In Triathlon the Hard Way, Erik Seedhouse reveals what it took to win the toughest triathlons on the planet. In 1995, Erik won Le Defi, the de facto world ultra endurance triathlon championships over the triple Ironman distance. The next day he turned professional. He followed his Le Defi performance with a win in the inaugural Double Ironman World Championships before traveling to Mexico to win the infamous Decatriathlon, an almost incomprehensible ten-times Ironman race requiring athletes to swim 38 kilometers, bike 1800 kilometers and run 422 kilometers. In addition to winning over the multiple Ironman format, Erik also won stage race triathlons, including Ultraman Hawai'i and Ultraman Europe. He finished his career as a professional ultra-distance triathlete by racing Race Across America. Beginning his athletic career as a ultra-distance runner, Erik also performed at the very highest level in the world of 100 kilometer racing. In 1992 he placed 3rd in the World 100 Kilometer Championships, breaking the North American record. Here is a story of an athlete who dedicated his time as a professional athlete to winning some of the most demanding ultra-endurance competitions on the planet. Triathlon the Hard Way is a riveting sports narrative and a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at what makes ultra endurance athletes keep going. Erik shares the details of what it took to train for these impossible events - the highs and the lows - along with the psychological strategies needed to survive life beyond the Ironman distance.

Among the most difficult athletic events a person can attempt, the iron-distance triathlon - a 140.6 mile competition - requires an intense prerace training program. This preparation can be as much as twenty hours per week for a full year leading up to a race. In Iron Dads, Diana Tracy Cohen focuses on the pressures this extensive preparation can place on families, exploring the ways in which men with full-time jobs, one or more children, and other responsibilities fit this level of training into their lives. An accomplished triathlete as well as a trained social scientist, Cohen offers much insight into the effects of endurance-sport training on family, parenting, and the sense of self. She conducted in-depth interviews with forty-seven iron-distance competitors and three prominent men in the race industry, and analyzed triathlon blog postings made by Iron Dads. What sacrifices, Cohen asks, are required - both at home and at work - to cross the iron-distance finish line? What happens when work, family, and sport collide? Is it possible for fathers to meet their own parenting expectations while pursuing such a time-consuming regimen? With the tensions of family economics, how do you justify spending $5,000 on a racing bike? At what point does sport become work? Cohen discovered that, by fostering family involvement in this all-consuming effort, Iron Dads are able to maintain a sense of themselves not only as strong, masculine competitors, but also as engaged fathers. Engagingly written and well researched, Iron Dads provides a penetrating, firsthand look at extreme endurance sports, including practical advice for aspiring racers and suggestions for making triathlons more family-friendly.