EverymanTri.com

Open Letter to the World Triathlon Corporation

Dear WTC,

I was sitting around the house yesterday just chewing the fat with a well know triathlon coach. (Who will remain nameless for reasons you'll soon discover).

Anyway, we were chatting about the possibility of someone actually doing a "Bandit " race of your World Champion in Kona, Hawaii like Jakob recently did in Boston. When my coaching friend jumped out of his chair and screamed Soloman. (And now you know why this mystery couch must remain nameless)

OK, so my main man of mystery didn't exactly jump out of his chair, but he did say Soloman with a such a degree of force that my sleeping dog opened one eye, tilted his head in a questioning manner, and sorter of snorted as if to say this better be good.

And you know what? It was good.

Apparently a few years ago Mr. Soloman did bandit the race....sort of.

He, along with the help of his wife, raced the entire course on the Saturday before the race. He jumped into the ocean when the imaginary gun sounded and swam the marked course with all of the other triathletes getting a last swim in before the big day.

But unlike the others swimming that day he sprinted out of the ocean, after swimming the 2.4 mile course and ran to the closed transition area. It so happened that his wife was waiting next to the transition area with his bike.

By now I think that you smart folks at WTC headquarters in Florida can guess the rest of the story. He completed the entire race all by himself, on the same course, going the same distance, just doing all this the day before the big race. Thus he earned the name Soloman.

At this point I believe my dog rolled over, gave another satisfied snort as if to say "well how do you like them appples," and went back to chasing imaginary tennis balls in her sleep and every-so-often reminding us with her presence with an ever-so-eye-watering silent but deadly dog fart.

All of this got me thinking...just to be clear I'm referring to Mr. Soloman, and not my dogs deadly emissions, about a possible new race Ironman race.

Now it is very public knowledge that you are eager to expand your own Ironman race portfolio. I believe that the inaugural Ford Ironman Louisville scheduled for August 26 is the first of several new races that you intend to add to your own portfolio of Ironman races.

And just to recap for all of the folks at home, most Ironman races in North America have been and are still put on by the newly minted North American Sports(NAS). Which begs the question of what now gets announced when an athlete crosses the finishing line of a North American Ironman put on by NAS.

"Congratulations John Smith, you are now an NAS," just does not have the same ring to it.

Anyway, here's a humble suggestion for another race that you can easily and pretty painlessly add to your growing race portfolio tomorrow.

Along with the Louisville race and the World Championship race in Kona this could be the third great WTC organized race.

I am of course referring to the possible Ford Ironman World Challenge (an Ironman/distance race) to be held on the Saturday before the World Championship on Sunday.

Now stay with me on this one.

First of all, you already have the course set up and most of the volunteers in place for the Sunday race. So why not just utilize all of the existing infrastructure for the Saturday Ironman Challenge?

Secondly, you already have a tremendous number of triathletes who would love to race that course but will never be able to, because they'll never qualify or win the very limited lottery.

And I'm sure you know from your demographics that these people tend to be the doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs of the world. To most of these triathletes money is not a huge issue. They would probably be willing to pay a good penny to be able to soak up some of that Kona race magic.

Now here's where the rubber hits the road.

As I'm sure you are well aware last year you had to move the race because of a date conflict with the local cruise ship. Kona is just too small to provide both enough houseing and accommodation for both the cruise ship and the race. Too many people in too small of a town.

So why not get together with NCL (the local cruise ship line) and create the Total Ironman Challenge Experience (TICE). In order to do the race the athletes and their families would get to spend a week aboard the Ironman cruise sailing the Hawaill Islands, meeting and greeting each other, listening to well known triathlon speakers, watching previous years race videos and just having a grand old triathlon time.

The Ironman cruise would culminate in 1) racing the Ironman Challenge on Saturday for those so inclined and 2) Watching the World Championship race on Sunday.

The athletes could sleep aboard the cruise ship (which I believe holds about 2000 passages) thus solving both your housing problem with Kona and your business conflict with NLC.

Furthermore, I suspect the price point of the Total Ironman Challenge Experience would be pretty elastic. You could (and should) certainly donate a sizable chunk of the revenue to the local YMCA, or the charity of your choosing, thus straightening many of the ruffled local feather and doing some good for the local community and economy.

The cherry on the cake and thus the complete win, win, win for you is that it would give thousands of Ironman triathletes around the world the chance to race their dream. These triathletes would otherwise never have the opportunity to compete and thus add their contribution to the Ironman legacy.

That's the plan. If you like it and decide to go with it all I ask is an outside cabin and perhaps a few annual entries to the Saturday Challenge for the my loyal everyman triathlon reader posse.

Kind Regards,
Roman Mica
Everyman Tri

When perception changes

Take a look at this photo of a “traditional” German beer bug.

We picked up the mug in Bavaria a few years ago. At first inspection it looks like a typical souvenir knick-knack that you might buy in Munich at any one of the dozens of souvenir shops near the city center.
But take a closer look at the characters and scenes depicted on the mug. I especially like the scene toward the bottom…the one where the one guy is walking on his hands.

In fact, if you look closely you’ll notice that this mug depicts the various stages of inebriation. What looks like a nice and respectable decorated souvenir from Bavaria, turns out to be a comical tribute to Bacchus the Roman God of drink and debauchery.

BTW: Don’t even look at that little scene on the bottom right side with the guy on his knees just in front of the standing women holding her arms above her head. You really don’t want to try to explain that one to the kiddies.

My point is that if you saw this beer mug on my shelf, you probably wouldn't think twice about it. Your perception would be that of just another typical souvenir from a long forgotten vacation.

Here’s another example of when perception changes. Almost ten years ago we moved from downtown Boulder to the outskirts of town. We lived just one block from Pearl Street and best of all all of the shopping, restaurants, bars and night clubs of downtown. As an example for all of you big city types, it would be like living one block from Michigan Avenue in Chicago, or one block from Times Square in New York.

It was perfect.

We could go out late at night and stumble back home after a long night out on the town. When our son Tommy was born, my wife wisely suggested that it was time to trade the downtown condo for a suburban house. I hated the idea of leaving the center of town. I really loved being in the middle of all the action and close to everything that I thought was important. We had lived that same way in Prague…right in the heart of the oldest part of the city and close to everything.

So it was with some fear and trepidation that I started the new house hunt. We soon realized that we could never afford a house anywhere near the city center. It was the same problem with a larger condo. We were in fact lucky to be able to even live downtown as home prices were just beginning their upward skyrocket as the high tech bubble drove the local housing market upward.

I remember to this day the first time we drove through to what would eventually become my new neighborhood. It was a new suburban sub division that was being built on the edge of town. I thought to myself that never in a million years would I live so far from the center of town and in this fine example newly minted suburban hell.

Ten years later I’m still here. It turned that I had very little choice in the matter given our budget and my fevered determination to stay in town.

It was my current neighborhood or nothing.

The funny thing is that I probably couldn’t afford to buy into my neighborhood today. Prices in Boulder have gotten so high that I consider myself very lucky now to live in town.

But the stranger thing is that after about a month of living on the outskirts of town my perception of this location completely changed. What once was the middle of nowhere quickly became a short ride to downtown.

In effect that map in my head completely and utterly changed. The distance to everything I valued like the mountains and local parks just flipped, and what I had considered to be the middle of nowhere became a neighborhood just a few short miles from downtown. I believe this happens to all of us at some point.

For instance, it is how a local friend of mine can easily commute several hours each day to and from his job. I don’t think that he considers it vary crazy that he has to drive across all of Denver just to get to his job every day.

It is the reason that many of my old Chicago friends don’t think that an hour commute to work each day is too bad. It is that same reason that (especially in big cities) like Atlanta and Los Angeles, what were once considered outlying suburbs and commuter communities are now considered close in towns and neighborhoods.

I’m thinking of all the turn of the century towns that surrounded our big cities. These places were once considered the suburbs or even the country, and are now the best newly fashionable central inter city neighborhoods. Our perception of these places changed overtime, and when that happened so did the market value of the homes in towns like Brooklyn, New York and Oak Park, Illinois.

For me that same mental switch happened sometime over the last few years regarding exercise. I thought of this today as I was on running on the treadmill at 6:00 a.m. doing my first indoor speed running workout of the year. A few years ago the idea of just getting up at 5:30 in the morning would have been something so silly that I probably would have called a friend to have a good laugh.

“Guess what Steve, I actually though about getting up this morning before the sun and going for a very hard run. Isn’t that the funniest thing you’ve heard all year?” I would ask, as I hung up the phone with my buddy and went back to bed for a late morning snooze.

But today, it seemed perfectly natural and normal to get up and get in an early run before my lunchtime swim. In fact, I was grateful to be able to take my wife’s place at her speed workout and get in some early morning running.

What’s even stranger is that I feel like my body wants and indeed needs at least an hour of rigorous exercise each day. I really hate it when because of work, travel, sickness, or other commitments I’m not able to swim, bike or run for at least an hour a day.

Do you remember the old government guidelines that stated that we should exercise at least three times a week for a half hour to stay healthy and fit? That seems completely crazy to me now. My body and mind seem to thrive on hard physical exercise. After an hour of early morning swimming, running, or biking I don’t really feel tired, instead I feel sharp and bright like a well oiled machine.

I’ll stop right now because this is getting very close to sounding like one of those late night infomercials for the Bowflex or Abodominator machines that eventually end up keeping the dust bunnies company under your bed.

My point is just how much my perception of exercise has changed, and how much that change has affected my daily outlook on working out. Just like the thought of living in my current neighborhood 10-years-ago seemed completely crazy, so the thought of working out once a day for at least an hour would have seemed completely insane just a few years ago.

I recall a conversation on a group run in the old days when somebody pointing out the triathlete in our small group and said how completely crazy she was because she was going to bike home after running 10K. Funny thing folks…today I’ve become that crazy triathlete.

What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t consider an hour commute to work crazy, I hope you understand why I don’t consider a daily one hour workout crazy. Plus, if you have to commute an hour to get to work…at the end of the day you still have to get home.

It’s just a simple matter of perception.

Guess and Win #3

And the winner from last week's "Guess and Win" contest is John McKenna.

John, Congrats you have won a bottle of Nuun active hydration.

I suspect that John used his mighty Google skills to win the prize.

This week I'll be giving away another bottle of Nuun. Please note that the bottles contain a bunch of the Nuun tablets for a nice supply of Nuun at your next race or long training week.

This week I'm making the contest a bit less Google friendly.

You'll noticed I've posted two interesting pictures of a bike.

If you look closely the photos have small clues as to the brand and make of this bike.

Your contest assignment (should you choose to accept it) is to identify the brand and model of this bike.

The first person who comes closest to the correct answer wins. If you have won in the past please sit on your hands and let somebody else have a crack at it.

Once you have studied the photos for clues please put your best guess in the comments section below.

Good Luck and have Fun!

Ironman Weenie Watch

Well it has happened again; my new Timex Ironman watch has flooded and died for a second time.

This is now my fourth Timex Ironman watch to fail in the pool.

The Running Elite

Did you know that in the United States in 2005 the average marathon time of both men and women was just a little bit over 4:45? To put this into perspective, that means that the average marathon runner in 2005 could only qualify to run the Boston Marathon this year if they were over 65-years-old (women) or 75-years or older for the men.

From the Marathobguide.com “In keeping with historic trends, the fastest average age-group were men aged 40-44, with a mean finishing time of 4:21:46” To qualify for Boston a male runner in my age-group (40-44) would have to run a 3:20 qualifying time last year. That is an hour faster than the national average in that same age group in the year 2005 (the most recent numbers I could find).

My fastest marathon time so far is just about 4 hours. For the last ten years I’ve have worked very hard to try to break the 50 minute mark at the local Bolder Boulder 10K. I’m pretty close and I think that one of these years I’ll smash that barrier. But I know that I will never run a 3:20 marathon. I was not lucky enough to draw that endurance card from the genetic talent pool when I was born.

I’m pointing out this fact simply because I want to be very clear about the Boston Marathon. It is not a race that most runners (no matter how hard we try, or how much weight we lose) will ever be able to qualify to run.

The Boston Marathon is for the running elite.

Did you also know that recently scientists have found a very strong genetic component to obesity? The old notion that obese people are fat because they are somehow lazy and weak willed is melting under scientific scrutiny. It really isn’t that simple as those who have tried to lose substantial weight can easily testify.

For these two reasons the argument that all Jacob had to do to run the race was lose 100 or more pounds, and qualify like the rest of us does not make much sense to me.

In fact, given the current rules I don’t think that Jacob, like me, could ever qualify for Boston. (Prove me wrong Dude;-)

Does this make his run legal?

No.

Does this make his run a bit more understandable and inspirational?

You bet.

And so while in 1967 Kathrine Switzer was technically registered under K. V. Switzer (as many of you have rightly pointed out) to my mind she was as much of a Bandit as Jacob. She broke the rules (stated and unstated) and the raced without the proper qualifications. In her case, she was born with the incorrect (female) genetic chromosomes.

It didn’t matter that she wore race #261 on her chest. To the race officials, that on numerous occasions tried to shove her from the course, she was as much of a bandit as Jacob. And that’s why I wrote, “We need more Kathrine Switzer in the world today willing to bend/break the rules to show us the way.”

You be the judge

I seemed to have touched a nerve last week with Jacob's story of how he did a bandit run of the recent Boston Marathon.

Your opinion matters to me. Please take a second and cast your vote and let me know what you think.

Best of all...when you vote you'll see the current poll results immediately, and the results will automatically update whenever you return to this web site.

Opinion Polls & Market Research

One person's inspiration is another person's shame

I just received the emails below regarding my post/email about Jacob who did a 9 hour bandit run at this year's Boston marathon.

"Wow! I’m appalled that you would support anybody who “participates” in an event as a bandit. That type of behavior should never be encouraged directly or even indirectly, and you just sent a message to the entire RaceAthlete community that suggests it is perfectly fine. I don’t care if you lost 300 pounds and did it on 1 leg, it undermines the whole challenge of QUALIFYING to run in one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world. Do you know why I haven’t run in it yet? It is because I have not EARNED the right to do so. Someday, maybe that dream will come true for me. But until then, I will continue to RESPECT the Boston Marathon, and respect the other participants – knowing that they would not want the integrity of the race cheapened by people who support bandit runners."

and this email

"I always look forward to raceAthlete news; reading the stories and seeing the results of hard work paid off. Unfortunately, I was incredibly disappointed with 'Dead Last.' I found it both uninteresting and uninspirational.

It's sad that some fella is stealing both the thunder and the resources of people who have both earned and paid for the right to participate in Boston. There are countless other marathons he could've legitimately entered without any need for qualification. Why rain on the parade of those who earned the right to toe the line...
many who worked years to get there.

I've got more than 50 marathons in the bag (including Boston) and hundreds of triathlons (including Ironman), and at each and every one, I hear multiple, incredibly inspirational stories (some featured on your site) that touch my heart and keep me coming back for more.
Focusing on someone who went about it the wrong way isn't one of those stories."

FYI: I've omitted the names of the senders out of respect for their privacy.

But I have to say with all due respect that I completely disagree.

I'll give you one name to prove my point:

Kathrine Switzer or K. V. Switzer as she was registered in 1967 was the first women to do a "bandit" run of the Boston Marathon.

You may recall that for the first 75 illustrious years of the Boston Marathon women were not allowed to run the race because it was thought that their ovaries would fall out if they ran that far...or some such silliness.

In a well photographed moment in the history of the Boston marathon, race official Jock Semple tried to rip off Switzers numbers and eject her from the race.

So no...I don't worship at the feet of the Boston Marathon, or the Kona Triathlon, or any other race. If Jacob wants to run/walk/crawl the race in nine hours well after everybody has left the course I say...more power to him.

I have no illusions about the Boston Marathon. It is a lot of things, among them a well oiled business run for the benefit of a bunch of insider Yankee old men.

We need more Kathrine Switzer in the world today willing to bend/break the rules to show us the way.

Old School vs. New School

I’m reading the book “Lance Armstrong’s War” by Daniel Coyle. In the book Coyle follows around Lance as he trains and he prepares to win his historic sixth Tour de France. What you get is an insider’s view of Lances race preparation, strategy and thinking as he prepares to battle his arch rival Jan Ullrich for the top spot of the podium in Paris.

I was immediately struck by how completely different Lance’s preparation was for the race to that of Jan Ullrich. You could call it Old School vs. New School.

Let’s start with Old School and Jan Ullrich. He came up through the old communist East German system of cycling which basically could be summed up by the saying “though them against the wall and see who sticks.” In other words, the East Germans (along with their Russian counterparts) would identify potentially talented cyclist at a very early age and put them through a horrendously difficult regime of coaching, training and racing.

The ones that didn’t crack (or stuck to the wall to use the early analogy) would become the new stars of the East German and Russian cycling teams and go on to compete for the pride of their communist motherland.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Collapse of the soviet Russia Republic it wasn’t long before these talented cyclist figured out they could make some serious hard currency racing in the newly opened West.  They figured it out at about the same time that the professional teams discovered this newly available pool of talent.

Besides Jan Ullrich you may know such names such as Alexander Vinokourov that came up from this Soviet Era regime of riding. All these guys were some pretty bad ass mother @@@$$&&**…if you know what I mean.

They only knew one way to ride and that was head down and full out. They would ride well beyond the normal pain threshold and revel in cracking the lesser and weaker riders.

They were also known for their outrages breakaways during the long stage races. More importantly they were known for staying out ahead of the peloton for dozens and even hundreds of solo miles, and often winning a stage by outrages displays of physical prowess and pain defying extreme rides.

It has often been alleged that a lot of this cycling ability came as much from the East German and Soviet doping techniques as it did from the natural talent and sheer will power of the cyclist…but that is a conversation for another time.

Lance Armstrong, on the other hand, took a completely different and more New School approach to cycling. He and his entourage of trainers, coaches, doctors, technical experts, and factory reps reduced everything to numbers.

The numbers came from the wind tunnel when picking the best bike. The numbers came from the power meter when analyzing his readiness to race. These numbers came from the scale when comparing his power to weight ratio. And the numbers came from the little machine that spit out his lactic acid threshold on the hood of his doctors car as he climbed and re-climbed a favorite training hill in his Spanish European home.

All these numbers were poured over, studied, and analyzed to the point that both Lance and his posse knew to the hundredth of a decimal place at what point Lance and his team had to be in their training to win the Tour.

More precisely, they knew the exact power to weight ratio that a rider had to have in order to win the tour. They took every possible variable and reduced it to a mathematic equation that let them see exactly what the human body was capable of at any given time in their training and eventually the tour.

You can also think of these two approaches to training and racing as left brain vs. right brain, or perhaps a better analogy and one that seems to fit would be the head vs, the heart. And therein lies the rub. It was Lances “New School” methodical (read mathematical) approach to training and racing that rubbed many “Old School” Europeans the wrong way.

To them bike racing was a sport of the heart. They were used to cheering for hard partying and hard riding cyclist. They wanted to see the passion of the sport on display when riders would push their bodies not by what the numbers said, but by what their heart said.

Keep in mind that many top “Old School” racers would come to the professional European cycling circuit completely fat and out of shape. They would use European races as training and hopefully have enough heart and stamina to win the big tours. This was the approach that Ullrich took. Every year the pro peloton money shot was the one that showed just how much of a big butt and belly Jan had at the start of the season. 

Lance was completely different. He would only race the Tour de France, and he came to the tour a mathematically perfect cycling machine. This cold and calculated approach to racing left many a fan cold and disinterested in the up stark American who seemed more interested in his power meter and heart rate than the pre and post parties of the tour.

The funny thing is that this old and new school approach to training and racing is very much alive today. It continues to both define the sport of triathlon as well as you and me.

As an example take a look at this brief video of  Ironman Champion Natascha Badmann as she explains the virtues of her radical Tri bike.

You’ll notice that not only is the video interesting in that it illustrates many of the newest and cutting edge (if not bleeding edge) advances in bike technology, but I  was completely surprised by her approach to racing.

You’ll see that she does not use a power meter, or even a standard bike computer. She simply has a watch stuck to the front of the bike to measure how long she has been riding. In other words, she seems to have a completely old school approach, and yet she is one of the most talented and winning Ironman of the last decade.

So I ask you…does your heart or your head rule your racing?

Are you old school or new school, or perhaps a little of both?

 

Dead Last

This is probably the most interesting and inspirational race report I've read in a long time.

Click HERE to see and read how Jacob got into the Boston Marathon (he actually didn't get in with a real race number but instead did a bandit run), lost almost 100 pounds to do the race, and still managed to finish dead last in just about 9 hours.

From his Blog:

"In what can only be described at the most horrific experience of my life. I, Jacob Seilheimer, completed the Boston Marathon...

DEAD LAST.

And I'm damn proud of it."

Guess and Win #2

And the winner is....21 Century Mom.

Last week she used her incredible Google skills to win some great Nuun.

Today is your chance to be the next winner.

Mashed-up Music is a fairly new genre.

Basically a DJ takes two familiar songs (read old) and mixes them into something new and completely original that sounds familiar and new at the same time.

It makes for a song that can be perfect for working out. Hint: This week's contest is all about the seventies, eighties and nineties.

This is your chance to win and try some nuun. All you have to do to win your very own bottle of nuun tablets is to listen to the mashed-up workout tune below.

Once you have listened to the tune just guess (in the comments section below) the names of the bands that have been mashed up to make the new song.

I've made this one a bit interesting, and by interesting I mean harder, this week. Not only do you have to guess the names of the mashed-up songs, but I want to know the DJ who put together this mashed-up tune and his or her country of origin.

The person who comes closest to the correct answer wins. If you have won in the past please sit on your hands and let somebody else have a crack at it.

MP3 File

Listen to this fun mashed-up workout tune and just guess at the names of the artist and/or bands that are mashed-up in both songs in the comments section below. But remember I also want to know the DJ who put together this mashed-up tune and his or her country of origin.

Good luck and have fun!

The winner will be announced right here next week.

Why Bother?

I’m not sure who is responsible for the train wreck that was yesterday’s Ironman live coverage of the Arizona Ironman.

Was it the WTC (World Triathlon Corporation) or was it newly minted (NAS) North American Sports or was it a combined effort?

But you know what? It really does not matter because it made them both look like two companies run out of the tiny basement of mom’s house by a pair of clumsy and incompetent 17-year-olds.

Ladies and gentlemen of Ironman: why bother?

I recall watching the early days of Ironmanlive.com and thinking how embarrassing for a company to put on such a lame, low-budget, and uninteresting show. But I thought to myself, “these guys are just learning and they’ll figure it out.”

Well here we are in 2007 and not only have you not figured it out, but you have actually managed to make the live coverage even more boring, amateurish and lame. I mean you could actually point the camera at a turtle walking across the lawn and it would be more interesting, with more drama, than the current coverage. At least you would know where the turtle is at any given point on the grassy course.

What the difference between any web cam in the world pointing toward any downtown in the world and the IM coverage? The downtown web cam has a more interesting camera angle and perspective. For Pete’s sake folks how hard could it be to provide some race coverage and race commentary. Here were the especially low points from my viewing of the IMAZ race feed yesterday.

a) The half hour camera shot of the blinking red stop light.

b) The crackling and popping sound that almost blew out my speakers as somebody forgot that there was also an audio feed associated with the video feed.

c) The countless hours of dead air with no commentary.

d) The hundreds of heads, arms, and hats that blocked the camera view at the finish line of the race. Yes, Mr. balding hat head dude we are trying to watch our friends and family cross the line, and only seeing the back of your sweaty head as my best friend crosses the line for the first time is somewhat of a letdown.

e) Losing the live feed every few minutes. This was especially frustrating as both the first and second place men’s finisher crossed the line completely unseen by all of us at home.

f) In the days of barn-sized High Def televisions, is it really that hard to create a live web feed that doesn’t pixilate beyond any form of human recognition when the computer’s viewer is expanded to anything beyond the size of a 39 cent postage stamp.

g) How hard would it be to actually know (let alone broadcast) the athlete’s real time race splits.

So did you know that Chicago Triathlon has (and has had for a couple of years now) an athlete tracker that will (in real time) email or text your cell phone any of the 6000 athlete’s split times as they race?

So did you that the New York City Marathon has an athlete tracker feature on their web site that will actually show you in real time the exact position of any of the forty thousand athletes on the course during the race?

So did you know that Ironman can barely (and I mean just barely) tell you in not so real time their best guesstimate of the race leader’s possible race position on the course?

So did you know that the Chicago Triathlon charges just over $100 for the race entry fee while the New York marathon charges just under $100 dollars?

So did you know (and I’m sure you did) that Ironman charges $500 for their entry fee?

Image if for that same $500.if we at home could actually know the position of our loved ones, friend and family on their historic day. How many people around the world would actually gather around the computer if they knew the exact moment when their special someone would cross the finish line?

Image how many people around the world would tune in to watch the race if they could actually see the race.

Image what sort of advertising revenue you could charge your sponsors for this sort of an audience.

Image what sort of powerful brand identity you would build?

Alas, the only thing you are currently building is a solid reputation for disappointing your viewers.

Ladies and gentlemen of Ironman: why bother?

My grandpa used to like to say that if you can’t do something right, why bother doing it at all. And that really sums up my feeling for your live race coverage.

How much time, money, and effort would it take to actually have somebody knowledgeable provide a race commentary for most of the race? They seem to be able to do it in other live and long sports competitions. Case and point just think of a golf tournaments, baseball games, the Tour de France, and 3 day cricket matches. And believe me compared to a 3 day cricked test (match); a 15-hour Ironman is so full of drama and excitement that you’ll burst a dozen windbag commentators.

My point being that if you have a microphone and completely uninteresting camera feed of a bunch of volunteers milling around the transition area…just turn on the microphone and have somebody at least describe the race at the head, middle or tail end of the field.

And here’s a concept that you might also consider: How about actually showing us the drama of the race, instead of a pointing the camera at some random spectators who (yes, I think I can actually make out a few bikes in the background) seem to be milling about waiting to cross the road?

I don’t even want to think what your sponsor at Ford, Timex, or Powerbar must think of this when they boot-up their home computers yesterday.

I’m sure the Ford people must have really loved that special moment last night when you aired the champagne medal podium finisher ceremony in front of the new Ford Edge. Oh yea now I remember, we couldn’t see the ceremony, the race winners, their medals, or even the Ford edge, because the camera was tucked safely away behind all the action…pointing at the ground behind the empty finish line.

Ladies and gentlemen of Ironman: why bother?

24 Hours of Triathlon

Last year I had a nice chat with Ian Adamson about his new race...The 24 Hours of Triathlon.

Today I had a chance to follow-up with Ian and find out how the first race went and ask him about his plans for 2007.

Ian Adamson wants you to be part of sporting history and be one of the first to compete in this hybrid new sports event. Think of it as a cross between adventure racing and triathlon.

You can learn more about this exciting new event by visiting the web site. Just click HERE to check it out.

Ian Adamson is a legend among adventure racers. He’s won about every adventure race that counts. So now he has put together something that’s completely different for both the worlds of adventure racing and triathlon.

Have I made you curious about the 24 hours of Triathlon? I know Ian answered all of my questions when I sat down with him and discussed his long career and how he came up with the concept for his new race.

This is the 36th Everyman Triathlon Endurance Podcast. There are several ways to subscribe to the show. You can click on the link below and use Yahoo.com.

You can go into iTunes and:

1) Click on the podcast link in the upper left hand corner of iTunes,
2) Click on the Podcast Directory link on the bottom of the page,
3) Now just use the search box located in the bottom left corner of the music store to locate Everymantriathlon and subscribe to my podcast.

The advantage of this is that you'll automatically get every show episode once I add it to iTunes.

Or you can listen (here and now) to the interview by just clicking the play tab below, or click on the link to the MP3 file and download it to your favorite iPod or MP3 player.

MP3 File

Up and over Downunder (part 3)

Readers Note: This is the third story in a series of travel tales from the 2006 ITU World Championships that I helped Sherpa for my lovely wife. You can read the first two stories HERE. Please scroll down after you click.

What do you call a bunch of triathletes strutting around in their national race kit in the lobby of an old Australian hotel like peacocks on display?

You call it the USA team meeting a few days before the 2006 ITU long course world championships.

I was amazed and honestly a bit embarrassed by the spectacle. My wife and I decided that it was best to stay in the team Hotel as we were new to this entire world championship business. Basically the now defunct long course distance was about two thirds the length of an Ironman race.

The World Championship moves around every year and my wife had qualified at the Great Floridian Triathlon the year before in Florida. Now I have to be honest here and point out that most of the world’s best Iron Distance triathletes aim for the Ironman World Championship held in Kona Hawaii every year.

The ITU (International Triathlon Union) sanctions most of the Olympic distance races throughout the World, but the long course or “Ironman” distance races are really better attended, and in effect owned by Ironman. So while technically this was the world championships in the long course triathlon, most triathletes would consider it a somewhat distant second to the Kona race.

However this in no way takes away from any of the athletes competing for their country in what turned out to be a very challenging race…that is unless they happened to be strutting around like peacocks in their team kit that Friday morning in Canberra.

Canberra (pronounced Can-bra) by most locals is Australia’s reluctant capital. It was chosen as the capital as a compromise between Sydney and Melbourne. It happens to be about halfway between both cities in the middle of pretty much nowhere. It is a highly planned city with beautiful wide boulevards, well manicured parks, and lovely man made lakes. It also happens to be almost impossible to walk around the city center without crossing 25 wide boulevards with speeding cars all coming at you from the wrong direction…at least if you are used to a country where you drive on the right side of the road.

Canberra is clean, tidy, completely manicured and pretty much devoid of anything that might smack of character. It’s the kind of place where you drink too much just to forget all of the places that you would rather be at...at this moment of your life. And drinking too much was exactly what I was doing at a local English style pub. We had now been in Australia for almost a week and we had not seen one freaking Kangaroo. And that was all my son really cared about seeing in Australia anyway.

We had spent hours on the drive to Canberra looking for the mysterious beast. Every so often my wife would yell out in great surprise as she thought she spotted some with her Lasik eagle eyes. When we got closer, the Kangaroos turned out only to be very energetic cows, sheep, or windblown bushes.

So it came as a complete surprise when the pub proprietor told us that we could see a bunch of the elusive beast just a short walk from the pub. And by surprise I mean one of those “no duh” moments that I know so well from my home in Colorado.

You see I live just a short distance away from Rocky Mountain National Park. And every fall we get billions of tourists from around the nation and world that descend upon Estes Park to see the Elk rut. For you and me that would be the Elk’s mating season when the big horned bulls come down from the mountains and bugle their lust across the vast expenses of the park.

The really big and successful bulls must gather and defend an harem of females from the horny young bucks. As you would image a regular animal planet show ensues with all of the frightening, drama, and sex that nature can provide free of charge.

And all this happens mostly at the local golf course. Which of course is a shame, because all of the billions of tourist with their high powered binoculars and expensive digital cameras are crowed in the park eager to visually assault anything that remotely looks like an elk in heat.

I, on the other hand, am having a really hard time making my approach shot to the 18th hole at the Estates Park Public Golf Course because I have to shoot over a humping elk hazard. And I’m already well over par because I have yet to find a golf club that is specifically designed to blast a ball from a steaming mound of Elk dung. And believe me there’s a lot of steaming piles all over the course as these animals eat the lush grass of the 18th hole, instead of the tough scrubby grass in the national park.

So it came as no surprise when the pub’s bar tender told me to go up the hill and take a look for the elusive Kangaroos at the local golf course. And sure as Elk dung, we were treated to the sight of dozens of Kangaroos feeding, paying, hop, skipping and humping, all over the 18th fairway.

Once again these smart animals found the lush soft grass of the local golf course, a much more yummy alternative to the scrubby, sandy, and heat-baked dry land of the surrounding hills.

When will I learn?

After snapping a few digital photos of the Kangaroos we returned to our hotel for the athlete’s parade. When I had read about the parade I imagined something like we are used to here on the fourth of July or perhaps the pageantry of the Rose Bowl, or the spectacle of the Macy’s Day Parade in New York.

Basically we stood around downtown for an hour waiting for some mysterious signal to start marching. This was after milling about for two hours waiting for the official USA team photo to be snapped. Imagine the hilarity trying to get about a dozen friends lined up for a photo. Now multiply that hilarity by a factor of 10, and you’ve got the makings of a two hours photo shoot for the official USA race picture.

The parade was a lot of fun in the sort of way that walking down the street with a few hundred of your best friends would be. At one point we walked by somebody with what looked like a very serious video camera so we yelled USA, number 1, and anything else we could remember from the Olympic television coverage. We eagerly waved the Red white and blue banner for all of Canberra to appreciate on the evening news.

About a mile into the parade it turned into an unorganized leisurely walk and we decided to abandon the entire thing for a carbohydrate laden pre-race dinner. As happens at most races, we were only able to find an overcrowded and over priced Italian restaurant that server what could best be described as uninspired spaghetti at a very inspired price.

What is it about spaghetti that has made it the ubiquitous choice for any and all endurance races of any sort? I guess I wasn’t looking when somebody crowned the noodle king as the mandatory pre-race mean. And that’s a shame as I have yet to have even a remotely interesting or memorable pre-race spaghetti dinner. It tends to be a somewhat nervous and twitch affair that is crowned by the serving of the soggy noodle and mushy tomato, eaten with an equally soggy plastic fork on a flaccid paper plate.

And so it was with this meal, except that we paid for the privilege with the Aussie dollars. I suppose this pre-race ritual has now become so ingrained in my brain that it now carries with it a bit of excitement as I know that in just a few short restless evening hours we'll be racing.

Next time...the race is on.

Get a Step Ahead of the Rest

You may have noticed that I have begun running a weekly contest to give away some great stuff from my great sponsors this morning (See Below).

You may have also noticed that somebody won the contest almost immediately.

However, you too can win and get ahead of the rest.

Just sign-up below for the raceAthlete news feed and get the latest stories, podcasts, and contest emailed to you each morning.

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Guess and Win

Mashed Up Music is a fairly new genre.

Basically a DJ takes two familiar songs (read old) and mixes them into something new and completely original that sounds familiar and new at the same time.

It makes for a song that can be perfect for working out.

Today I'm combining music and hydration is a new for something familiar and original at the same time.

More importantly this is your chance to win and try some nuun. All you have to do to win your very own bottle of nuun tablets is to listen to the two mashed-up workout tunes below.

Once you have listened to the tunes just guess (in the comments section below) the names of the bands that have been mashed up to make the new song.

I've made this one a bit interesting, and by interesting I mean hard.

This first mashed up song should be pretty easy for anybody who grew up in the eighties. It consists of two very popular artist that you'll probably recall right away.

Mashed-up Song # 1


MP3 File

But here's the rub. This second song is much tougher. It consists of four mashed-up songs. That means that both songs have a grand total of 6 different artist.

Mashed-up Song #2


MP3 File

The person to guess the most correct artists in both songs wins the nuun. In other words, just guess at the names of the artist and/or bands that are mashed-up in both songs in the comments section below.

Good luck and have fun!

The winner will be announced right here on Monday April 16th.

2006 was a good year for Triathlon in the USA

I'm not much of a numbers guy, but I do have a lot of respect for those who have the discipline to really analyze and crunch data.

So for all of you number crunchers here are some interesting new numbers to ponder. I just received the 2006 demographics from USAT (USA Triathlon) and last year was a good year for triathlon.

Both total membership and sales of one day licenses increased. One day licenses are people who just purchase a license to race one day.

The hard numbers are below:

Members:
2005: 58,073
2006: 84,787

One Day Licenses:
2005: 193,717
2006: 198,645

For 2006 the membership numbers break down by both state and gender as follows:

2006 annual memberships by state (Top 10)

1. Texas 10,457

2. California 8,910

3. Florida 8,762

4. New York 4,297

5. Colorado 3,631

6. Illinois 3,408

7. Virginia 3,348

8. North Carolina 3,289

9. Massachusetts 2,924

10. Georgia 2,885

Breakdown of 2006 annual membership by gender
Total members 84,787
females 29,967 35.34%
males 54.570 64.36%
gender not indicated 250 Percent: 0.29%

This sport is way male heavy as I'm sure you can tell.

The new numbers also are interesting in that the show just how few elite and younger athletes really make triathlon a career:

Elites:
Total 411
female 160 Percent: 38.93%
males 251 Percent: 61.07%


Under23
total 3,010
females 1,189 Percent: 39.50%
males 1,821 Percent: 60.50%

And Finally, the newest numbers also tell you which races are the most popular: