Following on the scars theme – how about ‘all the gear – no idea’ especially the 2 with the flashiest bike and t/t helmet!

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjqEogQtVQ0&NR=1[/video]

Reminds me of the Bros Logo.

I’m grinning at the red hills triathlon one. Imagine watching that lot pulling away from red lights on the morning commute 🙂

Following on from the whole philosophy of tats…. one could suggest that ‘tats of significance’ TM are pointless as you’d treasure the memories forever anyone. Ergo the only reason for a tat is for decorative purposes and that anything ‘symbolic’ is because someone feels the need to get a tat for peer pressure but lacks the imagination / creativity to come up with their own design.

What gets me about triathletes is that that virtually all of them seem to start off in the wrong gear. Presumably they put it as big a gear as possible to prevent the chain skipping off but is that really a problem?

And the time saved with having shoes already clipped in seems to be lost with the all the faffing around when on the bike trying to get the shoes on!

Never really thought about it?

What pieface said.
Tats are for Polynesians.

What gets me about triathletes is that that virtually all of them seem to start off in the wrong gear. Presumably they put it as big a gear as possible to prevent the chain skipping off but is that really a problem?

Maybe when theyre out swimming, some joker goes around the paddock putting all the bikes into the highest gear.
Then they post the results on YouTube. 8)

I seriously thought about getting one to celebrate a good solo result at the Mayhem but never came up with a design I liked enough to go for it. Ideas included ‘sun and moon in a band round my upper arm’ and ‘Salvador Dali like clock with 24 in place of the 12’.

It’d be loads cheaper just to stick needles in my knees, hips and lower back to remind me of the pain.

MB – would you have the Mayhem tattoo so people asked you what it meant then you could tell them about your great achievement? Seems a bit weird. The only symbols I would have tattoo’d are so much part of my psych, that I don’t need a tattoo of them – unless I want people to ask me what they mean, then I get to bore them about it….

ive got that on the back of my neck after a trip to swinley.

I have no inclination to run a marathon but I know I could

You don’t know you could, you think you could. It’s not the same.

People fail to complete challenges like this all the time, other people complete them all the time. They all start out thinking they could do it.
Until you’ve actually done it then you don’t know that you can.

Dismissing it with a flippant “anyone could do it with a bit of training” simply seeks to denigrate the achievements of others. I find that a bit sad really.

“tats are for Polynesians” exactly.

Google Carlos Spencer to see it done properly.

Now, see I think tattoos are a very very personal thing.
And if there’s anything in the world that IT DOESN’T MATTER what anyone else’s opinion on it is, then it has to be a tattoo!

You don’t know you could, you think you could. It’s not the same.

OK, I’ll give you that in that I can’t be 100% certain but it’s a good enough certainty for me (knowing my own background) to think it’s a perfectly reasonable statement.

Dismissing it with a flippant “anyone could do it with a bit of training” simply seeks to denigrate the achievements of others. I find that a bit sad really.

LOL. I think you’re taking yourself a bit seriously here. As I said, empirical evidence suggests that I’m right. that’s good enough for me and I’ll happily keep making the statement. It’s not intended to be insulting. If someone chooses to take it that way, I’d suggest it says a lot more about the person than the person making the statement.

Now, if the cutoff was a lot shorter so that you really had to put in a good athletic performance, well, that’d be quite different which comes back to the point about the Olympics. Only a very small handful of people will ever make that (Eric the Eel types notwithstanding) no matter how much effort they put in.

I’ll be brave here and admit that I have an Mdot tattoo on my right ankle. I did an ironman in 2004 and it took me about 3 years to train for it. I finished in 12 hours which was slightly dissapointing becuase I hoped to do it in 11 after completing a tought half distance in under 5 hours.

Anyway, it was very very tough and I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t do another becuase I was moving to e new country and changing jobs and my life was moving on. I think I got the tattoo mostly because my friends in the tri-club got them too and it did feel like a pretty significant achievement at the time. Now it is just something on my leg that I don’t think about but I am proud that I did it and I don’t really care if some of you think that makes me a saddo.

If you’ve done IM in a reasonable time and still think it’s not an achievement, then hats off to you.

Finally, you can’t generalise about all triathletes abilities on a bike, there are some great cyclists amongst them, there just happen to be some (rather vocal and obvious) idiots too.

What got me about the triathlete video was the fact that it looked like some of them hadn’t slung a leg over a bike since they were kids.

Considering the hundreds of hours they should have spent on a bike you would expect it to be as natural as walking. Mind you, looking at some of them, their equipment looked far more serious than their training schedule probably was.

It’s the new strong, fit and well equiped I often talk about. The same as those that cause chaos in 4th cats.

I’ll join oldgit in admitting to having one (same place)- but I wouldn’t have one done now. I did quite a few IMs at a relatively quick pace(pb just over 9hrs) and would say that the IM scene has changed out of all recognition in recent years as the number of people doing them has exploded. Far more people enter with the ambition of completing rather than competing. Back in the day you got proper good (read fast) at the short stuff and then maybe moved up a distance. There are now far more people coming straight into the sport and doing an IM in their first season – if you call walking the majority of the marathon “doing” an IM.

I had mine done partly for bravado I admit but there was also quite a nice nichey clubness about it – spotting another tat whilst in a cycling road race or doing a 10km run race and having a chat with them about giving the solo sport boys a good kicking afterwards!

Re the vid – weird one. I’ve watched a lot of ITU racing first hand and never seen so many folks doing so badly. Jess Harrison is the girl who falls and looses her shoe. I trained with her back in the 90’s at Loughborough and to say she is as hard as nails is doing her a dis-service. She used to muller a most of the roadie girls and quite a lot of the lads and she was pretty handy off road too. If you don’t know much about the sport I wouldn’t take that clip as a true reflection of standards.

It’s oddjob that has one.
Of course like many things those tats weren’t around when I did my ironman, 1985. Sadly neither were wetsuits or tri bars.

That’s more like it.

Re all the posts about marathons, I did one once and found that putting in healthy times (1:21 to 1:30) for half distance was no preparation for doing the full 26 miles. Until you have tried it you are in no position to belittle the effort required or the sense of achievement at completing one.

Or in my case it was the sense of frustration that despite having plenty of energy left the pain in my ankles, knees and hips stopped my using that energy.

You ever see the one where Bam gets branded on his ass with penis shaped brand. Now that is something you are going to live to regret!

Bam probably won’t live all that long..

Probably best use of a tattoo I’ve seen

convert has it – once upon a time IM was not fashionable.

And for all youse lot that reckon ‘oh i could do that’ i challenge you to do one then. I had a gobby mate reckon he could ‘easily’ do a 24hr race with us – he died horribly after 3 hours and needed medical attention, hard as nails he was. We went on to win (except of course there were only the 3 of us left in the team). He has since decided that maybe he should shut up until he puts up. Trihards are just that, it seems Tri and IM attract the nichemonger bike and gear whores who seem to think an aero helmet means they can skip 50% of their training.

I have 2 friends who have been at Olympics (one twice) both have ring tattoos in semi-hidden spots. They both say that they had them done to celebrate the achievement of making it to the pinnacle of their chosen sports and wanted something to mark that occasion. Neither of them would mention they went to the Olympics unless you asked them directly.

i did an IM. I would like to have ‘a’ tatoo to show off/remind me of what I achieved. And it was an achievement. Its also a sign to other people that you are in the elite group of people who have trained, competed and completed one.

But i wont get one because its a brand. I dont want to brand myself. If the chairman turned out to be a rapist or peodo and i had that on my leg/arm i would have to get it removed. You cant control a brand. If it was some sort of none branded sign, then i would have it by now.