Eliminate it all:

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Swimming is not more of a problem, but it is another barrier to be overcome. If you want to get into triathlon, you know you’ll need to be able to swim. If you lack the motivation even to learn that skill, the sport is not for you.

There are multiple ways to look at this. Yes, we want the sport to grow, but it will only ever attract people motivated by challenge; those people will learn to swim/swim better. Triathlon will never attract as many people as parkrun, but if it was that easy, many of us wouldn’t be interested either.

This is mostly the angle I was coming at.

Running is the lowest barrier to entry. Shoes, can do it anywhere. Shoot, some folks do it sans shoes.

Bike IMHO is next. People who think it takes a $10k bike are just to damned lazy to be bothered to think through the financials or the DIY repairs and bike fit/aero work. I bet my whiz bang Trinity with same bike fit is NOT hardly any faster than when I had my $500 all-in Felt DA dumpster find bike.

Swim is worst. It's already societally the most difficult barrier to entry, ignoring cost. Add pool membership and the cost of personal time, meaning having a good enough job that affords you the time to do this shit............you're already in an elite part of society.

This is why when bored or for filler fun I enter duathlons. I love to ride the bike and I don't "mind" running. Cheaper entry fees. No pool crap required.

I just get tired of folks claiming to "be competitive" that you "must" have the $10k bike. Folks are lazy at aero and bike fiting and the DIY things that save big money with the tri bike.

Freaking nice Dengfu framesets for like $600. All in 2x mech bike with modern width Chinese wheels for like $2000? Used Craigslist tri bike for $1k and some good bike fit and aero virtual elevation testing?

Eventually some seatpost clamp carbon stuff started to decompose and I could not source a replacement, so it's now just wall art. I still own/use that disc and 9+ and the power meter and the saddle.

My Trinity is NOT that much faster purely on frameset than the final project on my DA was. No way.

This: about $500 all in




To this: about $1500 all in

To your point triathlon hasn’t adapted where they should. Even in races there needs to be a Rec division. The cool thing about triathlon is you can race with all levels of athletes, the crappy thing is you get to race with all levels of athletes. But if you gave a couple friends who just want to do an event the option hey go run with your friends listen to music and you just need to make sure you’re not in peoples way or well there are a bunch of rules that if you don’t follow you may get removed from the course, you can’t race with your friends and you can’t listen to music. Almost no one is going to choose the second one.

We basically broke the feeder system when everyone else was building an option to help people still do an event without racing

@burnthesheep

It's true that with careful research and hopefully experienced friends, you can save a lot money on the bike stuff.

Still, there are a LOT of hidden costs that add up quickly to make it quickly not a huge savings compared to a new TT bike (I'm talking like $4k-5k range), and the hassle of getting the RIGHT used parts of the right size, and that work properly is a royal pain the rear.

I DIY'd my own road bike a few years ago and honestly, in retrospect I should have gone out and just bought a $4k (at the time) Di2 brand-new spec road bike, due to all the hassle I had in learning all the installation/repair stuff from scratch, and the countless hours lost in trial-error due to my complete lack of experience. (Yes I know youtube shows stuff, but trust me - it just scratches the surface when you have real problems.) It was absolutely a loss of money and time for me by the end, and I still don't benefit from the installation knowledge since I'm not a bike shop, so things like installing/removing parts like headsets, BBS, etc., are something I do so rarely that I have to re-learn it all from scratch if I do it again.

I wouldn't recommend to any newbie to go used for this reason, unless they were already die-hard into the fun of scrounging and researching used parts and/or had a close friend who was very knowledgable about what to buy and troubleshooting it.

DIY bike repair seems easy - until it's not. Then it's devilishly hard. (Stupid things like stuck seatposts, rusted-fused bolts, etc....)

I think swimming falls into the same category as tennis serving. If you cant' do a serve in tennis, you can't play. If you can't swim you can't do triathlon. There are barriers to entry to learn how to swim or learn how to serve (join a place that has a pool or tennis court, and for one you need goggles, the other you need a racket and balls), but beyond the basic user fees the costs are fixed, but there is a minimum skill to acquire. Our sport cannot eliminate swim costs to learn how to swim and improve just like tennis can't eliminate the cost learning how to serve and improve. It is part of the minimum cost base to acquire the technical skill

Biking you can do without a $18K bike or $4K wheels. A $500 bike and $500 of race wheels gets you enough speed that for most people it won't dramatically make a difference on beginner level performance. You can literally buy the equivalent bike race gear that Luc Van Lierde used to go 8:04 in Kona in 1996 for sub $1000. Our sport still attract people without expensive bike gear and intake those people into the sport. We can't eliminate cost of swimming. It is just part of the sport.

Personally my annual pool membership is $250 CAD, which I can use for something like 25 indoor pools and 10 outdoor pools in my city. I would not say that swimming where I live is for rich people only. It is one of the most accessible sports in the society where I live. I have done entire swim race seasons for $250CAD for pool membership and $400 to go in 6-8 local swim meets (no overnight hotels). Swimming is not a rich guy country club thing where I live, but I have cousins who live in parts of the world where it most definitely is a rich guy country club sport.

Swimming is definitely a rich-person activity where I live in Norcal! There are community pools to be had, but you'll be waking up at 12AM to rush the lane reservation and/or driving a ways in odd hours to get access. I think quite a few people in tri around here have pricey country club or high-end gym memberships. Even if you're signing up for the community pool, it's typically $8-10/swim so it adds up quick.

not good comparision cause the events are in different areas. The bonelli Park event is around $200 now

The "listening to music" I would guess applies to almost any sport that is on protected/closed roads. Like I dont think the PTB in our sport are going all "old man get off my lawn" by not allowing music. It's a safety issue especially when it's applied to the bike when almost all races *atleast in the US* are raced on open traffic roads. There is very few running events that I know of that run while in traffic, it's almost always on a closed venue. I agree they can make a REC division and take out pretty much a lot of the competitive rules (drafting, aid, etc), but I think there are *some* rules that are there for athlete's own safety. Those people who are taking selfies in the middle of run races, you'd endanger yourself and likely others, if you behaved like that on a bike in triathlon events. Now of course that makes me "get off my lawn" guy now, and I'll take that with the understanding that we race with real live traffic, run races and tough mudders, etc dont.

---

Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

£360 per year for my membership, which gives me use of 2 pools within a 15 mile radius. Not bad, but there are no adult lessons, no masters group, and the lane sessions are so infrequent and busy that I regularly have to share a (wide) lane with 6-10 others. Not ideal, but to access a better pool I’d have to drive over an hour each way and be there for 7am.
Once you can swim competently, it’s a relatively cheap activity. However if you didn’t learn as a kid, doing so as an adult is awkward and expensive.

Bonelli today is $70 for the Super Sprint and $85 for the Championship.

$85 to $100 seems standard for Olympic distance these days, but there are some bargains to be had generally these seem to be sponsored by the city's Parks and Rec department.

This, while I enjoyed building up the ten speed crit pig, it's been huge waste of time and effort. $5 K USD would get me on a 12 speed 105 Di2 Cervelo or Trek equivalent.

As for pool being barrier or Tri being harder, its all relative. I did an IM in 2008 after doing basically nothing but work for ten years building a career, getting a house etc.

My swimming background was did learn to swim so I didn't drown. For 6 months I swam 3 times a week and did 1:08 at IM AZ for the swim en route to an 11:30 IM.

IM is not hard to do, yes there are a few more hurdles compared to doing a park run, but my sub 18 park run was a lot harder than my IM done on literally 6 months of 10-15 hours a week of training coming from nothing.

Around here (Australia), Triathlon is not well supported, in our local cycling scene, running scene we have numerous sub 9 IM, heaps of sub 10 an Olympian or two and people who came out the water at IM first, second or third.

They are all out riding in bunches racing, doing park runs, nearly all of them more talented than the people in the 40-60 AG who are placing in out local tris. They all say the same thing, too expensive and the fun is gone. Nearly all of them on the back of 12 months focus and they do this every so often, win or place in the top three in their AG at IM or 70.3

The bulk of the AG talent ditched tri a long time ago

I haven’t swam since covid so might be more difficult now but when I was racing I would wake up at 5 so I could get to the pool before it got busy then drive home to get kids ready for daycare. I was 12 minutes from the pool but an hour swim was basically 2 hours door to door. Cost wasn’t an issue for me but time was a huge barrier with kids. When I had no kids it wasn’t a big deal but even with a nice pool close to me it was still almost an added hour to the workout. A bike can be expensive but you can bike for an hour in an hour and be done. Run for an hour in an hour but an hour swim takes much longer even in best situations

And no clue if swimming in my pool is harder now that I think they are still doing reservations.

Edit: I should say I woke up at 4:30 when I had kids and about 5:30 when I would go straight to work after the swim.

---

Twitter - Instagram

When new people approach me about the sport I try to keep it as simple as possible. To the point that I'll play dumb and maybe hide my bike, paincave, etc.

The first conversation hopefully goes like this:

Them: "What do I need to do to do a triathlon? Not one of those full triathlons in Hawaii. Just that one over at the lake in the summer"


me: "you need to be able to swim, own a bike you can ride the distance, and run"


Them: "Do I need anything fancy?"


me: "nope"

If the conversation goes further, I just try to get them to eat the elephant. You don't start with EVERYTHING. Part of the joy is the journey. Do the first race on whatever you have. Take from that the lessons you learn and decide if you want more and want to go further down the rabbit hole.

The worst hole I've seen people fall into is looking into doing some local tri in mid-July. Suddenly they think they need a $800 wetsuit, bike fitting, pool membership, smart goggles, new TT bike, bike computer, indoor trainer, carbon shoes, coach, etc, etc.

This is true for people with and "without" money. I've seen people without funding do their first race and then decide they can't afford the equipment to do more races. Even though they had a good time.

I've also seen Freds sign up for a local sprint and buy 10k worth of equipment and then decide they don't like triathlons.

I see your point, but you know the sport has a problem when you have to hide the actual, real expenditures of a typical regular participant.

It would be a lot better if we could be up front about what it ACTUALLY costs to participate in this sport as a regular, and not just as a bare-bones one-n-doner, and at a level reasonable for a new participant. (meaning they don't need the latest and greatest, but they aren't going to go on a deep dive into Slowtwitch classifieds to build a bike.)

I think my point was that I wasn't hiding anything. I was being honest.

You don't need anything fancy to do a local race in the summer. You need a bike, shoes, and goggles (arguably optional). But most people considering a tri at least have SOME bike. I did my first road tri on a mountain bike in basketball shorts. And I had a blast.

The only thing you need is to be willing/able to swim, bike, and run consistently. That would get 95% of the people there.

The discussion would be totally different if someone came and said "hey, I hear you do those longer triathlons. I've always wanted to complete a full distance and I'm a pretty competitive person...."

I'm 100% not arguing that tri isn't expensive. It's absolutely nuts. But really only for those of us trying to squeeze the last 5% out of whatever our genetics will allow.

Yes, but doing triathlon for more than a one-n-doner will likely require a lot more outlay.

Anybody can do ONE triathlon on a tricycle.

Very few suffer for more than one season on a markedly subpar bike. And I think that's the point of this thread - attracting not just one-doners, but actual regular newcomers who last more than a race or a season.

Point taken.
But I know lots of people who show up to local races with their commuter and have a great time.

Different question(s):

How many people on ST and this board are doing tris on their ten-speed beater bike, no wet suit don't need one and $27 Walmart running shoes.

How many of us bought and stuck with that second-hand bike? Tri bikes are essentially the biggest waste of money as you don't need one to go fast, but how many of us have a road bike with a forward facing seat post, clip ons, second hand or chinese race wheels?

That's just the fixed costs, race entries and travel will kill you and as pointed out earlier, triathlon is in the main done by people who are not very good at running or biking

You seem helbent on correlating people spending money on something they enjoy somehow affecting participation rates?

Travel costs??? You don't need to travel interstate or overseas to participate.

People 'choose' to buy nice gear or travel to compete because they can, it's a choice. It's not a requirement.

Just like people chose to buy nice clothes, it's not a requirement to keep warm.

Costs of events and getting and staying there are reducing numbers in Australia

That's awesome, love the panniers, is there an esky which goes on the back for race day nutrition?

.
I was tempted, Hahaha

No they aren't. Why are you making stuff up to try and talk down the sport? Every IM branded even sells out. And why do you even need to travel, there is a IM/Challange event in every state expect SA and NT...?