I've honestly never understood when people talk about all the barriers to get into triathlon.
Its a tough sport! I bet there are just as many, if not more, triathletes in the world than ultrarunners. If you are looking for excuses there are a ton of barriers but local ultras get maybe 50-150 racers at best. That sport has less financial barriers than even marathon running. I am in fact surprised at how many triathletes there are in the world for how tough it is. I got addicted to triathlon pretty quickly and anytime I talk to someone about it, the barrier is NEVER financial. I don't think people outside of tri have any idea how quickly the costs add up. Its a sport that is tough mentally, physically and on time. Plus, not all cities have tri clubs. I recently moved from Vancouver BC to Jax FL and there is next to zero triathlon community compared to Van. This is a niche sport and that is going to bring smaller numbers but I think it's actually impressive.

If there is any barrier in the sport, its swimming and the only fix to that is to have more duathlons so runners/bikers can ease there way into multisport rather than them having to pick up two sports at once.

FWIW, I distinctly remember a summer spent detassling corn in high school to save and buy a Trek OCLV 5200 circa 1994/1995. That bike cost $2000 w/ first generation ultegra STI. If I look at the trek website now I see an Emonda w/ 105 around $2700. That Emonda is soooo much better than the 1995 5200. Like for like, bikes may even be cheaper now than they were in the past after adjusting for inflation.

What I do think has changed is the multiplier for the highest end bikes. Certainly no one was buying $500 pulley wheel systems back then, and there was no $5000 version of a frame that maybe only has lighter paint than the $2000 version. So anyway, bikes are expensive, but it's been that way for at least 25yrs, and probably much longer.

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Dimond Bikes Superfan

Agree completely.

There a many fine entry level road bikes.
My LBS, also Trek, has a Domane for $850. And you could race the snot out of it.

However, the cheapest triathlon specific bike they have is a $4200 Speed Concept.

Bit of a gap.

Seriously? You can say that swimming has a high cost barrier to entry, but then suddenly triathlon which has a swimming component doesn't? It's not like everyone swimming is setting out to be elite competitive swimmers.

I'm not saying you can't do tri on the cheap. You absolutely can. As have been done by many on these forums.

But it's a pretty high bar to entry. It's already hard enough to drag regular people, let alone fitness enthusiasts, to do a single 5k, let alone train for anything longer, but I think it's a reasonably low bar of entry. Even marathons, which you say are expensive, are definitely NOT (I've done 6, they are friggin' discount compared to triathlon!) Throw in the bike and swim costs (swim coaching, masters, and pool access) and it's absolutely a huge barrier to most.

I now love tri as much as anyone here, but cost was absolutely a scary prohibitive factor when I started. Then ONLY reason I ended up diving into it full-on was that I was already a decent AG runner, so I knew I'd be at least ok on the bike and knew how to stick with endurance sports for the long haul.

If I were a MOP or BOP runner to begin with, fuggetabout it - I definitely would not have dropped $1k on an entry level bike as well as pool access (no, I didn't have access to cheap community pools that would mesh with my work hours and location) just to do something that I might do for a season or two and call it quits.

I think he is saying swimming is the biggest barrier because its the discipline that most people are concerned with, afraid of, etc. when considering entering the sport. I talk tri to lots of newcomers and interested persons and 99% of them state that the swim is what keeps them from giving it a try.

You all keep mentioning barriers as if there aren't any to other activities or sports also.

Sure, go buy a set of Walmart golf clubs. Oh wait, it flew out of my hands now I need a couple gloves. Ooops, balls all gone in the lake....more balls. Dangit....it costs HOW MUCH to play one round per weekend?!!!! Whoa, it costs how much to be a member instead!!!!

Cars.....don't get me started on cost or time or knowledge to DIY there. Bikes are stupid simple in comparison.

Everything has a barrier to go from "hey, that looks cool.......I'll go walk around a car show, run a donut 5k, or do a super short sprint tri"..................to.........I'm going to do well in my AG of a 1/2 or full IM.

If your barrier is physical cost of equipment in your sports, the burden is on you to figure out how to be thrifty. When golf was my thing........I re-gripped and re-shafted my own clubs. I bought a "shag bag" where you hit balls into an open field and go pick them up yourself. I used some DIY golf fit video capture to work on my swing for free after buying a few cheap and really good fit/swing theory books. I didn't lose balls very often as a single digit handicap player, but I would walk the tree line and pickup balls for my shag bag and keep the ones to play with that were nice.

Same for tri. If you want a better bike than a Walmart BSO..........learn to wrench. I've seen used old P2's go for $600 on CL local to me. Fit is 90% the battle anyway. Learn to do carbon repair! It's not witchcraft. If they race F1 cars with repaired carbon.........c'mon. If I didn't eventually blow money on a ton of wheelsets my Felt DA was well well under $1k and is amazing for what it is.

I don't accept the "I'm too lazy to learn to be thrifty and wrench myself".

My 5 y/o is starting hockey this year. You think triathlon is expensive????

He'll be pretty cheap for the next few years, but if he shows any talent for it and wants to play competitive hockey, ouch..

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

That LTS, as pictured, didn't go for $2100. Just the stock LTS-1 with XT went for about $2700 back then. And how much has the price of everything gone up in the last 25 years?

Today, for $3600 you can get 160mm of suspension travel, an XT/SLX component mix with hydraulic disc brakes, and a dropper post. Adjusting for inflation, that's less than the LTS cost 25 years ago...

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"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"

I see the barrier to swimming as entirely a COST issue.

I think everyone knows that they CAN learn to swim, and likely swim well enough if they stick with it to finish MOP or higher in a typical triathlon. Just because they can't swim now doesn't mean that they can't jump into tri in the very near future.

But COST of acquiring these skills is the real limiter. You have to pay for a pool that has good enough access and hours that it works for your lifestyle, and unless you want to suck for quite awhile, pay for good coaching that ain't cheap, and for quite awhile.

Furthermore, the cost of time lost to driving back/forth to the pool is a COST issue as well. Even a 15 minute easy drive to the pool racks up lost time super fast - with 3 swims a week, you just lost 90 minutes of your life to swim-commuting. With the likely 5-6 swims a week you need to really improve, we're talking 2+hrs/wk lost right there.

I see these things predominantly as cost limiters. I strongly suspect that if people could get both legit swim coaching and pool access for either very low cost or for free (which does occur just not commonly), this so-called swim barrier wouldn't be anywhere near as big.

My first thought going into tri wasn't 'how am I going to afford a bike' - it was literally 'how am I going to afford going to the pool and not spent my entire life driving back and forth to do it since I work' followed by 'I'm going to try and do this on the cheap and forego swim lessons, but it SUCKS because I know I'd improve so much faster with a good swim coach which I can't currently afford.'

[quote burnthesheep

Same for tri. If you want a better bike than a Walmart BSO..........learn to wrench. I've seen used old P2's go for $600 on CL local to me. Fit is 90% the battle anyway. Learn to do carbon repair! It's not witchcraft. If they race F1 cars with repaired carbon.........c'mon. If I didn't eventually blow money on a ton of wheelsets my Felt DA was well well under $1k and is amazing for what it is.

I don't accept the "I'm too lazy to learn to be thrifty and wrench myself".[/quote]
I learned to wrench. It's absolutely NOT the answer for everyone, and often can be the wrong answer for particular folks.

Try wrenching when you live in a small 1-bdrm apartment or studio apartment. Yeah, tried that, done that. It sucks big time, and I didn't even have to share it with a spouse or roomate at the time.

Also, youtube is great, but with nobody to actually teach you, prepare for HOURS of your life spent fixing big mistakes you will make. For sure, if you added up the hours I learned to wrench my bike compared to my wage rate per hour, I'm almost certain I'd be looking at an uberbike in the $10k+ class, as I spent so much time on it.

The worst part for me - even though I broke down and rebuilt my TT and road bikes almost entirely, I now only use a small fraction of those skills 1-2x/yr. Which means I always forget the details of what I've done, and it takes me freaking forever to do things that would take a bike mechanic 5 minutes - I literally have to look up everything and consult all my notes again.

And don't even get me started on the newfangled uberbike stuff that has ALL custom parts that all cost an arm and a leg and require their own installation/removal tricks and don't overlap with other bike parts. I could be wrong about this, but I think it was more useful and generalizable to learn bike repair stuff way back before all this custom aero lightweight stuff came out.

I don't regret having learned the ins and outs of my bike now, but it's absolutely NOT the best answer for everyone.

500 bucks for a 2 year old P2 is a total outlier. Don't waste your time holding out for a deal like that.

You probably think Mona Lisa is ugly too. You cannot question Italian beauty. That's sacrilege.

On a serious note, my first full-on racing bike was a Pinarello Montello SLX in the late 80s. Hand-made steel perfection. It was a beauty among beauties. Because of that bike, I have a major Pinarello crush. I'm not a fan of the Bolide, but I mega love the Dogma.

Just hope he doesn't want to become a goalie lol Then the cash will start flying out the door.

We all seem to forget that 30 years ago, triathletes were doing 8-9 hour IMs on heavy steel bikes with drop bars, downtube shifters, and absolutely nothing aero about them. Tech gear, aerodynamics, wings, lycra, and $300 carbon fiber shoes weren't even on the radar.

The high cost of entry is an excuse, the same way every overweight coworker I have tells me they'd exercise, but they have "bad knees" (as if there aren't a million other ways to get into shape). If the desire is there, the rest will follow, period. You may not win a Kona slot, and you're in no danger of being on the podium if you show up with a Schwinn from Wall Mart, but it can get you through until you find better, and for a beginner, those things aren't nearly as important as finishing, participating, and trying the sport on for size.

If you've got a passion for something, you find a way, make sacrifices, and adjust the other areas of your life to fit...in any endeavor. This is no exeption. Forums like this, where many of the participants are at the higher end of the sport, probably do more to give the false impression that you need a $5,000 frame and $3,000 wheels or you're simply wasting your time.

Exactly. But not only that. The constant nitpicking, snide comments, insults, bickering, arguing, Holier-than-thou, name-calling, whining, and way more that goes on here, on what is arguably the most active triathlon forum, sure makes triathletes sound like people potential newbies probably don't want to hang out with.

If you use WD40 instead of waxing your chain, if you don't have dimples on your tires where it is most important, if you don't have tubeless Conti 5000s, if you don't know your fit numbers, if you use butyl tubes instead of latex, if you don't have a Ghibli disc rear wheel to give you negative drag in a crosswind at 37.438kph then don't even bother sullying the course with your dumb slow ass because you'll just be another obstacle for all the faster people to get around who deserve to be on the course more than you do if any of the legs aren't out and back.

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The more people I encounter the more I love my cats.

I think the vast majority have historically started in children's go-karts, not their parents cars.

I don’t know. I have a 6 year old Jamis Road bike which I paid $1100 new. I think it was well worth that price. That bike is bound to last much longer so I feel the price was worth it.

Polygon (they’re an OEM like Giant) full suspension 140/130, modern geo, dropper, nice tires, SLX. $1800

https://www.bikesonline.com/...spension-mountain-bi

Its simple, the reason is because you lot keep buying them.

Stop buying them and the price will come down.

In a million years there is not $12,000 value in a bike.

Probably the same reason that kid's hockey skates are $800 and sticks are $300.

Combination of inflation, market forces of supply and demand, and perceived value by the consumer.

In addition, I might add: we are living in an age in which the marketers have convinced us that we deserve/should have the same stuff that professionals use.

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Not everything is as it seems -Mr. Miyagi

A lot of this and people feel that they need to have a name brand bike.

My primary bike is a round tubed aluminum Motobecane with Tiagra components. I shelled out $800 for it brand new 4 years ago. Its not as nice as carbon or hydroformed aluminum, its paint scheme isn't as pretty as a Trek, it started off with some crummy brakes and bar tape I upgraded for $150. Do I want a nicer bike: yes. Do I need one? No: I'm a weekend warrior dad trying to hang onto the last remaining bits of my super in shape 20's.

With all of that being said, I can see myself being in the market for a slightly used upgraded bike in the next few years (Don't tell my wife). But every time I have the itch to look at an upgraded one, I give my bike a good wash, clean the drivetrain and it looks nice and rides smooth. Then the itch calms down a bit.

this hits the nail on the head. No serious company in any business has been running a "cost+" pricing model for at least the last decade. And for sure no one will reveal their true cost.

From mid 2000a it has all been about value based pricing and misc methods to do this for B2C and B2B (take your pick from any sales training org.) Lately it has changed to "x as a Service" where you get an even higher value from each client over time. How soon before you can "lease" your favorite TT bike? (for a 3 year price that is significantly higher than the depreciation)



Andreas

If I am going to buy a road bike, I will buy one in the range of about US$150 from a supermarket.

When your standard speedo swim suit costs as much as a pair of jeans you know this to be true.

Whoa whoa whoa..........we need a trigger warning for posts like that! Lol.

:-p

It is very interesting doing the local hammer ride seeing $4k road bikes with expensive aero wheels, but about 2 months worth of road grime layered on top of layers of drip on tube o lube on the chain.