Articles and News

Melbourne, FL—Tom Loback, former GM of Christian Bauer, recently completed the Health First Fall Triathlon here.

The Health First Triathlon has two distance divisions for competition. The Sprint distance features a 0.25 mile swim, 15.9 mile bike ride, and 3.1 mile run. The Olympic distance, which Loback does, features a 1.5k (0.93 mile) swim, 43k (26.7 mile) bike ride, and a 10k (6.2 mile) run. (Both distances are less than half of full Ironman distances.)

Loback always has been athletic and played sports in high school and college. Later, living in Denver, he began running to train for skiing, and that led to some local 10K races, like the Colorado Governor’s Cup. In 1986 he and his wife relocated to Miami for her job, and for a time Loback was a “Mr. Mom,” but with time on his hands to train for and complete both the 1987 and 1988 Orange Bowl marathons in Miami.

“After the January ‘88 Orange Bowl marathon I decided that since I was in such good shape I would enter my first triathlon, in Miami, which was the first stop on the national Bud Light triathlon series.

“I like to have a couple of events every year that I race. It gives me a goal to train for and I get to compare my times from year to year. I find it impossible to train all year long so these events give me a goal. The Fall Triathlon takes about four months of training, he says. After the race, he’ll take time off from training and take it easy, He’ll still run, mountain bike, swim, or surf, but this time just for fun.

“It’s also fun to see who is still around as I get older and to see how they will perform,” he says. For example, in 2005 when I won this race in my age group (55-59), with a time of 3:04:20, there were four guys entered. Now in 2010, I placed third in my age group (60-64) with a time of 3:04:21, and again there were four guys entered.”