OH: "You can be good at 2: Triathlons, Career, Spouse/Family - you choose". The single biggest difference between training for a triathlon and training for a single event (Marathon, Cycling century etc) is the sense of "false urgency" a triathlon creates to justify your need to sacrifice other areas of your life to train. Missing a day's training because you have to travel, attend a critical event for friends or family, or work all day on a critical project is problematic if you're training for a single event. However, when training for a Tri it's catastrophic because "That'll be 4 days from my last ride/swim/run!" That pressure is really the secret sauce of Tri's over other endurance sports. It's why you can sort of pick whom out of your exercising friends will go down the Tri route vs stay single sport dedicated.

I have no issue with folks dedicating themselves to do a triathlon. Maybe you do one a year and everyone understands what you're up to and supports you for 12 weeks etc. That's not how it often works though. I do think it's odd that society glorifies what is really obsessive/compulsive behavior that takes over much of the waking day for the participant and materially impacts their relationships with those around them. And no one who has actually done a triathlon here can honestly tell me it isn't the first thing they think about when they wake up and doesn't impact how they schedule their work and social calendar every day vs the other way around. Well(they can but that would be the denial part that comes along with the behavior.

I don't do triathlons because of the time commitment involved. I'm training for a marathon and that's a big enough commitment.

I still think the best way to learn to be an entrepreneur is to be an entrepreneur.

If you enjoy a specific sport or activity, enjoy it for it's own merits. Rarely do things like marathons or Ironman or sports make sense just as ways to keep in shape - unless that's the only thing that will motivate you.

So what I am saying is that sports are great on their own, no need to justify them by assuming they "build character" in other parts of your life.

My guess is that success-oriented people do triathlons, not that triathlons produce success-oriented people.

Triathlon training really isn't just tacking together the training you would do for all three sports; this would be impossible. Instead, it is doing the same amount of training as you would do if you were doing one of the three sports exclusively. But in the same amount of training, you are training to perform three sports rather than one.

This necessarily means that a triathlete is not performing to his/her ability in any single sport. For example, a good time for the marathon portion of an Ironman is 2:40-2:50, but a competitive marathon time is 2:05 or faster. Just to add additional perspective, a good marathon time for an amateur runner is 2:30, faster than what a topnotch triathlete would be expected to pull off.

> Just to add additional perspective, a good marathon time for an amateur runner is 2:30...

That's not a good time for an amateur, it's an insanely good time for an amateur. The world record is currently 2:03:38. A 2:30 would have put you in 22nd place (out of 26,000!) in this year's Boston Marathon.

2:30 is an eternity away from 2:03:38.

I am not thinking of dabblers; many people will do marathons after having barely trained. The goal for these people is just to finish.

I think 2:30 is achievable for a healthy, moderately talented man who is not merely dabbling: someone who is training correctly and has put in a few years of sustained, injury-free effort.

2:30 is still very much an amateur time. For example, I think that even though 2:15 or faster is professional-caliber it is still nowhere near being competitive.

Of course it's an amateur time: You're not going to win any serious marathons running a 2:30, and if you have no chance to win, you can't really be described as a "professional". But c'mon, 2:30 is an amazing time for an amateur. Obviously it's "achievable", since maybe a dozen "amateur" runners managed it in Boston this year, but it's well beyond "good", as you initially described it. It's well into the top 1% of amateur marathon runners.

This whole argument is slightly tangental, but I figured I needed to chime in ;) A 2:30 is a ridiculous time for an amateur. It'll easy put you in the top 0.5% of amateurs in the world. To put in this in perspective... a 2:30 marathon pace puts you at doing roughly 17m30s 5km's, 8 times in a row!

Haha, yes, I agree. 2:30 would probably be run at the pinnacle of one's amateur career -- a personal best rather than a typical time.

I do want to point out somewhat pedantically that it takes being in better-than-2:30 shape to run 2:30 on the Boston course, a notoriously slow course. There are runners who ran more slowly than 2:30 in Boston when they could have run 2:30 elsewhere.

I do sprint and Olympic distance triathlons. A marathon takes far more time to get ready for than an equivalent time length triathlon because you just need to be pretty good at 3 sports rather than really well trained at 1.

The downside of triathlons is the expense, bike, gear, shoes, wetsuit (in most areas), etc.

I agree with your point about it getting you ready to be an entrepreneur. The plus side is that staying in shape makes me better at everything.

> I still think the best way to learn to be an entrepreneur is to be an entrepreneur.

I whole heartedly agree. My point is that it gives you a framework much like building a business is; to create a mind and attitude built for winning in a long-term competitive atmosphere. Too often I find myself trying to find the easiest way out of a problem. It's nearly impossible to do in the longer distance triathlons.

I wholeheartedly agree that exercise increases the ability to focus at work. I would even go as far to say that people who are not doing it are leaving some latent ability at the table. This is also true of sleep and nutrition, not just exercise.

I do want to remark briefly on what is admittedly a minor point that you made, namely that triathlons are highly recommended "... even if just doing sprint/olympic/half distance." It is a common misconception that the longer the distance, the more difficult or meritorious it is to complete. However, this is not true: It is not the case that one races an Ironman at the same intensity that s/he would for, say, a sprint-distance triathlon; rather, in order to last the entire duration of the longer distance, s/he is racing less intensely. (A person who performs a sprint-distance triathlon at the intensity s/he can hold for an entire Ironman is not racing the distance.)

Let's go to running for a concrete example. A topnotch overall pace in the marathon is 4:50/mile. But a miler will run a single mile in 3:50, a whole minute faster than marathon pace. (Note that these are typical competitive times rather than world-record times.)

With all this said, I would be remiss not to say that I agree with the overall sentiment that one should take baby steps rather than brashly pursuing unreasonable goals.

In response to your final question, I haven't done triathlons since college. At the moment, I am working on getting into shape to finally break 5:00 for the mile run. Next up is breaking 1:00 in the 100-meter swim. I'm still figuring out what a reasonable goal is for cycling... maybe 5 miles in 10 min.?

After I have all the pieces, I'll put them together and start doing triathlons again :-).