Loads of talk here about being an ironman and going long and the holy grail of tri being Kona, but where’s the talk about going short?
Some of the first images I saw of triathlon was reading about Brad Beven and company hammering away at the BRUTAL Formula 1 series. That was what I wanted to do! Olympic distance in reverse order? 500m swim 10kbike and 2krun three times through? (or something like that) half an oly race, 20minutes rest, top 15 go on to race the other half… WHAT A COOL CONCEPT! all the hawaii talk got me thinking.
I say, where’s the respect for the hard charging short course racers? What’s harder, surviving a 12 hour ironman, or running a sub 31 10k on the back of an oly race? Again, what is harder, train 15 hours a week and get through an ironman or even GETTING to 15 hours a week of run training and cutting your 10k PR by 30-40%.
BRING BACK FORMULA 1!!!
And while we’re here, I’d just like to point out that I am going to do my first IM race next year but… I have to say, I have more respect for a racer who trains harder in the limited time they have and takes 20 minutes of their local sprint race PR, than the 15hour training week ironman who shuffles through a 12 hour day. Good on ya for doing something, and I don’t want to take anything away form your goals and all, but I personally think doing something BETTER not just finishing something is a far harder goal. (that may change when I tackle the distance, but I dont think so)
Their’s racing, doing an event (participating or whatever you want to call it) and just surviving, lets not confuse the three. They all have their place, they’re all great things and I’m not knocking one or another, just pointing it out.
I have to admit I have about 90 videos of the F1 series at home and I do Turbo sessions watching them. By the time I get thru them all plus the Ironman videos I have forgotten who wins them.
Nothing better than Brad Beven smashing them all up. I still think the best series was when Greg Welch was going head to head with Beven and Miles Stewart.
I recall Jackie Fairweather (Gallagher) speaking in Colorado Springs. She credited the Formula 1 Series as one of the best tools for developing their future talent. Mainly due to the development of speed and the fact that up and coming Juniors could race alongside the best in the world because the distances were short enough. I think it eventually died due to lack of sponsorship dollars.
Wow, that would be amazing if you could put them up on Youtube. I remember seeing highlights on the old Triathlon World or whatever it was called shows - great races. I’d love to have those videos available to show my Junior athletes.
I remember watching it in Oceanside around '98 or '99. The format for that race was roughly a 300m ocean swim (with a decent swell that day), 10K bike and 3K run…all done 3x as 3 separate races. The next race started 20 minutes after the first finisher of the previous race. Finally, they changed the order of the events for each race (SBR then BSR then RBS). It was a really great spectator’s event, and looked too fun. Except for that wreck that I think involved Pigg and Welch. I would sign up for one of these the moment I got the race application.
You would’t happen to feel like making copies of those tapes would you? I’d pay too! that would be friggin SWEET.
I remember the race that was short and then the order was switched. I think in one of those Chris McCormack was WAY back on the last swim and was totally out of it. Then he jsut took a strange line, caught a wave and bodysurfed in for the win. Wicked sweet!
What do you think it would take to get some of those races back?
I think you are reaching the wrong crowd here…but I agree with you. I’m basically retired from racing and I never did anything over an Olympic distance. Good god I loved to do short sprints, something on the order of 400m swim, 10 mile bike, 3 mile run. I used to do hard track intervals all summer to get that run split down, real fast. It was so much fun. Totally balls out as fast as you can go for 50 minutes or something like that. I don’t regret for a minute that I never did an IM.
Is there someplace where sprint tri fans hang out? This crowd is always so Ironman-centric.
There were / still are I believe some F1 duathlons here in DFW. There was one at Texas Motor Speedway biking around the ring road outside the track. 2 mile run, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run. Pretty fun race Found I could run 6 miles faster that way than I could standalone
Before I got into tri I was in surf lifesaving and whilst in Oz for the worlds in '02 I saw F1 racing on TV. I’ve always wnated to have a go at a format like that. I guess the new ITU world sprint champs is my way of having some of that rapid panic race feel.
Agree. After years of IM racing, I’m yearning for the short stuff again. HFP Racing, who is organizing the new One O One series, used to do a formula one type format at their series championship race.
There is a such a race to begin the DATTT racing weekend (300 meter swim, 4 mile bike, 1 mile run). I’m considering just doing that first race on Friday evening in 2008, then retiring for the weekend.
Found I could run 6 miles faster that way than I could standalone