If you’re lucky, you can see them out running sometimes—the father, blond, tall, lean and tan, taking long, light strides and looking nothing like his 51 years; and the daughter, smaller, her multicolored hair tied back in a ponytail, gliding along beside him.

They are just two members of the Waddel family of Seaside, California, and chances are good that you’ve seen one or more of them in the last couple of years. They’ve been everywhere: last year, they went to Long Course Worlds in Sater and to Montreal for the Olympic distance Worlds. They sent one representative to Perth this year. They’ll be at Long Course Worlds again this year, in Nice. In Nice, as it was in Sater, it will be the mother-daughter-father act. That’s right, all three.

Of course, you’ve heard about what they did at Wildflower this year, right? No? Oh, OK. Well, let’s start at the beginning.

The patriarch of the family is Les Waddel. He was born on the Monterey Peninsula, attended local schools, then went to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, earning a degree in physical education. There he met and later married his wife, Noelle.

After a few years of living in the Southland, they returned home to the Monterey Peninsula.

They had two children, Alexis and Erin. Alexis is now 25; Erin is 22. Alexis has dreams of winning Ironman Hawaii and representing the U.S. in the 2004 Olympics. Erin has returned to triathlon this year and notched a nice finish in the Olympic race at Wildflower that left her primed to try a Waddel trademark next year…a double. (She plans to race the mountain bike race on Saturday, then the Olympic race on Sunday. Alexis and her dad have, for the last couple of years, done the long course on Saturday and the Olympic race on Sunday. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

Les started in triathlon in the early ’80s in the way many did…he read about the Ironman in Sports Illustrated in 1979 and thought it was a nutty idea. (Actually, he thought, "I can do the swim, I can do the bike…but run 26 miles? That’s ridiculous.")
Then, the next year, he was out on a bike ride with a guy who’d just returned from the race. He thought, "Well, if he can do it, I can do it." He walked into the local running store and had this conversation with the store’s owner, an accomplished ultrarunner and now a local podiatrist, Bobby Yee: "I asked how I could run a marathon. He asked, ‘How long have you been running?’ I said, ‘I haven’t.’"

The next year, in 1981, he was out of the water in 12th place; moved up to fifth on the bike only to be passed in the final mile by his brother, Pat, who had started him on his bike racing career; and then moved up to fourth place by the sixth mile of the run, re-passing his brother in the process. But this was 1981, recall, and lots of folks were still figuring out the nutritional aspects of being a man or woman in motion, in extreme heat and humidity, for hour upon hour. So this is what happened to Les: "At 12 miles I started hallucinating and wandering around and throwing up. At 16 miles, I laid down." He didn’t finish.

He returned in 1982, twice, and again in 1983. This time Noelle was competing, too. She had grown weary of being the support crew and wanted to give the race a go herself.

"Noelle got frustrated waiting for me and said, ‘The heck with this, I’m coming back to race it.’" They both finished that year, Noelle about an hour behind Les, at just under 13 hours.

It should surprise no one that Alexis has this to say about that race: "I’ve wanted to do Ironman since I was 12 years old. I’m going to go and win that damn race." She smiles when she says that.

In 1985 and 1986 Les raced as a professional, notching wins at the Cape May Triathlon and Escape from Alcatraz. He wanted to complete 52 races in ’85, so had to double up on a few weekends. It was July, he thinks, when he raced eight times and won his age group every single time. He also completed the old London-Paris team triathlon, which included a crossing of the English Channel on one day.

"It was fun stuff," Les says. "If I could’ve made even a meager living, I would’ve done that for the rest of my life," he says. Financial considerations made him give up his professional status in ’86.

Their parents’ training had a profound impact on their daughters, too, who would help out as support crew on long rides, handing out water bottles at the top of climbs, for example, after friends would drive them to the summit. "We thought that was awesome," Alexis says.

When their parents would run 10Ks, Alexis and Erin would run the one-mile kids’ races. Alexis, being a couple of years older than Erin, would frequently win. They also entered any sprint triathlons their parents could find.

Then came the crash, in 1989, two days after Wildflower. Les and Noelle were on a recovery ride when he was struck from behind by a van going 50 mph. He remembers nothing but waking up five days later in a hospital bed. He had sustained a fractured vertebra and lost a couple of discs in his back. His pelvis was split in half, a two-inch gap held together by a metal plate. He also suffered internal damage and had surgery to repair his liver, colon and spleen.

He was back on his bike two months later, having lost 15 pounds from a body that carried only 7 percent body fat anyway. He was 40 and had signed up to race in an elite master’s series with Noelle earlier that year.

At the hospital, he remembers his first visit from his wife: "As soon as Noelle was allowed to come in, it was kinda dark in there, and she came in next to the bed, and she said, ‘Les, you know what to do. You start healing yourself right now.’…. So I did."

He frightened his daughters a couple of days later mumbling something about blackbirds. Later, when they asked him about it, he told them the only thing it could’ve been was a line from a Beatles song, "Blackbird": "Take these broken wings and learn to fly." He had started healing himself.

The crash changed everybody. Les decided he wanted to close the running store he owned and focus on a profession that would help others recover from injury or get fit and stay fit. He went to school to learn chiropractic medicine, and now runs his own practice. Noelle, impressed by the medical care Les received during his two weeks in the hospital, went to nursing school.

A year later, Les returned to Wildflower and took fifth in his age group in the Olympic race.

He still rides the white Kestrel that is covered with get-well wishes.

You would think his older daughter would show him some respect after all that—and she does. But these days, she likes almost nothing better than beating him.

Alexis went to Monterey High School, then graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in kinesiology. At San Diego, she ran cross-country on a scholarship, captained the team, and took up bike racing. That was also when she started racing triathlons more seriously.

"1996 was the first real season after sporadically doing them since I was 9," she says.
It was at Nationals in 1997 that she first beat her dad in total time, but the first time she beat him out of the water was in Sweden, last year. And that was the biggest deal, because Les has always been a fast swimmer. In college, he clocked a 49.9 in the 100 free and competed in the state championships.

The family had just finished up Long-Course Worlds, had ridden 200 miles in a week from Sater to Karlstad and was racing in the Nordic Championships, an Olympic distance race. It was a mass start race, a first for everybody. Two loops.

"The first loop, Dad’s in front of me, and I’m like, ‘He’s going kind of slow.’" So she passed him in the second loop and Dad fell in behind her, following the fast, oddly familiar feet.

Alexis: "He was drafting off me."

She exited the water in fourth overall. "He caught me on the bike," she says. "The 10K run was an out and back. Before the turnaround, I passed him up again. I beat him!" Of course, she didn’t just beat her dad—she beat all the women, too.

Now, Alexis says, the race is on for her to see how far away she can get from her dad, who is also her coach.

"She spanked Dad at Wildflower," Erin says, smiling. Is it time to tell about that? OK.

At Wildflower this year, Alexis finished the long course in 5:01, taking more than 20 minutes off her time from 1999. She won her age group and was the first overall amateur woman. Had she raced pro, her time would have been good enough for ninth place. This was after a sixth place in her age group at Worlds in Perth a week earlier.

The next day at Wildflower, she raced the Olympic race, finishing first in her age group and sixth overall in a time of 2:25, 11 minutes better than her time in 1999.

Noelle raced the long course, finishing in 7:01, while Erin did the Olympic race.

And Dad? He finished the long course in 5:20, good for second in his age group. The Olympic race was much the same—second in his age group with a time of 2:35. Although Alexis beat him, he’s content, he says. "I bettered my time from last year!"

So now, the family continues to plan their trip to Nice, which will be accompanied by a nice, long bike tour of the countryside. They’re already thinking about Long Course Worlds in 2001, in Denmark. Noelle wants to take a month and tour around by bicycle. Les is plotting a ‘round-the-world bicycle trip he and Noelle would like to take someday soon. Erin’s going to keep training and racing.

And Alexis plans to turn pro this year.

"I wouldn’t be doing this sport if it wasn’t for them," she says of her parents. "They’re very inspirational, and motivational, and supportive."

In Perth this year, her Australian friends all wanted to know where her dad was. "He’s just like one of the kids," she says. "They think it’s totally awesome, the support we give each other."

And Les gets a lot from the time he spends with Alexis, too.

"It helps to inspire me, keep me going, and it keeps me pushing. I can’t keep up, but she keeps me going."