Our friends at Newton Running recognized us for our sustainability efforts (see our water and solar blogs) and made us this custom Newton shoe – complete with our name on the back!

Newton’s Socially Responsible Partner of the Year

Custom even down to the TriSports reflective heel!

Our friends at SRAM (this includes Zipp, Quark, etc.) recognized us as one of their Top 25 dealers.  This award is made from recycled bike parts from the folks at Resource Revival.

SRAM Top 25 Dealer Award

Thank you to all of our customer for putting us in a position to earn these awards.

Leanda "Super Bird" Cave

Angela "No Longer the Bridesmaid" Naeth

Missy "Check Out My Quads" Kuck

Could the women of TriSports sweep the podium? We’d put money on it!

Keep your eyes peeled for these speedy age groupers who are all gunning to top the podium this year: Leo Carrillo (M45-49), Sarah Jarvis (F30-34), Ali Rutledge (F45-59), and Mark Tripp (M30-34).

Our first stop is West Chester, Ohio for the USAT Youth and Junior National Championship.  We will be at the Voice of America Park Friday, August 10^th from 9am to 5 pm, and Saturday, August 11^th from 6:30am to 1:30 pm.

2011 USAT Youth and Junior National Championship

Next we will be headed to the USAT Olympic and Sprint National Championship in Burlington, Vermont. We will be setting up shop at the Burlington Sheraton on Friday, August 17 10am to 6pm, and Saturday August 18 from 8 am to 6:30 pm.

Burlington, Vermont.

We look forward to seeing you out there and make sure you honk and wave to Shari and Pam K in the truck!

Pictures from Triathlete.com

TriSports Tempe Panorama- A look inside the new store as construction starts to wrap up.

A look at the shoe area – With 80-100 different makes/models of  shoes TriSports will have one of the best run shoe selections in the entire Phoenix valley for both runners and triathletes!

The early morning sun in late April shines into the store with the famous ASU A-Mountain in the background.

A walk through the empty shell just after the lease was signed (and the day after Ironman Arizona).

Here is an early mock up of the store layout, most of the actual build will look this way.

A look in the store April 13, 2012

TriSports.com is no exception to these business rules and about a year ago, like many businesses, we had to make a critical decision to upgrade the software that is used to run our company.  This software will, once we get the bull under control, improve efficiencies for all of our operations that will ultimately help our customers.  The dedication of our entire staff has gotten us to this day, the day we walked up to the edge and looked down.  Over the next four days we will be making all final preparations for our Go-Live on May, 7.  From the outside it may seem like a simple task – all you guys do is sell triathlon equipment.  Yep, and all that NASA did on July 20, 1969 was get a man on the moon.  With this, can I get a Go, No-Go for Launch?

Receiving Logistics – GO!

Tucson Retail – GO!

Returns Integration – GO!

Wireless Warehouse – GO!

Purchasing Ops – GO!

Marketing Command – GO!

Tempe Launch Controls – GO!

Data Systems – GO!

TriSports.com, we are all clear for Launch! On behalf of the hundreds of thousands of customers from around the world, and the former and future employees of TriSports.com – Godspeed.

Tempe Gateway – the home of the new TriSports Tempe location.

During this retail experiment, Debbie and I happened to be in Tempe in December of 2008 for the Phoenix Tri Club Holiday Party at Monti’s.  I don’t know how I missed it, but they had just built a fabulous new building smack in the epicenter of triathlon in Arizona.  I pulled Debbie out of the party and we walked around the building.  I told her that if we were going to expand our retail outside of Tucson that this was the location.  We weren’t ready on an operational standpoint to expand at that point, which was disappointing initially because we didn’t want to lose the opportunity for the space, but ultimately didn’t matter because the people who built the building went belly up and it went back to the bank.  After a couple of years sitting idle, Paul Allen’s (co-founder of Microsoft, owner of the Seattle SeaHawks, Portland Trailblazers, etc) commercial investment group came in and bought the building. So, in February of 2011, Debbie and I finally got our first look inside the building.  After a lot of negotiating, we got the deal done in November of 2011 (although it looked planned, it coincided perfectly with Ironman Arizona; sort of a big race that finishes about 300 feet from the store).

The day before her victory at Ironman Arizona, Leanda Cave poses with Angela Naeth (both proudly sponsored by TriSports.com) in front of pictures of themselves at the new store location.

The store is now slated to open in late June 2012 and in the home stretch I will be updating the progress on our blog.  For employment information, please visit http://www.trisports.com/employment-opportunities.html

The final results comparing 1) Hairy leading edge, 2) Fully shaved leg, 3) TriSports.com’s Patented Hybrid Shave Technology

The Hybrid Shave Technology uses a scientific approach to removing leg hair on cyclists and triathletes to improve aerodynamics and speed.  “The experiment,” says Tom Demerly, one of the chief investigators on the project, “was performed over many conditions and using many different shave patterns and what we found was that using basic aerodynamic principals of laminar boundary conditions coupled with muscle formation resulted in the ideal real-world power conversion on the bike.”

The partial differential equations for the continuity and Navier–Stokes for a two-dimensional steady incompressible flow with Cartesian coordinates.

The final testing came down to analyzing the real world results of 1) Hairy Leading Edge Legs, 2) Full Shaved Legs, and 3) Short Stubble Leading Edge Legs (the Hybrid Shave Technology).  Full hairy legs performed exponentially worse than the three chosen tests.  The results are shown in the diagram above.  “It was amazing how superior the performance was using the Hybrid Shave Technology”, said Claggett, “the power savings were staggering. It is amazing how basic aerodynamic principles such as using the Navier-Stokes equation and Reynolds numbers  to estimate the boundary layer conditions of a hairy legs work in wind tunnel and real world testing.”

The results have shown an actual average power savings of 10 Watts over distances greater than 30k (compared to a full hairy leg and almost 6 Watts over a fully shaved leg).  Over a 112 mile relatively flat course with little wind the TriSports Hybrid Shave Technology will save you about 6 minutes.  “6 minutes”, says Claggett who used the Hybrid Shave Technology at the 2011 Ironman Arizona, “is a ton of free time, especially if you are trying to get to the finish line as fast as possible.”  Claggett consequently won his age-group by a mere 45 seconds.  “You can spend hundreds of dollars on an aero helmet, thousands of dollars on aero wheels and an aero bike, or you can use the TriSports Hybrid Shave Technology and get the same benefits – do everything and you are all-in.”

A video showing actual footage of the TriSports Hybrid Shave Technology

The aerodynamics of a full hairy leg are so bad that we did not use this model in our final testing.

Careful muscle measurement ensures proper shave pattern.

Precise marking during the measurement process.

Clippers are used to remove the Sasquatch hair.

Final clipper shave.

Using a new blade to clean up the remaining stubble on the back of the leg.

The final hairy leading edge leg.

Shaving down to the stubble for the Hybrid Shave Technology.

The final version of the Hybrid Shave Technology.

Conclusion: Hold off as long as you can during the season to get the training benefit of hairy legs and then shave them just before your “A” race. The results of the TirSports Hybrid Shave Technology speak for themselves, so when you do shave, use this method if you want to optimize aerodynamics.