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Perspective

Kona: A Place, a People and a Heavy Metal Event

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

To mark the recent 40th Anniversary of the IIonman World Triathlon Championship in Kona, Hawaii, I wanted to offer a survey of ideas and thoughts about the event I’ve penned over the past decades. But when I went through old files, most of the what I’d written was about the town of Kona and its amazing people. The reconstituted essay below first appeared in my book, Finding Triathlon: How Endurance Sports Explains the World (Hatherleigh, 2015).

In Search of Style

Thursday, February 8, 2018

Looking just fine. 2016 USA Olympian Ben Kanue is the epitome of contemporary tri-style -- and the result of four decades of multisport technological evolution, from eyeware to nutrition to everything in between, -- Mike Plant photo 

"When the will and the imagination are in conflict, it is always the imagination that wins" -- Emile Coue'
 

Collector's Edition -- Two Decades of TriMag

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Gale Bernhardt and part of her collection of Triathlete magazines. The magazines (not Gale) are looking for a good home.

In my home office closest, gathering dust and the fur of my support staff, sits 23 years’ worth of Triathlete Magazines, 1987 to 2009. Recent life events had me staring at the carefully dated boxes. What made me start keeping the magazines and why are they still in my house?

Aging Up

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

My recent return to Xterra, and in some strange way, competition itself, was thwarted by the weather. But that sounds lame. Shit happens. After four days of near constant rain, the great majority of the bike and run course were mired in two or three inches of icy clay; that sticky earth of which bowls and mugs are shaped and fired. Great for a set of dishes when glazed but a challenging surface on which to run or push a bike up a steep slope as the red dirt collects, dries, and immobilizes movable parts.

Passing Lane

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Dale Basescue 

1950’s fitness guru, Jack Lalanne, argued wrongly that “I can’t die; it will ruin my reputation.” The American icon lasted 96 years and three months before he passed quietly in January of 2011. At the root of any discussion on the cultural history of health and fitness, you will still find the name, Jack Lalanne. Increasingly, however, Jack Lalanne’s nine and one-half decade tenure stands anomalous to a troubling trend of athletes dying before their time.  

Pride To Fill The World - Rediscovering the Sport of Triathlon

Tuesday, September 1, 2015

On the last weekend of August, 2015, like thousands of other men and women across the globe, young and old, rich and poor, in all shapes, sizes and colors, across the continuum  of fitness from barely there to fiercely (and for most, naively so) competitive,  my 23-year old daughter McKenna finished her first triathlon. It was a lowly sprint-distance race held on a somewhat awkward course in Oakland, California. The finish line announcer didn’t call her name. There was not, in fact, a finish line announcer.

Tri Bum

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

If you offer that you are a triathlete, you are often greeted with awe, admiration, and support. It wasn't always that way. The modern triathlete, whether realized or not, undertake their quest cloaked in the safety of fashionability, a luxury afforded them by those who came before: The Tri Bums. They were the burgeoning sport's Quixotes and Mittys that today make completing an Ironman and hearing Mike Reilly's legendary call a bucket-list staple for athletes everywhere.

The Big Fifth -- A Look Back at Mike Pigg in His Prime

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

We thought our readers would enjoy this look back at Mike Pigg by Scott Tinley, on the occasion of Mike's well-deserved induction into the USAT Hall of Fame. -- Ed 

MIKE PIGG TRAINED HARD. Where Molina did mega-miles and Dave Scott applied NorCal mystique and Mark Allen used a focused periodization, Pigg suffered. In the annals of raw, gut-level, in-your-face work, Pigg stands atop the pinnacle of journeyman efforts. 

Tri Geek

Monday, March 3, 2014

Jay Larson racing at the Carlsbad 5000.  And yes, that's Mark Allen on his shoulder. 

When I tell people I was a triathlete back in the mid-to-late 1980's, they always throw me in with true pioneers like Tinley, Moss, Warren, etc. I don't belong there, I was part of the next wave—I was what they spawned. Though ignominious, I did have an important contribution to the covered wagon era...I was first generation Tri Geek!—the first seduced—junkies, lusting for inclusion to a sexy, shiny new sport. However painful to observe, we were born of the oh-so-true, "...sincerest form of flattery" maxim. Tri Geek, along with "poser" and "wannabe," is stamped into the sport's lexicon.

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