T1. He has pictures to prove it. I went out on the bike and as expected everyone and their uncle was passing. At one point I decided to look back and as a cycling neophyte I did not keep the bike straight. One guy was flying by me at the same time I looked back and my front wheel clipped his rear wheel. Down goes Fraser! I ended up with road rash on my shoulder, forearm and legs. Ouch! But got up I did and refused aid. Got back on the bike and finished the bike. The run was not that memorable but just tough. I finished and was hooked. I recall my roommate Mark saying. Don’t worry crashes do not happen at every race. I was hoping they didn’t and glad he was right.
Two weeks later I went and did the Galveston triathlon with Matt and our friends Rudy Revelez and Mike Kinter. This race swim was on the Gulf of Mexico and the ocean was brutal that day. I swam out or course and got a little lost. It was weird to get out of the water and have so many bikes already gone. It was a good experience however.
Later that year in 2006 I also did the Boston USTS event. That was fun as the run course went by Harvard and MIT. I had a good race and ran real strong. I think I ended the season by racing in a triathlon at The Woodlands north of Houston. This race was a pool swim. You swam 1000 meters by swimming 2 or 3 laps in each lane of the 50 meter pool. It was a staggered start 10 seconds apart. The picture above is me running during the race. If I remember correct the order was swim-run-bike. Notice the bike gloves. I was not going to ride without gloves because of my crash fear. So I figured I can put them on as I run instead of on the bike. Saved me 10 seconds : - )