Tucson is fine for training in some locations, but I don't understand why anyone would want to live there. I spend a lot of time there for work, and I still go ride Mt. Lemmon occasionally, but I just can't imagine wanting to live there. Maybe it's my traditional Phoenix bias.

Not sure if you found a place. I just posted an ad "Rental for Athletes" in notices. Were in Southern Colorado, not to far from Durango. Obviously we get snow here but I was outside the other day without a shirt on. Ridgway and Ouray are near us and at much lower elevations.

Rod

I remember this thread from 5 years ago! Wow a lot has happened. 4 Ironmans later, a big move and now the pandemic.

What we realized over the last few years is that we love Vermont and can't imagine living elsewhere. I found I could train successfully living in the cold for 6 months of the year indoors and outdoors. I realized I don't like the general population (to put it gently) and Vermont has the most space to have a buffer from people. I also realized in 2016-2020 that we could not live in huge swaths of the country since our values don't align (not to get into politics but that became important to us)

We ended up moving almost 50 miles northeast away from the busy suburban Burlington area. We found a totally remote, off-the-grid log home in the middle of a forest block with a 3/4 mile long driveway and no neighbors (except a mile or so down the road we have another off-grider). It's amazing and our dream home. We couldn't be happier out here! With an Endless Pool coming in Sept (due to long covid wait times), our little paradise will be complete.

We figured out what was important to us. From all the research we did, we realized there is no perfect place to live. There will always be a "give and take". For us we deal with harsh long winters, crazy high property taxes and a few other things in VT. But I love my privacy, peace and quiet in a beautiful wilderness playground. We even have a special exclusive open water swimming spot not available to the general public. I can run down from my doorstep and be there in less than 20 minutes. We got really lucky and are truly grateful. All the things important to us are right here.

That all being said, please don't move here! Many out-of-staters are trying to move in due to the pandemic but I'm hoping they will miss their shopping malls and starbucks and move back to the cities (or choose Burlington area as there are malls and starbucks there) :-) . Not being hostile, just a bit protective of rural Vermont, one of the last unspoiled places in the US.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

If you are off the grid how do you generate electricity to run an endless pool?

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Andrew Inkpen

Ha! Great question and we will be the first. We have a beefy system that will handle the loads. Once this is up and running in the late fall, I'll probably post photos and share more information. I'm super excited about it. Originally we were thinking we'd put up another solar panel for the pool but maybe in the future if we decide to put in a heat pump for AC.

I was thinking of asking Endless Pools to be a sort of ambassador since we will be the first off-gridders to put in this kind of pool (at least our salesman doesn't know of anyone else doing this).

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Here's a link that shows our new remote home. Feel free to follow me if interested in an alternative lifestyle. And I'll post photos of our pool eventually when it's finished next fall

Stories • Instagram

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Says stories unavailable

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Let food be thy medicine...

Now that we have two bike trainers, our own squat rack.

Basically it doesn't matter if you can find some decent outskirts road riding or the city has decent protected bike infrastructure. The hard part is finding some place that has multiple pools in the metro area that are open for lap swimming and possibly near a lake for OWS.

PHX has three lakes for OWS, but they're all at least 45 minutes away hard driving from me in Tempe. But there's at least four pools under normal circumstances near me that are open for lap swimming.

However, if you're good with your money and are willing to invest in your own property is buying property on a lake or building your own 25m pool and you're done. The location then becomes mostly irrelevant.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

hmmmm...well if you are super bored and find joyce_holsten on Instagram, I think you can click on the first highlight and it shows our home and even a solar panel. Huge batteries and northern lights generator are in a special shed

tried uploading a drone shot from the realtor who sold us the property. Well we took social distancing to a new level lol :-)

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Sorry, didn't realize the post was so old.

Were hoping to be offgrid by mid year. Solar is pretty cheap now. I think we are hoping to put in a lazy river to act as our endless pool. Glad you found a place.

No worries at all. It was a fun post and so interesting to read it again.

I think if we had to leave VT for whatever reason, Durango area would be one of our first choices. Haven't been there but did a lot of reading up and looking at real estate online. You have it all out there. Skiing, mtn biking, beautiful weather, wilderness. I recall open water swimming was something of a question mark 5 years ago for me. I couldn't find much info unless you can now swim in that large reservoir? I still want to visit out there after the pandemic.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

They opened up Lake nighthorse which allows swimming.

Oh that is fantastic!! So happy for everyone out there! I remember reading about talk of getting it open for swimming. I have a nice little pond close to my house but we also swim a couple times a week at the Green River Reservoir which is amazing for OWS. No motor boats. It's all kayakers, canoers and swimmers.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Your place looks amazing btw. Most areas have high altitude ponds if you don't mind a trail run to it. Our long term goal is to make this a place to stay for traveling athletes. Either to recover or get a workout in while traveling. Your place looks like you could do the same.

I would love to come out to Durango someday and trail run up to a high altitude pond, swim and run back! Please keep us posted on when your place is ready for traveling athletes.

Yeah we could do something someday with one of the barns that came with the property. We were going to fix the maple sugar house up and make it a home for my FIL but our plans had to change with that. But maybe an AirB&B someday.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

clearly you haven't been to vast swaths of land in the southwest.

clearly you know nothing about me. this post is not meant to be a pissing contest

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

Every post on slowtwitch is meant to be a pissing contest.

lol I thought that was just the lavender room

It's a tough crowd over there but never dull :-)

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.