I awoke and booted my computer this morning, and discovered that I had personally disposed of the position of Duathlon Coordinator at USAT. “Thank you Dan E.!” wrote a reader on a forum over at another site, “So happy you are on the Board driving these sort of decisions,” and, “You can thank the new board for this bad decision. Especially Dan Empfield who has been against this position from day-one.”

I read that I was a “Wacko,” and “out to destroy a sport.”

I called USAT’s offices, and asked Bill Wengert, USAT’s CFO, if I did in fact get rid of the Duathlon Coordinator.

Well, we’re short one of those, he said in so many words, but it’s news to me that you did it.

It was news to me as well. In fact, USAT’s board, of which I’m a new member, has had its hands full with other chores. We haven’t discussed duathlon or its coordinator in any substantive way. Everybody else seemed to know about this before I did, and they also somehow knew that I was to blame for it.

It seems to me that if I’m going to get the heat for engineering the demise of duathlon as we know it, I ought to avail myself of the pleasure associated with killing an entire sport. Here goes…

Yes, this is my view, the rock on which I stand. I’m all about abandoning duathlon as we know it. No joke here. And in its place…

…I’d like to insert another sort of duathlon, the one I used to know.

If there is a historic “Kona” of duathlon, it’s the Swiss village of Zofingen. I’ve been there three times for what was (and maybe still is, though not quite of the same stature) one of the premier multisport races in the World. Everybody came. All the best duathletes. All the best triathletes, at least the best long distance ones. It was where Kenny Souza raced Mark Allen, where Benjamin Paredes dueled Jürgen Zäck, and where Liz Downing and Matt Brick laid it on the line against Paula Newby-Fraser and Erin Baker and Mike Pigg. Zofingen was not the poor stepchild of multisport. It was one of the three or four preeminent multisport races anywhere.

I can’t even count how many times I’ve been to the Desert Princess race in Palm Springs. Here was where my first ever tri bike was raced. Maybe I should’ve called it a bi bike. The other steep seat angled, 26” wheel bike that debuted at the same time as mine was called the “Desert Princess,” after our sport’s best known biathlon at the time. Boone Lennon’s Scott bars, the very first triathlon aero bars, debuted there.

The Desert Princess was where short distance biathlon queen Liz Downing met long distance tri star Paula Newby-Fraser, both in their primes, over a course half as long as Paula’s Ironman bike/run and twice as long as Liz’s optimal Coors Lite Series bike/run. Paula caught Liz with one mile to go in that race over that brutal course, the closest thing to Mark’s and Dave’s ’89 Kona battle.

In each case, these popular biathlons—duathlons now—had a personality that made them special. In Zofingen, the course was geographically determined. You rode around one mountain three times, and you ran up and down an adjacent mountain. And it all revolved around a medieval village.

I’ve never been to Powerman Alabama. However, in my vague memory it seems to me this was already a popular race before it was a Powerman—I believe it was called the Whistlestop Biathlon. I don’t know, however I suspect, this race also had a personality all its own, and triathletes and duathletes alike would race on this popular course.

Then something went wrong, and I’ll tell you what I think it was. For some reason duathlon resists being formulaic, yet race directors persisted in cramming it into a formula. Duathlon seems to me a more maverick sport than triathlon. It wants to be geography-specific. Yes, there are 150 die-hards on any given weekend—willing devotees of 5k/30k/5k—however it doesn’t seem to matter how many coordinators we hire to pump up the air in this activity, there is a critical mass of people willing to do a limited number of these set-distance races. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not speaking as a multisport scientist. Just as an observer.

A woman called me several months ago. She was in charge of downtown redevelopment in a city in Arizona that sat 5000’ above sea level. She was the woman I approached on Oceanside, California’s city council when I endeavored to open this town up to triathlon—Oceanside has been a fabulous success story as a triathlon town. This woman retired to this smallish Arizona hamlet and took her redevelopment job. She called to see if I would be interested in putting a race on here. I referred her to an Arizona-based race director. In my mind’s eye, however, I didn’t see a triathlon there. I immediately thought of a duathlon. I don’t know, maybe they’ve got a lake right there, just ready to be jumped into by 600 eager multisporters. Just the same, I was thinking du all the way, I don’t know why.

The biggest problem we have in multisport is our attachment to formulae. For some reason, we feel entirely too enamored by the idea of the Ironman distance, or the half-Ironman, or double-Ironman. Just once I’d like to see somebody put on a race that’s a 1.3-mile swim, 57-mile ride, and 12-mile run. If I ever put on a footrace, it’s going to be 9km. Or 11km. Anything but 10km. We’re just so uninventive.

To me, duathlon is our one activity above all others in multisport that cries out to be geography specific, and probably because it can. I remember in 1984, when I was riding my bike from Mexico City to Oaxaca over the span of several days. I passed by a town at 7800’ above sea level, called Amecameca. There was a paved road that went from here up to 12,800’, and then a trail continued upwards of 18,000’, to the summit of Popocatepetl, one of the higher peaks in the Western Hemisphere. I knew I’d be making a return trip to Mexico.

Four months later I was back. Three days after I arrived I’d completed my own duathlon. I pedaled my road bike to the end of the paved road, ran to 16,000’, strapped on cramp-ons and with a piolet went to the top. And then back down. It took ten hours. I figured I could do it in seven. Later, I wondered how long it would take Kenny Souza to do it.

That "duathlon" was one of the great multisport events of my life, even though it had a start list of one. You can’t do that duathlon if you try and shoehorn a swim in there.

We don’t need coordinators, except to say that USAT needs to make racing cheaper, safer, more fair and, when applicable, more frequent. The reason there aren’t more duathlons is simple. It’s not because we don’t have enough coordinators. It’s because race directors don’t believe they can make money putting on a duathlon. But they’re short sighted. Duathlons are terrific money makers, and can be very successful. Problem is, RDs don’t realize what duathlon’s strength is. How many triathlon RDs have moaned, “If it wasn’t for that damn swim venue, I’d be able to lay out such a great course!” Well, then, ditch the swim, and lay out that great course!

Duathlon’s portability means most of the World’s really great, really scenic courses ought to be duathlons. Why aren’t they? I don’t know who to blame. Perhaps we just need to remind our RDs of the advantage duathlon represents.

All my training sessions are either swim, bike or run. I almost never do bricks. We do, however, have one session, a real ass-kicker, uncreatively termed the “ride/run.” After 7 minutes of warm-up on the bike, riding to the start, we climb 5.6 miles, to 5500’. We chain our bikes to a metal gate, and run 2.5 miles to 6500’ (we have our racing flats stuffed on our jersey pockets). Then the clock stops and we return home. It’s the hardest 90 minute workout we ever do. And by far the most scenic.

It seems most of the really fun, memorable things I do and have done with my own time are in the form of a duathlon.

Bike/run races get short shrift. They shouldn’t. Race directors, put on all the triathlons you want. But for your flagship event, the one people will not like but love—the one they’ll specifically thank you for—find the truly scenic duathlon course. Find a course that actually accomplishes something, that climbs something, that goes somewhere. If we had more of these inventive courses, and people talking about them, I imagine we'd see an uptick in the 5k/30k/5k traffic as well.

I’m still going to be in the dutch with some people. But that’s how I see duathlon.