Shoot and Run

The sport of modern pentathlon includes one of the craziest running events you probably don’t know about

At my Thursday track workout the other night, I found myself pretending to fire a pistol. In what was one of the most surreal experiences of my life, Kelly Fitzsimmons, one of Canada’s top modern pentathletes, showed me her ritual for the combined running and pistol shooting portion of the five-event discipline, which also includes fencing, show jumping and swimming.

If you asked runners to name Olympic running-related sports, they’d likely list off the track events like the 5000m, the marathon, and maybe the triathlon. But modern pentathlon? Huh? I didn’t know much about it, either, until Fitzsimmons joined our training group and I witnessed her fake-shooting the wall after our hard intervals around the track.

The pentathlon dates back to the ancient Olympics, when the sports – running, wrestling, long jump, javelin and discus – were meant to mimic the ideal skill set of a soldier. The modern version made its debut at the 1912 Olympics, and has undergone several format changes over the years. Most notably, in 2013 the combined running and shooting event became a contest of four laps of 800m each, with athletes having 50 seconds to hit five targets with laser pistols in each round of shooting. (Side note: this is remarkably similar to the beer mile format of pounding a beer before each of the four laps. Coincidence?)

This final event is staggered so that those with the most points after the other three events start ahead of the lower scorer – first person across the line wins. The result is an exciting race that involves seemingly incongruous scenes of men and women in running gear firing laser guns.

Runners would really enjoy watching “pent,” Fitzsimmons assures me, but they can also gain valuable insight from pentathlon training.

Pentathlon lesson #1: Mental and game plan management. “There is a lot to manage in pentathlon, from strength and speed to mental and technical aspects of the sport. “And it can become overwhelming in a hurry” Fitzsimmons says. “Stick to your game plan as best as possible and listen to your body.”

Pentathlon lesson #2: Patience. “I meet a lot of athletes, and new runners specifically, who are keen to start in their first races and are jumping into big-time distance goals on very limited training,” Fitzsimmons says. Training for five vastly different sports requires an incredible amount of patience. Running should be approached in the same way.

Pentathlon lesson #3: Fine-tune your body. Fitzsimmons says the precision shooting aspect of the race keeps her in tune with the tiniest dynamics and idiosyncrasies of her body. “When I have to balance, it feels like my heart could practically jump out of my chest and knock me over,” Fitzsimmons says. “The lesson you learn is not to ignore it, but to acknowledge its presence and refocus on the process.”

Sprinting down the straightaway of the track the other night, Fitzsimmons told me to repeat three words over and over: “Ground, flow, lock, ground, flow, lock.” Just past the finish line, we stepped off the track. Ground. We plant our feet. Flow. We raise a straight arm up to eye level. Lock. We mime the trigger pull. Bam.