A comment in another thread from a couple of weeks ago lead me to wondering about this.
The poster mentioned they had raced 25 triathlons in the 10 years they’ve been racing. My immediate thought was that wasn’t much.
Admittedly, I’m someone who has always enjoyed racing. Triathlon was quite different when I started out in the mid '80s; within 3 years, I had completed 30 races. Even now after nearly 40 years of triathlon, I’ve still managed 4 triathlons this year, scheduled around work commitments on consecutive weekends.
I can’t imagine too many other sports being sustained by its most ardent devotees participating as infrequently as 2 or 3 times a year. Plenty of runners and cyclists compete most weeks and often year round. Those involved in team sports play every week during the season. Tennis players, the same.
So, do we race enough?
Whether that be enough to maintain our own interest and enthusiasm in the sport? Enough to support a satisfactory number of local races? Enough to make friends with those you regularly see at races? Enough to keep the sport affordable and not dominated by one major player?
Do we just expect too much of the sport nowadays? Every race has to be big budget major event. It’s always an “A” race, or at least a critical nutritionally-dialed-in B race in the lead up for our A race seven weeks after. Heaven forbid we risk having a poor race on one of our only two outings this year.
Expense, family and work commitments, race availability and accessibility all factor in.
I do quite enjoy the big races but they do get pricey…and of course travel and time off work etc to do them. So if that’s your cup of tea prob 1 or 2 a year is all you do.
There are two series of Thurs night sprint tris up here in CT that alternate weeks. Last year I did 7 of those, one open water swim, and two 5ks all within 12 weeks. It was amazing. No one entry fee was more than 40 dollars. So basically all that for the cost of one “branded†event. I prob won’t do that many this year due to family stuff but I should hit at least 6 or 7 of them.
I definitely enjoy training a lot. But I do feel like I need to race a lot. Last summer was pretty amazing. Some weeks I just kept my race wheels on my bike bc it was just easier to do the training rides (short) on them.
On the flip side, I think kids in high school cross country and track (in the US) race way too much. They are still developing and growing and they race once a week. Sometimes twice a week. In addition to workouts and speed drills. Seems crazy to me and it’s no wonder so many kids get injured.
If they need to race that frequently, their weekly training schedules don’t take it into account. At least at the schools I’ve seen. Maybe there are some coaches wisely building their overall race season up with the idea to peak at just a couple meets and let most of the others be essentially a part of training with proper easier sessions built around it.
But for adults? There’s only so much time, money and close races available. The hobby part of our hobby is the training and posting about Lionel Sanders.
I completely agree with so many of your points. I’m even a bit guilty as I currently only have 5 on the schedule. Working in a shop in a very popular tri spot, we see so many who only have the IM race on the schedule and wonder why they are overtrained (even though they don’t realize it), cranky, burned out and ready to leave the sport. Tapers are too short, volume too high and they beat the fun out of it. Short races can be so valuable, especially to get that but of speedwork you won’t do one your own. I need to address that…
There are two series of Thurs night sprint tris up here in CT that alternate weeks. Last year I did 7 of those, one open water swim, and two 5ks all within 12 weeks. It was amazing. No one entry fee was more than 40 dollars. So basically all that for the cost of one “branded†event. I prob won’t do that many this year due to family stuff but I should hit at least 6 or 7 of them.
One big thing I see holding back a weekly(ish) tri series is how involved it is for everyone. Weekly bike/running races you can easily ride/run to with just things that you can carry on your person. Swim is a bit more but really just a drawstring bag.
Even just a sprint tri needs the participants to carry much more equipment, and the organizers to set up transition somewhere. A bike/run race can also be in a parking lot/trail/backroads, a tri needs to be by a lake/pool/river, which is usually a tough place to host a bike race.
I think I’m in my personal sweet spot with 5-7 tris a season, including 0 to 2 middle distance events and the rest being non-drafting short course.
Hot take: America has a bigger problem with the “dominant player†and people racing less for more money in part due to the brainwashing the athletes take. As in: “you’re such a hero for finishing this Ironman 70.3, you’re exceptional, what an accomplishment, it was so hardâ€.
You get this sort of messaging in European IM events, too, and I always scratch my head, like are we all 12 years old here to be hearing this nonsense? We’re amateurs having fun, we’re not even fast and finishing a triathlon is not a life-changing event (99% of the time). It’s OK, you can do it plenty of times, it’s not hard and you don’t have to dress it in this whole ideology.
And grassroots events are great, even if they pop the balloon of your ego a bit when the fast local people turn you inside out and leave you in the dirt. But they sure as hell don’t make you feel like this exceptional prince(ss). 😂
I travel for big races but also love doing local races. I think for a lot of people the issue can just be availability of local races. I’m not going somewhere to stay in a hotel to race a sprint, so I’m sticking to anything within maybe an hour drive at most. I have been relatively fortunate to have a few well done local sprint and Olympic distance races but over the last couple of years a few of them have disappeared. Also had Timberman less than 30 minutes away but of course that’s gone now too. I try and do every local race available if possible. They’re a lot of fun and it’s nice to do something that isn’t a massive event. I think availability is a limiter for a lot of people.
5 is my sweet spot. 2 local races in the spring to keep me motivated to ride during the winter, 2 local races in the fall, and 1 scattered throughout the year for me to take a trip with my buddies for a week long of MTB riding capped off with a race.
On the flip side, I think kids in high school cross country and track (in the US) race way too much. They are still developing and growing and they race once a week. Sometimes twice a week. In addition to workouts and speed drills. Seems crazy to me and it’s no wonder so many kids get injured.
If they need to race that frequently, their weekly training schedules don’t take it into account. At least at the schools I’ve seen. Maybe there are some coaches wisely building their overall race season up with the idea to peak at just a couple meets and let most of the others be essentially a part of training with proper easier sessions built around it.
But for adults? There’s only so much time, money and close races available. The hobby part of our hobby is the training and posting about Lionel Sanders.
100% agree with kids racing too much in XC and T&F. I’m the only coach on a text message thread trying to set up the TUSD (our school system has an invite). People want it 3d before a really big invite which is then 4d before regionals. Plus we have the same number of meets as last season in a season that is 1 week shorter.
As for triathletes IMO the overwhelming majority of long course (half/IM) focused adult grossly under race. It’s often pulling teeth to get them to race their local sprint of oly. Those are GREAT training events that have a low cost of recovery and can help develop a high9er) level of fitness. Plus you get to develop OWS skills, transition skills, racing tactics and skills all in an event that can take anywhere from 45min to 2.5h.
I’m helping a pro plan out their rest of the season races and they are oh I’ve got these two races left. Convinced them to do their local oly tri especially since they’ve had a crap year of racing so far with a DNF and bad race. For them it’ll be a perfect rust buster and they can still go ride 4h after the race for a pretty solid training day
The TLDR is you 70.3/IM focused athletes should race about every 3-6 weeks doing mostly sprints and olympics without changing your training the day before or after except for maybe not running the day after.
You HS athletes and XC/T&F parents should tell your coach you want to develop more and race less
Agree. This year I realized I’ve only raced 7 triathlons in the last 4 years. So I’m changing that this year and just did my third race this year, a sprint, this morning. My plan is to race more.
Racing every 3-6 weeks sounds great, and what I’d hoped to do when I first got into the sport (around 2010). I’m in Scottsdale, an area with a ton of triathletes. However, we don’t have that many races within an hour drive. Particularly if you’re not that interested in a pool swim, it really narrows the list down to about 3 races in town, one being Ironman AZ.
Maybe it’s where I am in life, with small kids and a busy job, but at around $85 minimum for a sprint (plus registration fees!), and the possibility of needing a hotel to do more races, it’s really tough to justify racing often. Maybe this is particular to my location because once you leave the Phoenix area, it’s a long way to other towns. It’s a lot easier to frame your year around 1 or 2 big races where you take the vacation days, travel, get a hotel, and race.
I wonder if the solution is to do more single-sport races to work on speed, particularly running, as they are a lot more ubiquitous, and considerably cheaper. Or just be patient for about 14 more years until the kids go off to college!!
A comment in another thread from a couple of weeks ago lead me to wondering about this.
The poster mentioned they had raced 25 triathlons in the 10 years they’ve been racing. My immediate thought was that wasn’t much.
Admittedly, I’m someone who has always enjoyed racing. Triathlon was quite different when I started out in the mid '80s; within 3 years, I had completed 30 races. Even now after nearly 40 years of triathlon, I’ve still managed 4 triathlons this year, scheduled around work commitments on consecutive weekends.
I can’t imagine too many other sports being sustained by its most ardent devotees participating as infrequently as 2 or 3 times a year. Plenty of runners and cyclists compete most weeks and often year round. Those involved in team sports play every week during the season. Tennis players, the same.
So, do we race enough?
Whether that be enough to maintain our own interest and enthusiasm in the sport? Enough to support a satisfactory number of local races? Enough to make friends with those you regularly see at races? Enough to keep the sport affordable and not dominated by one major player?
Do we just expect too much of the sport nowadays? Every race has to be big budget major event. It’s always an “A” race, or at least a critical nutritionally-dialed-in B race in the lead up for our A race seven weeks after. Heaven forbid we risk having a poor race on one of our only two outings this year.
Expense, family and work commitments, race availability and accessibility all factor in.
Would you race more often if you could?
I think once I get back in shape I’ll race locally A LOT. Which would get me to probably 6 or 8 races if I signed up for every sprint or olympic distance in the Phoenix area.
Racing every 3-6 weeks sounds great, and what I’d hoped to do when I first got into the sport (around 2010). I’m in Scottsdale, an area with a ton of triathletes. However, we don’t have that many races within an hour drive. Particularly if you’re not that interested in a pool swim, it really narrows the list down to about 3 races in town, one being Ironman AZ.
A few years ago, we started spending half our year down in AZ (not in The Valley; we are farther north). The other half of our year we still spend in PacNW. From May thru Sept, the PacNW has a pretty active local tri race scene. You could find a half-decent local race on almost any weekend. Given the population size, and that there are lots of active triathletes there, I had expected AZ (especially Phx area) to be similar. Was rather surprised at how sparse the tri event offerings are. As you noted, other than the IM event, there are really only 3 non-pool-swim local races in the Phoenix area (IceMan, CactusMan, and Castle Creek). And, to the best of my knowledge, there are no non-pool-swim events anywhere near Tucson.
That being said, there are still some other events in AZ, though a bit longer than a 1 hour drive from Phx. There are the two different MountainMan events up in Flag in the summer (Lake Mary road is one of my favorite places to ride in the entire state), Deuces Wild over in Show Low, and the race over at Lake Havasu.
I’ve found that doing some of those races, along with an occasional event requiring that dreadful swim in the Anthem community pool, gives me a decent dance card while we are in AZ. I just sprinkle in a few other single sport events, such as Tour de Tucson, Tour de Scottsdale, a couple run events up in Sedona, etc. Helps me stay motivated to train, having some type of event on the horizon on my calendar. Then again, since I’m retired, I probably have a little more flexibility in my schedule!
Shorter races dying out was a trend that started before covid, but the pandemic really seemed to hurt the local race scene/organizers. This leaves a lot of us with just the IM and other destination races where the cost and logistics make it hard to do more than a few a year.
15 years ago I’d probably do 5-6 sprints, 2-3 olys, and 1-2 HIMs in a season. Those shorter, local races are harder to find; so racing volume is way down and lots more training blocks for the longer races.
Way back in the '90’s when I lived in Cairns the event calendar was stacked and between the Cairns Croc’s Tri Club and the Cairns Road Runners we had about 40 weeks a year when you could do an event. We raced all the time. All types of events and all distances and it wasn’t unusual to do 30 local races a year. Same thing when I was spending the northern summers in Penticton. We stacked races back to back all the time.
From memory this was 1999 July to Sept in Penticton…
Mid July: Kelowna Across the Lake swim (2k)
The following Day : Peach Classic Tri (Oly)
The next weekend: Peachland Tri(Sprint)
The next weekend: Ultraman Canada
The next weekend: Rattlesnake Island swim Peachland (7K)
Two weekends later:Ironman Canada
The next weekend: Summerland Tri (Sprint)
Summer is over so fly home to Oz.
.
Now,it is the cost of racing that stops me from entering events.Not just entry fees but hotel rooms.
I was going to enter the Ultra355K Hervey Bay in Aug/ Sept but the entry fee is $1300 plus motels for 7 days.
I can ride my bike 1,600k to Cairns on a bikepacking trip with 9 motel nights and airfares home for less than just the entry fee to that race. I booked the ride to Cairns instead.
I can fly to Thailand and do the 30th anniversary of the Laguna Phuket Tri with 9 night accommodation for less than just the entry fee to ironman West Oz. I booked the trip to Thailand.
I think a lot of pros race too much because they have to to piece together a living. Before Lionel’s injury you actually heard him talking about being more selective with races this year so that he could actually peak for the races he wanted to do well at (could also be some of the guidance of his rumored new coach).
25 races in 10 years could be plenty if they’re a mix of 70.3/140.6 races. Most people in running will do 2 marathons/year. A 70.3 is a similar enough kind of effort. Maybe it’s a little easier on the body and a 140.6 is a little harder. You could do a lot of sprint racing. It does seem like a lot of local races & shorter races are going away. People want to do 1 long distance race to knock it off their bucket list. It’s also very expensive just to do a couple of races/year.
I think the obvious area for improvement is revitalizing local sprint/olympic racers and getting former single sport athletes into triathlon. People will move up to the longer distances. Some will stick with them & then IM will do their best to get people through a single race & find the next person who wants a 1 day mega challenge.
Racing every 3-6 weeks sounds great, and what I’d hoped to do when I first got into the sport (around 2010). I’m in Scottsdale, an area with a ton of triathletes. However, we don’t have that many races within an hour drive. Particularly if you’re not that interested in a pool swim, it really narrows the list down to about 3 races in town, one being Ironman AZ.
Maybe it’s where I am in life, with small kids and a busy job, but at around $85 minimum for a sprint (plus registration fees!), and the possibility of needing a hotel to do more races, it’s really tough to justify racing often. Maybe this is particular to my location because once you leave the Phoenix area, it’s a long way to other towns. It’s a lot easier to frame your year around 1 or 2 big races where you take the vacation days, travel, get a hotel, and race.
I wonder if the solution is to do more single-sport races to work on speed, particularly running, as they are a lot more ubiquitous, and considerably cheaper. Or just be patient for about 14 more years until the kids go off to college!!
I was going to suggest using run races, and TT’s as fill ins. I’d also say go to the pool race swims. It’s still a race, you’re still going to go hard. You have the Picacho Peak TT’s which have both 20 & 40k plus a Merck division (or they used to anyway) and idk if they still do the S. Mtn hill climb. They may also still hve the SwimRun races at TTL which usually were 1k swim/5k run. Plus when I was swimming w/Sun Devils masters you could hit the S/R race & masters getting in ~ 5k each of swimming and running plus your morning workout.