No pain, no gain | Swimming, biking and running, oh my: Maine companies chase the growing triathlon market
Will Thomas felt like he was on the verge of keeling over. Every inch of his body ached, his skin was covered in sweat, his heartbeat raced. Thomas was seventeen years old, with a long, lean body like a track star, but he'd met his athletic match at the Falmouth Sprint Triathlon on Cape Cod. It was a warm day in July nine years ago, and as he approached the triathlon's finish line after swimming a quarter-mile, biking 10 miles, and running nearly three miles, he knew he was wrapping up the most grueling hour of his life. His body burned, his concentration faded in and out, and his spandex track suit looked like he'd balled it up, dunked it in a mud puddle, and then put it back on.
"The whole time I thought I'd never do another one of these again," says Thomas. "It was sheer agony."
Then he crossed the finish line, and his endorphins kicked in. Thomas registered for another triathlon on the spot. He has since completed 50 triathlons, including an "Ironman" distance — 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, and 26.2-mile run — triathlon in Lake Placid, N.Y. He's even placed among the top racers at several events. Tackling triathlons, those mothers-of-all endurance tests, Thomas explains, is a real rush for type-A personalities like him. No pain, no gain.
"It's addictive," he says.
Triathlons are so addictive, in fact, that Thomas now owns Tri-Maine Productions, a race management company in Portland and one of a handful of area businesses catering to the triathlon crowd. Interest in triathlons in Maine has grown rapidly in recent years, particularly in Greater Portland, where membership in the Portland-based group TriMainiacs has shot from 30 in 2004, the group's first year, to more than 150 this year. On February 14, smack in the middle of this winter's messiest nor'easter, the first triathlon of the Maine season, the IronBear in Brunswick, scheduled for May, sold all of its 500 registration slots in just over an hour.
Triathlons aren't only beloved in Maine, they're catching on nationwide, especially among hard-charging executive types who have the drive and disposable income to go after the coup de gras of recreational boasts: "Oh sure, I've completed a triathlon." Businesses like Thomas's Tri-Maine, and Midcoast Multisport, a Brunswick shop aimed at triathletes, are catering to this growing force of summertime athletes for whom play is a serious commitment.
Tough guys
Reliable figures on the total number of American amateur triathletes are elusive, but according to Jason Mucher, spokesperson for USA Triathlon, the organization all triathletes must register with before completing a sanctioned triathlon, about 400,000 Americans participated in triathlons in 2006 based on race registration data. USA Triathlon currently has 84,787 season pass members, plus the thousands more who have purchased single-race passes. Of the full-time members, a little more than half of them are male. The majority are between the ages of 30 and 49. About 80% make over $40,000 a year, and 28% make over $100,000 a year. The triathlon base is made of baby-boomers, many of whom are at their career peak, with the income to afford thousands of dollars of tri gear — notably bikes, which can cost upwards of $3,000. Triathletes also typically have a lot of control over their schedules to allow for ten or more hours a week of training, and the dedication to excel in every pursuit.
"For a lot of these people, it really defines who they are," says Ted Kennedy, president and founder of CEO Challenges, in Boulder, Colo. CEO Challenges registers CEOs, business owners and presidents in Ironman triathlons around the world. In exchange for a registration fee of approximately $6,000, CEOs receive invites to special networking events, a running suit with CEO Challenges emblazoned on it, and access to a ranking system that pits them against other head-honchos in the same race. Kennedy says about 200 CEOs have participated in CEO Challenges since he founded the company in 2001. None of Kennedy's CEOs are from Maine, but USA Triathlon says 285 of its members reside here.
Kennedy says ambitious business leaders gravitate to triathlons, particularly the Ironman, because they're always looking for a challenge.
"They revel in over-achievement," says the 50-year-old Kennedy, a 2001 Ironman. "They do pretty well at achieving outlandish goals, and the Ironman is the most outlandish sport you can accomplish."
Jim Favreau is one such over-achiever. Favreau works 60 or more hours a week as the director of facilities for Bath Iron Works, and exercises 20 hours a week. He spends another 20 hours a week running a sports shop that caters to triathletes; in January, the three-time Ironman purchased Midcoast Multisport in Brunswick from Portland's Rob Smith, who opened the store in 2004. (Favreau declined to discuss financial details of the sale.) Favreau and Smith are two of the four triathletes who run the southern Maine triathletes club TriMainiacs, which Smith co-founded in 2004. TriMainiacs organizes triathlon training for members throughout the year in preparation for Maine's triathlon season, which starts in early May and runs through the end of August.
Favreau, a 60-year-old grandfather of three, calls the Midcoast Multisport store his "passion." Immediately after buying the company, he began selling the carbon-framed, Maine-made Aegis bikes he rides, tripled the small store's triathlon inventory, and created training programs for customers. Along one store wall, next to the expanded bike-repair area, there's a treadmill, a couple of computers, and a set of bike mounts, otherwise called "trainers." Customers can test out sneakers before they buy them by taking a jog on the treadmill, race a store bike or their own against a computerized competitor, and breathe into a blue spandex bag attached to a computer program called ExerSmart to test their metabolic rate. The metabolic test is Favreau's favorite new gadget, since this kind of evaluation was used exclusively by professionals only a few years back. "Typically, only Olympic athletes had their VO2 tested," he says.
Favreau says the exercise evaluation equipment cost him about $15,000. He charges between $150 and $300 for training evaluations.
Pumping you up
Before he did his first triathlon in 2005, Favreau was 70 pounds overweight and hadn't jogged since high school. Running the store now, Favreau explains, is about sharing the physical reawakening he enjoyed through exercise. To this end, he offers free spin classes several times a week, sponsors local racing events for kids, and has given free training and gear to a couple of teenage athletes who otherwise couldn't afford it. Favreau's staff includes an Ironman top-finisher, an Ironwoman who also manages the Bay Club in Portland, a competitive off-road cyclist, a registered nurse and triathlete, and Sean Teel, an 18-year old triathlete ranked third in the nation in his age group.
This year, the store will sponsor professional racer Derek Treadwell, originally from Maine, and Teel. Sponsorship means the athlete receives free training and gear from the store, in exchange for wearing Midcoast Multisport clothing and otherwise marketing the store.
Favreau says sales in late March exceeded expectations, and he expects the store will turn a profit during its first year under his ownership, with projected revenue between $200,000 and $500,000.
Favreau wants Midcoast Multisport to be as much clubhouse as shopping destination. On a recent weekday evening, an amateur triathlete talked training with a staff member for close to half an hour before purchasing a pair of sneakers. Another triathlete, Erik Baxter, a state patrolman from Topsham, stopped in just to chat.
"Right now I've got a shin splint," Baxter said, "and they've been excellent about saying you need to do this and taper this [exercise]. They give you great information because they've been there, done that."
The biggest challenge Favreau faces is supplying customers with any of the thousands of different bits of gear and equipment upgrades triathletes want without making them wait days for the item to be ordered. But with thousands of parts available for bikes alone, Favreau may need to expand into the basement of his 1,600-square-foot store on Maine Street.
When Will Thomas talks about why he thinks triathlons are gaining converts in Maine, he betrays his bookish bent. Everything, it seems, can be connected to triathlons. Thomas says maybe the sport is catching on because it became an Olympic event in 2000. Or maybe it has something to do with a renewed zest for life in a post-Sept. 11 world. Or maybe it's that the country's 77 million baby-boomers are hitting middle-age and looking for a cross-training sport to save knees battered by jogging.
Whatever it is, Thomas thinks there's plenty of room for more endurance races in Maine. Tri-Maine Productions, his Portland-based race organizing and promoting company, has already become a well-known force among endurance athletes in southern Maine. This triathlon season (from May through August), Tri-Maine will own and operate five races, including the Shipbuilders' Triathlon, in Bath; the Lobsterman Triathlon, in Freeport; and Thomas's newest baby, the Urban-Epic Triathlon in Portland, in which racers start by leaping from a ferry one mile off the coast.
Thomas wants the Urban Epic race in Portland to become one of Tri-Maine's biggest, a destination race that will attract amateur athletes from all over the country. This year, Urban Epic will include between 600 and 700 athletes, about 300 volunteers and up to a dozen sponsors. It will cost close to $70,000 in race expenses for security, infrastructure and athlete support. Typically, sponsors pay for between 30 and 50 percent of the cost of operating Tri-Maine's races. As a race matures, its sponsor money, theoretically, grows to cover all of the race expenses plus profit for the organizing company. Thomas says he hopes to break even on the inaugural Urban Epic, but says the company's four more established races and the few they've managed for other race owners made Tri-Maine $100,000 in 2006, the company's first year.
The biggest challenge ahead of him, besides, he jokes, "getting some sleep," is to maintain the character of these Maine races even when he adds national sponsors, some of which can demand course changes to saturate the event with their logos. Navigating growth without losing the local character of the events takes an energetic, type-A personality with a lot of endurance. An Ironman, you might say.
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Each one of these races is like launching a new businesses and trying to run it," Thomas says. "Each has its own needs and issues and personality conflicts and all kinds of things like that. It's a lot of multitasking."
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