#108: Growing pains

Both literal and figurative.

issue #108: Oct. 9, 2024

All-sporters, we’ve got like 15 of our ‘Not Here to Play Nice’ tshirts and tanks left from Women’s Nice if you’re looking for the coolest merch from France (and paying subscribers I sent you a discount code above ☝️ to grab one).

I also sent out this past weekend our quarterly-ish round-up of training and gear news that stood out the last couple months. And I thought there was some interesting stuff in there if you’re a training nerd (which I’m definitely not really, but still interesting) — like this English translation from Norwegian of the Norwegian training gurus looooong interviews on developing the double threshold strategy.

And, I’ve mostly been trying to catch up on some life stuff and future plans right now — but I will be at Men’s Kona for just a few days (Wednesday night through the weekend), so may post up somewhere to grab a beer with a few of you!

- Kelly

---

Are more people doing races or not? Are events on the rebound finally and growing again — or not?

I think not. But I’ve been trying to factually, mathematically figure this out for months and here’s what I’ve finally figured out: I don’t think anyone actually knows.

There have been a lot of headlines touting how more athletes than ever are signing up for races, there’s a running boom, the youth they’re so into the events. But then you read the details and the stats are comparing growth to 2022 or 2023 — which is something but is certainly not everything because what really matters is growth compared to 2019. Or the stories are heavily anecdotal, based on some sense that “young people” are more active than they were during the pandemic. Or, really, it’s only Major Marathons that are seeing record numbers.

And even when I’ve gone into the tri registration numbers that we can get access to or asked the heads of large race companies about their data, the answers are mixed: Triathlons are selling out in some regions globally (but it’s not clear to me how many events there are in Europe compared to pre-pandemic, for example, if we’re going to say they’re selling out). And here in the U.S. tris are definitely not full. Numbers are inching back up but they’re not at pre-pandemic levels and I’m not sure they’re going to get there. Major destination races (ie. Boston Marathon, New York Marathon, etc) are seeing record numbers of entries — and there’s some evidence small local races are starting to rebound. But, really, we’re still missing a huge number of the small or grassroots events.

I say this mostly because I think we want to believe our sports are booming and that’d be great. We want to forget that a lot of companies and race directors and organizations are still struggling to get back into the black (and are making decisions based on the need to stay afloat). We want it to be true; I’m just not sure it is true.

---

The T100 contracts — explained

Last week I argued that a number of T100 contracted athletes were not going to meet their contractual obligations. So then I was trying to figure out this week: What can be done about it?

To confirm: Since the elimination of the 8th T100 race, contracted athletes are now required to do four races + the Grand Finale. Athletes who raced in the Olympics (who didn’t already do a race) only have to do two races + the Grand Finale (and their two scores will be averaged to achieve a third score ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

For the purposes of contracts it appears DNFs count. In some cases, showing up to race and then not being able to start also counts (ie. Magnus Ditlev breaking his wrist during a pre-race training ride in Singapore).

So going through the list, here are the athletes I’ve counted who will not have the number of starts/races they’re contractually required to have — even if they do race the last event, Vegas, before the Grand Finale:

• Laura Philipp

• Anne Haug

• Chelsea Sodaro

• Marjolaine Pierre

• Max Neumann

• Daniela Ryf

• Javi Gomez

And athletes we know won’t meet their contracts because they’re pregnant (so the PTO maternity policy kicked in):

• Holly Lawrence

• Skye Moench

This list is not a judgement. It’s just addition and facts, nothing more. So: What happens now?

My understanding is there’s an injury clause athletes can invoke (as Max did) — but it doesn’t count if they race within 15 days on either side of the missed race.

For everyone else, that means the official position from the PTO is: All other cases will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Literally. They’re like weighing how much media xx athlete did v. how well-intentioned yy athlete was. And what about the people we know have announced retirement (Daniela & Javi) since taking the contracts? Do you claw money back from them or not pay the second half of their contracts?

It’s, IMO, a bit of a cluster quandary.

Start lists for the Vegas - T100 with wildcards are here. And Triathlon Insights caught the fact that the field capacity for the Grand Finale has been expanded in the rules (likely to accommodate wildcard athletes who are in contention for the overall series).

Photo: Courtesy of T100

---

From the races

• Supertri Toulouse: Georgia Taylor-Brown took her third Supertri in a row, and Cassandre Beaugrand got DQ’d for an unbuckled helmet (which always seems to me like we should be able to just resolve before the DQ). Vasco Vilaça and Tim Hellwig really stepped up for Team Stars & Stripes with a 1-2 — and Alex Yee was missing because of jury duty, really.

  • Going into the final NEOM race we also have actual team rankings for the $375,000 prize (which is *very* team-focused this year). While Crown Racing is solidly in the lead, the Finale points are 1.5x points.

• World Triathlon - World Cup Rome: Doesn’t it seem like there’s just a different German woman who wins every week? Nina Eim this week. Ditto for the French men, and Yanis Seguin.

• Ironman Barcelona: I was surprised to see Marta Sanchez back up that strong 6th in Nice with the win here, but the heart wants what the heart wants.

Results: Supertri - Toulouse, World Triathlon - World Cup Rome, IM Barcelona, Challenge Vieux-Boucau

Mark your calendars

• Yes, a couple big ones in the next two weekends: First, T100 - Vegas and the World Triathlon WTCS Grand Finale in Spain on the same exact weekend (Oct. 19-20). It’s almost as if the two aren’t actually coordinated at all, weird.

• And then Men’s Kona the weekend after — which we’re all curious about.

• So, this weekend’s a bit slow with all the build-up still to come and all we’ve really got on tap is IM Malaysia.

---

The -ish

Stuff from around our sports worth knowing about this week.

• Supertri also announced that next year’s Toulouse race will also feature a Toulouse Triathlon as part of their effort to grow short-course mass participation events in parallel with their pro circuit. (Supertri)

• An athlete died during the swim at IM Barcelona. (Triathlon Magazine)

• TriBike Transport’s founder & president sent out a farewell email to customers earlier this week, looking back on the 20 years. He also noted the lawsuit against Ironman — which we reported on here — is in the works and he can’t comment on it. For all the people who keep asking: No, I still don’t know what is going to replace TriBike for all the athletes who don’t know how to or like to fly with their bikes. (Triathlonish)

• Chasing the Burn has a good podcast with Vicky Holland before she retires, and Ruth Astle, Jackie Hering, and Nikki Bartlett did a joint pod for The Triathlon Hour about Women’s Nice. (Apple Podcasts)

• Personally, I sorta think whether or not you can crunch the numbers to show more or fewer women DNF’d at Nice is just not really that relevant — because who “deserves” to be at a world championship is actually just a made-up thing anyway. But Triathlete looked at the DNF and quality of field numbers for the age-groupers and one of our readers made a data visualization graphic of where the DNFs happened and in what age groups. (Triathlete/Instagram)

• I also thought this breakdown of the changes in the Boston Marathon qualification standards by age and gender was good. (Running with Rock)

• There’s a documentary out about the first-ever Iron-distance event in Antartica (which actually happened like four years ago, but good trainer viewing this winter). (Youtube)

• Gravel Worlds — aka the actual UCI Gravel World Championships, not the other U.S. race randomly called “Gravel Worlds” — happened this weekend with a decent number of big names. Plus, Ruth Astle got out there and mixed it up in the elite field. Marianne Vos won her 14th (!) world championship title — which apparently includes cyclocross, road, and track — and Mathieu van der Poel won his 8th rainbow jersey. And everyone argued about whether the dirt roads really counted as gravel. (Instagram/FloBikes/Youtube)

• And Red Bull Rampage is this week: Women on Thursday (for the first time EVER) and men on Saturday. And, no, none of us understand anything about Rampage other than that people bike off the side of a cliff and somehow survive. (Red Bull/Escape Collective)

• Lachlan Morton rode all the way around Australia in 30 days, nine hours, and 59 minutes. (The Guardian)

• The Chicago Marathon is this weekend and the U.S. women (most notably Keira D’Amato) will have Olympic 1500m gold medalist Matt Centrowitz pacing them towards an American record. (Outside Run)

• I went down a hole earlier this week re: marathon qualification times. And I still think everyone freaked out stupidly about the Boston Marathon times getting “harder” since in reality they just were updated to reflect what it actually took to get into the marathon. But, it turns out the BQ times are not the hardest. The times you need to run to guarantee entry into the Chicago Marathon also got updated even faster (and more disproportionately). And, the times for guaranteed entry into New York are still the hardest. Of course, those aren’t totally fair comparisons because most people still just enter a lottery to get into Chicago or New York. (Citius/Chicago Athlete/NYRR)

• Courtney Dauwalter is back and she won the 100-mile UTMB qualifier in Nice by five hours and came in second overall (one guy beat her by 13 minutes). And if you Google that result one of the top things you get is this LetsRun thread about how her wins are suspicious because no one could run that far in those shorts without chaffing and she’s probably faking it. (Outside Run/LetsRun)

• SheRaces is conducting a survey of female triathletes on how to make races better for women. (Survey Monkey)

• Do you remember how global “Blue Zones” were supposed to be areas where people lived significantly longer? Turns out a lot of the octogenarians in those regions actually just didn’t keep good birth & death records, and also sometimes were simply committing pension fraud. Who could have guessed. (All That’s Interesting)

• What does college football have to do with college anymore? I mean arguably nothing really. But Cal (Go Bears!) sure took its chance to shine on ESPN’s Game Day — and oh yeah, there was a game too. (New York Times/Twitter)

---

One last thing

If you’re not freaking everyone out with your epic pre-Kona workouts on Strava are you even really a pro triathlete.

See also: Sam Laidlow’s response workout. And Lionel Sanders’ Youtube double day.

Whether they implode (which I don’t think most of them will) or it all turns into an epic race in two weeks, ISN’T THIS WHAT WE’RE HERE FOR??