Anyone else no longer have any friends who do triathlons?

Triathlon Forum
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As the subject says, anyone else no longer have any friends who race? I have been racing triathlons for over 20 years, and for many of those years had lots of friends who would race. Planned trips or did local races together with different groups. But over the years people have just fallen off for various reasons. Whether it was kids, wanting to move on to other sorts of events or no events at all, injuries, whatever. I do have a few friends who are not local to me who I still see at races sometimes when I travel but itā€™s not quite the same. Iā€™ve always been more of a solo training person so that doesnā€™t really bother me that much, but going to all of these races by myself is just losing its appeal to me. Itā€™s harder to get excited about training and racing when I donā€™t really have anyone to commiserate with. Not to mention the general interest in triathlon seems to be waning in general as most races I do these days just have fewer and fewer people showing up. It used to be impossible for me to show up to a local race and not run into at least a handful of people I know. Now I often donā€™t recognize anyone.

Has anyone else experiencing the same thing?

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Yes. When I go to triathlons now (after 20+ years in the sport) I recognize a handful of people versus years ago I knew many people at races. I think there are many factors, financial, family, work and traveling to races (such as out of state) is a hassle with the bike, etc. I think there seems to be a ā€˜bucket-listā€™ trend where people do one 70.3 or one Ironman distance race and then they are one and done. Plus, it can be an expensive sportā€¦

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I donā€™t have any more friends that race tri. in the early 2000s to right before the pandemic I had a group of ~ 25 friends that did tri. You could be assured of seeing everyone of those at 3-5 or more races per year.

Now none of us race tri anymore. Maybe 5 of the group still race anything. 2 do a few gravel/mtn/BWR type events, 1 the occasional road race, 2 run ultras but donā€™t race them.

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Never had any to begin with

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Why is the song ā€˜puff the magic dragonā€™ playing in my head?

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Iā€™m that guy that no longer races. I love triathlon as a fan, but I fell out of love as a competitor.

I am now just focusing on the bike and lifting weights, this has been better for this 40+ year old body with a very busy job.

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same. Pandemic really wiped the slate clean. Seems like everyone these days wants to train alone

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Yeah, triathlon me didnā€™t survive the pandemic. I had such a good 2019, and I was looking to progress through 2020, but for plenty of reasons I couldnā€™t find my way back.

I miss it sometimes.

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I have raced for 40 years and have gone through several ā€œerasā€ of different friends and acquaintances who have come and gone through the decades. Iā€™m 69 now (currently with a broken hip suffered in a bike crash last month) and in the past ten years there have been only a few folks who have stayed around since ā€œback in the day.ā€ Iā€™ll see them once or twice a season and weā€™ll reminisce about how hot or cold a race was 30 years ago or try to remember the names of people we raced with back in the 80ā€™s. Until this injury I have been lucky to have kept racing every year. I hope to be back at it and see those few remaining folks again next summer.

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After 40 years,I am still active in the sport (mainly Ultraā€™s), from volunteering to helping RDā€™s to doing the odd podcast to the huge number on social media and I have a bunch of people I call ā€œrace friendsā€, those who I only see at races around the world but fall straight into old friendships immediately. As for mates I train with and hang out withā€¦none.

I donā€™t want a coach and donā€™t want to pay to be in ā€œa squadā€ so that pretty much rules out a massive percentage of people in the sport. Add to that is the fact that people tend not to want to add a single,loner,61 year old male to their friend group and that leaves me training,racing and existing by myself.

I really noticed it when I was in Busselton for Ironman a couple of years ago. It seemed that everyone was part of a training squad or club and this random old dude was roundly ignored. That is what bugs me about Ironman cancelling the Carbo Parties at races,at least those functions allowed people to meet each other. I have multi-decade friends from those parties back in the day.

The only reason I donā€™t race more is the outrageous cost of race entries (and the whole race week costs) these days.

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After almost 50 years doing triathlons me and my friends have just aged out of the sport. However I do maybe 1 sprint a year and sometimes talk old friends into going with me. The last one I talked a friend who hadnā€™t raced since the mid 80ā€™s, and he beat me in the last mile to take the win in the old mans. So kind of do, and kind of not I suppose, I know Dan wants to do one one of these days, so I may pitch up with him if I can get at least 4 weeks of uninterrupted triple training inā€¦

Mostly for multi sport have moved to swim/runs and the lifeguard events, including their ironman race(swim, run, paddle, row, kayak)

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Same here

The same Friends donā€™t even train anymore.

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Like you I am in my 40th year of racing. Have seen ā€œcohortsā€ totally into it for 3-8 years come and go. Some stick around for 15 years some for 20, but very few keep doing it over 4 decades. Life gets in the way, interest wanes, injuries happen, and many just age out of being serious.

For me, I mainly swim now. Half my volume is swimming and a bit of running. Literally my routine is 50-90 min swim daily followed by 20-30 min jogging. I get on the trainer a few nights a week or in summer I get outdoors. On the weekends, I swim both days, and one day has a 1 hrs run, the other day has a 2-4 hrs ride. But mainly I swim and do a bit of the other stuff so I can still participate in racing which I enjoy even though my running is so slow. I donā€™t think my body can handle any more jogging than I do.

I am transitioning to fully focus on swim and XC skiing and will enter tris for the competition and social, but canā€™t be bothered to train ā€œlike a serious triathleteā€. I go through bouts of trying to focus on triathlon training and just capitulate back to enjoying swimming. Mainly because running feels like ā€œexerciseā€ not ā€œfunā€

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Around me, the local tri scene was waning and the pandemic really killed it (minor signs of recovery, but a shadow of what it once was). Itā€™s hard to build community without those frequent, local races. Having sporadic ā€œbucketā€ races like IM 70.3s that most people need to travel out of town to doesnā€™t work vs. a solid schedule of sprints and Olys with longer races as high points.

We have also lost feeder systems like Team In Training that brought people into the sport.

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Itā€™s not too late.

And also general response to the thread, it seems like increasingly people want to train alone or to a plan from a coach and they canā€™t deviate for fun.

For example, four out of last 5 weekends, I invited friends to do this ride:

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Itā€™s a bit of a weird rideā€¦a bit long for those training olympic and even half, too short for Ironman people. But itā€™s just a fun ride with 1400m vertical over 100km (itā€™s a slow ride). I canā€™t seem to get anyone out because ā€œits not on their PLANā€

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You make a good point about people not showing because itā€™s not on their plan.

Iā€™m in that camp and itā€™s bugging me. I need to find a balance of riding or running with a group of friends when I can vs sticking to major rigidity all the time.

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ā€¦and that is my biggest pet peeve in the sport.

The sense of adventure seems to have vanished and exploring and riding just for the sake of riding while checking out new roads or doing epic shit for fun isnā€™t a thing anymore.

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I think there is a lack of sense of adventure in terms of even experimenting with different approaches. What I find most interesting is people in our peer group in the last ten years who try to replicate workouts that worked when they were podium studs ā€œback in the dayā€, except they are forgetting they are 20, 30 years older and their bodies donā€™t react to the same stimulus. Rather than experimenting with different ways to explore all three sports, sticking to the ā€˜same old success storyā€™ is kind of the solution to create the current ā€˜failure storyā€™ !!!

In any case, probably the people responding to this thread who have been around and raced for two, three, four decades, are kind of still involved because we keep mixing things up (workouts, routes, plans etc).

I am heading to 70.3 Tremblant shortly (it is tomorrow). My wife asked me if any of my friends are doing it. I said, "a few from years ago, but largely I just work and invite people to join in to train, no one wants to change their plan for training and only one person from work trains "

However, part of this is on me. My work life is kind of slammed. I train when I can during the week and there is limited opportunity to train with others. But on the weekends, I donā€™t get it.

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I can give the 25x400IM LCM workout !!! And they can pay me !!!

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Responding to the threadā€¦

Great question. Many of the friends in my life are from the running club I joined in 1990 and the tri club I joined in 2005 or so, and the coaching group I joined in 2015. And my coaching group and I have been part of Team Zoot for a while, which is free and makes the kits affordable and itā€™s very nice to say hi to people wearing the same gear at races.

The coaching group is fairly inexpensive because the coach was new when I joined and he never raised my rate. And he posts workouts that anybody, including non-members are welcome to join.

And the various run, tri and coaching groups have organically lost people, but whatā€™s more important, others have joined. Some are my age, some are quite a bit younger, but itā€™s freshened up the workouts and race weekends. I only race about two to three times a year, but itā€™s been great to be with a friend group, so worth the money and time spent to build those relationships.

Losing friends from common activities is part of aging, and healthy aging can mean finding new friends, or moving on to new activities that excite us. Me, Iā€™m a widow, 67, semi-retired from a journalism career but I still host a few public radio shows each month. Iā€™m in very good health and questioning the utility of workouts that last many hours. Itā€™s not the hours I resent but the very long recovery.

Iā€™m thinking that Ironman California might be my last full distance race if I donā€™t get into Kona (Done the WC twice before). Iā€™d probably switch to just 70.3 races because shorter ones are so expensive they feel like they are not a great value.

I might go for Wildflower next year. The friends I made at our tri clubā€™s training camp are people I stay in touch with on social media. So a return might be worthwhile from a social standpoint.

So Iā€™ve gotten into swing dancing as additional calorie burn and social outlet ā€” the dances last a few hours and I tend to dance almost every song. Iā€™m also looking into dragon boat paddling and yes, Iā€™m a stereotype, pickleball. Giving up long distance triathlon would free up weekends for other activities, and I could finally switch out long ride Saturdays for my long runs with the run club, and the fun coffee & breafast meetup after that Iā€™ve been missing.

But getting the point of actually quitting long distance triathlon is something I still struggle with a bit.

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