Would his life be better if he tried triathlon? via http://www.sketchplease.com

People are always talking about why you should do triathlon, why triathlon is so amazing – but the truth is that 99% of the world’s population has never done a triathlon, doesn’t want and never will. So trying to put myself inside the skin of this majority I tried to come up with 10 reasons not to do a triathlon to help them feel they are “sensible” and “reasonable” in deciding that triathlon is not for them [Ed. a tough challenge]

Goals

One of the things about triathlon is that you have to be quite goal focused. You have to decide to enter a race; set intermediate goals and then turn up and try and achieve race day goals. At each point there are lots of opportunities to fail. Many people choose to avoid trying so that they never fail. Triathlon is unlike a lot of sports in that it’s really difficult to be a triathlete without competing – unlike football or golf – and setting goals is a key part of that. Doing triathlon will make you quite good at this – best avoided for this reason.

Friends

People are influenced by their friends. No surprise there. They’re also influenced by their friends, friends and their friends, friends, friends. (actually a bit further than that – but it gets repetitious.). It’s actually pretty difficult and unusual for someone to become a triathlete unless they have contact with triathletes – or come from a running or sporty background. It’s socially difficult – not impossible – and triathletes very quickly develop networks of triathlete friends to support themselves against negative social pressure. So if you like the friends you have, stick with them and stay inside.

Injury

Many people have injuries or issues that stop them leading an active lifestyle. Many of these are socially inflicted – think of the weak knees of obese people or the low lung capacity of smokers. Being a triathlete isn’t a choice between black and white. There is a huge range of ability across the participants. It’s possible to do an Ironman in 8 or 26 hours (before the 17 hour standardization), to do it with 2 legs, 1 leg or no legs. If you’re one of the 9 million people on disability in the US para-triathlon could change your life.

Alcohol

Alcohol is a great reason not to do triathlons. The relaxation of intoxication leads to later beds and later starts and makes early morning training hard. The extra calories mean extra weight to carry and this only helps downhill on the bike. Even worse regular exercise makes consuming alcohol in quantity harder as you tend to get drunker faster and more easily. Natural detox as it were.

Smoking

If you smoke – exercise and triathlon is pretty bad for you. Firstly the regular swimming and sweating gets rid of your habitual smoky smell. Then it makes the tale tale wheeze you have when climbing stairs go away and you start managing to catch the bus if you have to run for it. Even worse your friends will tend to smoke less and at some point you’ll make a rash decision to give up smoking and spend your cash on smokin carbon wheels!

Success

No one’s ever said that you’ll be successful if you do triathlon and not if you don’t – Steve Jobs gave us Apple and he’s from SoCal and didn’t do triathlon. But….there’s a lot of people out there who’ve found redemption one way or another through triathlon. So if you’re down and seem to have no hope left give triathlon a miss. It might mean you change everything.

Time

With a busy life watching TV you won’t have time for triathlon. To start with you’d have to cut out at least an hour of your favorite soaps every day – and then if you got more serious you’d find that you’d have to adopt an even more restrictive diet so that you could make sure that you managed to squeeze in the very best TV shows. It’s not all doom and gloom as many triathletes cycle inside and you’d be able to watch a great film during a turbo session. Beers and nachos don’t work if you’re on the bike watching the Superbowl though. Sorry.

Job

Of course most jobs mean that you can’t train as effectively as you’d like. Your 9 – 5 labors will forever ruin any chance of breaking the 8 hour Ironman record. So there’s probably not a lot of point in trying. You could lower your sights and say “What can I do with the time I have?” It’s a problem that every triathlete faces – in fact everyone faces – there simply is not enough time to do everything. You’ll also find that as you get fitter you’ll be more energetic and productive – but this will be counter balanced by the time you take off to travel for competitions. So promotion will still remain unlikely

Family

Triathlon would also take time away from your family. This is especially important as it may have an impact on the high divorce rates in modern society. It may not either – but if you enjoy squabbling and arguments with your spouse and children and constant high blood pressure, then the stress relief and feel good factor generated by regular exercise should be avoided.

Money

I totally agree. If you bought everything in a triathlon magazine and everything that other triathletes said was cool you’d be bankrupt. But you’d have the credit card companies chasing you if you said yes to every bargain opportunity at Thanksgiving or Christmas. They are all ready chasing you? Oh dear – well maybe now is the time to take up barefoot running. Triathlon isn’t all about the equipment. Its really about your mind and attitude – and we do have a great mental performance training course on offer just for you….

Any good ones I missed?

In Summary

OK. I didn’t really try too hard to be convincing. Triathlon isn’t the answer to every problem that we face. It does encourage a healthy balanced life and helps people build their self esteem by achieving things that they never thought possible. That can only be good.