issue #124: Jan. 29, 2025
All-sporters, you’ll be getting one more regular Wednesday newsletter from me next week (hopefully) and then I’ll be going on mini-maternity leave through March, which means Triathlonish will go on a biweekly schedule: You’ll get one or two pre-written from me (hard to say right now) in February and then Tim’s generously agreed to drop you all a couple of fortnightly triathlon missives in March.
And then in April, we’ll be back to your regular weekly triathlon-ish commentary.
One quick thing first: A subscriber asked in the Chat where they could send or organize triathlon equipment and gear donations for the L.A. tri community, so many of whom lost everything, and another reader helpfully connected me with the woman spearheading collections for the Tower 26 athletes down there — so I’ve dropped that info in the Chat if you want to pass along some gently loved gear!
- Kelly
Should we just have a ‘PTO Updates’ section every week?
I mean, probably.
And this week is a big one. (And thank goodness for that, otherwise what would we even talk about.) The PTO officially announced its final-ish 2025 T100 schedule. We say final-ish because you’ll notice some TBAs still sitting there. Don’t think we didn’t notice that:
You’ll also notice the T100 series has been renamed to the T100 Race to Qatar because T100 didn’t sound dumb enough.
(I’m being mean. Racing to Qatar is fine. It’s as fine as Road to Kona, Race to Dubai, the Triple Crown. Sure. But I’m not being mean about the fact that every time I mention the “the T100” to my husband, he says “is that the one that was the other thing?” So. Maybe we gotta stop renaming it every year.)
Why did they rename it? Because Qatar gave them hella money!
As part of the announcement, the PTO also announced a five-year deal with Qatar for the country to host the Grand Final (now being called the World Championship Final) through 2029. This raises the interesting point that we should perhaps feel reassured that the PTO and its T100 Race to Wherever will be around for at least five more years — and I think that’s a semi-valid argument. Certainly, the deal and announcement creates some continuity and consistency, and (in a very real sense) some cash flow.
But it’s also true that a contract is only as good as everyone agrees it is. (See ditto: laws.) If the PTO runs out of money in three years, then it kind of won’t matter that they said they’ll host the final in Qatar for five years. If Qatar Tourism, which is a part of the Qatar government and is what funds Visit Qatar (which is the sponsor here), decides in two years that actually this hasn’t been a success and pulls their money (which is not without precedent in the region), then I doubt the PTO will have recourse.
None of which is to take away from the fact that the PTO has pulled off an expansion of its pro tour, continued to grow and adjust, and clearly found some additional income to keep the war chests flowing. Kudos to them.
They’ve additionally made it very clear — in the flurry of announcements this week — that they *are* a mass participation events company now. Less kudos.
The T100 San Francisco race (which is currently held in conjunction with the age-group Escape from Alcatraz race) is the only one still on the calendar where they won’t be putting on their own age-group/amateur events; and I think part of the reason it wasn’t clear to me if the San Francisco T100 race was still happening is because it’s very much getting second billing. The new Vancouver race, the French Riviera race, the Qatar race will all have what the PTO is saying will be huge mass participation events.
If I was looking at the endurance and participation market, I’m not sure this is what I would be proposing, but if I was in the financial position the PTO is in then I’d probably try to convince myself I was wrong. So.
You can see the full pro schedule and requirements on their site — as previously mentioned, contracted athletes will be required to do four races + the championship — though there are a few spots on the site where some language or links didn’t get fixed or changed from the 2024 schedule.
Something else new: A gear & training section. Weird.
Since we have no races right now and things are, as they say, slow af, let’s get to some of this random gear and training news I’ve had sitting in my notes — which used to go into the monthly roundup of gear and training news. I know you’re really just here for the ‘goss and industry analysis — training info is really not my favorite kind of info — but we’ll take what we can get right now.
Garmin is stuck: This actually hasn’t happened to me yet, but it sounds like a lot of people are getting stuck with the blue triangle of loading after their Garmin tries to connect to GPS. (Here’s the most in-depth explanation and possible fixes.)
Ironman sold off FulGaz to Rouvy — allegedly, minus the staff.
Back in the fall, TrainingPeaks acquired IndieVelo — which then led to TP launching its own virtual platform, which I have not used because I am not looking to add more virtual things to my life.
There were a couple of soft/secret bike launches in Kona, and now I think we can publicly fully say the big two were: the Decathlon brand getting into the tri bike space with Van Rysel & the new “budget” Factor TT.
In the massive year-end training data report things: This analysis of 16 weeks worth of Strava training data from 120,000 runners basically found that faster runners run a lot more hours and a lot of it is a lot slower. But there’s a fair point that the issue there may not be that you need to go slower (sure, possible) but rather that you need to run more (and if you’re going to run a lot more then it might have to be slower). Circles.
Another massive analysis looked at 7,400 runners on Garmin Connect for 18 months and found that you basically get injured if you run too much or too little.
And to close us out: A very-not-large-scale analysis looked instead at two short-course junior elite triathletes and what got them to the elite elite level.
Hopefully, by the time I’m back from my break we’ll have actual races and actual results and more actual news!
The -ish
Other stuff from around our sports worth knowing about this week.
Cassandre Beaugrand was the first big splashy announcement for the E Tri World Champs in London at the beginning of April. Which I actually think are a kinda cool fun well-done spectator-y event. (Instagram)
She was also the first athlete announced for the Lievin Indoor Triathlon (another fun fascinating weird event). One of the PTO’s big announcements last week was also that it was “partnering” for the Lievin race — to help produce it and broadcast it. Which is an interesting move from the PTO and a slightly confusing one for me, unless it’s simply part of their broadcast portfolio expansion. (Instagram/World Triathlon)
You can also see World Triathlon’s registered testing pool of athletes for out-of-competition testing for 2025 — which does pick up and add a few PTO/T100 athletes (Sam Long, Jason West, Paula Findlay, Ashleigh Gentle), per the agreement that World Tri would run a joint pool for the PTO. So that’s interesting. (If you don’t know what a registered testing pool is, then start with my explainer on anti-doping efforts.) (World Triathlon/PTO/Triathlonish)
Georgia Taylor-Brown & Maya Kingma both attended the Team EF Education-Oatly team camp, and both were equally vague about whether they’ll be racing pro cycling events too — though we do know now Maya will be doing a 70.3. Let’s call it the Taylor Knibb model! (Instagram)
Ben Kanute is going for the Ironman Triple Crown: IM world title + 70.3 world title + IM Pro Series title. Which is now officially A Thing. Who do you think will be the first to achieve it? (Tri247)
The Zuma Beach Triathlon — which replaced the Malibu Triathlon, which Supertri bought and then lost — is now back on the calendar for this September (though, a lot of that area is totally burned, so I’m semi-not-sure it’ll happen) and the Malibu Town Council re-approved the permit for Zuma. Backstory here. (Zuma Beach Tri/Triathlonish)
The New York Triathlon is off for this year. Which is *not* the New York City Triathlon (which is the bigger one you’ve probably heard of, which Supertri bought), but I’m not super optimistic for the NYC Tri either. (Instagram)
This is an interesting story about the guy who made St. George a tri destination and is now looking to do the same in Washington. (Slowtwitch)
Paralympian Lauren Parker received a Medal of the Order of Australia. (Instagram)
Last year’s TDFF champ Demi Vollering opened up about the anxiety and stress she faced at this year’s TDFF. (Instagram)
A lot of athletes have been posting about the realities of getting dropped by or changing sponsors this year. And the one that seems to be garnering the most attention and outrage is Lululemon appearing to abandon its push into the run space (after signing big-ish contracts with its FURTHER athletes last year) or, at least, not committing to what they said they were committing to. And I’ll say that while it’s shitty for a company to wait to drop someone until the last moment — leaving those athletes with few options because it’s often too late to change directions — and it’s fair for us to judge a company on how it chooses to spend its money, it’s also true that this is kinda how jobs work unfortunately. (Instagram/Let Me Explain Myself)
Unbound is opening up some additional spots for women in its sold-out 100-mile and 200-mile races (in an effort to up the percentage of women on those start lines). In case you thought you missed the boat. (Unbound)
The Women’s Decathlon is pushing for a second annual world championship event this August. And I was split on whether or not we really need a decathlon — I’m, in general, a believer that the men’s thing isn’t automatically the better thing; they could also just do our thing — but from the organization’s info, I pulled together a history of why women *don’t* get to do the decathlon and it is, honestly, a little bit bullshit. (Instagram/The Feist)
Stop using fertility or tracking apps as birth control! (The Guardian)
And, finally, I don’t know much about figure skating (other than fyi, the world championships are gonna be in Boston in March), but six quads seems like a lot of quads for one program. (Youtube)
One last thing
Turn your post-marathon poncho into a running vest (h/t Fast Women).