At first, it seems like curious logic: A marathon is too much, I’ll do a triathlon instead. Curious, until you realize that the triathlon in question isn’t of the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, then a 26.2-mile marathon Ironman variety. It’s the increasingly popular sprint triathlon kind, consisting of a roughly 300-yard swim, 12-mile bike ride and 3.1-mile run.

“Three miles seemed reasonable, I love being in the water and I love riding a bike,” Kim Feth of Apex recalls of her decision to get into shape by training for a sprint triathlon. “And with three sports, I figured I wouldn’t get bored.”

It was late 2009 and Feth had just turned 42. She was grieving the death of her mother, was plagued by headaches, her weight had ballooned to 207 and after putting in a full day at Poe Montessori Magnet School in Raleigh as lead secretary/bookkeeper/nurse, had little oomph left for exercise. Her A-ha moment came when her son approached one day and said, “All you ever do is lay on the couch and have a headache. When are you going to play with me?’”

She knew then that she had to do something. Shortly, she decided on a sprint tri. Her training began immediately — by walking laps in her living room. It was December, Feth explains: “I don’t like the cold.”

She didn’t want to pay to join a gym, so she went to WalMart and bought a training DVD. That first workout was one mile and it took her 30 minutes, again in her living room. “I thought I was going to fall over sideways,” she recalls.

She didn’t. She kept at it and my March was walking outside, for five miles at a brisk 12-minute-per-mile pace.

Also from the start, Feth signed up on RealAge.com, a Web site offering tips and tracking tools for people trying to get into better shape. She began eating better, looking now at food as fuel to feed her walking habit. “I stopped eating junk,” says Feth. She cut out sodas, substituting them with water, occasionally spruced up with lemon or cucumber. She switched from ground pork to the leaner ground turkey in the family’s weekly spaghetti, started using Greek yogurt instead of fatty sour cream, switched from fried chicken to baked or grilled, dropped from 2 percent to 1 percent milk, started using whole wheat noodles, stopped buying ice cream simply because it was on sale.

She was religious about entering every detail of her fitness program — what she ate, her workouts, her weight — into her RealAge.com tracker. She was especially tickled to see her measuring tape — a graphic device used to show progress — get smaller. “It’s goofy, but I love seeing that. I love seeing the progress that I made.”

Just two weeks into her new lifestyle Feth says she could notice a difference. “My pants were fitting better … I’ll over-share here. I was wearing size 18 pants [before launching her fitness regimen]. Realistically, I should have moved up to a bigger size, but that would have meant crossing the hallway in the mall to the big girl’s store. Mentally, I knew if I went into that store I was never coming back. I just couldn’t do that.”

Spring rolled around and Feth added cycling to her workout regimen. That, too, was unorthodox for a triathlete-in-training. Rather than three-hour rides in the country on a sleek carbon bike with aerobars, she was tooling around the neighborhood on the cruiser she had gotten for Christmas. When the neighborhood pool opened at the end of May, she added swimming. Again, her training deviated from the norm of triathletes swimming in 2,000 to 3,000 yards three times a week.

“I’d do mostly sidestroke, some backstroke,” she says, acknowledging the absence of the more competitive freestyle stroke. “I was losing weight, so what did I care?”

It wasn’t until she showed up for her target race, the Dash for Divas in September that the unorthodoxy of her training struck her. First, there was the 250-yard swim — in a murky lake. Feth had trained in a clear pool. Then the gun went off and the adrenaline kicked in. “I got so caught up in the pace I was out of breath. That’s a scary place to be.”

She made it out of the water in 35 minutes and ran to the bikes. “I noticed all the other moms were on serious racing bikes with those clip-in pedals. I’m in a mommy cruiser, in running shoes.

Time began to blur on the bike. Had she been pedaling five minutes? Five hours? Then she noticed a car was following her. She tried to wave it around, but it continued to stay on her rear wheel. She turned and discovered it was a sheriff’s deputy car, lights blazing: It was the escort car for the last rider, and it would keep her company through the end of the race. Not far from the finish — where volunteers were already packing up equipment — a volunteer told her, “You’re almost there! I’m going to run with you until 20 yards from the finish.” She did, peeling off so Feth could enjoy her moment alone. Or, as it turned out, with her awaiting husband and son. It was her 9-year-old son that provided her true motivation.

When she saw the police cruiser and realized she was the last racer, “It was all I could do not to break into tears. I just wanted to toss my bike in the trunk and quit.” She kept going, and when she saw her son at finish, realized, “I don’t care if I have to crawl across the finish line, I’m not going to let my son see me quit something. I want him to see what I’ve accomplished.”

Over the course of her training, Feth lost 34 pounds. She continues training and hopes to be under 150 pounds in time for her next sprint triathlon, the Ramblin’ Rose in Raleigh, on May 22.

The post An unorthodox approach to the sprint triathlon appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Swim. Bike. Run.
We did them for fun as a kid. And, increasingly as we approach middle age, we’re doing them to get in shape. Only instead of spreading the activities out over the course of a day, we’re doing them in rapid succession: swimming  500 meters, hopping out of the pool for a 12-mile bike ride, then lacing up the running shoes for a three-mile run.
According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association, 1.2 million Americans participated in at least one triathlon in 2009. And according to USA Triathlon, which sanctions the majority of triathlons in the U.S., more than three quarters of triathletes eschew the longer Olympic and Ironman distances in favor of sprint triathlons, races that typically begin with 6 to 10 laps in the pool, followed by a 12- to 15-mile bike ride and a 3.1-mile run.
And it’s not 20something hard-bodies driving this trend: USA Triathlon, which has seen its membership grow seven fold in the past decade, to 134,942 in 2010, has seen the greatest growth in the 35-44 age group.
To a growing number of health-conscious adults, doing a triathlon is a sensible way to get in shape. The three disciplines work a variety of muscle groups, all offer aerobic benefits, and the variety reduces risk of injury from overworking the same muscles.
“People work, they have stuff to do in their lives,” says Jason Biggs, one of the founders of Cary-based FS Series, which promotes and runs races throughout the state. “For people who don’t have time to ride 100 to 150 miles a week, or swim 2,000 yards three days a week, they’re great.” In a survey of 15,000 members, USA Triathlon found 87 percent said they participate to stay in shape.
Kim Feth of Apex found herself in a physical funk shortly after turning 42 in late 2009. She was grieving the death of her mother, she’d gained weight, she couldn’t motivate herself to move. Then came the gut punch:
“My son came up to me and said, ‘All you ever do is lay on the couch and have a headache. When are you going to play with me?’
“It all crystalized for me,” says Feth, who weighed 207 at the time. “I decided then and there that I cannot keep this up. I decided I’m going to do a sprint-distance triathlon.”
That logic might be a head-scratcher if your only familiarity with triathlons are the highly publicized Ironmans, in which participants swim 2.7 miles, ride their bikes for 112 miles, then run a marathon — 26.2 miles. Not for Feth.
“I knew I couldn’t do a marathon, I couldn’t run that far. But three miles seemed reasonable, I love being in the water and I love riding a bike. And with three sports, I figured I wouldn’t get bored.”
Doing a sprint triathlon also seemed the sensible thing for Gerald Babao of Charlotte when he was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare from of head and neck cancer, in 2008.
“That was my launching point,” says Babao, who was 33 at the time. “I felt I need to do as much activity as possible.”
Not that Babao, who works for USA Canoe and Kayak, was a slug. He hiked, backpacked, paddled. “I wasn’t overweight, but I wasn’t in shape.”
Baboa spent the summer in Durham getting treatment at the Duke Cancer Center. When he was strong enough, he bought a bike and started cycling (that led to him sponsoring Team Wannabe Riders in the Livestrong Challenge ride in Philadelphia). Then someone mentioned sprint triathlons, so he he signed up for the TRYMCA class through the Ballantyne Village YMCA. The class met three times a week for eight weeks, swimming, running and cycling. Baboa and his classmates supplemented that training with workouts on their own.
He did his first sprint tri last July, finishing about mid-pack.
“Realistically,” he says, “I know there’s only so much I can do about my cancer. “But this allows me to believe I’m doing everything possible to keep the cancer from returning.”
Feth’s training was a little less … orthodox.
“I started walking around my dining room,” says Feth. (“I started training in December,” she explains. “I don’t like the cold.”)
In March, she started riding her bike (outside) and in June, when the neighborhood pool opened, she added swimming to the mix. She also signed on to RealAge.com, which offers tips and tracking tools for people looking to get into better shape. Between training for her tri and eating better, she dropped 34 pounds by the time her target race, the Dash for Divas, rolled around in September. She looked better, felt great — and realized at the starting line that her self-styled training left her totally unprepared for the race.
At one point on the bike, she sensed a car slowly rolling along behind her fat-tired beach cruiser. She kept trying to wave it around, then stopped to find she was being tailed by a sheriff’s deputy, lights blazing.
“He was behind me because I was the last racer,” Feth recalls with a laugh. “It was all I could do not to break into tears. I just wanted to toss my bike in the trunk and quit.”
But she didn’t. She finished, with the police escort still on her heels. And she signed up for her next race, the Ramblin’ Rose in Raleigh this May.
Her goal for that race: to have the scarlet letter removed from her leg. Actually, it’s an “A” and it’s in black grease pencil. It stands for “Athena” and its given to female participants who weigh over 150 pounds.
“I know,” she says, “it’s pride. But it’s a righteous pride because I’m trying to get healthy.”

* * *

Try a tri?

• The Charlotte YMCA’s TRYMCA program is an eight-week training program intended to prepare first-time triathletes for their first sprint tri. Cost is $135 for Y members, $195 for nonmembers. The next session begins April 4. For more information go here or call (704) 716-6927.
• In the Triangle, the Raleigh Triathlon Training Team Meetup group holds training events and offers opportunities to learn from seasoned triathletes.
• You can also find training programs online. At BeginnerTriathlete.com, for instance, plug in specifics about the type of event you’re training for and you’ll get a recommended training program.
• For a rundown of triathlons, sprint and otherwise, in North Carolina, visit TriFind.com at  or the Endurance Magazine calendar.
• Just getting started? Check out TriathaNewbie.com — “Guiding Beginner Triathletes into the World of Mini-Triathlons.”

Photo: From last year’s Ramblin’ Rose in Raleigh. Photo courtesy Clarke Rodgers.

The post Tri this: A sprint to fitness appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

0.2, 12, 3.1.
0.93, 24.8, 6.2.
2.4, 112, 26.2.

Those are the distances, in miles, of the sprint, olympic and ironman triathlons, respectively. Triathlons, it may surprise the uninitiated to learn, come in a variety of sizes.
Today, in The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer, I write about the growing popularity of the shorter sprint triathlons, especially among middle-age folks looking to get in shape.  (That story will run here tomorrow, with links.) Today in this space, I have even more triathlon numbers, courtesy of USA Triathlon unless otherwise noted, the nation’s governing body of triathlon.

Growth

Not all triathlons in the U.S. are run under the auspices of USA Triathlon, but most are. In order to participate in a USAT tri, you must belong to the organization (either through an annual membership or a one-day license). Here’s how the sport has grown in terms of full-year licenses issued:
1993: 15,937
1999: 19,060
2010: 134,942

In terms of single race permits (generally people trying a tri for the first time and uncertain about their future as a triathlete):
1994: 49,083
1999: 108,764
2009: 312,489

USAT credits at least part of the sport’s boom in the past decade to triathlon’s reappearance at the Olympics in 2000. They also credit the growth in sprint triathlons for making the sport more accessible. Of 15,000 members surveyed in 2009, 78 percent had participated in a sprint triathlon. Speaking of which, here’s a look at how those events have grown in popularity, based on number of USAT-sponsored sprints held:
2004: 818
2009: 1,393

According to the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association, the total number of Americans who participated in a triathlon — USAT sanctioned and otherwise — in 2009 was 1.2 million.

Age

More than 50 percent of USAT members are in the 30-49 age range. A further breakdown:
30-39: 25.11 percent
40-49: 26.52 percent

Older racers tend to race more. The average age of triathletes who did one or two races a year: 37.6; average age of triathletes who did five or more races in a year: 39.0.

Of the 134,942 USAT members last year, 30,511, or 23 percent, belong to kids under 18. In North Carolina, however, 35 percent of USAT members are kids.

Guys ‘n’ gals

Of the 134,942 registered USAT members in 2010:

Male: 84,518 (63 percent)
Female: 50,424 (37 percent)

Female membership accounted for 27 percent of memberships in 2000, and 37 percent in 2010, as indicated above.

In North Carolina

There were 6,023 USAT members in 2010: 3,628 male (60 percent), 2,395 female (40 percent)

Reasons to tri

Of 15,000 USAT members surveyed in 2009, the top reasons for participating were:

For the personal challenge (95 percent)
To stay in shape (87 percent)

Demographics

63 percent of triathletes are married.
Average annual income: $126,000
88.2 percent are white, 3.2 percent Hispanic, 2.1 percent Asian, 1.5 percent multi-racial, 0.5 percent African American, 1.1. percent “other.”

Spending habit

It’s not your imagination, if you’re a triathlete you do spend money on your passion. In the past year, survey respondents said they spent, on average:
$2,2274 on bikes
$564 on race fees
$524 on bike equipment
$370 on training, running and athletic footwear
$277 on nutritional supplements

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