We celebrate the friends who got us (and you) into triathlon, cycling, running, & swimming
If you're like us at Coeur, you may have, at one time, thought that endurance sports were for other people. On the surface, the events were intimidating and the people who did them may have been nuts. Pre-dawn workouts, monastic diets and running, biking and swimming distances that were so far that you thought the decimal point was in the wrong place. I mean, surely, it is supposed to read 2.62. Right?
And just like us, you may have discovered that these type-a, obsessive folks, were in general, surprisingly nice and incredibly “welcoming”. In our hometown of Atlanta, there was a triathlon group called the “Tri Geeks”.
The leader of the Geeks was a retired Delta Pilot named Fox and he made sure that everyone in the group went out of his or her way to make “newbies” feel at home.
Now there was an initiation session that required the wearing of a funny hat but other than that, newcomers were never singled out. Instead, they were celebrated and welcomed with open arms. In addition, the training sessions were free and open to anyone. When they ended, camping chairs popped open and invariably, the stories and jokes began to fly. To this day, we’re still amazed at how much time and energy the leaders of this group put into it.
And despite the unassuming veneer, the Tri Geeks, and groups like them, serve an incredibly important purpose. They are real gateways into the lifestyle. Now a book or a race may be the catalyst to get someone to start training, but we believe that groups like the Tri-Geeks (or Team Sheeper up in the Bay Area) are the ones that convince people to make endurance sports a permanent part of their life.
And for that we are incredibly grateful! If you know of someone like a Fox or a Tim Sheeper who advocates for endurance sports, please give them a shout out here. We’d love to learn more about them and thank them for what they do.