FYI USAT does sanction indoor triathlons. Took 10 seconds to find this one:
http://www.usatriathlon.org/...thlon-age-group.aspx

Iron distances? Genuinely curios, don't care enough to look for myself.

I still don't think that's "iron distance".

I'm not going to go out searching for one that's an indoor iron distance. I highly doubt someone would try to organize that or that anyone would actually sign up. If USAT would sanction a shorter one though, I don't know a reason they wouldn't sanction longer.

He'll earn Wednesday's. Supposed to be 97 here. Heat index will probably be 105 or so.

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Let food be thy medicine...

I don't see how it could be much more difficult than his schedule this week:

IM Chatt course on Tues - 97 deg at 50% humidity on a tough course
6+ hr drive to MS - 97 deg with 60+% humidity
AL will be a cool 91 deg but still 60+% humidity and then the same weather in FL - Both with 40% chance of thurnderstorms

I actually believe that what he is doing is great for the cause of childhood obesity. Whether it will move the needle much is clearly debatable, but this country has a massive problem with this issue, and so I would wholeheartedly support any attempt to help spread the word of living and eating healthily. Hopefully he is inspiring some kids to change their habits, and as his attempt continues I hope he garners more media attention.

Improving this issue is a huge uphill battle - just look at how much resistance Jamie Oliver met when he tried to change hearts and minds in a couple of communities in the US - so I commend this guy's efforts. Negligent parenting in this regard borders on child abuse, when you consider there are kids as young as 12 developing diabetes from being overweight.

Maybe put the lawyer in you to the side for a second, and "think of the kids!" ;)

Of course, we could always find another lawyer to argue the opposing viewpoint:)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I am thinking of the kids, and here's how my thinking goes. I'm not sure how this activity "is great for the cause of childhood obesity" if it doesn't "move the needle." It's very unclear from the website where the money from donations goes: IC travel/ironman fund, or obesity education. Off topic, there are way better causes I can think of to donate to, like kids who don't have enough food vs. those that eat too much.

While I completely agree that obesity is a huge problem in this country, how much will he raise from this? If he's really trying to make the world a better place, how about instead of all the training time/expenses/time spent on this activity, he just WORKS a job and donates the money? Seems like that might make more of a difference. Or get a job with the charity he supports. This setup to me smells of getting others to pay for his desire for fame. People who really want to make a difference go volunteer their time, or donate, or take a low paying job in the field they're passionate about, they don't spend years training for and then attempt a "record" in the hope of "raising awareness" and maybe a few dollars. Just doesn't smell right to me.

The charity part of this endeavor aside, it's athletically incredible what he's doing and attempting, and even more so if he finishes. Whatever the "rules" are or should be, I don't think anyone can deny that it's a pretty impressive feat. I just don't like the vague sort-of-link to a charitable cause. I'd rather he just go for the athletic glory.

Not sure how long along it was but his website has been updated with more specific details on the charity

http://www.ironcowboy.co/donate/

He has stated many times on FB, Instagram, Twitter, etc. that 100% of all money donated goes to The Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, and his sponsors are the ones funding his travel and related expenses.

He promotes his run the 5K with him and all money raised goes toward the charity. Last night he signed posters for $20, with all money raised going to the charity

Until proven otherwise, I trust him on this part.

I think (and hope) that his 5K runs encourages one child to increase their activities. Based on a lot of photos, there are a large amount of children that run in these races.

Thanks for the link. I actually didn't realize the Jamie Oliver Food Foundation was involved in this. Knowing now that it is, I am even more confident that his efforts will make a difference. Just donated...

Actually it's pretty clear where it goes: The Jamie Oliver Food Foundation


He's aiming to raise $1m


I think if he even reaches half of his goal he will have raised a lot more than he could by working a regular job and donating money to child obesity charities. As well as this, his travel across the country, his efforts, his story, could be far more impactful on kids who see him.


You're entitled to this opinion, but I hope that after you've actually done some research on how this is being funded, where the donated money is being channeled to, and how inspirational this guy has the potential to be to kids across the country, you may reconsider. Don't get me wrong, I admire anyone who works in a low paying charity job, especially those qualified to earn much more in the private sector. But criticizing this guy for not doing that, for potentially changing kids' lives directly when they see him and meet him, for trying to raise national awareness by accomplishing this amazing feat, is something I don't understand.


I believe the vagueness is your problem, not his. As SayHeyKid said "100% of all money donated goes to The Jamie Oliver Food Foundation, and his sponsors are the ones funding his travel and related expenses."


I would recommend you watch this TED Talk by Jamie Oliver, and do some research on his charity, and then reconsider your position.

https://www.ted.com/...e_oliver?language=en

If his real purpose really is to raise awareness and money for childhood obesity he's not very smart or savvy from a business sense. Go big or don't do it. Get a large corporate sponsor (Biggest Loser perhaps?) and do it right. Maybe McDonald's would like to get in the game and prove they are really concerned about nutrition and well-being (which they are not). Just purely from a marketing and business ROI standpoint this is a major failure. I don't question the Iron Cowboy's (or his supporters) motives, I question his business IQ.

Of course that will cost you $0.04

biggest loser and "doing it right" should never be mentioned in the same sentence.

I read what I could about the charity in 5 minutes. I stand by my assessment that there are more worthy charities. I don't trust what some anonymous person on a random forum said regarding where the money goes. It should be clearly spelled out on the website. What he aims to raise is irrelevant. It still looks to me like he decided this was his goal, then stumbled on this idea when trying to figure out how to finance it.

I don't work with "potentially" how many lives could be changed or "potentially" how much he could raise, I'm not interested until I see results.

I thought lawyers generally were at least good at making their backpedaling believable?

I'm not sure where you think I backpedaled. I think my followup post basically said that I stand by my original statements. At least that's what it intended to say.

And to seriously address your facetious point, I think one of the big problems with our world is that people have a very hard time publicly changing their minds, so if I get new information that convinces me to do so, I'm happy to change my position.

Switching from doing tris to help africa to doing tris for obesity awareness bears that out.

Looking back it was actually a few times in this thread, heck don't even need to leave this page.

OK, so where was it?

First couple posts on this page for starters.

You are making my comment seem less and less facetious with each post you make.


At the very least your posts are less silly than the guy who apparently doesn't do iron distance races challenging this guy to a race.

I'm actually just genuinely curious. If you don't want to be specific, no worries. You can PM instead if you want. If you're referring to the indoor tri thing, I didn't backpedal, I was just incorrect, at which I'm surprised that USAT would sanction an indoor tri, but whatever.

It is spelled out on his website.

"More Worthy" charities, that's a new one on me.

But alas, nothing anyone says is going to be good enough for you.

When did this happen? Between 2 years ago when he did 30 in a year, and now?

Because I know at least as of December of 2014 his goal was childhood obesity

Not sure where it's spelled out, I couldn't find it, maybe you can point me in the right direction.

Have you really never seen charity rankings? There are definitely better and worse charities, with the worst ones bordering on scams. Not saying that this one is a scam. Maybe I should have been more explicit. I believe that the more worthy charity is one that does more with the money. To me that means more lives saved, less spend on administrative costs, about which I believe charities should be completely transparent. Seems to me that more done can be good per $ spent than generalized "food education". Feel free to disagree.

Don't be a dick.