Patrick John McCrann | Athlete. Author. Coach.

Hint: She’s not looking for a missing contact lens.

Triathlon is a sport of excess; there are few other athletic endeavors that both (a) incorporate multiple sports into a single event and (b) have a version of the event that covers 140.2 miles with a time window of 17 hours. Comparisons could be a 36-inning baseball game, a 16-quarter game of football, or even a 12 set match of tennis. Yikes!

Triathlon is so time-intensive, people talk of it as a lifestyle — not as a hobby. It’s hard to argue that excellence in our sport requires less time, but I do think one can argue it doesn’t have to take as much time as you think. But you can read all about that in the eBook. It’s very easy to “give in” to the culture of training that pervades our sport…before you know it you are doing 3 x Master’s swim, 4 x bike and 5 x run a week! Remember, most runners do 5-6 runs a week on average…you have more than double the number of workouts.

With three sports to focus on, plus nutrition, strength, flexibility, etc., it’s a miracle anyone who takes the sport seriously has time for that peripheral stuff like work, family, or community. But it doesn’t have to be that way. As with any other addiction, the first step to making change is recognizing you have a problem.

To help you out, here are my Top Ten Signs that you are a Train-a-holic, presented in full Letterman style:

Number Ten: When you tell your friends you are going to have a baby, they say “another triathlete no doubt!”

Number Nine: You spend equal time washing your training clothes as you do wearing them.

Number Eight: Your TiVo recording list is full of all things triathlon.

Number Seven: You’ve had a gel at work when bonking.

Number Six: You get more mail-order bicycle catalogs than items from J. Crew, Williams Sonoma and Restoration Hardware…combined!

Number Five: You have kept your Heart Rate Monitor on all day (at least once!) to track all “work.”

Number Four: You refuse to do a workout shorter than an hour // You add time and/or distance on to the end of each workout your coach gives you b/c “more” must be “better.”

Number Three: You look at lakes / ponds / rivers as you drive the freeway, thinking to yourself: “I could swim that!”

Number Two: Every vacation you have taken in the last three to five years has involved racing or training…oh, and family. 

Number One Sign That You Are A Train-a-holic:  You are reading this list on your Crackberry as you do an indoor trainer workout, you hard-core multi-tasker you!

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Any ones I missed? Add them in the comments below…