Tim Shanta’s Quest : Airline Pilot From Redondo Beach Vowed to Run 50 Triathlons in the Year Before He Turned 50--and Did It

Tim Shanta of Redondo Beach didn’t celebrate his impending 50th birthday in any of the usual ways. He started running triathlons--in fact, he vowed to run 50 of them in a year.

Shanta’s quest began last Sept. 24 and ended on his 50th birthday, Aug. 27, with a run in his 50th event, the Pismo Beach Sea Venture Triathlon.

“When I turned 49 (last September),” Shanta said, “my wife, Janet, and I were sitting at home and I said: ‘Gee, Jan, I’m going to be 50; what do you think we should do? I mean, it’s a half a century. Do you think I could do 50 triathlons in one year?’ She glowed and said: ‘I think you could do it. I think it would be a great idea. It’ll be exciting.’

“I said: ‘OK, I’ll train and I’ll do the triathlons. You handle all the room reservations and the applications. You just tell me where I have to go on what day,’ ” Shanta said.

A pilot for United Airlines, Shanta said scheduling and traveling to the triathlons became his most difficult task. He credits his wife with making it possible.

“There were many mornings when we had to drive up to Bakersfield to do (a triathlon) on a Saturday morning, and I would get in from work about 2 a.m. and have to get up at about 4:30 or 5 to jump in the car and drive all the way up there through the Grapevine in the winter,” Shanta said.

“We started in the Tri-Heats in Ventura State Beach in September of last year. From that point on, it was every weekend and sometimes two on a weekend--on the indoor ones (shorter than outdoor triathlons), six or seven on a weekend.

“I would go back to Chicago in the winter, and they had an indoor triathlon club back there that would have triathlons Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so I would do one every day. I would try to do one in the morning (and) one in the afternoon to get in as many as I could.

“I knew that I couldn’t find one every weekend, and with my work schedule I couldn’t always get the weekend off. Jan and I just keep plugging away,” Shanta said.

“My job comes first. When I find out about a triathlon, I bid to have the weekend off. If I get the weekend off, I do the triathlon. I’m in a fairly senior position--I can’t get exactly what I want, but I can come pretty close. There have, however, been some rough days when it’s tough to make it all work out.

“It was a family thing, in that Janet would do the planning, the scheduling, take care of the applications. That was almost a full-time job in itself, to find out where these triathlons are and how we’re going to get there.

“Most of the time we drive, but there are (exceptions), like going to Hawaii, and we have to make those plans. I don’t think I would have done it without her.”

Triathlons combine running, swimming and bicycling in one competition. They can cover various distances, from the grueling Ironman Triathlon, virtually an all-day event held annually in Kona, Hawaii, to considerably shorter indoor contests. Generally Shanta does what is called an international distance triathlon--a 1.5-kilometer swim, a 40-kilometer ride and a 10-kilometer run.

“None of them are the same,” he said. “Some of them have all three of the transition areas in one place; others are in different places. The bike ride in Ventura was 13 laps around the park, while others are out on the road.”

Finding time for training is another problem. Shanta learned to be inventive on the road and to make the most of his time at home.

However, training was nothing new to Shanta, who had been a marathon runner until, he said, “the feet couldn’t take it anymore.”

Shanta still looks as if he could run a marathon. He has the classic, lean marathoner’s body, toned but without an extra ounce of fat. Only the white in his hair tells his true age.

“I start about 5:30 in the morning,” Shanta said, “and I will either have a wind trainer at home or rollers”--a ski-motion training device where the feet slide along two rails while the arms pump poles on each side--”and I will either get on those rollers for 30 minutes or I will swim.

“I have a wet suit so I can swim in the ocean year-round. I also run. I try to do at least one and sometimes two things in the morning, and I try to do most of my bike riding around here because I can’t take my bike with me when I go away, but I can always take my running shoes and my bathing suit.

“I probably do at least 60% of my running and 40% of my swimming on the road. I do 100% of my riding here. During the winter, when you go back to places like Detroit, you can’t go outside and run all the time, so I run the steps in the hotels. In the Renaissance Hotel in Detroit, there are 16 steps per floor, and 25 floors.”

Shanta says competing against younger people is not his motivation. He just wants to compete at his own level.

“It’s difficult to give up 10 or 20 years and try to compete with somebody. Fortunately, most (triathlons) have age brackets, so you end up competing against men or women your own age. That makes it easier and better for people like myself,” Shanta said.

“I think that even though you don’t know these people, there is a certain camaraderie. You all know what you’ve gone through to get there; that is a type of excitement. Then comes the competition against everyone else.

“Competition is somewhat invigorating. It does tend to spur the heart on. You can’t help but go to one of these things and (then) your heart rate picks up and the adrenaline gets to going. It’s exciting,” Shanta said.

Though he has never done the prestigious Ironman in Hawaii, Shanta says he’s going to try to qualify next year.

“We’re not going to continue to do so many this year. Jan and I hope to do one every three weeks. A good friend of mine (Steve Le Mire) and I are really going to try and go to Kona, but whether or not we can qualify remains to be seen. The competition is hard, so we’re going to have to get lucky and work hard. I’ve just entered a new age bracket, so I might have a bit of a jump on the 53- and 54-year-olds; it does make a difference.”

After 50 triathlons, Shanta has picked up the “little tricks” of how to compete to the best of his abilities. One of the biggest challenges was learning to ride competitively.

“I like the swimming part the best. I’m a better swimmer than I am a biker or a runner, even though I’ve done more running. I’ve just got a knack for the swimming part of it,” Shanta said.

“I’ve really had to work on the bike part of it. I’ve come a long way on the bike. I used to get off the bike after 25 miles and I could barely walk. I would just have nothing left. Now I get off a lot less tired. Steve taught me about what gear to be in, and when to shift is very important, because if you don’t shift at the right time, you lose a lot of forward momentum.

“The first one or two triathlons, I was so new on that bike I was afraid to take my hands off the handlebars. I wouldn’t shift, so I just powered through and that just didn’t work. I even went thirsty because I couldn’t take my hands off.

“It’s really surprising how much power you can get from the upstroke on the pedal. To pull up on the pedal is just as important as pushing down on the pedal. That’s one of the tricks you learn when you’re conditioning the muscles. It’s a smooth stroke with a push and pull at the same time. I haven’t been able to do that yet. I either push or pull, but I do get into a good rhythm where I’m doing both,” Shanta said.

“We don’t have to learn to tie our shoes in triathlon. We have either slip knots or elastic shoelaces. Seconds here and there add up to minutes later on. That means quite a lot when first through seventh place are only a few minutes apart.

“The mind-set is important because you have to concentrate on what you’re doing. You can be hurt in any one of the three events. One of the jokes is that swimming is not a contact sport, but when you have 100 to 600 people hitting the water at the same time, it becomes a contact sport. Maybe I’m a little over-conscious of it, but I do want to be safe so I give ground so no one gets hurt.”