davem

Hi Henley I have an entry and am not doing it. PM me. Cheers Dave

The same reason we don't put our payslips on the hub.

Andrew Messick has been in the job for about eight months. I get the feeling that if he had been at WTC at the time, 5150 would not exist. Triathlon is a sport that has attracted money making businesses such as WTC and World Endurance (IMSA) to give us great experiences. (a slight but profound difference from your statement). Compare that to tennis (SA), hockey, yachting, kiting and many other sports which are just as much fun but don't have the commercial driven interests, they really struggle for any sort of mass participation / spectator value. To put a personal perspective. If it was not for the owners of the BSG series (don't know their name) and Triangle Sports/World Endurance, myself and probably many thousands would never have done a triathlon. We would never have created the critical mass for there to be three triathlon shops in Joburg, umpteen small product importers, spent millions in tourism in PE and EL and to the many other races that are now being held. We would be wealthier, fatter and bored on weekends. The organisers owe me nothing. I enjoy some of the events and will pay the price they ask. If the value proposition is not within my expectations, I will give it a miss. I think Bela Bela falls into this category for me, I do think they have got it wrong. Ironman - I don't have a problem paying the fee for what I get out of it. It would be nicer if it was cheaper, but I would not wish for less of an event. Even if the entry was a R1000 cheaper, it is a small part of the financial and time commitment to the event. Don't begrudge people who are good at their business making a fair living from providing something you really enjoy.

Does what it says on the box. Choc tastes quite good. Has the texture of sawdust, which takes some getting used to.

R300 for 6 hours of entertainment including lots of refreshments (if you fast, do it twice), a great endorphin rush, hours of dinner time conversation and water cooler chat at work. You get one up over motorists for the day. You may even make a few new friends while training or during the race. You get to grimace a little and smile a lot. Compare the cost to getting a hair cut, what you spend on a round of drinks, a night at the movies, getting your car valeted, a new tyre, a round of golf, the monthly insurance premium on your bike, a plumbers call out fee and a dozen others which we just pay without questioning. If you really cannot afford R300, then it is a lot, but if you can, enter, pay the money and enjoy the experience and be thankful that you can.

Just spent 45 minutes watching this video: Andrew Messick, the new Ceo of WTC. At about 39min he talks about the 5150 success and costs very frankly. To paraphrase: 5150 is small money for WTC given the small entry fee related to the resources to create an Ironman quality experience. He specifically says that it is more profitable for them to add two full Ironman distance events that to run a full 5150 series. He also says that maybe these races would be best run by other race directors under licence. Interesting.

Garf, you were trying so hard to keep up, you were actually seeing two of me. I was actually drafting myself.

There is a simple solution. The refs must just use a Paintball gun to mark the drafters. When you get to transition covered in red paint, you get a 20 minute penalty. Try running after standing still for 20 minutes.

If I understand correctly, the final choice as to whether your organs are donated, rests with your next of kin. Being a registered organ donor is not a legally binding gift that your NoK must honour. It is critical to ensure that they understand your wishes and will respect them in what will likely be a emotionally charged and challenging time for them. I place my red stickers on my ID, medical aid card and drivers licence. The most likely places that an emergency rescue person would look.

See attached from the Multisport forum. Is Uncle Bob running the Polls?

Garfield and Odie's Tryathlon2 TM © ® TSAFU Now stop buggering around and go do some work! You can squeeze in 15 minutes before you go home.

We don't want to pay TSA anything, so it cant be called a triathlon, apparently they have the rights to veto those. Maybe a Tryathlon. I will strap a Go Pro to my dog and we can then broadcast on YouTube without TSA demanding TV broadcast rights. Budgeted Income Statement Entry fees (1000@797.00) 797 000.00 Hot dogs sales 6 000.00 Costs : Case of Windhoek (149.99) For the genius race organisers 50kg of fish past best before date (100.00) To feed the hippo before the race. See Note Below Box of plasters (15.95) You do need to be prepared for emergencies Think that about covers it. Now need to make it a seven event seriies and we are done. *Note: It is cheaper to feed the hippo that lose an entrant for the next event in the series.

We could actually cancel the event a week before and just keep everyones money. What a brilliant idea, surprised no-one's ever tried that before.

We will make it wetsuit compulsory so we dont need any life guards. If you drown wearing wetsuit, well sorry for you.

Hey we better take this off line or B Active is going to steal all our ideas.

Would you like to be the marshal (we can use an oval track so no-one gets lost) or man the water point. We will only have one box of water sachets, so it wont be so much work. At the finish, we can have scraps of paper and a pen so people can write down their own time. Save a fortune on those pesky time companies. This sounds like a good business model.

Another thought, why dont we organise a triathlon to fund our own racing. We can make megabucks and not have to work and we can train all day. We will make it R2.95 cheaper than Bela Bela, then everyone will do our race. I am sure we can also throw in a nice water bottle. I got a lot of reasonably clean ones in the cupboard.

I have now decided to race slower to get better value for money for my entry fee. Perhaps, Garfield, we should organise a passive resistance campaign. Do the race in a big bunch then stop at every water station and drink and eat everything they have. We will only stop when the race fee is better value. On a more serious note the Durban races at R280 for an Olympic seems fair. Nice one B Active. On a slightly different tack. When I registered for the Joburg Tri a few weeks ago at Troisport, they wanted to charge R50 late entry fee. I complained because the online entry was down the two times I tried to enter and they did finally waive the fee. However, entry involved filling in my details on a single A4 sheet, signing an indemnity (which early entrants have to do anyway). I felt that this late entry fee was unnecessary and opportunistic. (I understand if it was on race day). I did not get a goodie bag, that should be enough incentive to enter early.

Sounds like they all could learn a little about PR and keeping the fights behind closed doors. Thanks for clarifying what happened.

What you observed is not rumour mongering. Absence of detail is what leads to rumours. As a registered athlete, I would love to know why my elected TSA official is wanting to strong arm a microphone from a respected member of the sport community.

Please give details.

B Active gets the daily spot prize for well timed relevant opportunistic marketing. Whew, am away for a few days and Garfield starts another s#@!fight. I agree the Bela Bela 5150 is very pricey but they do organise a great event. I almost fell off me couch when I got an SMS on Friday telling me early bird entries close in the next few days. Why would I register six months in advance for an Olympic distance event. To save a whole R100 nogal. They must have a new shipment of good stuff in PE. Unfortunately as with last year, I feel that the event schedule is spread out in such a way to make it practically impossible to do as a one day event (from Joburg) which skyrockets the costs into thousands for accommodation, kennels for dogs etc. On the whole, it looks almost like race organisers have abandoned finding sponsors and looking for the full race revenue from the athletes. Triathlon is a commercially run sport where events are owned by individuals or companies and everyone is paid for the work they do and the owner has to make a living from it. Running by comparison, is a volunteer run sport where races are owned by clubs and staffed by volunteers. They are just as well organised. The difference is that it costs those that volunteer to organise the race a huge amount in time and lost income. They can continue to do so because the sport and clubs have a long tradition of volunteerism and community service. Triathlon does not have any meaningful clubs and certainly no spirit of volunteerism. (The volunteers at IM and 70.3 are not generally athletes). Everyone wants a slice of this nice juicy pie. As with every exciting new industry, some will do well in the short term but likely most will fall by the wayside and the quality and value will remain. Hopefully, the greed does not damage the sport in the long term.

To totally throw the cat among the pigeons, do you even need to dope to win the Tour de France? Yes, your team will need to. The winner only rides in real anger for 2 to 3 hours in the race, the rest of the time, he gets pulled along. LA was the master of strategy and intelligent riding. I believe that it is possible. Maybe even, he pretended to dope to get his team buy in so they would do it for him. I can believe he would be clever/devious enough to do that. The facts stand, that he never tested positive. The only evidence is a hearsay from bunch of guys already caught doping after also lying about it repeatedly (somewhat lacking is their own integrity already). This theory is the only one that fits the evidence and is reasonably credible in my opinion. Ironically, that could make him guilty of the US Federal charges of misusing public money, but not guilty of doping. I find it difficult to believe that every single person is on the take from one athlete, he does not have that much money.

Not really. The course was laid in the morning. This should account for the tide at that time. The tide level would not change the course distance materially from day to day. The beach did not seem narrower than usual either.

Just to add some more analysis to the swim time. Marino Vanhoenacker swam 1:25 per 100m in EL. At Kona (a non wetsuit 3.8km swim) he did 1:20. Compared a female age group podium finisher. 1:41 per 100m in EL, 1:30 at 70.3 Thailand. (ie 3min 35secs slower in EL) My estimate is that the swim was probably in the region of 10-12% longer than the 1.9km. Where this had a catastrophic effect is that Team Garwood missed the cycle cutoff by less than a minute. A regulation distance swim would have meant they would have made the cutoff comfortably and finished the race.