This pi##es me off! (Page 2)

I didn't know we were sisters!! HEY SIS! My dad said the exact same thing to me last night. Please note that my father never once fed me as a child nor changed a diaper. Also note he once looked at my eldest, when my eldest was about 4 months and said "Wow, he is almost like a real person isn't he?" "No Dad, he's a FAKE person" sheesh. He will also ask things like "Can he walk yet?" about a three month old baby.

First of all, I feel your pain. I think a majority of us are on the receiving end of similar comments - and yes, it's annoying as heck. However, I do think that the sooner you come to terms w/ the general public's ignorance about the various tri distances, the better off you'll be. Unfortunately, most people equate triathlon to iron distance. And that's just not a mentality that's going to change any time soon. Heck let's face it, even in the tri community itself, there's a "better than thou" attitude between iron distance and non iron distance racers. Yes, this is not always the case but it *is* out there.

So, in short, be the better person and roll with it. Take pride in your accomplishments. Seriously, who cares what anyone else thinks?

Edited by adventuress 2005-08-31 9:49 AM

Well, I am going under the knife in the off season but I hope they dont go that far. The questions on the breast feeding on behalf of my wife probably threw you off. Happy to be your bro though!

I'm curious when(if) the triathlon = Ironman mentality will finally fade away.

I was reviewing my first race (sprint) with a very good friend, who has an athletic/outdoor type background - so he understood the level of training needed for this length and was expressing interest in getting involved himself (just to set the stage that there is no negative point-of-view on his part.)

So, I tell him I'm doing another on 9/11. He says, "Will this be a full one?" I blew it off at the time and told him the distances. But later I'm thinking to myself, "Is a 'full one' an Ironman? Did I give ANY impression that I had trained enough to do complete an iron distance event?"

This wasn't the first time and won't be the last. Just have to accept it and explain. If triathlon participation is truly growing, mindsets will eventually change.

Now, the truly negative...whaddaya gonna do. They have to live that way.

I've done sprints, Olys and one race that was between Oly and HIM and you can definitely exert yourself as much in a one-hour sprint race as you do in a 4-hour long course race. It all depends on pace. Any way you slice it, the "average joe" might be able to get through a sprint race, but their pace is going to be way slower than a trained triathlete.

Only with education to the masses and interest to get up off the couch, so probably not. I must admit I was naive enough to think all there was in tris was IM distance until early this year. Once I knew I could do shorter distances/training requirements, I decided to go for it. The longer races will come over time, but didnt know they were possible. I dunno, maybe the "not so bad" comment could lead to education on the sport and give somebody hope that they could do it too if more and more learn as I had to. Having an athletic background and not being much of a swimmer, still sounded like a workout to me upon hearing about sprints though not as daunting as an IM.

I saw a snide article in WSJ about how people are pretending to be triathletes when they're not doing iron distances. I'm still fuming about it. It's like they think I'm pretending to be a runner when I only run 5Ks instead of marathons. (Hey, it's a LOT like that.)

They completely missed the point of getting in the arena. It's not just that I can swim, bike & run, it's that I sign up for races, train for them, then show up and compete.

It's like they're mad at us for their own ignorance of the sport. How dare we pretend to be "triathletes" when they think "triathlete" means "ironman." Break it down, folks. Triathlete means an athlete in three sports. There's nothing in there about what the distance is.

So, my best advice is to treat their ignorance as a teaching opportunity. Sometimes I tell them that triathlons come in three main distances*, just like road races come in three main distances (5K, 10K and marathon) and that each distance has its own challenges.

Gwendal

* Yeah, I know about HIMs, but figure it complicates things too much for this purpose.

STRIPES!! I love it!!!

So I find it odd, that being in NYC not one person - friend, relative or stranger - has ever commented 'that doesn't sound too bad' to me. Quite the opposite, as I am always trying to get people into the idea of trying a tri, that I am the one saying "no, really it's not that bad!" when speaking about an Oly (haven't done a sprint since my 1st 3 yrs ago). hee hee. Does that make me a bad person?

I never had anyone downgrade any of my sprint races. Last June I completed an olympic distance race in Maui. My company newsletter reported that I was an Iron Man!! When people congratulated me I told them it was "only" an olympic distance. They were still impressed though. Just shows that most people don't understand the sport.

Brother, sister, whatever. We are definatly related! I really don't check sex of the posters and have made this little gaff before. I always feel bad when I emasculate some poor man and turn him into a female. Apologies.

I had a similar experience...We were about to do a mock tri so I said well come on out and join us the more the merrier !!  the response was...wait a minute how long is that swim???  Just tell them your next race date and how to sign up   They will back down

While I've never gotten the comment, "That's not bad I can do that," I do get the obligatory, "Are you doing a full triathlon." Most people don't even know the definition of a triathlon. They don't know what a "full" triathlon is. I don't even know what that means. I started doing sprints last year and most people were pretty receptive and thought that was cool. But I still got the "Oh it's only...."And then I did my first Olympic triathlon and got a little more respect. But still got the, "Oh it's not an Ironman." About this time I realized that I do triathlons for me not for the approval of other people. I could care less whether my boss, my grocery store clerk or or whomever respects the distances that I do. I've got three weeks before my HIM and all I'm thinking about is how it will feel to finally have set a goal, trained for it and finished it. Who cares what everybody else thinks? But you bet your butt I'll be wearing my HIM sweatshirt for a while! Why not I sure as hell earned it!

my first sprint last year my sister in law came down to watch with my wife. After the race she commented on how the swim didnt seem too far. She had a swimsuit so I encouraged her to go for it; just the swim, no bike, no run.

She swam freestylye for about 20 yards, breast stroked/ side stroked/ back stroked/ floated for another 100 yards or so and then painfully made her way to shore.

She had a different view of it after that.

I love it when I tell people I am training for a marathon and they tell me "so and so ran a marathon, it was ahout 3 miles" or "how long is your marathon?" I get that a lot. I got it from one of the doctors in my regular doctors practice and I will not see him anymore. Anyone treating me had better know how far I am running in my training.

The other comment I always get from people when I tell the the Oly distance they gasp and say "SWIM a mile? I can't even RUN a mile!" I seem to surround myself with a bunch of lazy sods, I guess. With the exception of the fantastic tri friends I've made.

I have though, gotten the "it's not a full" triathlon and rather than being offended I use it as an opportunity to educate and say "No, they're all full triathlons, there are just varying distances" and I explain the variety of sprint distances, the Oly, HIM and IM. But never has anyone said "really? a sprint sounds like somehting I might want to do" (see above comment)

I really don't mind if someone says "That doesn't sound too bad." I said the same thing once. I was curious about triathlons because I liked all three sports seperately. Not that I was any good at any of them though, and I certainly had no intention of attempting a mighty TRIATHLON. Then I read the distances for a local mini. I said exactly "That doesn't sound too bad", and signed up. When someone says that to me now, I agree and really encourage them to consider tri-ing.

Some time ago, I saw an interview with a Navy SEAL. The reporter asked (I'll paraphrase), "so what are typical work outs?" to which the SEAL responded "100 push ups, 6 mile run,......". The reporter then stated how just about any athlete can easily do these exercises.
The SEAL very nicely responded "Yeah, anybody can do everything we do, but do everything non-stop. To prep for hell week, we do this for 8 hours a day, during hell week, we do this for 24 hours non-stop, with about 1hr sleep every 24, then after we graduate from hell week we ease into a 10 hour work out routine". There was silence after that response.

ROUTINE!! I'll never forget those last words "EASE into a 10 hour routine"

I see triathlons the same way. Yeah anybody can do what we do but we have to START with practice, sacrifice, commitment, money, equipment, frustrations and most of all, a burning desire to do what we do regardless of distance from "mini", all the way to IM.
NOW, once you did all that just to finish your first race, keep the list of requirements in your life-schedule if you want to STAY in the sport.

NOTE: If you have to explain all this to the mere mortal, they will never understand.

Edited by cobannero 2005-08-31 12:34 PM

Isn't it morifying when people misquote you like that? I was inducted into Sigma Xi once and there was a press release that the paper apparently corrected until it said "Phi Beta Kappa." Uh, no, it's different. That's why we used different greek letters. It's like they thought we had a typo because the only honor society they knew was Phi Beta Kappa.

So, you did a triathlon in Hawaii. Must have been an ironman, right? :-)

Hopefully no one thought you were bragging. That would be mortifying.

Gwendal

So..... can you?

What amuses me is that I only really get this from my out of shape friends and relatives. These are the people who haven't been active since they last wore a gym suit in high school, but they are the first to diminish the accomplishment. I think someone upthread hit the nail on the head - it makes people insecure and when you first question your physical ability, it is not a fun feeling. By downplaying my accomplishments, in a way, they are creating a wall where they don't have to say, "Could I really do that?"

I have a couple of friends (as well as my over the hill father!) who are big into running, doing massive distances of 10+ miles a day, and I know if they trained swim and bike for as little as 6 weeks, they'd smoke me in a triathlon. Yet these are the people who are most amazed at the accomplishment and have no intention of taking me up on a challenge. Good thing, because my ego would be bruised when they beat me!

well said!

I've got to confess, I said those words to one of my co-workers. About 3 years ago a friend told me about his first triathlon and as I thought about how much I'd been working out to get back in shape I said, "you know that doesn't seem to bad." Having never seen any coverage of any triathlon other than the Hawaiin Ironman, I had that misconception that Ironman was all there was. I wasn't trying to demean his achievement, I just suddenly realized maybe something I didn't think was possible actually may be within my reach. The next day he showed me the next race he was thinking about doing and we both signed up. Since then I've completed 15 tris including an OLY and a HIM.
Alot of folks don't have alot of exposure to the world of triathlon, so you have got to give folks the benefit of the doubt every now and then. You may have inspired someone, and turned them on to our great sport. And sometimes those words aren't meant as a slam, but are a light bulb you turned on in someones head.

Only when I rub my thumb and index finger together and chant "I'm Squishing your head, I'm squishing your head...."