How close is your nearest triathlon? (Page 2)

7 minutes. The inaugural race was last year and they are having it again this year. It's about 3 miles from my house.

I'm in the same boat... majority of the AZ races are in Tempe, 2 hours away, requires the logistics of gas, hotel, family, 1 car (thus my family rarely attends to do otherwise would requre a taxi ride for them), restaurants, etc... You take a simple $250 HIM race and add all that, it becomes a $400 to $500 affair... forget about going to St. George, UT for the 1 chance a year I get to try to qualify for WC... that's 10 hr drive, and double the amount without family in tow.

This year for a cycling 3 day stage race in the Phx area, I got up at 3:30am on a Friday, go do the TT, then back home (4 hours in a car), then next day... wake up a 3:30am, go to race site and return home... then again, the next day the same. Why no hotel? The race was at 3 different locations in the area for each part of the race, and also, we own a restaurant and the spring time is our busiest period, and I had to go back as quick as possible and work for the rest of the day cleaning up. Yes, I was tired... probably affected results.

Furthermore, our town doesn't have a year round pool, the county pool opens Jun 1st and closes tomorrow until next year... yes, a whole dedicated, solid 9 weeks of swim practice a year. From then on no swimming for me... double pouting

It's a reason why I'm considering this my last triathlon year... 4 years of doing this is mentally taxing and expensive and puts a strain on the family life. I get envious when I see families at the events and mine isn't there due to logistics. I'd like to show my 5 yo daughter that there's more to it than daddy being tired, achey and grumpy a lot. I may just go with cycling which is my best discipline.

I think that's what happened at my last race this past June in Show Low, 7 hours away... I got there, but didn't want to be there... I showed up late for the swim start, did the swim with the ladies wave behind the men, biked my off with the fastest split in the race, but got to T2 at 3rd overall despite starting 3 minutes late, and said to myself, so what, I'm done... I don't want to run, don't care... no family there, no friends... just stopped and turned in my chip. I accomplished a good swim split and bike split, so no running would have made my mental state better.

Edited by tomspharmacy 2014-08-06 1:43 PM

Northern Ontario

I dunno about north of the border but I think there's a direct correlation between the number of triathlons and the number of Starbucks in a given area.

Yeah, when I saw that the OP was from Northern Ontario it all made more sense. Just to educate myself a little I looked at a map of Ontario. The map I found didn't even show cities in Northern Ontario. lol.

 

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You know you're a triathlete when you read that and think dead fing... what?

Depends where you live. In Oregon, where I spend most of the summer, there's one triathlon that's a 30-40 minute drive from home. There are a few others within an hour's drive, but not when I'm there. In Saigon, at least a five or six hour drive or train ride to the closest, which I've only done once (my first one). It's an ex-terra style race and I'm not a good mountain biker; also quite polorly managed so haven't done it again. One other tri in country that I know of--about an hour flight and then 90 minutes by car or bus to the resort area. Car transport is very slow here and there are really no options with a bike unless you have your own vehicle, trains are very limited and slow, so it's usually only feasible to fly. Other than that, everything requires a trip to another country, usually Singapore. I try to choose races on breaks or long weekends so I can make a mini-vacation of it. this really constrains my race schedule.

30 mins

For me, the closest is ~ 1.25 hrs away, do this most every year. Everything else at least 2.5 hrs away and big races prolly 3+ hrs.

Closest big race is 20 miles away, WTC (half) Ironman Lake Stevens. Closest overall is a sprint, the Kirkland triathlon.

It's not super concentrated but there are plenty of races within an hour.

Local sprint and Oly is 1 mile and I just happen to work on the property where it is located. 3 halfs between 1 and 1.5 hours and IM WI is 2 hours. Lots of other sprints within an hour and even an xterra within 20 min.

Local sprint is less than 2 miles from my house. Lots of other local sprints within 20 minutes. Oly is maybe 30 min, HIM 40 Min

We have two TRI's here, one is 1/2 mile from my house and the other is 3 miles. Otherwise, we have to go to the mainland, about 130+ miles to Miami or further to the SW coast of FL for TRI's I don't really travel much to TRI"s. I'll travel for a marathon though.

The IronMoose 140.6 and 70.3

My closest has been 5.6 miles away. And they hosted about 3-4 events per year, so that was very convenient.

Most within 30 min. All the tris I've done are in Tempe, which is about 15-20 min, depending on traffic. There are plenty of small local ones that are in the phoenix vicinity.
Lake Havasu - around 4 hours I think
Bartlett Lake - 30 min
Show Low - 3.5 hours
Flagstaff - 2.5 hours

and of course IMAZ - 20 min away.

No spint in my town. Closet is about 45 minutes. We had one when I started Triathlons but it got dropped two years ago. Sad, because that race got me hooked on the sport. Was my first podium race as well.

Olympic: One in my town, about 15 minute drive.

HIM: Augusta which is about a hour drive.

IM: I could drive to B2B but I am driving to Lousiville for my IM.

I can ride my bike as a 10 minute warm-up to two races. It was three, but one of them ended.

There's a 3-race sprint series in my town, plus a couple of super sprints (all 15-20 min from me). Within 45 minutes at least 2 more sprints and 2 Olympics. Muncie 70.3 is 90 min, and there are many more choices in Indy. 140.6 I'd have to drive 4-6h and spend the night.

We're lucky enough here to have a whole series of triathlons between 5 minutes and an hour-ish away. Many athletes just bike over from their homes. Mont Tremblant is also only a couple hours' drive.

I guess I'm lucky- I live in Vancouver, BC, and we have several tris (short, sprint, olympic, and half-iron) in the city or adjacent suburbs. Spring tris are pool swims (up to Olympic) and later summer are ocean swims. Some of them I can even take public transit from my house. Within a few hours drive there are several lake swim tris in the summer. Closest IM is Whistler and there is also Challenge Penticton about 5 hours away.