Lifetime Fitness Series

Triathlon Forum
1

I’m surprised at the small amount of attention paid to (or discussion of) Lifetime fitness and their ever expanding tri series they are building… city by city, fairly slowly and deliberately. Sure, maybe they have deeper pockets, but it looks to me that they have a big master plan and are putting it together in “stealth” mode.

Looks a lot like the old Bud Light series (I used to do them) except for Lifetime it is a better fit, i.e., sign up for the race and go swim, bike and run at their gyms right down the road… I hear they are great events too.

I think this is going to be big, if they continue to pursue it. And, no, I do not have any vested interest in posting this. I am just interested in the sport and have been involved in it since the 80’s, so it’s nice to see what appears to be a new Olympic distance series coming back…

This is where they are now:

Minneapolis
New York
Chicago
Los Angeles
Dallas

Where to next?

Atlanta
Miami
Denver
???

2

I’m just hoping you and Lance can have another go at one of these :slight_smile:

Hope you’re well
.

3

The CEO of Lifetime really likes triathlon and they have a pretty experienced and dedicated crew working on the event side of things. It will be interesting to see how Dallas turns out, as that will be their first totally new event (the Minneapolis event is kind of a resurrected one).

4

Bahram Akradi
Bahram Akradi is the main man from Life Time Fitness and he is also behind the creation of the Life Time Fitness Triathon Series, which includes the Life Time Fitness Triathlon, the Nautica New York City Triathlon, the Accenture Chicago Triathlon and the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Triathlon. Bob had a chance to go one-on-one with Bahram Akradi to find out what it is about the sport of triathlon that he loves so much.
taped on 08.06 download show

5

Can you tell me then if my thesis holds true, or not? Is he going to keep building this series?

6

Listen to the recent analyst calls on www.lifetimefitness.com . They are very clear regarding their expansion and growth…

7

Good stuff. He gets it and seems very sincere about it.

8

Just don’t cut him off in the parking lot…

9

small lifetime (mpls) rant here from my humble opinion:
pros:
1-first triathlon I ever did (with team in training), was hooked right away. it is a great event. It will hook u if u do it.
2-gives more exposure to the great tri scene we have here in mpls and it seems like every year there are more and more spectators/competitors
3-showing up race day with the nbc cameras, people like hunter and terrenzo racking their bikes while u rack your own gives u the tingles.
3-big pay day for the pros in our sport.

cons: these are mostly detail oriented but…
1-even though the rumor mill is that the Equalizer is gone, they have made NO mention of axing it.
2-their website has had almost no updates since '06. (same pro roster as last yr, including bios) - I mean it’s a joke that you’d have a huge race and not even update the site (and yes I have emailed them about it but have received no response).
3-still think its on the expensive side of races for what u get (ie they need to understand that uhauls full of ice for bike and run is a GOOD idea)

****OH WAIT! Right before I was going to post this on ST I just double-checked the site, yessir it is June 22nd with the race less than 4 weeks away and they finally revamped/updated the site!

Ok - surprise surprise, NO equalizer (one of the unique things is gone, man I liked it). No Terrenzo (got bad call last year…), too bad - but Craig W is back and hungry! This is my prediction:

With no equalizer, the men will have to go harder from the start, while the women will not be looking over their shoulder for kemper to be running them down, therefore:

Girls: I see Lavelle getting off the bike first, with Emma and maybe Bennett trying to catch her by 2nd loop. Then it’s anyone’s game.

Dudes: yes DKT will crush the bike again but Walton will be here and oh boy will that be a great race to watch. Maybe they both come into T2 together if craig doesn’t put too much swim time on the field. Once they get out on the run Alexander or Kemper might be running them down on the Cedar bridge “hill.”

Women: Bennett, Laura (AUS)Carfrae, Mirinda (AUS)Dibens, Julie (UK)Dillon, Michelle (UK)Fernandes, Vanessa (POR)Haskins, Sarah (USA)Hill, Rina (AUS)Lavelle, Becky (USA)Luxford, Annabel (AUS)McGlone, Samantha (CAN)McLarty, Sara (USA)Shapiro, Margie (USA)Snowsill, Emma (AUS)Sweetland, Kirsten (CAN)Taylor, Pip (AUS)Zeiger, Joanna (USA)

Men: Alexander, Craig (AUS)Bennett, Greg (AUS)Cunningham, Richie (AUS)Docherty, Bevan (NZL)Gemmell, Kris (NZL)Gomez, Javier (ESP)Griffin, Leon (AUS)Hackett, Stephen (AUS)Henning, Rasmus (DEN)Johns, Andrew (GBR)Kemper, Hunter (USA)Ospaly, Filip (CZE)Pais, Bruno (POR)Polikarpenko, Vladymyr (UKR)Rana, Ivan (ESP)Reed, Matt (USA)Robertson, Peter (AUS)Thompson, David (USA)Thompson, Simon (AUS)Tollakson, TJ (USA)Walton, Craig (AUS)Whitfield, Simon (CAN)

10

Much smaller total purse (no surprise given the new Dallas Championship race) and no NBC this year either…