Having spent 10 years scaling the lower echelons of the sport, the time has come for one of Britain's least successful athletes to reveal all about how he got involved in all this nonsense in the first place. Marvel as he reveals: His sporting history - how being last pick at school football in the 1970s set him on course for a lifetime of being rubbish at team games. How he took up triathlons in the first place (for a bet, and the cow who made it with him never paid up). How he overcame a crippling lack of talent and a chorus of complete indifference from his family to complete 10 Ironmans, all outside the top 500 finishers. The many triathlon adventures he has experienced over the past 10 years (cow pats, Ironmans, incontinence, driving bans, broken bones, public nudity, spending entire redundancy payments on a new bike, Belgian portaloos, German knocking shops, sunburnt arse cheeks, channel swimming, fights with chavs, obsessions with weather and the nutritional value of Jaffa Cakes, 3 hour marathons, chronic dehydration and so on). The many and varied idiots he's got to know as a result of taking up the sport (aka his mates). The typical training (hell) he goes through to take part in a race given he has absolutely no ability whatsoever. How triathlons ultimately caused him to sell his Mercedes, give away his expensive suit, chuck in his job in the City and become, as his father put it, a "god-damned hippy" (A cycle path designer who owns a camper van).

Perhaps more than any other two colleges, Harvard and Yale gave form to American intercollegiate athletics--a form that was inspired by the Oxford-Cambridge rivalry overseas, and that was imitated by colleges and universities throughout the United States. Focusing on the influence of these prestigious eastern institutions, this fascinating study traces the origins and development of intercollegiate athletics in America from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Smith begins with an historical overview of intercollegiate athletics and details the evolution of individual sports--crew, baseball, track and field, and especially football. Then, skillfully setting various sports events in their broader social and cultural contexts, Smith goes on to discuss many important issues that are still relevant today: student-faculty competition for institutional athletic control; the impact of the professional coach on big-time athletics; the false concept of amateurism in college athletics; and controversies over eligibility rules. He also reveals how the debates over brutality and ethics created the need for a central organizing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which still runs college sports today. Sprinkled throughout with spicy sports anecdotes, from the Thanksgiving Day Princeton-Yale football game that drew record crowds in the 1890s to a meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt on football violence, this lively, in-depth investigation will appeal to serious sports buffs as well as to anyone interested in American social and cultural history.

Many more of us are taking on the challenge of triathlon in our 40s and 50s, and above. Masters athletes include any athlete over 40 years old. Irrespective of fitness levels the scientific impacts of ageing can affect your performance and need to be acknowledged to help you continue to get the most out of your training. Triathlon for Masters and Beyond looks at the physiological changes experienced by athletes over 40. Taking these variables into account it is packed with tailored information and advice, equipping you with the knowledge to train harder and stronger to reach your fitness goals. Includes: motivation and goal setting planning and preparation training programmes and schedules muscles and injury prevention nutrition and fuel pre-race preparation race day recovery. This is an essential companion for any Masters athlete wishing to improve their triathlon results.

This book was first published twenty years ago in the early days of the sport. It has continued to sell to beginners and recreational multisport athletes by showing them how, starting as a fitness novice, they can cross the finish line happily and healthily, and have fun doing so, without turning their lives upside down along the way. Steven Jonas, a former nonathlete who began racing in middle age, now has over 160 multisport races and two decades' worth of evidence that his training program works to his credit. This twentieth-anniversary edition features a friendly, wider format; the latest advice on equipment, race choice, and preparation; and Jonas's programs that will train you for standard-distance duathlons and triathlons on 31/2 to 5 hours per week for 13 weeks. It even shows you how you can do the ironman distance."

In June 1972, President Richard Nixon put pen to paper and signed the Educational Amendments of 1972 into law. The nearly 150-page document makes no mention of "gender," "athletics," "girls," or "women." The closest reference to "sport" is transportation. In fact, the bill did not appear to contain anything earth shattering. But tucked into its final pages, a heading appears, "Title IX-Prohibition of Sex Discrimination." These 37 words would change the world for girls and women across the United States. On its face, Title IX legally guaranteed equal opportunity in education. In time, Title IX would serve as the tipping point for the modern era of women's sport. Slowly but surely, women's athletics at the high school and collegiate levels grew to prominence, and Tennessee fast emerged as a national leader. In Title IX, Pat Summitt, and Tennessee's Trailblazers, Mary Ellen Pethel introduces readers to past and present pioneers-each instrumental to the success of women's athletics across the state and nation. Through vibrant profiles, Pethel celebrates the lives and careers of household names like Pat Summitt and Candace Parker, as well as equally important forerunners such as Ann Furrow and Teresa Phillips. Through their lived experiences, these fifty individuals laid the foundation for athletic excellence in Tennessee, which in turn shaped the national landscape for women's sports. The book also provides readers with a fuller understanding of Title IX, as well as a concise history of women's athletics in the pre- and post-Title IX eras. With interviewees ranging from age 20 to 93, Pethel artfully combines storytelling with scholarship. Guided by the voices of the athletes, coaches, and administrators, Pethel vividly documents achievement and adversity, wins and losses, and advice for the next generation. This book represents the first statewide compilation of its kind-offering readers a behind-the- scenes perspective of Tennessee women who dedicated their lives to the advancement of sport and gender equality. Readers will delight in Title IX, Pat Summitt, and Tennessee's Trailblazers: 50 Years, 50 Stories.