Gerald Babao is matter-of-fact about what motivated him to take up triathlons: Cancer.

“I’ve always been active in life, hiking, backpacking,” says Babao, who works as director of operations for USA Canoe/Kayak in Charlotte. “But I wasn’t a runner or cyclist, I wasn’t a swimmer. The catalyst came in 2008 when I was diagnosed with cancer, adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare head and neck cancer. That was my launching point. I felt i needed to do as much activity as possible.”

At a time when most people have their heads full just thinking about survival, Babao, who was 33 at the time, was working on how to take life up a notch. As he saw it, he didn’t have much choice.

“The medical side was beyond my control,” he says nearly three years later. “My drive was to become as healthy as I possibly could to beat cancer.

It would be a while before he could kick into training full speed. He spent the summer of 2008 at the Duke Cancer Center getting treated, then had to recuperate. When he got strong enough, he got into cycling.

“I had a slight obsession with Lance Armstrong and his ability to overcome an obstacle, and in addition to raise money for cancer research and awareness,” says Babao. To fuel both efforts — riding and fund raising — he started team Wannabe Riders Against Cancer, primarily to raise money through the Livestrong Challenge in Philadelphia, an annual century ride.

The team did its first Livestrong Challenge in 2009. While training for that ride he ran into some folks training for a triathlon. The seed was planted. He heard about TRYMCA, a triathlon training program offered through the Charlotte YMCA and signed up for the spring 2010 session at the Y’s Morrison branch. His goal: the Tri! Ballantyne sprint triathlon that July.

TRYMCA is a fairly rigorous training program, meeting three times a week for eight weeks. One day the coaches would have them swim, one day run, one day go for a ride. Baboa says he and the others in the class tried to meet at least that often on their own.

“It instilled discipline,” he says. “Prior to that, I jut did my own thing. There was never any rhyme or reason to my workouts.”

Come race day, Balboa was ready. He completed his first  triathlon — a 300-yard swim, 12.7-mile bike ride and 3.1-mile run — mid pack. His finish was secondary to the new course he had set.

“I was never overweight,” he says. “I was never at the point where I was concerned about my health [prior to the cancer]. But I wasn’t in shape.” He told himself that wouldn’t happen again.

He’s mildly annoyed with himself that it took cancer to make him come to this realization. Through team Wannabe Riders Against Cancer and his growing list of other active pursuits, he hopes to encourage others to lead a healthier lifestyle before it becomes a life-or-death question for them.

“I’d like to get people to become more engaged with their lives in general,” says Babao. “I’d like to help people discover the fun things you can do that involve pushing your body to its limits.” Things such as (all done post-cancer, in 2010):

• Cycling the notorious 29-mile stretch of pavement from Marion to the top of the eastern United States, at 6,684-foot Mount Mitchell, a total of more than 5,000 feet of climbing. “This ride was no joke,” Babao wrote on the WRAC blog. “I’m not one to embellish, but this ride is the REAL DEAL.”
• Nation’s Triathlon, an Olympic distance triathlon that includes a 1.5-mile swim in the Potomac River, 24.4-mile bike ride and 6.1-mile run.
• Cane Creek Triathlon, a 750-meter swim, 14-mile bike ride and 3.1-mile run.
• Livestrong Challenge, Philadelphia.
• Climbing Mount Rainier. (He was scheduled to climb the 14,410-foot volcano a year earlier, but cancer intervened.)

Babao has a similar slate of activities on tap for this year. He’s back in the TRYMCA program, getting up some days to run at 5:15 a.m., heading to the pool some evenings at 7:30, taking long rides on Saturday mornings. And he’s planning to add to his race resume with the addition of the Rugged Maniac 5K next month in Asheboro. Doesn’t sound like much, a 5K run, until you learn that this breed of 5K is more medieval steeplechase, with the course peppered with barbed wire, fire, tunnels, mud pits, pools of water, barricades, cargo nets, rock scrambles, swinging pendulums, and, in the words of the sponsor “a host of other obstacles that make this course one rugged gauntlet of glory.”

For Babao, it’s not about the glory. It’s about the fun. And about doing everything he can to remain healthy.

“This lifestyle allows me to believe I’m doing everything possible to keep the cancer from forming,” says Babao. “Psychologically, I know I’m doing everything in my control to prevent any kind of re-occurrence. I know realistically that it can only help so much. But if I’m doing triathlons, I know there’s a correlation between working out and ridding myself of deadly diseases.”

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Swim. Bike. Run.
We did them for fun as a kid. And, increasingly as we approach middle age, we’re doing them to get in shape. Only instead of spreading the activities out over the course of a day, we’re doing them in rapid succession: swimming  500 meters, hopping out of the pool for a 12-mile bike ride, then lacing up the running shoes for a three-mile run.
According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association, 1.2 million Americans participated in at least one triathlon in 2009. And according to USA Triathlon, which sanctions the majority of triathlons in the U.S., more than three quarters of triathletes eschew the longer Olympic and Ironman distances in favor of sprint triathlons, races that typically begin with 6 to 10 laps in the pool, followed by a 12- to 15-mile bike ride and a 3.1-mile run.
And it’s not 20something hard-bodies driving this trend: USA Triathlon, which has seen its membership grow seven fold in the past decade, to 134,942 in 2010, has seen the greatest growth in the 35-44 age group.
To a growing number of health-conscious adults, doing a triathlon is a sensible way to get in shape. The three disciplines work a variety of muscle groups, all offer aerobic benefits, and the variety reduces risk of injury from overworking the same muscles.
“People work, they have stuff to do in their lives,” says Jason Biggs, one of the founders of Cary-based FS Series, which promotes and runs races throughout the state. “For people who don’t have time to ride 100 to 150 miles a week, or swim 2,000 yards three days a week, they’re great.” In a survey of 15,000 members, USA Triathlon found 87 percent said they participate to stay in shape.
Kim Feth of Apex found herself in a physical funk shortly after turning 42 in late 2009. She was grieving the death of her mother, she’d gained weight, she couldn’t motivate herself to move. Then came the gut punch:
“My son came up to me and said, ‘All you ever do is lay on the couch and have a headache. When are you going to play with me?’
“It all crystalized for me,” says Feth, who weighed 207 at the time. “I decided then and there that I cannot keep this up. I decided I’m going to do a sprint-distance triathlon.”
That logic might be a head-scratcher if your only familiarity with triathlons are the highly publicized Ironmans, in which participants swim 2.7 miles, ride their bikes for 112 miles, then run a marathon — 26.2 miles. Not for Feth.
“I knew I couldn’t do a marathon, I couldn’t run that far. But three miles seemed reasonable, I love being in the water and I love riding a bike. And with three sports, I figured I wouldn’t get bored.”
Doing a sprint triathlon also seemed the sensible thing for Gerald Babao of Charlotte when he was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare from of head and neck cancer, in 2008.
“That was my launching point,” says Babao, who was 33 at the time. “I felt I need to do as much activity as possible.”
Not that Babao, who works for USA Canoe and Kayak, was a slug. He hiked, backpacked, paddled. “I wasn’t overweight, but I wasn’t in shape.”
Baboa spent the summer in Durham getting treatment at the Duke Cancer Center. When he was strong enough, he bought a bike and started cycling (that led to him sponsoring Team Wannabe Riders in the Livestrong Challenge ride in Philadelphia). Then someone mentioned sprint triathlons, so he he signed up for the TRYMCA class through the Ballantyne Village YMCA. The class met three times a week for eight weeks, swimming, running and cycling. Baboa and his classmates supplemented that training with workouts on their own.
He did his first sprint tri last July, finishing about mid-pack.
“Realistically,” he says, “I know there’s only so much I can do about my cancer. “But this allows me to believe I’m doing everything possible to keep the cancer from returning.”
Feth’s training was a little less … orthodox.
“I started walking around my dining room,” says Feth. (“I started training in December,” she explains. “I don’t like the cold.”)
In March, she started riding her bike (outside) and in June, when the neighborhood pool opened, she added swimming to the mix. She also signed on to RealAge.com, which offers tips and tracking tools for people looking to get into better shape. Between training for her tri and eating better, she dropped 34 pounds by the time her target race, the Dash for Divas, rolled around in September. She looked better, felt great — and realized at the starting line that her self-styled training left her totally unprepared for the race.
At one point on the bike, she sensed a car slowly rolling along behind her fat-tired beach cruiser. She kept trying to wave it around, then stopped to find she was being tailed by a sheriff’s deputy, lights blazing.
“He was behind me because I was the last racer,” Feth recalls with a laugh. “It was all I could do not to break into tears. I just wanted to toss my bike in the trunk and quit.”
But she didn’t. She finished, with the police escort still on her heels. And she signed up for her next race, the Ramblin’ Rose in Raleigh this May.
Her goal for that race: to have the scarlet letter removed from her leg. Actually, it’s an “A” and it’s in black grease pencil. It stands for “Athena” and its given to female participants who weigh over 150 pounds.
“I know,” she says, “it’s pride. But it’s a righteous pride because I’m trying to get healthy.”

* * *

Try a tri?

• The Charlotte YMCA’s TRYMCA program is an eight-week training program intended to prepare first-time triathletes for their first sprint tri. Cost is $135 for Y members, $195 for nonmembers. The next session begins April 4. For more information go here or call (704) 716-6927.
• In the Triangle, the Raleigh Triathlon Training Team Meetup group holds training events and offers opportunities to learn from seasoned triathletes.
• You can also find training programs online. At BeginnerTriathlete.com, for instance, plug in specifics about the type of event you’re training for and you’ll get a recommended training program.
• For a rundown of triathlons, sprint and otherwise, in North Carolina, visit TriFind.com at  or the Endurance Magazine calendar.
• Just getting started? Check out TriathaNewbie.com — “Guiding Beginner Triathletes into the World of Mini-Triathlons.”

Photo: From last year’s Ramblin’ Rose in Raleigh. Photo courtesy Clarke Rodgers.

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