Taped Interview: Terry Moore

I managed to get in contact with 23-year-old triathlete who's completed more than six triathlons in the last three years, including an Ironman triathlon (2.4 miles swimming, 110 miles cycling, 26.2 miles running). He's an employee at Jack Rabbit Sports, a triathlon store that has a branch in Manhattan which I mentioned in an earlier blog, and he was more than willing to speak with me.

Though he was initially tentative about being interviewed, he liked the idea of a profile on the triathlon culture and opened up. Our interview took place inside of Jack Rabbit near the wall of shoes.

The topic of our interview touched on subjects like why he chose to do the sport, why he thought other people join the sport, and why people stay in the sport.

Here are partial transcripts of my interview with him:

Terry Moore, 23, Triathlete

Terry: I started in 2006, it was my first one: August of 06. It was a half Ironman.

Calvin: Half Ironman?

T: It was a huge mistake ... I was unprepared for the bike leg mostly. I borrowed my dad’s old roadbike, which was about 20 years old at the time. He hadn’t ridden it in a long time. It had a gear set on it that was made for Nebraska where it’s all flat, and … the bike course was just brutal hills the entire time ... I didn’t really know a whole lot going into it and definitely was humbled by the experience. I came in last place in my age group.

***

C: What made you say, all right, let’s do this triathlon?

T: Well actually I started working here in February of '06 cause I was in school [The New School] and it’s right around the corner. And I’d been interested in running, and I figured it was a good part time job to pick up ... [O]ne of the guys that worked here qualified for the Hawaii Ironman (*note: Hawaii Ironman is the world championship triathlete race) that year, and he kind of just gave me a little bit of schooling on the sport and convinced me to maybe give it a shot.

And of course, at that point, my mentality was: unless it’s a really long race, there’s no point in doing it because you can’t really … I don’t know.

Doing marathons kind of made me…fulfilled some kind of wacky and lame self absorbed purpose. It was something I kind of took pride in … in not the greatest way looking back on it.

...So I guess this was like I’ve done marathons, what’s the next challenge? So that’s kind of the reason why I started it. And then also the reason why I picked something like a half-ironman to start with because I looked at Olympic distance races (*note: olympic distance is .9 miles swimming, 25.8 miles cycling and 6.4 miles running) and was like, eh, 6 mile run I can do that; 25 mile bike, that’s really easy. I figured that a half-ironman would be more of a place to add another notch to the self absorbed belt. The hubris belt.

***

Terry: I think another thing is that you get to a point where just the whole activity of exercise becomes habit and, in a way, addictive. And not in the macho, I’m addicted to working out sense, but just it becomes something that is a tremendous mental workout as well. Like I can get a lot of thinking done when I’m on the bike or going out for a run. Kind of gives your brain a break from really working.

***

Terry: They’ll usually come from athletes who have gotten to a really high level in one sport, they can’t quite break through, but since they’re sort of used to working you — and that’s just an a part of their life. You can pick up the other two fairly quickly and there’s an old saying about triathletes: They don’t do anything well, but they do the three sports well enough.