Next Year (your opinion/ideas please)

[romanmica]

I know it may seem early to start thinking about next year, but the sponsors will soon be making their 2009 sponsorship decision.

Recently, Mandy suggest this new formula for the B-Fit Challenge for next year as lot of folks are put off by the length of the swim:

"Hey, What if for next year...the B-Day challenge is any combination of mileage from swimming, cycling, and running as the total age for people who are in an older age group if they deem the challenge too difficult. The only catch is that you have to include all three sports. For example... a 50 year old might swim 1.5 miles, bike 43.5 miles, and run 5 miles. Just a thought though!"

What do you think?

Do you like the idea or do you prefer the current Challenge formula?

You opinion would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[Joe_h]

sounds good to me. 3 mile swim is a bit daunting for me.

[21stCenturymom]

This is a great idea. For me I'm looking at a 5 mile swim. That is Iron distance x 2 plus a bit. OW! I'm just glad I'm not turning 59.

[Mike]

I like the current formula, so my vote would be to keep it the same.

However I can understand how it would be a challenge for some, and in all honesty when I turn 70 I may well have wished my vote had been the other way.

What about adding different categories? Keeping Gold as the traditional challenge, and then allowing substitutions in Silver and Bronze. Perhaps, since 1 mile isn't standard across the board, we could come up with a conversion table - 1 mile running being the same as 400M swimming and 4 miles on the bike.

Outside of this discussion, some things that I think would be good to see on this site would be online triathlons - perhaps once a quarter, a day or weekend is scheduled, and everyone gets to complete a Sprint, Olympic or other distance triathlon, and email their times in. Obviously courses would differ, but personally I would like the competition, plus the opportunity to see I could improve over the year. Maybe even the concept in the indoor triathlon where the challenge is time based and the results are determined on distance convered....

Just some ideas!

Thanks for a great site though - this is a great community to be involved in.

Mike

P.S. And if anyone is undecided in the voting - VOTE FOR ME!

[Charlie]

Having completed a 3 mile swim it's tempting to say, leave it alone! I think it's really only the Gold medal (one day) that makes the swimming hard, and perhaps that's the way it should be. Looking at the distances the swim does seem a bit disproportionate.

Maybe people could pick, i.e. instead of swimming the first number and running the last, I could swap? Hmm... it lacks the simplicity, and considering how quickly people are willing to scamper off on multi-mile runs and dozens of miles on the bike maybe it just points to a bunch of folks who need more pool time? It's certainly the most involved training of the other two as for most of us it involves a trip to the pool or beach, packing gear, and potentially layering up for a soggy ride home in sub-zero temps.

[Lonnie K. Hunter]

How about this:
I modified my "B-fit" challenge for my 45th birthday. Swimming 4 miles was way too much so I did this--Swam 1,000 yds/m for the first number my age (4 was 4,000yds), biked the combined numbers (45 was 45 miles) and ran the last number (5 was 5 miles).

[J-Wim]

Roman,
I like the format, but the mileage for the swim seems high. What if it were tied to yardage/meters instead of miles? (i.e. 4000 yds vs 4 miles??) That is still a substantial amount of yards but a more manageable distance for the average bear.

[Craig Weaver]

I like it the way it is and I'm in one of the groups who has to swim 4 miles. Getting close to old but hey that's only a frame of mind. If you wanted to change but keep the original spirit how about changing the swim from a miles to kilometer distance. so for me instead of 4 miles make it 4k (4,000 meters) or for the metrically challenged make it yards just to be easier.

Just my 2 cents...

[romanmica]

These are great suggestions, please keep them coming. My only concern with the great yardage formula that a lot of you have suggested is that it is still a lot of swimming.

A fifty year old would have to swim 5000 yards or about 3 miles.

Is that still too much for many Newbies?

And is it confusing that the swim is in yards, but the bike and run are in miles?

Just wondering out loud!

[romanmica]

And BTW: This is really all about you guys so after I get a bunch of suggestions I'll create a voting box with the most popular ideas and let you decide what the formula should be.

You know what they say about great minds...

Thanks for all of you help and input.

FYI: In case your were wondering, I need to get this figured out early so that I can go to the sponsors and the ball rolling for next year.

[Craig Weaver]

I thought about that Roman but I came to the conclusion that with the different levels (gold/silver/bronze) that anyone could break it down into a more manageable chunk.

Or, you could make the gold to do it all in miles and the silver and bronze could be lesser distances such as meter or yards instead or even drop by factors of 10 for each level. (i.e. 50 yr old - gold 5 miles, Silver 5000k/yards, bronze 500k/yards.)

Personally, I feel gold should be hard. It's gold darn it!! :)

Roman, I love the original concept. It's so simple anyone can remember it. I think you should try and stay true to that simple vision as much as possible. Thanks for having this vision and sharing it with all of us.

[Mandy King]

I kind of like the yardage idea, but it can still translate into a lot of swimming like Roman said. What if the swim or everything was time based...somewhat like the indoor triathlon. For example a fifty year old would swim 50 minutes, bike 50 minutes and then run 50 minutes and report how far they went on each leg. I like the current version as well but I don't like scaring people away...that's why people won't get up and get going in the first place is because they feel like they can't go the distance. Another option could be: swim number of minutes in the total age, bike total miles in age, and for the run keep it the same as current format. A bit confusing, but hey we are all intelligent individuals so we can come up with something compatiable. :-)

[Dave, Tri-ing to Balance in Boston]

I like the idea of changing the formula of the swim distance from miles to 1,000 yards (or meters) times the first number in your age.

It keeps the calculation simple while the distance remains challenging without overwhelming the average triathlete.