I've been away (13 years)

I rarely post but do keep using the logs on here and Training Peaks. 26 IM's to date. IM AZ this year, maybe a second one but not sure. Life is busy but I need tri training to keep me balanced and in decent shape. Not super high training volume but still maintaining. I miss the days when there were lots of posters. I don't care about my times as much and focus more on the pure enjoyment of pushing myself. I follow Slowtwitch but that site too has changed.
What I miss most on this site are the mentor groups.
Sport to me is still the same, people are supportive on race days, the volunteers are as amazing as ever. I miss Mike Reilly, met him many times.
Welcome back!!!

Welcome back to the game..I predict you're going to have a lot of fun.

The years you mentioned as your peak engagement was totally in alignment with 'peak triathlon'. There were a lot of people doing multisport in those days(it also coincided with peak BeginnerTriathlete but that's another story) and the tide has gone back out, so to speak. Fewer races, fewer participants. Remember when you had to be in line the morning after IMFL/IMAZ/IMLP, etc., to get a spot for the next year's race? That kind of interest has subsided to, yes, some IM's eventually sell out but there are fewer to choose from.

Not everyone wants to do IM but you really see the difference in local racing, too; sprints and Oly's and the like. I can speak to my city's dropoff in the number of races AND people showing up to do them as pretty shocking compared to how robust an ecosystem it was in 2005 and for the next decade. We have one longrunning race series with a stable participant count but I can not name another new local event that's come along in a long time. There are certainly lots of opinions about how/why this happened and maybe others who remember will chime in.

Yep, 21 years since my first half and one thing that hasn't changed is that I still can't decide..Clinchers or Tubular??