Five Triathlon Lessons From a Vacation in Hawaii

The Wednesday after the women’s IRONMAN World Championship took place, my wife and I boarded a flight in Oregon, bound for the Hawaiian Islands. As I wrote in our forum at the time, the irony was not lost on me that I had not been in Kona for the race, yet here I was now about to be on vacation (almost) in the same place. (We wound up one island over.)

And after a whirlwind five days, it was over just as quickly as it had started; we drove our rental Jeep Wrangler back to the airport, boarded a flight, and headed home, just in time for the rainy season to begin in earnest here in the Pacific Northwest. In that short span of time, we managed to cram in a lot of activity, as well as plenty of time to think through some lessons from the trip that are applicable to triathletes, race directors, and our industry alike.

The Magic of Hawaii is Real, and Makes the Case for Why the IM World Championship Should Never Move

I get why Kona is Kona now.

There is magic in Hawaii. Period. From the second we stopped off our flight, even late at night, until we got back to the airport, there’s a buzz in the air. Whether it’s lava fields, or the beaches, or the terrain around you, or the people you meet — Hawaii has something that can’t be replicated anywhere else.

And for IRONMAN, that’s true as well. Hawaii is the birthplace of IRONMAN, and Kona has been its landmark since the move from Oahu in 1981. They are forever linked together. And among IRONMAN customers, they’ve clearly spoken: for both the men’s and women’s world championships held in Nice, the fields were smaller than the respective fields when those genders went back to Kona. While I think at least in part those fields were smaller due to the dramatically different landscapes of those two courses, I also think it comes down to the fact that there’s something simply different about Hawaii.

The company might be based in Tampa, but its heart is in Hawaii.

Triathletes: Try Something New This Year

Please. I’m begging you.

We are a weird bunch. We’re the segment of the endurance sports marketplace that is least brand loyal; we’re most likely to try new things; we typically have disposable income to support buying gear and doing events. Yet then we see the same events, year in and year out, getting most of the race traffic, and then we wonder why certain events disappear.

I learned how to surf while in Hawaii. And to say that I fell in love with it is a mild understatement. I’ve been researching boards like it’s my day job. (Editor’s Note: so that’s why you’ve not been writing as much…) Even the act of failing (read: falling) was exhilarating in its own right. It was moving my body differently, getting out on the water differently, and simply doing something for the sake of having fun.

It’s that last part that I think we lose sight of far too often when it comes to racing or triathlon, generally. It’s supposed to be fun. At our core, this is supposed to be tapping into the joy of play, of movement, of activity, of being outside, of being with a community. And while yes, there’s fun to be had in racing for the sake of racing, there needs to be balance to that. In my opinion, to have balance, you need to be doing some different stuff. Whether that’s my upcoming SkiMo season, or trying a gravel triathlon or cycling event, or hitting the trails instead of the roads for some running, it’s time to bring out some of the adventure.

Race Directors: Don’t Try to be IM — Be Something Different

Race directors, it’s the same edict for you: it’s time to try something else.

The truly successful independent events in our sport bring something else to the table than being just a race. There’s an experience of some sort; whether that’s by being a particularly difficult course (Norseman and the associated XTri events, for instance), or by excelling at customer service, or by having a race director that brings his or her own cult of personality to the table. The one thing they aren’t trying to be? A budget version of an IRONMAN.

If you try to compete with IRONMAN on the basis of price or convenience, you will lose that battle ten out of ten times. People know exactly what they are getting when they pay for an IRONMAN entry these days. And with costs continuing to escalate, independent races are forced to either raise prices or reduce amenities in order to run profitably. If that event is a 70.3 or 140.6 distance race…unless you have massive brand equity (Roth, I’m looking at you), or you are providing a white-glove level of service to all of your customers, it’s likely you are doing yourself a disservice by trying to have those events.

So do something different. Make your courses different; make them challenging or easy; make yourself uniquely marketable. Heck, in the running space, we have an entire race series dedicated to downhill marathoning and running Boston Marathon qualifiers. It’s identifying your niche and filling that space. Because otherwise…you’re playing IRONMAN’s game. And that’s not a winning scenario for anyone.

How Do We Improve on Sustainability?

One of the shocks to the system was the lack of single-use plastics anywhere. Coffee shops serve everything in paper or cardboard. Want water? It comes in a can, a cardboard box, or better yet, a screw top aluminum bottle that you are asked to refill. Whether it was at the hotel, or gearing up for an excursion, you’d be given one of these aluminum bottles, asked to write your name on it, and keep it with you for the trip.

It’s a far cry from the amount of single-use plastic waste that we, as triathletes, generate at your average race. There’s all of the water bottles at aid stations, particularly those for the bike. In places where there aren’t other sources of water to fill coolers, there’s all the fluid that needs to wind up in those coolers. There’s all of the plastic for ice; for the wax paper cups we use at aid stations; for trash itself. And it’s not like the answer is recycling, as for the most part, plastic recycling only accounts for roughly 5-6% of all plastic produced.

As an industry, we’re likely going to need to wrestle with the idea of modifying our race experiences to try and improve on this front. We’ve seen this in the ultra running world and in certain gravel races; namely where aid stations have you refill bottles as opposed to disposing of them for quick refills. There have been limited instances of this practice in triathlon, with mixed athlete feedback about it. But, especially where resources for disposal are limited, and recycling potentially even more so, it might be something worth considering.

The Art of Being a Good Neighbor

This is about all of us: athletes, race organizers, tourists, you name it. We need to be more respectful of the places we’re in.

Every year after the IRONMAN World Championships, there are stories and grumblings about poor athlete behavior. And look, we are well aware that a.) negative stories are almost always more likely to come out than positive ones and b.) that this is not indicative of all athletes. But, we also have to face some realities; athlete behavior in our race locations has been a sticking point for a while. We nearly lost, for instance, IRONMAN Lake Placid in part due to community issues as athletes came to town for training, or acted up during race week.

It’s not hard to be nice, to be curious, and to tip well (assuming you’re in a tip culture oriented place, which, yes, Hawaii and the rest of America is). If something is signed as being off limits, follow it. It goes a long way.

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