So you are an aspiring newbie triathlete and you want your neighbors to know. I mean you don’t want them thinking that you are just any run-of-the-mill jogger or weekend cyclist. You want to make sure they know that you are living the triathlete dream and soon you’ll be featured on network television with heroic feats of endurance on the big island of Hawaii.
Nothing says I’m Kona bound more than triathlon Bling. So for all of you hot young and even aging endurance junkies, here the complete Everyman list of essential triathlon Bling in proper triathlon swim, bike, and run order.
Speedos
Sure, some (especial in the United States) may look at the average tiny Speedo style swim suit and immediately think of a pot-bellied, chain-smoking, furry-backed Frenchmen enjoying his summer holiday on a crowded and dirty beach on some smelly European holiday island. But be that as it may, the tiny Speedo, or TYR or, Nike swim suit is essential triathlon Bling.
Why? Because you can’t really swim seriously in your typical beach trunks and actually get descent workout. You can swim like a very angry and drowning cat with your feet churning up the water as you make little to no headway in your drag trunks, but rest assured that no one will mistake you for a triathlete.
Swim Goggles
Somehow it has become chic for newbie triathlete swimmers to wear those massive scuba style goggles. You know the ones I mean that are one large lens instead of the tradition small swim goggle.
In the best American Idol tradition I just have to be honest with you here and say that they make even the hottest hard body triathlete look like a complete triathlon nerd. Which means that for the rest of us who wear (or have worn) these massive goggles, the juries is in and we’re guilty as charged of the biggest triathlon fashion faux pa.
So unless you want to be sentenced to a lifetime of triathlon uber nerd, get yourself some traditional goggles and just deal with not being able to see so well in the pool.
Areo Bars
Let’s face it folks, nothing says to the world I’m a triathlete like a set of area bars on your road bike. Now it would seem obvious that they belong on a road bike but at last year’s Chicago triathlon I did pass a young lady with areo bars on her mountain bike.
Some of you may be wondering, “Hmmm…is it really worth investing in areo bars since I only plan to race one or perhaps two times this year.”
That’s a great question, so let me answer it with another great question, “if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it fall, does it make a sound?”
In other words, did I tell that young lady at last year’s Chicago Triathlon that that she really needed a road bike with areo bars? Of course not!
Did she need a road bike with areo bars? Of course she did.
Bike Pedal Clips
Four words: knee high tube socks.
As in, do you still wear knee high tube socks? Because if you do, I think that you really need to keep those traditional pedals on your bike. Perhaps even keep the old school leather pedal straps, heavy reflector pedal, and really go for newly cool seventies look.
Otherwise you probably want to seriously consider investing in a modern bike shoes, and modern clip-in bike pedals.
Running Shoes
In the not-so-distant past I used to go to my local mall shoe store and purchase either the coolest looking and/or the cheapest on sale running shoe. It would really depend on how much money I was willing to spend to look cool.
Trying out the shoe meant either seeing how it looked with the days’ outfit or walking up around the store while the pimpled faced sales clerk looked like he was impatient to get to his daily Orange Julious break.
When it was all said and done I would shell out just under $100 for a pair of Nikes and walk out of the store wearing them. Inevitably these shoes also became my walking and running shoes until they no longer looked cool.
Today I run (and only run as in not walk around town) in my Suacony Omni Grid something or another shoes (pronounced like sock a knee) and replace them every 300 to 400 hundred miles of running.
I do this because I had a pro fit by somebody who actually made me run on a treadmill while recoding my running stride with a camera. After playing back the video the Suaconys seemed to offer the best compromise of foot stability and support for my foot type.
Are they cool? Perhaps…now that I’ve learned how to correctly pronounce the brand name. What is cool is having healthy feet.
Heart Rate Monitor
Would you drive a car without a fuel gage? Perhaps, but at some point you inevitably run out of gas, and you would certainly change your driving style because you would never really know how much gas you are using and how much is left in the tank.
It’s really the same thing with cycling and running without a heart rate monitor. You never be able to fine tune your own endurance engine without knowing your heart rate.
So while you bike and run all day without a heart rate monitor, the athlete next to you wearing one has a huge advantage. Besides nothing says I’m a triathlete like fiddling with your watch for 15 minutes before your run trying to get it calibrated correctly to pick up your heart rate.
You neighbors will surely know you are a triathlete just by looking at the massive size of your….watch.
