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.