The sport of triathlon has experienced tremendous growth over the last several years. Membership in USA Triathlon has nearly doubled since 2001 to over 70,000. One-day licenses to participate in specific events has also roughly doubled with literally hundreds of thousands of people a year paying for the privilege of swimming, biking and running with their fellow athletes. Why has there been such a huge increase in participation, and why should you join the fun? Although explanations are plentiful, the following are my own personal thoughts.
Triathlon is fun. Years ago, “triathlon,” “Ironman,” and “profound suffering” were more or less synonymous to the average man on the street—if he had ever heard of triathlon to begin with, that is. There weren’t too many small local races and triathlon wasn’t yet an Olympic sport. Therefore, to many, the only exposure they may have ever had to the sport was from ABC’s early coverage of the Hawaii Ironman. I don’t know about you, but for me, watching Julie Moss drag herself across the finish line in an exhausted stupor didn’t conjure thoughts of “fun.” Inspiring? Impressive? maybe. Fun? Not so much.
Now, however, there are myriad races in lots of unlikely places like Show Low, Arizona and Old Appleton, Missouri (although Old Appleton’s race isn’t new, it was first run in 1983). Go to any of these races, most of which are a fraction of the distance of an Ironman, and you’ll find that they are less about crawling to the finish line and more about getting together with friends to swim, bike, and run—inherently fun activities, as any 10-year-old will tell you. Triathlon is a competitive outlet. While it is fun, triathlon is at its heart a sport, and sport implies competition. Unfortunately for the vast majority of us, being the overall winner of a triathlon, especially one of the larger ones, is an unobtainable goal. Rare is the athlete who has the physical gifts and motivation required to break the tape in front of thousands of other competitors in big cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Fortunately for the vast majority, is the fact that any given triathlon is made up of many races. Maybe you’re not quite fast enough to be the overall winner, but you have the ability to win your age group. Maybe you’re not much of a swimmer, but on dry land you’re a locomotive and your goal is to run down your friend who swam in college and always gets out of the water with a huge advantage over you. Maybe you just want to shave a few seconds by learning to do that cyclocross bike Dismount you’ve seen the fast people do. Triathlon is inclusive. All the sports in which I’ve participated over the years, none have been more accepting of newbies than triathlon. Even (and maybe especially) people who are light years away from the physical ideal of the Endurance athlete receive support and encouragement like I’ve never witnessed in any other sport. For instance, it’s not uncommon to see professional triathletes offering encouragement to age groupers in the middle of a race. If you were to somehow find yourself on the same field, course, or court with most Pro athletes in other sports, the words you would hear from them probably wouldn’t sound like “nice work, keep it up.” If you find this hard to believe, go witness the excitement at the finish line of any Ironman race around midnight as the last of the Sub-17ers stride triumphantly down the finishing chute. The upper body of a swimmer, the legs of a cyclist, and the body fat of a runner. OK, we’re not all going to morph into fitness magazine models because of participating in triathlon. However, your fitness level almost certainly will improve to some degree. The diversity of doing three different sports helps keep training from becoming stale. It also mitigates the chances of overuse injury from performing the same repetitive motion day after day. Having that race circled on the calendar provides motivation to keep after it. When you’re motivated and you’re not bored or hurt, you work out. When you work out consistently, you look and feel better.
So, there you have it. Triathlon is your avenue to learning some skills, meeting some great people who don’t care what you look like, changing the way you look if you don’t like it, beating your sister who was always better than you at everything, and most importantly, having fun. I look forward to seeing you on the course!
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