Barb,
I competed in one triathlon, a local open water Olympic sprint race. I finished 5th in my age group, I was 48 at the time. I can't tell you what level of competition it was, but it was a fairly large event that has been held for several years and there were people who traveled from several states away. I had some swim training as a child and competed in some recreational swim meets. I was actually pretty good, but I am sure the competition was no where near the kids who did real training and swam for clubs. I love the water, but I hadn't done any swimming other than the beach or a backyard pool since I was about 11 or 12. I purchased my bike from Walmart and only biked from time-to-time when I had a running injury. I did do a long charity bike race once and was able to hang on to the back of some guys who biked fairly regularly. I learned transition from YouTube and watching some of the people before me. Long story short, in this triathlon I came out of the water in my wave only a dozen or so people from last. I caught a few people on the bike, but I caught almost the entire wave on the run. In fact, my run was faster than the guy who won my age group and he was a national age group competitor. Talking to the guys who finished ahead on me while waiting for the awards, they thought it was incredible that I finished on the podium in my first tri with almost no training. Question: I know you deal with elites, but in general or as a recreational triathlete; does being a good runner bring that much to the table or perhaps I had beginners luck? The other reason I bring this up is I have a niece who is one of the top 400/800 runners is my state. She is a H.S. sophomore and the 2 runners ahead of her in my state are 2 of the best in the nation. She is also decent in XC. She swam for a club in middle school and was very good. Her age group times are better than most of the girls on the her H.S. swim team and she loves to bike, albeit she has no bike training. She wants to a tri, but her pop thinks that biking will take away from her running ability. As an ex-runner competitive myself, I think she only needs to make a small improvement to get a major D1 program scholarship. She wants to do a tri and I think with some training she could be good at it. I guess I should also add that her pop is an African American and he simply can't identify with triathlons. - Your thoughts?
Btw, I started doing some tri training for a while, but I didn't stick with it because of the time commitment and when I learned some guys had accessories that cost more than my bike.