Annoying comment #1082

She is probably right that a reasonably active person could do a sprint triathlon.  Most people could pay a round of golf or play a game of basketball or softball too.  But they don't.  Some people have the courage to get out there and experience life and some people are content to sit on the couch and watch other people live life.

You should very politely invite her to participate in your triathlon and see what kind of excuse you get.  It is my experience that most people are intimidated by the swim.  Anyone can bike 10 or 15 miles and anyone can run/walk 3 miles if they had too...but swimming 1/2 a mile is another story.

~Mike

So I assume you are the little guy and not the big one in your picture?  :-)

I see a chance for family bragging rights here...tell her it's time to put up or shut up...

Your friend is 100% correct.

what people can do and do do are two different things, however.

you participating in tri's is awesome not because you have an ability most could only obtain with hours and hours of training, but because you do it because you can. 

sometimes thats all the reason we need to reach levels of success most only dream is possible through raw talent.

I have a friend that did a local try-a tri last summer with only a couple of weeks of training (she is reasonably fit).  She ended up walking the entire 2.5k run and finished 10th last.  She was really disappointed with the race and basically blamed the whole thing on the fact that she was on a mountain bike.  Well 90% of the racers were on mountain bikes and they all manage to get pretty good times.  I suspect it was because she had never biked or ran hills (this race has plenty on both the bike and the run) and wasn't prepared.  Fast forward to this year and she has bought a road bike but still not trained a heck of a lot - I'm willing to bet that her performance won't be much better.

Could have said, "Great!  The more the merrier; you can do it with me!"  Then email her a registration invitation to the event.

A co-worker and her brother do a small-town super sprint every year and the brother being an olympic level waterpolo/swimmer back in the day really does well. Anyway the sister and I were talking and I must have said something to the effect of for him to step it up and come to a big city race. Long story short, she told him, and he accepted my inadvertant "challenge" to do an Oly in Aug. He rides his bike to work every day so his issue is just the run with his "slow" time of 25 min/5K for a standalone. I expected to get clobbered and said as much.

Fast forward about 5 months, he's done a few runs but nothing like he should. Race day he's 2nd out of the water at around 20 mins (I'm 30 as usual), bike is about 1:20 (I claw back about 1 min on the bike with a 1:19 or so) but then on the run, he suffered like he's never suffered before. Pretty much last with a 1:16 run for total time of 3hrs while I pulled a tollerable (for me) 52 min run for a 2:40 time. If you saw us standing side by side you'd probably laugh as I'm short and chub while he's a tall super lean biker guy.

But at the end of the day he did a sub 3hr OLY on crap training, cause he had the fitness, where some others can train all year and still not make the 3hr line. Genetics is a cruel mistress.

keep in mind, some also train 10 hours a week, and make training claims as indicated above to make it appear, they're not even trying, which in a way, makes their 1:10 look even more impressive than it might be.

but, I agree with you.  either training is higher than indicated, or finishing time is off, or course was off....