With a little bit over a month left to go before my first Olympic Triathlon, I decided that the time had come to buy the last bit of equipment.

1. The Wet Suit

When you see the wet suit on people, it feels like something cat woman would wear. Not something an athlete would wear. And yet it works, does it ever work well. I was actually shocked after I put it on, how much flexibility I had while wearing the suit. I was wearing an entry-level suit. Which makes me think that the high-end suits flexibility exceeds my flexibility…

One thing about the wet suit, you really need to have no shame wearing this thing because it does look like you escaped some rubber fetishist party.

2. The triathlon bib

One thing I love about triathletes is that they fail to explain some very basic pieces of information that are super critical. Kind of like what the hell the base is.

When you are doing an Olympic Triathlon distance you are not changing out of your clothes. Pretty important piece of information because it determines what you swim in and what you cycle in and what you run in.

And if you’re a fat middle-aged dude like myself, the most important piece of clothing is what you cycle in.

The problem with a bicycle if you are overweight is the painful seat. A well established solution to the painful seat is the chamois. The problem with the chamois is that the more chamois you have, the worse the clothing is for running and swimming.

For cycling shorts, this is not an issue, you’re not expected to run or swim in them. But in a triathlon you are expected to run and swim … And so the chamois is less cushy. In fact, you can get triathlon clothing that has no chamois – which I find an unbelievably painful thing to contemplate.

And here is where the ouchie arises. If you’ve trained your ass on a cushy chamois and then switch to the triathlon chamois, man does your ass hurt. Well at least mine did during my 2 hour bike ride.

Word to the wise – if you are training for a triathlon ditch the cushy chamois, and get several pairs of triathlon shorts and train your ass early.