G-man wrote:
Back in the good old Vietnam draft days my lottery number was old #5. I joined ROTC so I could stay in college. I qualified for Army Triathlon school but ended up flunking my Army physical because of childhood asthma. I submitted my 500 and 1,000, and 1,650 swim times from the past season and had to run a 2 mile time trial on the track. I was under 10 min by a tad or so I think. With those two base sports they gave you one year to get your shooting up to speed, then they would develop your horse and fencing skills over your career. It seems with shooting you can either be world class in a fairly short period or you just don't have it. It takes years to develop college speed in the pool , equestrian and fencing. Another road un followed.
Anyway my idea back in the early 80s was to have the Worlds Fastest Triathlon. 50 meters in the pool. Go to the track venue 100meters out of blocks. Then a flying 200m on the velodrome. Interesting how a second or a few 10ths makes a big difference.
Or the "long form" triathlon. 100m in the pool, 400m on the track and a timed kilo straight out on a road. The best part of this format is that you could have the local swim team, runners club and bike club do all the venue and timing and you could hold the race on Friday of a Sunday Triathlon weekend. That way you would already have all the competitors you could handle and it would give the triathletes another event on a long travel weekend.
I love the idea of super sprint distances in triathlon. In fact, part of the reason why I became totally hooked on Modern Pentathlon is my best running distances have always been middle distances. It just so happens the Modern Pentathlon race distance is 3200 meters (actually, a broken 4 x 800 with shooting in between). And, for masters, the distance is 2400 meters (3 x 800).
I also love the idea of piggybacking off of existing races. I'm currently speaking to a race organizer in Santa Cruz, CA, who holds three aquathlon / triathlon events each year about integrating an exhibition Biathle / Triathle race into one of her events. I can't think of a better way to expose people to these Modern Pentathlon sub-sports. Biathle is really just a run-swim-run aquathlon with slightly shorter distances than a typical aquathlon. Triathle adds the shooting skill component, which gives opportunities for slower athletes who are better marksmen to do well.
You can still go down the road. I started getting involved in the sport at 49, having never done horse jumping or fencing before then. It took me one year to achieve minimum competency in horse jumping to be able to compete in the 2021 Olympic selection event. In other words, I went from no experience to the highest levels of the sport in the U.S. in less than two years and at the age of 51.