[Yesterday's] Periodical

Meant to write about this yesterday but ran out of time.  I mentioned earlier in the week that I had received new issues of both Runner's World magazine and Triathlete magazine over the weekend, and then proceeded to talk a little bit about the content of the RW magazine, excluding any talk of Triathlete.  That was because I only had time to look at RW during Monday's workout.  Yesterday as I rode the bike I finally had a chance to peruse Triathlete.  There were a couple of things I found worthy of mentioning. 

 

First, the latest edition includes a special feature (really a separate magazine of a decent size in and of itself), dubbed "The Kona and Clearwater Qualifier's Guide".  These two places, Kona, HI, and Clearwater, FL, are the locations of the Ironman World Championship and Ironman 70.3 World Championship (popularly referred to as Half-Ironman) races, respectively.  While my immediate plans do not include being able to run a qualifying time for either race (it is similar to qualifying for the Boston Marathon, only it is not done on a purely age-to-finish time basis, like Boston; rather you need to finish in some portion of the top finishers in a qualifying Ironman or Ironman 70.3 event either overall or in your age group, an achievement that for me is far away - I am happy just to finish the races I enter!), I do like that this supplemental magazine lists out all the qualifying events and provides descriptions and other information about each.  I like to look at the dates and try and scheme about which one or ones I may have a chance to run in the next few years.  For example, while we live in Taiwan, I would like to try and run the new Ironman China race, which happens in April every year.  Supplemental events that I may be able to do in preparation / conjunction with that race would be the Singapore Ironman 70.3 or maybe one of the races in Australia or New Zealand, or maybe the Ironman Japan.

 

Secondly, the issue also contains a wetsuit buyer's guide, sort of like the feature Runner's World does on shoes that I talked about a few days ago, except much less useful to me.  I realize that at some point I may have to purchase or use a wetsuit to race in a triathlon, but I am glad that up to this point, having some dozen plus triathlons (I am not really sure how many I have done, more than 12 but less than 20, I would say), I have yet to have really needed to use one.  Because of this, I find the many pages devoted to wetsuits in the magazine of little use.  I do realize, of course, that clearly there is a large group of triathletes who have used and do use wetsuits (largely based on the locale of the events they participate in, I would wager) and this feature is aimed at them.  I find it interesting, though, the contrast between the shoes feature in RW, in that I would say the vast majority of runners use a running-specific shoe to train and race in, while I don't think nearly as great a proportion of the overall number of triathletes regularly use or train for swimming using a wetsuit.  I would definitely say, though, that most triathletes who conduct ocean swimming 'round these parts DO use wetsuits.  That ocean water is just too cold!

 

GJS