From today's Boston Globe:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/07/16/muscle_beach/

Muscle Beach

Thoreau's quiet retreat makes quite a splash as a training ground for triathletes

By Irene Sege, Globe Staff  |  July 16, 2007

CONCORD -- Jeff Aronis need only look at the towels on the stone tiers ringing Walden Pond's beach and at the heads in brightly colored bathing caps bobbing in the calm early - morning water to know interest in triathlons is rising.

"I've been swimming here eight or 10 years," he says. "When I started, there'd be three people. Now there's 20 or 30. As the sport has grown, this has grown."

On this particular Wednesday morning, three days after a swimmer died of a heart attack in a triathlon in Cohasset Harbor, two dozen people, many of them triathletes, are in the water or on the beach shortly after 6 a.m., and over the next hour more come and go. The air is a humid 75 degrees and the water temperature is in the 70s, perfect for a before-work dip, but most of these swimmers, seeking buoyancy and speed, slip wet suits over their tank suits before venturing out in small groups. All week, the buzz, online and off, has been about the tragedy in Cohasset.

"Any time a triathlete dies, it stirs the whole community," says Laurie Damianos, 43, a computer researcher from Waltham. "It makes you think about the athlete. It doesn't make you think about the sport."

Marissa Solomon's friend was in the Cohasset contest last Sunday, as was a political fund-raiser donning a wet suit held together with duct tape who declines to give his name.

"You know what? There are risks doing everything," says Solomon, 30, a marketing manager from Cambridge. "It's not stopping me."

The veteran triathletes here have the muscular bodies that come with training and competing for endurance. They enter everything from sprints -- 500-yard swim, 15-mile bike ride, and 3-mile run -- to Ironman events consisting of a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bicycle ride, and 26.2-mile marathon run. Traversing Walden, they'll pause to let slower swimmers in their group catch up.

Aronis, 37, an accountant and attorney, and his girlfriend, Rachel Saks, 36, a marketing consultant, who live in Waltham, met through the Boston Triathlon Team. She knows so many people here, he jokingly calls her the mayor of Walden Pond. They compete in about a half-dozen triathlons of varying distances a year, not to mention another four or five road races or open - water swims. When their flight to Portland, Ore., for the National Age Group Championship, was canceled last month, they found a smaller event in Portland, Maine.

Damianos expects to compete in four triathlons this year, including several at the Olympic distances -- 1.5-kilometer swim, 40k bike ride, and 10k run -- that she prefers. To get in three swims , rides , and runs a week, plus take a day off, she often trains twice a day. "Hopefully you have an understanding boss," she says.

Walden Pond is a half-mile long. Swimming point to point along the perimeter makes for a longer swim, as does going crooked. The snapping turtle that resides here once startled Damianos when it popped up beside her. "It's legendary," she says.

So is the pond, which Henry David Thoreau in 1854 described as a "clear and deep green well" that is "remarkable for its depth and purity." The daybreak swimmers come from as near as Sudbury and as far as Hanover. Some mornings the water is so flat and glass-like that they fight glare on the return lap. Some mornings the dawn fog is so thick, swimmers stick to circling the perimeter.

"I swam with a grandmother the other day," says Elizabeth Dial, 29, a software engineer from the Back Bay. "She was an awesome swimmer. You should have seen the biceps on her."

"That's why I swim slow," says Karen Lempert, 36, a book editor from Canton. "I'm preserving my knees so I can do this when I'm 80. I'm looking to outlive everyone so I can finally win my age group."

Dial zips up her wet suit, and heads to the water with swimsuit-clad Lempert and Raquel Cerezo, 34, a pharmaceutical worker from Malden who calls Walden a second home. "I try to use my legs as little as possible to save them for the bike ride and the run," Dial says. "You're more buoyant in a wet suit. A lot of the kick is going to keep your body afloat."

Rooker Price, 34, an annuity salesman from Melrose, is here training for the Swim Across America relay set to start at Rowes Wharf two days later for which he's raised $2,000 for cancer research. Price has been swimming since he was 13 and injured his knee in a dirt bike accident. Now he does the swimming leg on relay triathlons.

When swimmers return to shore they check their waterproof watches . Saks clocks a half-mile across at 12 minutes and 20 seconds and Aronis registers 13 minutes. When they compete, whoever loses the swimming leg buys ice cream. "She hasn't bought yet this year," Aronis says.

By the time Judy Jankowski, a 45-year-old technical manager, arrives from Acton at 7:40 a.m. , Walden Pond is almost empty of swimmers. Jankowski no longer competes.

"I come a little later," she says. "You see how quiet it is now?"