What's it all about?

A triathlon is a race consisting of three different sports performed in sequence.

It's simple: You swim, you bike, you run.
Then you collapse.

Triathlons come in pretty much all distances, but here are some typical course lengths:

International Half-Ironman Ironman

Swim 1.5 K (.93 miles) 1.2 miles 2.4 miles

Bike 40K (24.8 miles) 56 miles 112 miles

Run 10K (6.2 miles) 13.1 miles 26.2 miles

	International	Half-Ironman	Ironman
Swim	1.5 K (.93 miles)	1.2 miles	2.4 miles
Bike	40K (24.8 miles)	56 miles	112 miles
Run	10K (6.2 miles)	13.1 miles	26.2 miles

For more information, I suggest visiting:

Tri-Baby's web page, which mainly contains race reports, photos, links, etc.
Marty Miller's Triathlon Web Page, which transitively closes over pretty much every triathlon resource on the net.
Lee Rudin's bay area training sites.