...they are not nearly as intimidating as they are made out to be.

One thing I really love about tris is that they allow us to laugh about our strengths and weaknesses. Most triathletes are good at maybe one sport and totally suck at one of the other sports. MOST of us start out fearing either the swim portion, the bike portion or the run training. We all get over it! You will find that most of your fears are mental - not based on your body's actual physical limitations. For instance, I have a friend who was *convinced* she couldn't run over 3.0 miles. We got her up to 4 miles and she was dancing on the tables! After that she never thought that she *couldn't* do it.

The other nice thing about tris is the variety of training. Any given week you might be doing a little of each sport plus possibly sampling a little strength training, yoga or stretching, pilates, walking, hiking, etc. You can mix and match and if you're feeling tired of one type of exercise, you just pick another one!

Also - running (and to a lesser extent swimming) are very time efficient. A lot of people here are probably spending 3/4 of our Saturdays on long-ish bike rides. But a "long-ish" run, depending on the tri you're training for, will take you just 45 min - 2 hours and there is no bike maintenance required!

Watch out - it's a VERY addictive sport.