Our Mom, the Triathlete

Great Story! 

Our Mom, the Triathlete
(How Tough is Your Mom?)

Submitted by Spencer Rosen (age 12) and Jordan Rosen (age 16)

 Last year our mom, Anna Rosen, helped my dad, Mark, and us with our triathlons. She made out the training schedules, cooked the right foods for endurance exercise, and cheered us on during the races. I guess she didn’t have a lot of fun watching us race because she had to stand around all day waiting for us to finish, and then had to listen to us talk for days about the race. My mom said she got bored and tired during our five triathlon events. That’s when she decided to do something about it in 2004. 

 We never realized our mom was so tough. Before she even started training, she signed up for five triathlons. When she started in January, the first thing she did was fall off her bike and break her elbow the first time she got on her bike. That didn’t stop her, though. She kept on going even though she had to train mostly on her own. She said she knew what to do because she read a book about triathlon training. She also watched what we did and sort of copied our training that we learned from the Olympic Club Triathlon group. She never swam before this. She had to swim at 5:00 in the morning with the Fog City Masters at Saint Ignatius pool because that’s the only time she could fit it in. After that, she came home and made breakfast for us, made our lunches then drove us to school all before 7:30. On the days when she didn’t swim she got up at 5:00 to bike on the trainer and then ran on the treadmill. She did all this before the sun came up, and still went to work afterward. She needed some help with her swimming because she was a new swimmer so she called triathlon coach Diana Williams [wife of Olympic Club Swim and Tri Coach Scott Williams]. Diana helped her a lot and now Mom is pretty good at the crawl.

 We realized how tough our mom really was when she did the Wildflower sprint distance triathlon on May 1 this year. She wasn’t even nervous before the start, and did the quarter mile swim with no problem. Then came the ten-mile mountain bike ride. She was doing great at first. We know because we both passed her up going down a hill. She looked real happy and said she was having a great time. Right after that, she fell off her bike three times because of loose gravel on the track. We know how tough our mom is because she got back on her bike even though her knee was bleeding and she had cuts and bruises on her legs and stickers in her hands. Later, we passed her on the two-mile run and she waved at us. We didn’t even notice the blood running down her leg because she was smiling. She was smiling when she crossed the finish line, and finished fourth in her over-50 age group. Mom said it was great to hear all the fans along the course cheering, “Go, O’Club!”  We had to drag her to the medical tent for bandages, but she didn’t have any problem with the heat near 100 degrees that day.

 Our whole family had a fun time racing and camping for three days at Lake San Antonio with all the other members of the Olympic Club Triathlon Team. We had fun cheering for all the Long Course racers [Dean Woerner, John Dougery, Michelle Deasy, Frank Rollo—what others?] and Olympic distance racers [Gil Dowd, Mark Rosen, Steve Stanfel, Pat Carlin, John Flannegan, Lee Wanie—what others?] when they passed by the OC campsite.

 Now that our whole family is doing triathlons, we can recommend that your family “tri” it, too. It’s a fun way to do stuff together, and your mom might even like it!