Lifestyle

More important is to identify reasons for failure. If you're failing and you can't identify why, it's likely you'll continue in that pattern, right?

And so I thought I'd ask around, and see what my colleagues thought were the reasons people leave triathlon.

What? People leave triathlon?

Why, yes they do. Let's face it, our sport is young, but it's not that young. It's been around for 25 years. If you were to take a poll, however, and ask people how long they've been triathletes, you'd probably discover a running average of about 2.5 - 3 years of service. This means a lot of people moved on to something else.

It's my belief that many of them eventually come back, and this is one of the reasons why our sport has been growing over the past three or four years. Prodigal sons and daughters have returned. But that doesn't erase the fact that they left in the first place. Why do they leave?

l've asked that question to quite a few people who're in a position to know. These are people who see triathletes come and go from the vantage of a front-row seat. Certainly there's more than one answer, but earlier this year I had a conversation with the president of a large, established triathlon club, and I think he hit the nail on the head (which I'll get to).

As for me, triathlon has been my way of life, even when I stopped racing for years at a time, gained upwards of 40 pounds and wasn't training at all. In my mind I was always a triathlete, and my bike was always hanging in the garage waiting for me. I remember the day I took it down off the rafters in 1998, where it had been, pretty-much untouched, since 1989.

That's when I began a long road back, and this is my first season as a triathlete in 14 years (I'd done three multisport races in that 14-year span, and I didn't race at all for a decade straight).

In my "comeback" I realized how much I'd missed practicing triathlon, and how grateful I was to have it back in my life. In my second life as a triathlete I have hopes, but no expectations. I know what I think I can do, but I won't feel like I've failed if I never reach my ultimate performance goals.

Which leads me (the long way 'round) to my point. Our sport is too goal-oriented. We not only have a lot of "climbers" in our sport, we attract them, and we feed them. If our sport was a female, she wouldn't be the girl you'd want to marry. She'd be a pin-up. Our sport is marketed to be a notch in one's belt.

It starts as a carrot to get one into shape: "I'll set myself the goal of doing a triathlon — that ought to help me get the fat off." Then it's to do an Olympic Distance race. Then a half. And then, of course, an Ironman. Then it's qualifying for Kona. Then it's doing Kona. What then? What's left?

That's the life-cycle of a climber. At least in our sport. After the Ironman, what? Climb the Seven Summits? Swim the English Channel?

Even the owner of the Ironman itself, Dr. Jim Gills, doesn't do triathlons anymore (that I'm aware of). He was (and is) a super-achiever, a good Ironman athlete, and an avid one — so avid he bought the company. But I haven't seen him at a triathlon in upwards of a decade, not even the one he now owns in Kona.

People leave triathlon because it's not a place of comfort. It ought to be, and it is for me, but it's certainly not marketed that way.

You've got to carve out your place of peace in this sport. For me, after 25 years, it's easy. Competing in triathlons is like breeding racing greyhounds. They're high-power, and exciting, and can help satiate your competitive spirit. Or they can give you a source of companionship and comfort (or both, I suppose, though I don't race them, they're just companions for me).

Likewise multisport. I don't have to do more, train more, win more, qualify more, in order to enjoy it more. Triathlon is a drug, but it's one I can take in moderation.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have anything against Ironman racing. But it takes a long time to train for an Ironman, and now you've got to do two per year if you're good (one to qualify for Kona, and then Kona). Even if your family would sit still for that, you'd weary of it eventually. And then you'd quit the sport altogether, because not doing Ironmans would be a step "backward" in your evolution as an athlete. That's something a lot of people can't take.

If I've described you, I've got some news. After 25 years of watching all of this, I can say with some confidence that you'll probably leave, and then you'll probably return. But when you come back you'll have a lot of catching up to do, and you'll wish you never left. Why not just find a place of peace and statis in your triathlon life, and save yourself the trouble?