"Even in the rarified air of triathlon"

December 11, 2022 12:22 PM

How the 1% Runs an Ironman (NYT gift link, archive.org) Inside the world of Ironman XC, which makes the endurance contest a little more endurable—for executives who can afford to pay.
posted by box (58 comments total)

Is there nothing rich people can't ruin?
posted by tommasz at 12:30 PM on December 11, 2022 [20 favorites]

I don't know, they pair beautifully with guillotines.
posted by ZaphodB at 12:33 PM on December 11, 2022 [19 favorites]

From the article, it doesn't seem that XC is "ruining" Ironman in any obvious way, unless you consider holding separate events that cater to them in a luxurious manner is ruining Ironman for others.
posted by tclark at 12:36 PM on December 11, 2022 [8 favorites]

I mean really, it's not like Ironman, as a sport, isn't already jam-packed with people who have enough societal privilege stacked up that they can devote the time and equipment to train for a 2 mile swim, a 100 mile bike ride, and a marathon in a single day.
posted by tclark at 12:45 PM on December 11, 2022 [41 favorites]

There's always Plan J if you want to beat your personal record.
posted by onehalfjunco at 12:47 PM on December 11, 2022

This article is hilarious.

"there’s no schadenfreude quite like watching a bike that costs more than a car get smushed by the automatic door at a Holiday Inn."

"2,000 queasy warriors in black wet suits, bracing themselves to charge into the water through a giant inflatable arch presented by Subaru, like a reverse amphibious assault on Normandy."

"this particular expression of psychopathy is the ultimate test of problem solving. That problem could be mechanical, like a blown tire, or it could be physical, like mismanaging your hydration and needing to adjust your race plan, or it could be mental, like your brain’s instructing you to lie down and die."
posted by basalganglia at 1:03 PM on December 11, 2022 [32 favorites]

MetaFilter: your brain’s instructing you to lie down and die.
posted by Splunge at 1:05 PM on December 11, 2022 [26 favorites]

"The XC winner at each race, and often the runner-up too, earns a bid to the world championship, and for many XCers this is the program’s top lure: It improves their chances of qualifying from about 100-to-1 in the open field to better than 10-to-1....

Because of Covid-related race cancellations earlier in the 2022 season, XC hadn’t been able to award several of its allotted qualifications for the 70.3 world championship, meaning now they had a large surplus. And so, Ford declared, all of the remaining XC finishers at Mont-Tremblant were now bound for the 70.3 world championship in St. George, Utah, as well.

How you feel about this may depend on how you feel about privilege’s habit of becoming self-perpetuating, like compound interest, and whether it makes XC sound like an exclusive social club, or as Dixon described it, “a great case study of what real leadership is now.”"

posted by box at 1:09 PM on December 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

I read this a few days ago when it was first published and I'm still trying to understand 1) why it was written and 2) why I read it.

I'm not being snarky. I like to run, but I don't have any interest in triathlons and I'm also not (nor will I ever be) part of the 1%. I'm not even 1% adjacent. There's a certain gawking at rich people thing going on, and also the wonder of reading about people who are using their wealth to make their lives both easier (stay at the closer hotel!) and much, much harder (train for and run a triathlon!). But still: why do I care? Why is this a story? Why was this the #1 story on the NYTimes site (according to the NYTimes app)? And @box why did you post it?
posted by heyitsgogi at 1:11 PM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Le Jamtel did the research and crunched the numbers (chief risk officer), and he concluded that if he kept cycling Ironman distances on open roads — 112 miles for the bike leg, which in the race is sandwiched between a 2.4-mile swim and a full marathon — there was a 100 percent chance he would be killed.

Either he's incredibly bad at picking roads to cycle on, or he likes to watch movies while he's cycling, too.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:14 PM on December 11, 2022 [14 favorites]

box why did you post it?

I thought it was funny and well-written and took some interesting turns, and its themes of capitalism ruining everything and privileged people having no idea how privileged they are... let's say they spoke to me.

I also thought it might prompt an interesting discussion.

(And, full disclosure, I'm trying to make an FPP every day between now and Christmas.)
posted by box at 1:22 PM on December 11, 2022 [53 favorites]

I too would like the most luxurious maximum self-inflicted suffering possible. I did immigrate to America after all.
posted by srboisvert at 1:36 PM on December 11, 2022 [13 favorites]

@box those are good reasons, all.
posted by heyitsgogi at 2:05 PM on December 11, 2022 [16 favorites]

For a while there, you could buy top-end triathlon bikes that included, as part of the price of purchase, an admit-one ticket to some Ironman triathlons; I know some triathletes, and the way they sneer when you mention those bikes to them is something else. I've heard one guy call them "Sponsored by DNF".
posted by mhoye at 2:18 PM on December 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

So it’s a fastpass for a triathlon.

I wonder what would be the best underwater creature to secretly populate the swimming part with?
posted by Mister Moofoo at 2:47 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

Holy crap, I know Matt Dixon.
posted by RakDaddy at 2:48 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

Too late to edit: he was a young pro triathlete back when I was doing triathlons. He had a coaching company that's now turned into this XC thing. Wild.
posted by RakDaddy at 2:58 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

The harm to Iron Man I see is that they get to give out qualification slots to hand out as a class. So you just need to be the fastest rich asshole and even if you're two hours off a competitive pace for your age/gender you take up a slot that, presumably, a more competitive, but not rich athlete would have had if this XC class didn't exist.

There are plenty of ways to group competitors but net worth shouldn't be one of them.
posted by VTX at 3:13 PM on December 11, 2022 [25 favorites]

I agree with VTX. None of this really bothered me except the additional qualifying slots. Of course rich assholes are going to have fancier training equipment and better logistics and nicer dinners. That's just a given and it isn't exactly fair but what are you gonna do? But more qualifying slots is really not at all in the spirit of fair play.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:18 PM on December 11, 2022 [7 favorites]

Part of finishing the race is a mind-set that comes naturally to gifted executives: Every problem has a solution.

This is in the article almost as an aside but it seems to me to be a central to what's going on here. For most people maturity to adulthood involves understanding that the world is quite broken in lots of ways, that humans have limits, and there are many things that simply don't have solutions. Other things are compromises; one successful outcome will mean another one fails. And we make our accommodations to that and we do the best we can. There are entire world religions built out of that truth.

The thing that draws these people together isn't privilege, it's a fundamental philosophical error.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:25 PM on December 11, 2022 [8 favorites]

Part of finishing the race is a mind-set that comes naturally to gifted executives: Every problem has a solution.

Did they just never get around to replacing the lead plumbing at business schools or is there a case study out there about how all the best CEOs of the 20th century had lead poisoning or what.
posted by mhoye at 4:36 PM on December 11, 2022 [7 favorites]

...there was a 100 percent chance he would be killed.

I guess they don't teach probability theory in business school either.
posted by meowzilla at 4:44 PM on December 11, 2022 [21 favorites]

art of finishing the race is a mind-set that comes naturally to gifted executives: Every problem has a solution.

I mean, the solution seems to be to pay someone else to solve the problem for you:

It means an on-call bike mechanic to resolve any prerace emergencies — and there’s always something. If you’re not in XC and you packed your 162.5-millimeter crank instead of your 167.5, you’re pretty much screwed. Ford will drive back to Montreal to replace it, if that’s what it takes.

posted by hydropsyche at 4:47 PM on December 11, 2022

There's sports where they pay the professionals a lot of money, and the owners get even richer.
There's sports where the owners pay a lot of money, and The World Triathlon Corporation of Tampa, FL is getting richer.

This is definitely the latter.
posted by not_on_display at 5:13 PM on December 11, 2022

This reminds me of how you can get dropped off a mile or so from the north pole and “arrive” there in skis.
posted by gottabefunky at 5:16 PM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

There is Ironman the lifestyle, and Ironman the brand. This is a great article on the brand, and why the spirit of triathlon is withering because the company is squeezing it dry. I don’t know of a full Ironman with 2000 entrants; more like 3000+.
posted by fluffycreature at 5:38 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

I like to run, but I don't have any interest in triathlons

Whenever anyone mentions triathlons, I’m reminded of the comic who reckoned that a shark could swim faster than he could and he could run faster than a shark, so it would all come down to their relative performance as cyclists.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:29 PM on December 11, 2022 [38 favorites]

In my day rich people stuck to obscure Olympic sports that cost too much for anyone but the idle rich "amateurs". Like bobsled, sailing, and dressage
posted by cmfletcher at 6:41 PM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

This reminds me of how you can get dropped off a mile or so from the north pole and “arrive” there in skis.

One of the things that Jon Krakauer talked about in Into Thin Air was how people that didn't really possess technical climbing skills could summit Everest, and that there were rumors that one of the people on the mountain in 1996 was being "short-roped", a euphemism for basically being dragged up the mountain by a Sherpa.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:44 PM on December 11, 2022 [8 favorites]

Whenever anyone mentions triathlons, I’m reminded of the comic who reckoned that a shark could swim faster than he could and he could run faster than a shark, so it would all come down to their relative performance as cyclists.

I'm reminded of the old joke that if you really wanted to make Triathlons exciting, you'd do the swim last.

In fact, I'd accept that as the price of this kind of admission. If you buy your way in, you do the swim last.
posted by mhoye at 6:55 PM on December 11, 2022 [1 favorite]

I see the execs in companies who put "race triathlons" on their "get to know you page," along with a photo from a race. It's one of several bullets, that also lists their family. You know, to show they are human. I always chuckle a bit, as it's folks at their level who say things like "10% overtime should be standard and a minimum." Where do they get the time to train?

This sheds a bit of light on that.

Stay tuned for how they post to LinkedIn what business lessons they learn.
posted by MrGuilt at 7:11 PM on December 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

I wonder if the 'bad-at-probability' guy has considered that, using his calculations, enough triathlons will eventually result in a 100% chance of his death while competing.

I've completed two ultramarathons and I give kudos to anyone that can finish these events under their own steam. Even with all the pampering around the event, I don't see any evidence that they get it any easier than anyone else, beyond the minor advantage of better equipment and maybe more time to train gives. They still have to complete the course just like everyone else.

I don't have an issue with the winner getting a qualifying slot - there's a reasonable chance they would have qualified anyway. I disagree entirely and strongly with the idea of just giving away allotted qualifying slots on an 'every child player wins a prize' basis though. The slots shouldn't get to be saved up and, if they don't get used at one race, they should be reallocated to the general field. That is the line between being slightly privileged but still putting in the hard yards and being gifted an entry you don't deserve.
posted by dg at 7:50 PM on December 11, 2022 [4 favorites]

This was a really fun read. I went in expecting it to be a story about rich people somehow being towed through the race (like the Everest cheats mentioned above) - but I have pretty much no problem with this. It’s gross rich people overspending, but they’re still doing the work AND they’ve wasted money on something that probably only hurts themselves. Toward the end of the article one of them snapped a front tooth in half trying to bite open a water bottle. I’m good.
posted by Mchelly at 8:24 PM on December 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

My favorite part about triathletes is when they take their very expensive bike to the shop - usually for the first time since their last race and with not nearly enough time before the next race tomorrow morning - and the first thing the mechanic does when they see a tri bike is they take a really deep breath, put on a fresh pair of gloves and look at the bike and customer with a palpable look of fear mixed with some disgust.

The next thing they usually do is remove the saddle and start wiping the bike down with wet wipes or sanitizer.

Because: Pee. Pee is why. Pee everywhere. Pee, salt water, sand, glycogen energy gel goo and pee.

The look of fear is because of how often they've had triathletes bring their bike in at the last possible minute to do way too much work in too little time because something about most of them just isn't right. Like they're not even remotely normal cyclists even by notably insane road cyclist standards.

Apparently they have a bad habit of destroying bikes with the combination of abusing them during races and then not doing any care or feeding until the next race because they do all of their training on an indoor trainer or a different bike.
posted by loquacious at 12:00 AM on December 12, 2022 [10 favorites]

Le Jamtel did the research and crunched the numbers (chief risk officer), and he concluded that if he kept cycling Ironman distances on open roads — 112 miles for the bike leg, which in the race is sandwiched between a 2.4-mile swim and a full marathon — there was a 100 percent chance he would be killed.

This asshole, who cannot calculate risk, is a Chief Risk Officer.

It's almost as if these very highly paid executives are not very smart, competent or necessary.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 2:36 AM on December 12, 2022 [16 favorites]

I enjoyed the article. I had my bit of schadenfreude.

However, I don't understand why everyone keeps ripping on the risk management guy saying he'd die on a bike if he kept training outside.

Maybe saying "100%" chance is the sort of overblown C-suite phrasing that's easy to mock, but putting in hundreds of miles of high speed riding around a suburb town of NYC is actually asking to get killed.

More to this guy's aims - there's also an excellent chance of an accident that would require substantial recovery time, or where the nature of the injury would preclude him from doing these sorts of events in the future. So with his limited time, yeah, it's much safer to get all the miles on a trainer.

I'm in the hospital about once a year here just commuting at normal speeds and following the lights...
posted by jellywerker at 4:22 AM on December 12, 2022 [13 favorites]

Maybe saying "100%" chance is the sort of overblown C-suite phrasing that's easy to mock

Yes, exactly. Concluding that there is a 100% chance of death is very stupid, and if you run the numbers and it comes up with something that doesn't pass the sniff test - not everybody who does this is killed doing this - then you gotta check your analysis.

but putting in hundreds of miles of high speed riding around a suburb town of NYC is actually asking to get killed.


I'd prefer to re-frame this. The dangers, of course. I have friends who have died or been permanently disabled by drivers, because lethal negligence is par for the course for drivers in the USA. "It's an accident!" after all. But saying that it's "asking to be killed" - I get it, it's an offhand way to use language - but it's also really victim blamey. I would like to be able to do my recreation and get to the grocery store and visit my friends and relatives without this being framed in this way.

Rather, we have a lot of places with a murderously car-centric urban planning and design: public policy and a built environment that is absolutely willing to have dead people as collateral damage. It's more like a form of social murder than "asking to be killed."
posted by entropone at 6:15 AM on December 12, 2022 [11 favorites]

Traffic fatalities on a bike in the us are about 1/20M miles. That’s take 91 years maintaining a good pace. Of course, there are other factors, like the fact that he is male, that we would need to take into account.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 6:19 AM on December 12, 2022

I'm fully aware that riding can be dangerous, and that it's arguably gotten more dangerous in the pandemic years, because of a lot of people driving way more recklessly. I've had countless near-misses on my bike, and one very minor collision in the mid-90s that could have been way worse or even fatal. And I've got an indoor training bike of my own. But I'm also very aware that, if you want to be a good road racer, there's no real substitute to actually riding on the road, the sophistication of modern indoor training bikes in general and training programs like Zwift notwithstanding, and that generally the health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks. (Disclaimer: 12-year-old study done in the Netherlands.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:56 AM on December 12, 2022

I actually don't do long distance cycling because I do it for fun and don't want to die. I agree with the guy. You can say my risk calculus is wrong, but I've had several close calls, and I bike in neighborhoods at 20mph roads. Screw 100 miles on something closer to state roads or highways.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:46 AM on December 12, 2022

Traffic fatalities on a bike in the us are about 1/20M miles. That’s take 91 years maintaining a good pace. Of course, there are other factors, like the fact that he is male, that we would need to take into account.

That may be the current correct statistical assessment, but that's because it takes out all the people who are completely unwilling to bike because of the danger, so the only ones left are the ones able to ride well enough to accept the danger.

Or to put it another way, your chances of dying during an Ironman swim are pretty low, because it's taken out all the people unwilling and unable to swim 2 miles. They should not be taken as population-level statistics until more the total population undertakes the activity.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:50 AM on December 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

A friend who does Iron Mans (Iron Men?) pointed out to me that these guys have it backwards: if someone's paying extra they should be more miserable, not less, because that's what they're all doing it for.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:58 AM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Another factor in the riding safety discussion, I believe, is that time trial bikes bikes can be less safe than regular road bikes when riding on open roads (as opposed to the closed roads used in organized races). I'm less familiar with triathlon bikes but I think a similar argument could be applied, which is that riding in the tucked aero position that such bikes require gives you less visibility, less stability, less ability to make quick adjustments to avoid hazards. And on a TT bike anyway, no access to the brakes when you're holding on to the aero bars.

One of the top pro road cyclists, Egan Bernal, suffered a near-fatal crash when training on his TT bike in January, and there have been calls from other pros to ban TT bikes and just do time trials on regular, drop-bar road bikes because it's too risky to train on TT bikes on open roads:

• Egan Bernal crash: Tom Pidcock says time trial bikes 'dangerous' to train on
• Chris Froome (four-time Tour de France winner) video: "Do Time Trial Bikes Belong in Road Cycling?"

Again, this is all from the road cycling perspective and not triathlon, but I think that there's an argument to be made that riding X number of training miles on a TT or tri bike carries greater risk than the same distance on other styles of bike.
posted by good in a vacuum at 9:11 AM on December 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

Irons Man, clearly.
posted by VTX at 9:11 AM on December 12, 2022 [6 favorites]

After a little more research, it looks like triathlon bikes, like time trial bikes, typically don't have brake levers on the aero bars as I suspected. See the Canyon Speedmax CFR or S-Works Shiv.
posted by good in a vacuum at 9:22 AM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I completely understand the risk calculus in choosing not to expose oneself to the legions of barely-aware road users who could kill you in an instant without remorse or punishment. It's just a shame (but incredibly obvious) that the "can-do" attitude of the rich only extends to making their own lives better and not making any attempt to improve the environment for everyone.

I'm less familiar with triathlon bikes but I think a similar argument could be applied, which is that riding in the tucked aero position that such bikes require gives you less visibility, less stability, less ability to make quick adjustments to avoid hazards.

I'm an ex-bike racer and the idea of a race with cyclists who aren't used to riding outside, with other people, on twitchy TT bikes, with "accidental" drafting, sounds like a recipe for disaster.
posted by meowzilla at 10:06 AM on December 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

This article made me so sad, because these guys honestly believe that they have "a solution for every problem," but the actuality of their lives is that they spend a lot money in order not to have to deal with the regular problems we non-rich slobs deal with and then they are like "what's the problem?"

It's like the mandatory segment of the morality play that is Undercover Boss where the Boss learns that a) it's hard to do front line work and b) the people who do it are real people, often struggling financially due to the company's compensation!!!! And what do they do? They solve that person's problem by giving them a car and everyone is like wow, you gave them a car. Problem solver!!! *rolls eyes.*
posted by warriorqueen at 10:13 AM on December 12, 2022 [4 favorites]

the idea of a race with cyclists who aren't used to riding outside, with other people, on twitchy TT bikes, with "accidental" drafting, sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Oh I agree with you meowzilla, training indoors is definitely not a complete substitute for training outdoors. I was just attempting to add some shading to the idea expressed in this thread that training outdoors is perfectly safe by noting that the nature of the bikes used in triathlon adds some risk. (I don't know that it means that the guy in the article would have a "100%" chance of dying though.)
posted by good in a vacuum at 10:21 AM on December 12, 2022

Entrepone, you're absolutely correct.

I did just mean that it raises your chances significantly, not that people who cycle are to blame for the actions of drivers.

Ride safe everyone, rich triathlete or not. I appreciate all the other comments here, and didn't mean to start too much of a derail.
posted by jellywerker at 11:21 AM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I live very near the Risk Manager ... and as nice as it is, it really is not good for cycling. Outside of dead end streets and cul-de-sacs, people drive 40+ MPH, including on roads that are very narrow and have limited visibility due to curves, slopes and overhanding trees. Bikes are mainly seen on racks on cars going to the parks (which have a very nice bike trail system) or upstate. Zero culture of bike commuting by kids or adults.
posted by MattD at 1:24 PM on December 12, 2022

Everyone here talking about indoor/outdoor cycling and skipping the part where the swim training is sans water.
posted by dame at 2:26 PM on December 12, 2022 [3 favorites]

Here is the machine mentioned: Vasa Swim Ergometer. It only exercises the arms; how do you become a great swimmer without using your legs or worrying about breathing?

It looks very similar to a modified and taller Concept2 RowErg, to the point where I had to check if they were actually the same company. They are based in the same state, Vermont; and Vasa calling it a "SwimErg" is too similar to Concept2's machine names, which are the RowErg, SkiErg, and BikeErg.
posted by meowzilla at 2:49 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yes, exactly. Concluding that there is a 100% chance of death is very stupid, and if you run the numbers and it comes up with something that doesn't pass the sniff test - not everybody who does this is killed doing this - then you gotta check your analysis

This was IMO pretty obviously a joke of the sort a risk officer would make.
posted by mark k at 5:07 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Meowzilla, while I am sure there is a healthy dose of inspiration and potentially some former employee overlap, an erg is just a term for a unit of work. My understanding is the rowing community called rowing machines ergs before concept2 existed.

But ugh that's what those concept2 machines make you do...

Waterless swim trainers do exist though! Just like climbing treadmills and other things that you wouldn't think would lend themselves to a training machine!
posted by jellywerker at 6:03 PM on December 12, 2022

We live in a relative world.

I just bought a shop soiled, but new mountain bike for the equivalent of about $500. This is no where near the money these guys are paying. But despite the fact that this is the most I've ever spent on a bike, and that it's a reward for a year of difficult mental and physical health, I still feel guilty having a bike like this in a country where most people are unemployed and most people on bikes ride clunkers and live in shacks.

Then put that up against the scornful tone a motorist used when he described my, other, $200 bike, as more expensive than his car.

I'm a school teacher on a moderate salary but still grapple daily with trying to understand how I justify my existence on that spectrum of privilege.
posted by BrStekker at 7:12 PM on December 12, 2022

Everyone here talking about indoor/outdoor cycling and skipping the part where the swim training is sans water.

OH MY GOD this is the part I just can't get over.

You know one time I read about how 2nd gen ultrarich people apparently have a harder time accessing *decent* wine on demand vs. the very expensive shit (>$500 a bottle). For very expensive wines their household manager generally already has a system to purchase the wine via fancy procurers or by the case, or else it's already been laid down in the cellar by grandma who used to collect good bottles of wine. But due to the fact that they're 2nd gen, they have no experience of driving to a wine shop and paying for a nice $100 bottle. They have to special-call an assistant to go buy the $100 wine for them, and that assistant will likely farm it out to underservants, and it's a special errand, so all said and done, they might as well have drunk a $500 bottle from the cellar.

Anyway this whole business of training to swim without any water reminds me of this wine story for some reason. There is a level at which it becomes more efficient/effective for rich people to do normal things in truly ridiculous ways? Something like that? There is a black comedy here when they're taking all the pleasure out of training to swim and having to add some pleasure artificially back in by putting an iPad under your swim training machine. Peak LOLSOB.
posted by MiraK at 1:25 PM on December 13, 2022

As a swimmer, I'm just not sure why a wealthy person wouldn't just put an addition on their house for an indoor lappool, or if there are space limitations, an Endless Pool. If I were suddenly wealthy, I would absolutely buy myself one of those. A waterless arm erg is just not the same thing as swimming for so many reasons.
posted by hydropsyche at 1:44 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

In my day rich people stuck to obscure Olympic sports that cost too much for anyone but the idle rich "amateurs". Like bobsled, sailing, and dressage

I once heard a standup comic observe that bobsled is the only Olympic sport that you cannot tell if the people involved are there against their will.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:38 PM on December 13, 2022 [2 favorites]