The Long Mile and Adult League Stanley Cups

Good afternoon!

"What's this," you ask?  "Another post?"

Indeed.  It's not a day off, just waiting to go to the pool in a little while.  I know, you're excited.  I'm excited too.  News time.

I managed to get up before Kayla had to leave (unbelievably) and eat some food to fuel the morning's pre-work run.  I knew that I would only have about 45 minutes max, so I decided to get in a speed workout on the track.  I have a 5k in about two weeks or so, so I decided that it would be a good idea to see what some mile times on the track would be.  I haven't done speedwork really for the run since last fall, so I believe it may be time.

I ran the mile to CMU's nice outdoor track at a leisurely pace.  As I was making my way around the back stretch, getting ready to wind it up for a mile, who do I see but my long lost triathlete friend, Steph Stambaugh.  She's been busy owning the women's B class in the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference this spring, preparing herself to own a lot of races again this summer.  We chatted.  It was good.  Had to work later so I was on a deadline.  Time for a mile.

The first lap was pretty decent, I guess.  just under 80 seconds.  I know.  Don't laugh.  Slowed a few seconds each lap and ended up at 5:28.  Can you believe the "under four minute" crowd?  Me either.  I'm okay with it for a few reasons.

a.)  Ummm...not a mile runner.  Obviously.  Of the miniscule speed work that I've done on the track, I've never really recorded mile times.  Need to start somewhere, I guess.

b.)  I was doing an entire workout that a mile TT was just a part of, so I definitely didn't give it everything.

c.)  I didn't give it everything because I don't really know how to run a mile regarding pace.

d.)  I think I can still expect to run reasonably faster in a race because of motivation, adrenaline, tapering and other runners.  This run was pretty much lacking motivation.

It's nice to have a  more clear picture of what sort of racing I'm going to be targeting this year.  Last year, I began still thinking the 70.3 distance was for me, but later had the revelation that I'm better suited for Olympic distance races.  At that point, it wasn't really possible to alter my training to drastically affect my races.  This spring, I've been more okay with just putting in thirty or thirty-five miles (although that's my bare minimum) because I know I'm racing a shorter distance.  This does mean, however, that I am trying to get more sessions in per week to even out the mileage.  As the quote goes, cycling is a blue-collar sport; you need to put in the work.  It's so much easier to have a double workout day when I only have a 1.5 or  2 hour ride to do if I work in the evening.  Last year, I would try to get in 45 or 50 and that would pretty much kill the day.  No running or swimming, both of which I need to be doing a lot more of.

Regarding running it's nice to know because I can now focus a lot more on speed work.  I probably would have benefited from it just as well racing 70.3s, but I seem to be more motivated to do it because I feel that it will have a more tangible result.  I'd love nothing more than to be able to knock off a few minutes from my 10k by the end of the season.  I'd like to get in one of these session every week, so I'll keep you posted.  I'll be interested to see what kind of improvements I can make with my mile splits from week to week.

Anyway, I ended the workout today with a few miles of sprint sides/jog corners before running back home in time to shower and head to work.  5.35 miles, 32:30 something, 6:07/mile average.  Not too shabby including the run there and the run back.

Well, should be headed to the Y for a swim right now, but the rain has picked up again.  Forgot the rain vest.  Idiot.  My means of getting there is my bike so if it doesn't stop within the hour, I'll be ticked.  In the meantime, I'll make like an old man and work the crossword.

P.S. congrats to my oldest brother, Matt, who scored the game-winning goal to win the "Stanley Cup" of his adult hockey league.  Go, bro!

Crashes Suck

Happy Monday, Everyone in Blogland!

I would say this is my third off-day post in a row, but that would be lying.  Unfortunately, I had a bit of  crash on Thursday the 19th.  Happy 25, right?  I had  a good run the next day, despite being bruised and my upper body being very sore and achy.  Saturday, however, seemed like a good day to rest up so that's indeed what happened.

I went to bed Saturday night with the intent of biking and maybe swimming the next day, but my right knee (the one I didn't fall on, curiously enough) was super-sore.  It was starting to look bruised.  I ran that day too and it wasn't too bad, but I can still really feel it today.  I hope it's just a product of it being sore.

Regarding the important stuff, my bike is okay.  There is a bit of scuff on the left side of my base bar, but it doesn't look like there was any structural damage.  I still rode about 25 miles after the crash that day and rode like I normally do, so I think everything is fine.  Other than that, I completely shredded one of the booties I was wearing so they went in the trash.

More than anything, though, I'm mad that the second half of last week completely sucked regarding training.  I couldn't really swim because my ribs were pretty sore for two days or so.  I tried to do some stretch cords yesterday, but the strap that goes around your hand rests right on the bruises on my knuckles and hurts a lot to pull.  So this officially sucks.

So hopefully I'll get a little bit better today.  My body definitely feels good enough to swim so I know I'll be doing that tomorrow.  I'd like to bike provided that my knee improves.  I rode my fixed-gear to  my house from Kayla's this morning and it didn't feel too good.  I can tell that when I'm actually riding and putting a lot of pressure on the pedals, it's going to hurt almost enough to make me stop.  The pain wasn't too bad running on Sunday, so maybe, if I can't bike, I'll go for another run.

I hate being off of my bike and really want to put in some big mileage for a couple of weeks before the season really kicks off.  However, it's sort of a good thing because it's getting me to run a lot more, which I have been massively neglecting since the post-marathon lull and winter.

That's about it for me today.  No rant, I know.  

Thinking about getting a Renn disc.  Hmmm.

Bye!

Una Macchina and Love/Hate Part 2.

Okay, I'm taking an off-day on a Monday this week.  My legs still feel pretty beat after yesterday's long-ish bike ride.  Only 50 miles, but it's the first time of the new year that I've gone up to 50 so far.  That pales in comparison to the 70-80 I crank out on a Sunday once the season gets rolling, but it's only the middle of March.  Not to mention that all of my other rides that have been over 40 have been with someone else so there was either some working together going on or some slower paces.  Yesterday was by myself so I had to deal with my usual "go hard all the time" mentality.  I'm still recovering.

Did anyone notice that I'm writing for my second consecutive week on the off-day?  Excited.

So the good news first.

Kayla and I are getting a car!  That's nearly as exciting as my two-week blog streak.  It's an '02 Nissan Altima from a family member of Kayla.  Among other things, this means that I'll be able to fill out the schedule portion of the blog page soon as I register for races.  I'll still pretty much be doing most of my racing in the Pennsylvania/Ohio/West Virginia area, but I'll no longer have to rely on anyone else to get to races.

The not so good news.

I suppose it's not really bad news, but having to buy the car results in me not being able to entertain the possibility of buying a disc wheel for the season.  I'm greatly lamenting that fact, but having a car is a necessity for racing and a disc wheel isn't.  Now I just have to drop by Dirty Harry's and have my rear Flash Point hub serviced and I'll be rolling with them again.  I can't believe this will be my third year racing with them.  It seems like only last year that I started all this biking stuff.

It's an unfortunate reality that, if I want to get a pro license, I need a car.  A disc wheel might help if the only thing keeping me from getting one is an extra minute in my bike split, but something tells me that the need to go to bigger races is more important than that.

Love/Hate Part 2.

So last week I talked about the laughable practices of WTC's management of the Ironman brand including the lack of money in the sport and the direction in which it is headed. 

This week, I'll extend the notion that WTC has a responsibility to the entire sport (not just the Ironman distance) because, as I said before, the popularity of all distances of triathlon in America lives and dies by the popularity of Ironman.  I will do this by talking about:

The Average Ironman Athlete

I realize that by somewhat ripping on the average age-grouper, I'm opening a huge can of worms.  Afterall, isn't it the entry fees of these age-groupers that ultimately pay the prize purse for the pros?  Well, yes, but the prize purse has stayed the same or gone down for the past ten or fifteen years while the age-group field and the entry fees have gone up, so someone is just plain mismanaging the money.  Though, I'm confused as to how cycling can afford to pay riders at least a living wage for even the most average domestic pro and there is no age-group base in the sport.  There are ranks of pros just like baseball or hockey and that's it.  WTC has turned their business into a solely-for-profit venture by exploiting the type and class of people who can afford to pursue the sport on a recreational basis, thereby ignoring their inherent responsibility to the rest of the sport.  This is made evident by the most reviled division of an Ironman race:  The CEO challenge.  

Seriously?  The CEO challenge?  Fifty-year-old CEOs are honestly so bored with their time and money that they have to have a competition with other bored CEOs to see who can get into the best shape?  Jokes.  

I raced at the inaugural edition of the Providence 70.3 in Rhode Island last summer.  In our race packets was a program about the race and about Ironman.  It included a profile of "The Average Ironman Athlete" complete with age, weight, IM times and even average income, which turned out to be $160,000 per year.  Does anyone realistically think that if the average income was $50,000 per year, the entry fee for Ironman races would still be $500?  It's probably the same reason that bikes cost $5,000 and wheels cost $2,000.  There's a bit of a vibe in this sport that, no matter the finishing time, he with the newest, most expensive gear wins.  I've never been a class warrior, but if you think that money doesn't make some things a lot easier, you're kidding yourself.

And then there is the coverage of Ironman races, particularly the world championships in Kona, that focuses on the sixty-year-old  mom with five kids who still finds the time to train, the guy with cancer who is competing in an Ironman as one of his lifelong wishes and the guy who had both legs blown off in Iraq or Afghanistan and is still doing it.  First of all, let me make it clear that these people are insane examples of time management and heartbreaking courage to prove that anything is possible no matter the hand you're dealt.  They deserve the attention they get because they show anyone watching at home what is possible.  But there is such emphasis on these stories that the fact that triathlon is a legit sport with legit pros is lost on the general public.  It is no wonder that there are so many people who get into this sport to climb their Everest and prove to themselves that they can do it; that is image of the sport that is marketed to them.  To them, that is what the sport is for.

It is true that this sport is so much more popular in other countries like Germany, Australia, New Zealand or Portugal than it is in the United States, but as is the case with other things, the U.S. has the influence to direct the world's attention one way or another if for no other reason than its sheer size.  Right now, it is directing attention to the inspirational stories of the common person achieving an Ironman finish.

I believe it is also true that the athlete base in other countries is so much more competitive as well because of how they conduct their races.  If  you race in another country, there are often only three awards given out; first place, second place and third place.  Maybe this goes down to five, but that's the most.  If you race in the U.S., awards go to the top three or top five overall, the top three in each age group, the top three clydesdales, the top three athenas, the top three CEOs and the top three of whatever else the organization has come up with to make people feel better about themselves for completing a sprint race. 

Other countries focus a lot more on Olympic races that they hope would ultimately benefit the country itself in the Olympics.  Whether you think that is right or wrong is beside the point.  They have comprehensive development programs that harvest talent at a young age.  Vanessa Fernandez (Portugal) for instance is something insane like 20-years-old and wins most world cup races she enters.  You can bet she was picked out by her country's triathlon federation years ago and is given everything she needs to become a better athlete.  There are no part-time jobs involved to make ends meet like there are for developing Olympic athletes in the States.  For other countries, triathlon is a sport; here it is a spectacle.

But I digress.  If this post gets much longer, I might fall asleep! 

Training is going well.  I'm trying to pick up my running again and work in more distance on the swim.  My first race is potentially in about six weeks so I need to get things in gear.  Hopefully I'll update further next day off.

On a side note, Wednesday is my birthday!  Feel free to leave a birthday wish comment or to find out where to send disc wheels as gifts :-)

Cheers!

Tuesdays Mean Off-Days. My Love/Hate Relationship with Triathlon (Part 1).

Not all the time, I guess, but it seems like the past couple weeks, my off-day has fallen on Tuesday.  Here's a novel idea:  

"Zach, maybe you should do a post every off-day!"

"Hmm...I don't know, it sounds pretty ambitious."

"Oh, come on.  What else is this blog for?"

"Entertaining me while I drink coffee and wait for work to start.  It makes me feel productive when I am, in fact, doing absolutely nothing at all."

"That was bleak."

"Do you think we should end this before people stop reading?"

"You mean they started?" 

Okay, but seriously, from now on, off-day is now national blog post day.  Hopefully you won't see more than one per week.

There have been many issues regarding the sport of triathlon (that I love so much) that have been bothering me to no end.  They unfortunately permeate the entire culture of the sport it seems, so I decided to have a bit of rant.  Bear with me.   I think a lot of these comments have value (although some may not, aside from me getting it off of my chest) regarding the current state of the sport.  Surely there are things inherent in the sport that prevent its popularity from growing to such a level that it becomes a household sport or even to the level of cycling.  Then there are the myriad things that some of the governing bodies are doing to shoot the sport in the foot.  But I'll start with the things we can't change.

1.)  There is not much money in the sport because:

Triathlon is like cycling and distance running in respect to its viewership.  How much does it cost to stand on the side of L'alpe d'huez and watch the Tour de France roll by?  How much does it cost to stand on the side of the road and watch the best runners in the world fight it out down the finishing stretch of the Boston Marathon?  How much does it cost to stand on the Queen K in Hawaii and see Normann Stadler or Craig Alexander fly past?  The answer to all of these questions is, of course, nothing at all save for the personal expense of getting yourself to these locations.

How much is the average ticket to a game at Yankee Stadium?  There are 162 games a year in baseball; how many of those are at home?  You don't have to do the math to realize that an unspeakable amount of money is being spent on tickets and the merchandise sold at the game.  Also, how much is spent by companies to air a commercial during one of these games?  A lot.  Compare that to the price of airing a commercial on the versus network during the Tour.  Surely it costs a lot of money to be a major sponsor or host an departure/arrival at the Tour or the Giro, but the advertising opportunities during the three weeks of Tour de France pales in comparison to the 162 games of baseball per year for a team.  And these pro teams have to support riders for a full season; a living salary for the year, not just for three weeks during its most well-known event.  

It sure is odd though, how a sport like cycling struggles to even get a foothold in America.  Lance Armstrong won 7 Tours de France.  It took a few of them for people to start to take notice.  In Spain or Italy, if a rider wins a stage of the Tour even, they go home as national heroes.  At the turn of the 20th century, cycling dominated even here in the U.S. with riders earning far more than baseball players ever dreamed.  Every year, there are over 2 billion viewers of the Tour!  That's over a quarter of everyone on earth.  45.85 million people watched the Super Bowl, arguably the biggest sporting event in America, this past year.  That means the Tour had over 40 times more viewers than the Super Bowl!  Interesting when you consider that the average Football player makes about that many times more than the average cyclist.  I realize I've been using cycling here in an article about triathlon, but it serves a point because cycling even is far more lucrative than triathlon.

To me, these are staggering numbers.  But, as I said before, they are inherent qualities in the sport that won't begin to change unless the sport gets a considerably larger slice of the popularity pie here than it currently does.  Sure Armstrong has come back to cycling this year and that is great for the sport.  However, there is currently no American cyclist waiting in the wings to take over his reign and if winning 7 Tours in a row doesn't make this sport more popular here than it has, good luck finding something that will.  Again, I use cycling because I feel like cycling and triathlon are attached at the hip in a way.  The more popular cycling gets, the more popular triathlon will get just because of the involvement of a bike.

Now for the stuff that we can change:

1.)  This sport makes no money because:

If I tell someone I am a triathlete, the first question they ask usually is, "oh, so you do that Ironman thing?"  This illustrates the point that Ironman is basically what puts the sport on the map in America so the popularity of triathlon here lives and dies by the popularity of Ironman.  It does not matter that Olympic distance triathletes make much much more than Ironman triathletes because people here do not pay attention to Olympic distance triathlons.  I'd be willing to wager most people don't know that there is more than one distance to the sport.  This would be fine if it weren't for the company that puts on nearly every Ironman race in the world and has rights to the Ironman name and brand.  That company would be the World Triathlon Corporation (WTC).  

They are responsible for setting up the prize purse structure at these events, which are laughable.  It was recently announced that the award for the winner of Ironman Florida would get $8,500.  Believe it or not, that is a decrease since last year despite the fact that the costs for entering the event have gone up, as well as the number of entrants.  This money is going somewhere and it isn't to the pros.  The prize purses for these events, save for the Ironman Championships in Kona, have not gone up in fifteen or twenty years.

Typically, a top professional triathlete will either get an appearance fee from the race director or at least a free entry.  This allows the promotor to use this person's name in the advertisements to get more people out to the event.  WTC has now limited the amount of free entries to just a handful.  That means if you're a pro and you finish in 6th place in an Ironman (which is an incredible feat in itself), you would not only get nothing, you would be out the money that you paid to enter plus the travel and lodging for the event assuming you are not one of the lucky few (and I mean few) to get a free entry.

Throw in the fact that even the most veteran, hardened pros can only handle doing maybe three Ironman races in a year, where do they get their money?  Even if they win all three, they get maybe $25,000.  Good luck with that.

WTC, allow me to look into the crystal ball to tell you what this will do to the future of Ironman, and subsequently, the sport.

1.)  Professionals will stop racing your events because they cannot make any money in them.  They will either move away from the sport entirely, or switch to Olympic distance if they are fast enough.  

2.)  Young, up and coming triathletes will not even entertain the idea of becoming an Ironman-focused triathlete while they still have a chance to develop a lot of speed and race Olympic distance where they can actually make money.

3.)  People who are racing Ironman as amateurs with hopes of becoming a pro will stop because, once again, they will not be able to make any money.

4.)  And now to the demographic that makes up 95% of people racing Ironman, the age-groupers.  I'm willing to bet that there is a very large percentage of those people who will race one Ironman and be out of the sport.  An Ironman is an insane challenge for the everyday person, just like climbing Everest or running an Ultramarathon.  People do it so they have a goal and can say that they did it.

So after your pros, serious amateurs and most of your age-group base has left, not to mention preventing people from getting into the distance in the first place, who is left racing your races?

You have a good business model for making a good profit over some time.  Maybe a decade, maybe longer.  But your model for supporting a sport and its athletes is a joke.

Well, that's all for the money and popularity aspects of the sport and I think this post has grown to be quite long enough.  Next post I will tackle the rest of my love/hate relationship with triathlon.

Thanks for reading.  Hope it's getting warmer wherever you are like it is in Pittsburgh!

Cheers.