Scott Tinley - Finding Triathlon: How Endurance Sports Explain the World

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Finding Triathlon

Text copyright 2015 Scott Tinley

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN: 978-1-57826-584-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-57826-585-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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Interior Design by Cynthia Dunne

v3.1

This book is dedicated to all my publishers and editors past, present, and future.

S OME PARTS OF this text were previously published across a thirty-year spectrum of sport-related publications. Without those people offering that place for me to share my thoughts and ideas on the world of sport, this book would not have been possible. In no particular order, Id like to thank the following for believing in my abilities to put a pen to paper in service of making sense of the physical culture that defines us:

William R. Katovsky from Tri-Athlete Magazine; Harald Johnson, C.J. Oliveras, TJ Murphy, and Somyr Perry from Triathlon Magazine; Armen Keteyian from Sports Illustrated Magazine and CBS News; Nancy Crossman from Contemporary Books; Tony Svensson from The Trimarket Company; Mike Plant from Running and Triathlon News, The Plant Report, and TriHistory.com; the brilliant freelance writer, Ken McAlpine; Felix Magowan, Amy Sorrels, and Anne Stein from Velo Press; John Duke and Jay Prasuhn at Lava Magazine; Frank Day from Hall-of-Fame.com; the highly-skilled and under-appreciated Tom McCarthy, formerly of Globe Pequot/Lyons Press; free thinking advisor/mentors, Mac Williamson and Keri Puhl; Brad Roe and Paige Dunn of Move Press; Jay Cassell, Marianna Dvorak, and Leah Zarra of Skyhorse Publishing; Jerry Anderson of Headline Graphics; Bisquit Yelnit of Habitus Press; Drs. Eve Oishi and Scott Thomas from Claremont Graduate University and Harold Jaffe at SDSU; Drs. Jesus IIundain-Agurruza and Mike Austin of Blackwell Press; Dr. Lawrence Wenner acting as editor for Peter Lang Publishing; and particularly, Ron Shea of BeginnerTriathlete.com who gave me free range to run on any topic even slightly related to endurance sports. But can I just say that my favorite editor to date is Christina Gandolfo? What a joy it was to work with Ms. C for so many years. Finally, to the grand folks at Hatherleigh Press who said yes when others had only asked, Can we make money on this book? Thanks Andrew Flach, Ryan Tumambing, and Anna Krusinski.

T HE SPORT OF triathlon represents a secure bunker of commitment, focus, and striving. It signifies much of the health and hopefulness seen in endurance sport. It is stylish, techy, challenging, and can enable such otherwise difficult-to-learn traits as self-confidence and control. But this triple-activity sport might also reflect the gluttonous 80s, the falsity of Reagans trickle down, the aesthetics of neon, and the tragic glory of excess. Most of my friends who are private equity capitalists love triathlon.

But this book isnt about triathlon.

Finding Triathlon is an attempt to explain certain kinds of human behavior that are not yet made explicit by the growing popularity of endurance sports; it is an attempt to unpack our psychosocial environments through a scrutiny of endurance sports. This book asks many questions and, with any luck, will answer a few. Finding Triathlon is an effort to explain effort. Why the hell would well over a million people around the world willingly spend thousands of hours and dollars, jeopardize jobs, marriages, essential health and wellbeing, all in preparation for a day of suffering? Are triathlons and endurance sports a new kind of religion?

A marriage of spiritual materialism?

Material spiritualism?

Consider that in recent years nascent endurance sports have had less bearing on the decadent look-at-me body types found in other sports than some quest for something ephemeral and intangible. Endurance sports, we are led to believe, are of a higher plane than say, soccer or fishing or ice hockey. And triathlon, we are told, is where youll find the Grail.

But where do ideas emanate that suggest running 26.2 miles is better for your soul and your social life than a Sunday morning game of hoops or your Thursday bowling league? Have endurance sports been over-sold to us? Mythologized by mass media? Offered as purple Kool-Aid by the already-hooked? Sports such as swimming, cycling, running, hiking, paddlingheck, anything that goes on for hours and days and weekscan fall into the endurance sports category. And they aint going away.

So, why not try to make sense of their place in our hearts, minds, and bodies?

What is it about triathlon, and the emerging endurance sport phenomenon, that suggests some larger shift in our social worlds? That helps to explain the nuances of first world choices that might or might not have any bearing on any betterment of mankind? That would seem, in another time and period, evidence of the pure lunacy of the participants? Why, in God and Peles name, would tens of thousands dream of racing across the barren lava fields of west Hawaii, scantily clothed; scorched meat, balls and boobs straining against Spandex, and for what? To transform yourself (as the announcer promises) from John Q. Public to a finisher of a full-distance triathlon?

More questions than answers.

I won that IRONMAN Triathlon thing in Hawaii a few times in the 80s. They called it a World Championship, but my friends wondered why I had missed a week of work and went off to Hawaii with a bike and not a surfboard.