A Forest for rest

A five minute bike ride from our Stuttgart apartment brings you to a simple forest, about 100 acres in total.  Since I'm typically the only one running its crisscross of trails very early on a weekday morning, or a bit later on a weekend, over the past year I've come to think of this sylvan spot as my own, a treasure of trees and the animals, seen and unseen, that attend.  We'll be leaving Germany at the end of this week, and the mental and emotional withdrawals, preceding the physical, have consistently ranked the forest as the biggest loss for me in our move.  I'm already in mourning.
The forest has taught me, again, of the importance of daily outside time, of just being quiet with self in nature.  Bike commutes can help, and after dinner walks with family are special, but nothing compares with an early morning run in one's own forest, the birds ever chirping, the occasional fox, deer or jack rabbit scurrying, and all of it presided over by the ever watchful hawks in the high trees adjacent the fields.
As I've found over the past forty years of competition as an endurance athlete, when training, developing a sense of attachment to place is important.  A good pool with a consistent masters swim program, a strong cycling group with regular rides of varying length and speed, a nearby track program with weekly speed workouts - all these can help the triathlete.  Yet developing a personal, visceral connection to one's own natural environment  is equally if not more important, at least from my perspective.
When I did my first triathlon in 1981 while still in college, the campus arboretum adjacent the college was my personal cathedral, a place I could run and mentally recharge.  A mental map of its running trails is still ingrained in my head.  A few years later, now in Ann Arbor, it was another arboretum that gained my spiritual favor, allowing me to experience its many hills and trails while working my way through graduate school and to a podium finish at Kona in '84, a tricky two-step if ever there was one.  Following Ann Arbor, NYC beckoned, and with it the many treasures of Central and Prospect Parks, both of which I came to know intimately while dedicating myself to running and launching a teaching and coaching career.  Funny, but the trees and trails of New York City linger longer than the many buildings and people.  After NYC, Seattle, home to more than 200 parks, was the next stop, two of which, Green Lake/Woodland Parks, just up the hill from our Ballard home, would become the source of much running and ski-bounding satisfaction in our nearly two decades in the city before leaving for teaching jobs overseas.
Yet none of these can compare with the attachment I've come to feel for the simple collection of trees just down the trail from our apartment here in Plienningen.  In the morning, there is no greater feeling than to achieve a steady pace on a run and be surrounded by trees, this city's lungs.  In the distance, the A8 autobahn churns away, or up the hill I may hear the U3 ubahn whir by, but it's the music of nature that truly envelopes and transports me to runs in the '70s, when woods near home and school snared me forever as a runner and set me quite literally on a life quest of paths less traveled by.
I may never return to these woods again, yet my soul is enriched for having treaded its trails.  Here's hoping many more wooded trails await, wherever life transports.         

Root System

   Funny what a difference a little ball can make.  I'd been a runner all of my life, enjoying any running game as a child and parlaying that love into a string of amazingly gratifying years of competitive running in secondary school and college.  By my 30s I'd run nearly 30,000 miles and hundreds of races, including marathons, half marathons, 10 and 5Ks, as well as dozens of triathlons.  Still, even though my body was beginning to tell me that I'd pushed hard, I kept on running.  Dam the torpedos!
   Gradually, however, running became less fun, the body less able to recover from good runs, the mind less willing to embrace the idea of another run.  So I did what most inveterate endurance athletes do - I began coping by doing other sports, like blading, skiing, cycling, and then swimming, etc.  And I tried to forget running.
   No matter, once a runner, always a runner.  Meaning, any time I had a chance to include some running, like with ski bounding up and down hills with poles, I would will my body to run.
   The only problem is that by 40 running was not only not so fun, it had become downright painful, at least after the fact.  Knees and hips would be sore or tight, and a lower back, which I'd never noticed, would occasionally trigger its presence, especially after longer runs on harder surfaces.  But most of all, my achilles tendons, especially the left achilles, would let me know that they'd put in too many extra hours, without benefits, and needed a break.
   Then along came the mid-century mark of life, a chance to get back into Kona Fit, and I just pretended that all was well.  I mean, if I was going to get through the swim and bike legs, as a lifetime runner I was damn well going to make it through the marathon!
   And, frankly, that was largely my approach.  With the proverbial band-aids and hope, and just enough mileage to be a pretender and contender, I held the running body together just enough and made it through the marathons in Port Elizabeth and Kona, never running the mileage I knew an age group victory at Kona demanded, yet running just enough to fake it through the 42.2K at both races.  For neither event did my weekly running mileage top 25 miles, and let's remember that 25 miles isn't even the distance and Ironman must run!
   Finally, this year, a little green ball came into my life.  I'd tried new shoes of all sorts, inserts of every variety, various stretches and strengthenings, read articles of all persuasions - and at the end of the day it was the little green ball that did the trick.  Cost: less than $5.
   So what do I do?  Twice a day I place this textured ball (bigger than a golf ball but smaller than a tennis ball, with the density similar to that of a little league baseball) under my foot and press down hard.  I then roll my foot around, self-massaging each foot's undercarriage, pushing the ball into the metatarsal, the joints of each toe, the arch, the heel, and essentially any tiny part of the foot I can.  At first I was a bit timid, but now that my foot is used to it, even craves it, I press down with quite a force, taking the time to work the ball into the myriad geometries of the foot, noticing how the foot gives out a silent sigh of relief each time.
   The last year has been telling.  In the lead up to Kona 2011, my running mileage plateaued at about 20 miles a week, with many a week not even reaching that.  I wanted to run more in preparation, but May - Sept. Saudi Arabia was blazing, the tread mills were boring, and my running body was bust.  The finish line at Kona couldn't come fast enough, in part because I had essentially faked the final 10K, in part, let's face it, because the last 10 Kona K are a tough bargain no matter one's condition!
  So I just about quit running altogether, and in the following two years I don't think I ran more than once a month, if that, each time knowing my body would tell me all over again that running was dumb.
   But the little green ball has allowed the runner and me to believe again.  By rekindling the nerves and tissues of the feet and reworking the body's natural root system, I've allowed my feet to reawaken, and I've been as astonished as anyone since, as I've said, I honestly never expected to run much again.
   Why the change?  Our feet are complex, 3-D appendages that, until very recently, lived largely in a similar, unpredictable 3-D world.  Then along came shoes, limiting each foot's mobility. And paved, hard, flat surfaces, forcing the foot to go through repetitive motions each time, recruiting the same muscles, using the identical bones and tendons and ligaments.  And soon the natural foot of the homo sapien was coping with a world it did not know.  Hence foot problems.  Hence foot doctors.  Hence millions and millions of otherwise hopeful, intelligent, active folks, each with foot issues.
   The little green ball attempts to reboot the foot by reawakening the muscles and nerves of the foot and essentially teaching the foot to be its whole, vital, helpful self again.  Thousands and thousands of hard-pavement miles had essentially deadened my feet, forcing them to cope easily in my teens and twenties, but less and less well thereafter.  It was as if I'd been born with a full marching band but was now relying just on the snare drums and clarinets.  You can make music; it just probably won't be pretty!
   Yet now, with the little green ball, my feet are gradually undergoing an unanticipated renaissance.  Where before I dreaded running and looked to other sports for physical outlet, now I look forward to running a few days a week, almost as much as before.  At Kona in 2011, the swimming and cycling propelled me into the top three in the 50-54 age group by T2; now, with the runner in me gradually reawakening, I feel another Kona Comeback is possible.
  I will never reclaim my mid-20s running body, but over the past few months, whenever I'm out on the beautiful trails in Stuttgart's uibiquitous urban forests, I occasionally feel like the young man, now long ago, who ran a 1:10 half marathon and 2:29 marathon.  I know I don't have that speed today, but my happy feet make me feel like a true runner again, and that's a feeling I thought had disappeared forever.  It's like getting back in touch with a long lost friend.
 
   

Cross (Country) Training

Very often it's the unintended or unexpected that impacts the most.  We may train like mad, swimming, cycling and running to no seeming end, only to find that a small change in seat height, or a new sports drink, figured most heavily in the outcome of a race.  In truth, we like to think we know how to steer that ship of life, but we really don't.
Such was the case a few weeks back as we headed to Seiser Alm, a magnificent ski venue in the Italian Dolomites.  We were headed for a week of skiing, and word was the southern Alps (where we were headed) had stolen all of the snow from the north (where we live).  Only problem was that for the first winter in a long, long time, I'd not roller skied, or bounded with poles up hills, or done any one of a number of things Norwegians and others with similar Nordic builds and bent do to go fast on snow.  Settling into life in Germany had taken all of our time, and suddenly here it was, winter, and I needed to be in ski shape.
How then to explain the best week of skiing in my life, much of it at altitude?  Lifestyle, that's how.  You see, rather then explicitly train for cross country skiing, I'd added a much tougher and more wonderful bike commute to my life, replete with big hills, dark woods and plenty of fresh air.  In addition, I solved a long-plaguing foot problem and became a runner all over again, after pretty much having sworn off the chance of ever again feeling comfortable in running shoes.  Finally, when the weather allowed, and even sometimes when it most certainly did not, I got on my mountain bike or road bike and took to the amazing roads and trails of Schwabian Germany, noticing every time that being outdoors is what it's all about around here, no matter your age, and regardless the season and weather.  The net result is that I had inadvertantly trained for skiing, and rather than suffer through a week due to a lack of preparation, I was reminded that your classic multi-sport athlete's active lifestyle may be a good suitor to a variety of endeavors.  
Seiser Alm had simply the most beautiful ski trails I'd ever seen, and to do anything other than ski all over them each day we were there would have been sacrilege, and so I skied on, at first worried that by day three, Tuesday, I'd be spent.  Yet, strangely, rather then feel more tired, the days got easier even as daily mileage climbed.  Before long, I was tackling the biggest climbs and returning to favorite trails, knowing it would soon end but hoping it wouldn't.
Perhaps most interestingly, it was a week where I was able to push physically each day, sometimes for five or six hours, and find that my body is again strong and resilient.  I don't know if I have another Kona Offensive in me, but the week at Seiser Alm has shown that training can come in many stripes, and that this triathlete at least has made one big "transition" since 2012.  Here's to Cross (Country) Training!  
    

The Gift

What can be more special than that first real bike?  I still vividly remember mine, a purple five-speed banana seat Sears and Roebuck special, sent all the way to Accra, Ghana, where my family was living, just in time for Christmas.  My older sister got her new bike at the same time, and try as I might, I could not quite keep up with her on our back veranda, which essentially doubled as our own private race course and the place where my parents entertained, both events occurring sometimes at the same time to comic effect.

Being a father has brought back the fond first-bike memories.  Only this time, sans Sears and minus banana seats, we benefitted from the largesse of skiing friends, with kids just a bit older than ours, who'd already negotiated the fleeting year of beginner-to-future-champion-cycling not uncommon to five year-olds.

So, as I watched our oldest son Hayden grow to the almost-bike-ready age of four, I kept asking him if he was ready to take off the training wheels, and did he want to go over to the only flat, largish space around our neighborhood and become a "real" cyclist?  "No" was the constant reply, and even though I knew he was ready and just needed that final push, I allowed him to come to terms with that faltering balance that seems so hard initially but which becomes unnoticed instinct in short order.  

Finally, one dry early spring Seattle Sunday nearing his 5th birthday, I knew the time was ripe, but I couched the opportunity in "don't worry, I'm not going to let go of you and let you crash," and its slight variant, "it's just a chance to practice for the real thing later, when you're ready."  Reluctantly, he followed me out the door, walking beside me as I rode, proudly, his miniscule, bomb proof, shiny silver bike.

The Silver Bike - Logan's turn 2009

We got to the paved basketball court-cum-bike testing zone at West Woodland Elementary in short order, and soon he was on the bike, attempting to ride and turn and balance and, let's face it, do a bunch of things simultaneously that conflate into one fairly sizable psychic hurdle in the mind of a youngster.  Of course, I knew it wouldn't be easy, and so I held on to the seat post, bent over, getting the usual father back pain, and doing my best to keep up with his spurts and weaves and general gravitational dysfunctions.  I was just another dad willing his son's success, with son slowly, unpredictably, approaching that inevitable fail safe moment experienced by all cyclists.

At one point he pleaded, "dad, don't let go!", but I already had, though I stayed right behind him a bit longer, making it look like my hand was still on the bike, giving my supporting role pretense a bit more life, and allowing him to gain quick confidence.  He was into a turn and heading back when he realized that I hadn't been helping him with balance, and one of those smiles that remain forever ingrained in a father's memory beamed from his face as he realized he could ride a bike.

The Silver Bike - Teaching Logan to ride - 2009

Son number two, Logan, had to ride a bit earlier, of course.  Now about to be the introductory bi-pedal stepping stone for its sixth youngster, the shiny sliver bike was still an amazing machine, with a few more scuffs and dings but as intrepid and indestructible as ever.  Better yet, his older brother had used it and just about all of his older friends coveted it, so it had to be The Bomb.  And, just as before, I played the part of balance-helper and then faker, and in what seemed like a nanosecond we had a complete home of cyclists.

As I said, there is something special about that first bike, especially when it's the first bike of both your boys, not to mention two other families' kids.  So, even though the younger one was outgrowing it and the older one was beginning to look silly on it, we dutifully packed it up in our Saudi shipment in 2009, both parents probably thinking that the boys would soon outgrow it, each probably wondering "honey, so why are we packing this?"

The Silver Bike - Working on bikes in our garage - KAUST, Saudi Arabia 2012

The shiny silver bike, of course, had plans of its own.  Our younger one loved being in a place where you could ride every day of the year, and which was as flat and trafficless as Seattle wasn't, and soon the bike was getting more miles than it'd probably ever bargained for.  Better still, as soon as the youngest was off of it, the oldest often was on it, zipping around on it like a BMX Lawrence of Arabia.  The bike went with us everywhere, and the neighborhood kids couldn't wait to get on it and try it whenever, in a magnanimous and reluctant moment, either of the boys decided to relinquish it.  

Then, four years later and a whole lot bigger, and with alternate "big boy" bikes each, we found ourselves packing up for a move to Germany.  Though the bike wasn't getting nearly the use it had, both boys lobbied hard to have us include it in the shipment north.

The Silver Bike - passed on to its 7th new owner. Saudi Arabia 2013

Yet we knew, just like two sets of parents before us, that the bike would better serve the needs of younger boys and/or girls, planting the seeds of possibility just like it had for our boys.  So, reluctantly, and not without a few tears and regrets, we left the bike with a family with a young boy at the cusp of two-wheel bikehood, hoping that the bike would get into the boy's soul even half as much as it had dug into ours.

I've been thinking about the shiny silver bike recently.  Its legacy, including at least four families now, with kids from all corners of the globe who've happily ridden it, stretches back to a time I've learned more of in the past few days, a reminder that it's the little things in life that very often lead to lasting legacy.  The shiny silver bike was given to us by the Lindahls in 2004. Their two kids, Erik and Elyse, learned how to ride on it, but its origin stretches farther back, into the latter years of the 20th century, to another Kongsberger family many of us have been thinking a whole lot about this week.  You see, although dozens and dozens can claim to have ridden that shiny steel bike, only one person first rode it, and that was Torin Tucker, a person's whose inspiring legacy the cross country ski world has been commemorating this week.  The oldest of the Tucker/Lindahl/Evans kids, it was only natural that Torin would be the lead-off hitter in this amazing bike's game.  Sometimes, we don't know the gifts we give, and I'm quite certain Torin never knew that his parents passed the bike on to the Lindahls or, even if he did, that the Lindahls then sent the bike on to our family.  Torin touched the world in ways that many of us are only beginning to recognize; for one unknowing American boy and his buddies in faraway Saudi Arabia, Torin's gift just keeps on giving by continuing its legacy of smiles and dreams.  Thank you, Torin.     

       

Thinking of a friend

This blog exists in great part due to my friend, Scott Tucker.  In an earlier post I've spoken of our history as training and racing buddies in Seattle and elsewhere.  Scott was and is a standout cross country skier, triathlete, and, most recently, runner, and in part due to his achievements and example I've felt awed and inspired.   It was Scott who contacted me with his Ironmania in 2010, and who then called me from Kona that October and told me to get my triathlon butt back in shape so he could meet me on Ali'i Drive in 2011. Had I not followed his advice, qualified in South Africa and competed in Kona, this sporadic column would never have been.  Good or bad, the writing in this blog is due to Scott's original urgings for me to pack my transition bags and get on the Road Back to Kona.
More recently Scott had been living in Boulder, CO, and working at Pearl Izumi.  Although not as excited about his work designing PI's running shoe line as one might expect, having him there made it even more fun to visit in-laws in the Denver area.  The past few times in Denver, including this past summer, we'd gotten together for rides, general hanging out and having fun, comparing notes on training and racing, and catching up on family news.  His daughter had doted on our boys when they were tots, while his son, though quite a bit older than our boys, had gradually grown into the student/athlete example of father.  A keen math/science mind who just happened to be one heck of a cross country skier, he'd followed his parents' examples and was attending a top college, pursuing his academic and athletic dreams.
Which is why receiving news of his untimely death, at a collegiate cross country race in Vermont, where he was competing for Dartmouth, has sent my heart reeling and my thoughts ever returning to Scott and the anguish he must feel.  Being an endurance athlete exposes you to sometimes relentless pain.  The final miles of an Ironman bring emotional and physical deprivations I'd wish on no one.  All Ironman races aren't created equal; Kona raises the pain stakes even more with its heat and humidity and world championship tableau.
Scott has been through all of this and more and yet, as a father, I am sure that  nothing prepares us for the kind of pain Scott and his family must be feeling just now.
They say that outliving one's own child is the cruelest fate.  As adults, we can have our health setbacks, our troubles at work, our challenges in relationships, etc., but having a child die prematurely is a curse that can't be named, or that at least is so statistically rare that most of us are unfamiliar with its wrenching intimacies in the First World of the 21st century.
Competing for a Division I Ivy League school, Scott's son was doing what any of us would want our sons to be doing.  Sport, especially endurance sport, can provide the kinds of hard lessons and real learning we so hope for our children, and my guess is that is what Scott's son was reaping as a member of Dartmouth's legendary ski program this winter.
Cross country skiing may not be so well known a sport as some, but there isn't a sport out there with higher aerobic returns, which is another way of saying that it's a sport that punishes and demands as much as any endurance sport, even as much as Ironman.  No world class athletes have higher VO2 maxes than the top Nordic skiers, not even triathletes, cyclists or runners.  Although there may sometimes seem a fine line between physical demands of competition and death, in reality the average endurance athlete couldn't be more removed from the sad statistical realities of modern mortality inhabited by those with chronic diseases, or those who make poor choices.
Death in sport is rare, particularly in endurance sport.  While triathlon has lost some swimmers over the years (written about in this blog), death during competition is rare.  Particularly for a strong and healthy college student, in the prime of his life, competing in a sport few of us would associate with the kind of risk more often correlated with contact sports like football and hockey, death is all but unheard of.
Which makes today's news all the more unfathomable.
Last April, after hearing of the tragedy at Boston, I went out for a long run and pushed and pushed, hoping to spiritually complete a few of that Patriot Day's abbreviated miles and abridged races.  Running for them in solidarity, as an expression of brotherhood-through-sport, however, those athletes were unknown to me personally - though Scott, incredibly, was in the race that day.
Today, not coincidentally, I went out on my longest run since completing the marathon leg at Kona in 2011, now more than two years ago.  As I ran, I thought once again about the untimely intersection of athletic competition and premature death.  And while I gave thanks for the health of my family and the visible ongoing growth of my boys, chastened and anguished and on the verge of tears the whole way, I was also reminded to take nothing for granted.  We can't know when our last race will be, just as we can't truly know what the incredible demands of training and competition may really preparing us for.  My thoughts are with Scott and his family in this dark hour, praying for a new dawn ahead.
    

Financial Disparity Comes to Sport

A week or two back, which is to say the week of the 2013 NY City Marathon, a NY Times feature focused on marathon running's "Near Elites."  These are the journeymen marathoners many of us know (and a few of us have been), the ones not quite good enough to be elite distance runners, who don't have the sponsors or the world-class speed, but who do have full-time jobs, and often families, and therefore all sorts of reasons not to train as carefully as they usually do or be as fast as they often are.

With top male marathoners now regularly running under 2:10, and sometimes under 2:05, the Near Elite is a proud and typically unheralded secondary fiddle in a huge and apparently growing athletic orchestra, a warrior who runs in the 2:20 - 2:40 range, yet is well aware that 2:29 (this author's PR) is now an incredible minute per mile shy of the men's world record pace of 4:41/mile!  Thus, the Near Elite knows his place, and while it is clearly not at the edge of the starting line, huddled with the magazine-cover-shot masses of amazingly fast runners from across the globe, he is happy to tuck in just behind, hoping that an osmosis of talent can filter back and pull him along to a hallowed PR.

Yet the Near Elites aren't quite as near as they once were to the top, and this needs examining a bit.  In previous articles I have touched on the burgeoning field sizes and the vastly larger number of huge endurance events occurring across the globe.  At the marquee events in particular, gross participation seems to be the name of the game.  The just finished 2013 NY City Marathon was the largest marathon ever - anywhere - with 50,000 entrants, many of whom paid upwards of $200 to strut their stuff in the Big Apple's five boroughs.  You do the math.  Yet as field sizes have stretched the tape measures toward XXL, you'd think there would be a proportional increase in the both the size and quality of the Near Elites, just as there has been at the very top.  Not so.

The Near Elite article featured a local guy who had run NY City before, had a PR of 2:30, and was hoping to break into the Nearer Elites category by eclipsing 2:30, a goal of many Near Elites.  What was most interesting, to this author at least, is that in his previous NY City marathon he'd run 2:37 to finish 64th overall while, a generation earlier, I'd run 2:29 to finish 72nd overall.  Eight minutes faster to earn eight spots lower in one race do not a trend make.  Yet I'm betting you'd find similar statistics in many of today's bigger races.  Which begs the question: Is sport imitating life?

Legion are the articles about financial disparity. Maybe you, and me, mayors, cities, countries, even whole parts of the globe (like the Eurozone, from where I type) are worried about the growing schism between the haves and the have nots.  This widening economic rift is a fact of life in many parts of the world; persistent and possibly prescriptive going forward in unfortunate ways, this growing gap has many worried.

Intriguingly, if you look closely at America's wealth disparity, the top 1% may be pulling ever farther away from the rest of the field, but the top 1% of that 1% group are pulling away much faster, soaking up unimaginable fortunes along the way, with consequences even paid pundits can't predict.  Those in the now famous "1%" may be fortunate, but the real fortune lies at the top, which is to say that many of those in this economically elite group are actually losing ground on the true leaders of the pack.  They accumulate wealth very fast indeed, but apparently not quite fast enough... not by a few decimal points, actually.

Art can imitate life.  So apparently can sport.  Near Elites, while good, are finding themselves further removed from the heaviest cream at top of the milk jug, yet at the same time they are finding less and less in common with the growing legions, battalions and myriads slogging through the 42.2 K behind them.  In an endurance sports participatory universe seemingly ever expanding, the Near Elite remains the faithful moon, ancillary but quietly proud, dearly hoping not to lose orbital contact to the main attraction planet.  Money or minutes, should we be concerned that virtually all of us are losing ground to the top few?  I'm not sure, but it's an interesting parallel nonetheless.        



  

Appearance Fees Disappearance

First off, full disclosure: I have never received an appearance fee.  I had equipment given to me, plane tickets covered, race fees waived, but I never was in the triathlonic stratosphere with Dave Scott or Mark Allen or the very few rest of them who may, on occasion, have received an appearance fee of some sort.

Yet this week's announcement by a large investment company, that just so happens to own the rights to many of the top marathons (Rock & Roll, etc.), to stop granting appearance money to running's fastest and fittest, warrants examination.

First off, no one is making any real money in endurance sports.  No one.  Some of the best marathoners and triathletes might make six figures in a good year, but Tiger made that yesterday, in a few hours, so the amount of money this company is talking about is relatively small in overall sports economy terms.

Second, the company isn't even talking about how much they're talking about.  They won't mention how much they had been allocating to elite athletes' appearance fees, nor conversely are they willing to mention how much of this they'll be then ploughing back into the sport.  Sounds a bit like robbing Peter to pay Peter's investors, not Paul.

My first concern is that many of the top endurance events are now owned by investment groups and not necessarily any one or any group directly tied to the sport.  Ironman, for example, is owned by an investment fund and not by a group of triathletes who might well know, or care particularly deeply, about this iconic longer version of the sport of triathlon.  This concerns me.

What also concerns are the reasons given, at least publicly, for this change.  Apparently the investors polled athletes competing in their events and say they discovered that most athletes could give a rip about the top athletes in the race.  Many didn't even know who they were, where they were from, or what times they'd recently posted.  In other words, many athletes are in it for themselves.  The sport doesn't transcend them; they, regardless their talent, transcend the sport.

Let's examine this a bit by looking no further than Ironman.  For years now Ironman has layered in more global events for triathletes and would be triathletes, at the same time working carefully to make each of those fields bigger.  The ballooning of events and event size has allowed many more folks to get involved with the sport of Ironman, but it has certainly come at a cost (some of which I talk about in other blog entries..).  While it is apparent to this author that the upper end of the age group fields is more competitive than it was ever before, this Darwinian reality is a function of quantity not quality.  A bit like cats playing around on a typewriter long enough and coming up with a bit of Shakespeare, throw enough folks into a sport and surely a few of them will be good, some exceptionally so, no matter their age.

But what about the rest?  Which is to say, if you just look at the Port Elizabeth 50-54 men's field of 2011, what about the 99+% who didn't make it to Kona, 95% of whom never have a chance of making it to our putative World Championship, even under the best of conditions?  This is the group the investors are talking about.  Indeed, this is the group actually underwriting the sport, the one leading top investment firms to buy out leading endurance races and markets, the same group of non-elite folks the investment house feels it understands.

So, because it says a lot about society today, let's talk about why a majority would care so little about those at the head of the class in their sport as to deny them fairly paltry appearance fees.
Like Ironman, marathon fields keep getting bigger.  The 2013 Berlin Marathon took place last weekend.  A colleague participated, finishing in 4:25.  It was her first marathon, but no sooner had she done it then she had to decide if she was going to do it again, 51.5 weeks early, if she had any hope of gaining entry into the October 2014 field of 40,000+.

Today, even second or third tier events fill up quickly.  Want to do a major race in 2014?  Chances are you've already signed up.  The investment portfolios purchasing major endurance events know this fact.  Apparently, the majority swift are now of the keyboard variety, the ones who gain access to websites just after midnight, when entries often open up, and who fill up the fields to the cliche events of their choice.

And while the top times remain fast and may even on occasion get faster (2013 Berlin was a world record for the men, IMSA 2011 was a world Ironman record for the women, Kona 2011 was a World Championship record for the men - to cite the races mentioned here), in general times aren't getting faster as fields balloon.  Average marathon times keep creeping upward (my colleague was hardly alone at the finish in Berlin), which means that the lion's share of folks in the legions of endurance races now out there for consumption are finishing farther and farther behind folks they never knew and can't become.

At the expense of being a bit unpopular, it is this author's view that technology is possibly also leading to changes in people's opinions.  Could there be a connection between dropping appearance fees and the rise of the "A is for Apple Products" generation?  If at least some conscious time is spent connecting virtually with sites that parrot my opinion, chatting with folks I have already "friended", and basically having routine thoughts and feelings confirmed but not challenged, how can I be asked to reach out to someone I don't know?  Many live in a world that reflects back to self, a world in which we live with and work near people like us and rarely mix with others.  This is a world in which partisans are reality, are sole basis for judgement, damn the others, even if it means making Congress dysfunctional and bringing the US government to a halt.  

Given that sports are the ultimate metaphor for life, is that the way our races are becoming, polarized, disconnected?  At Kona, the pros are now a separate race from the amateurs.  If many age-groupers paid little heed to them in the past, chances are they are doing less so now, when even the fastest among the non-pros have no chance of catching those who largely struggle do it for a living, most of whom won't win any money that day.  And why were the pros separated from the rest of the field?  Because the owners of Ironman at the time caved to pressure from TV, which had a difficult time disentangling the pros, and particularly the pro women, from the top ranks of the rest of the field.  Ironman presented the change to the pros as a bonus... while at the same time cutting back on the size of the pro field and keeping the overall prize money steady.  Message: we really only need the very best of you, and then only on our terms.

No wonder many of the world's best stay away from Kona now.  Kona already forces the world's best to qualify year after year for the race.  That means at least two ironman races need to be devoted to Kona each year.  I was a pro once, and the two ironman races I did in '84 led to a breakout Kona performance - and a stress fracture in my right tibia for good measure.  A pro essentially needs to dedicate his or herself to the Kona assault (just like the rest of us), and then know that on average he or she has a 1 in 5 chance of winning money, and about a 1 in 20 chance of winning real money, of the variety that might pay barely year's expenses.

My prediction is that private investment funds owning endurance events, while lucrative potentially to the fund's investors, will ultimately do little for sport.  Much like private health insurance, privately held ownership of races solely for the investment opportunity will swell fields and highlight mass brand appeal while selling the soul of the race or family of races.  Terminating appearance fees will lead some pros to leave the sport, and for a guy who used to gain no small amount of inspiration from the top pros (and still does), leaving these guys off the starting line is a sad day for sport.  It begs the question: Who should be making the big decisions about any sport's iconic events?