Tri Beginner‘s Luck

The night his college basketball career ended, his team was still in a hotel in Pennsylvania. By the next morning he was on a treadmill, starting a sport he could barely do.

Dr. Jacob Capin saw the Ironman World Championship on television at 14 and filed it away as what he would do when basketball ended. He could get from one end of the pool to the other, but it was not pretty, and he did not learn to flip turn until 28. He is now a five-time Ironman 70.3 winner, a seven-time USA Triathlon national champion and the 2025 USA Triathlon Triathlete of the Year.

He is also a physical therapist and an assistant professor at Marquette University, where he directs the Life After Sport Trajectories Lab and studies what happens to athletes after the sport ends. The episode covers his first sprint triathlon in 2012 on a road bike with flat pedals and running shoes, and what changed when he started training alongside single sport athletes.

The comebacks did not stop once he found triathlon. A concussion took most of his senior basketball season. He has been hit by a car twice, including 12 days before his first Ironman 70.3 overall win, badly enough to land in the hospital, and he crashed his bike nine days before a national championship. The results look smooth from the outside. They were not.

His advice for beginners is quieter than expected. Swim, bike and run with regularity, train with people faster and slower than you, and stay in it long enough to still be racing at 80. Whenever you tri, you always win.

Join the Tri Beginner's Luck Community: Enjoyed this episode? The best way to support the show is to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Follow us on Instagram: @TriBeginnersLuck Connect on Facebook: Tri Beginner's Luck Page Questions or Feedback? We want to hear your story! Send your questions to tblpodbiz@tribeginnersluck.com, and we may feature them on a future episode. Let's tri this!

Two first-time racers finished at She Tries Huntersville in September. One of them is 6 years old, and the other had been carrying an unfinished swim goal for 13 years.

Zuri lined up for her first youth triathlon without ever having taken a formal swim lesson. She learned in her neighborhood pool, argued her way out of the life vest, and finished first in her division. She also has a run route to the stop sign and back, a weights routine, and a very good reason for choosing the helmet every time.

Her grandmother, Tonya Gainey, is a run coordinator with Black Girls Run and co-leads the UNCC Greenway Running Group. She raced her first triathlon in 2013, stepped away from multisport, and came back this year with five friends and one goal, to freestyle all 10 pool laps. She made eight. Next year, three generations of the family are racing a relay together.

The conversation moves through representation, exposure, and why approachable beginner triathlon formats reach past the person who actually registers.

If you are standing at the edge of a sport wondering whether there is room for you in it, this episode is a reminder that the first step is the whole thing. Whenever you try, you always win.

Join the Tri Beginner's Luck Community: Enjoyed this episode? The best way to support the show is to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Follow us on Instagram: @TriBeginnersLuck Connect on Facebook: Tri Beginner's Luck Page Questions or Feedback? We want to hear your story! Send your questions to tblpodbiz@tribeginnersluck.com, and we may feature them on a future episode. Let's tri this!

Two years of nearly nonstop racing ended with a Guinness World Record. Then the racing stopped, and everything he had been carrying finally caught up with him.

For the first time in the show’s history, the guest who closed one season returns to open the next. Thomas “Tom” Scheer, a Guinness World Record holder, U.S. Naval Academy graduate and Clydesdale triathlete, comes back as the show begins its fifth anniversary year. He is honest about an off-season that looks more like a honey-do list. He talks about a shoulder that still needs repair, a body asking for care and the weight of grief when the endorphins of training are out of reach.

Tom also shares the new record he is chasing in 2027 and the simple 30-day pool habit he recommends to every triathlon beginner. That habit turns into a challenge accepted live on air. He explains why long walks built his durability as a bigger-bodied athlete and how Anvil, his ultra triathlon race company, lets athletes choose their own adventure.

Twenty years in, Tom is still learning, still adjusting and still willing to begin again. If you have been away for a while, consider this your invitation to start again with us.

Join the Tri Beginner’s Luck Community: Enjoyed this episode? The best way to support the show is to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Follow us on Instagram: @TriBeginnersLuck Connect on Facebook: Tri Beginner’s Luck Page Questions or Feedback? We want to hear your story! Send your questions to tblpodbiz@tribeginnersluck.com, and we may feature them on a future episode. Let’s tri this!

He registered for 47 races, blew out his knee, got disqualified for a GoPro, got married, went on a honeymoon, and still came home with the record.

Thomas "Tom" Scheer is a Naval Academy graduate, Navy Commendation Medal recipient, Ironman Kona finisher, and Boys and Girls Club board member who is now the official Guinness World Record holder for the most Ironman 70.3 distance triathlons completed in a single year. Tom has spent 20 years in triathlon as a Clydesdale athlete and the kind of person who stops mid-race to help a stranger fix their bike even when it risks his own cutoff.

In this conversation, we get into what the chase actually cost: the injuries, the disqualifications, the 3.9 million Hilton points, and the harder truth of being a newlywed while racing nearly every weekend for 11 months. We also go back to where it started. A panic swim in Tallahassee in 2006 in a scuba diving wetsuit, imposter syndrome on the bike, and a Dairy Queen peanut buster parfait to celebrate. Twenty years later, he drove back to that same Dairy Queen and ordered the same thing.

This is the last episode before the season break, and it ends exactly where this show has always aimed: with proof that this sport belongs to everyone willing to try.

Want to race? We are giving away a free entry to the Alpha Wins Big Apple Triathlon in New York on October 10. Head to @TriBeginnersLuck on Instagram for details. And through July 19, use code TRIBEGINNERPOD26 for 10% off your registration.

Join the Tri Beginner's Luck Community: Enjoyed this episode? The best way to support the show is to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Follow us on Instagram: @TriBeginnersLuck Connect on Facebook: Tri Beginner's Luck Page Questions or Feedback? We want to hear your story! Send your questions to tblpodbiz@tribeginnersluck.com, and we may feature them on a future episode. Let's tri this!

What if the person behind your race experience has been living inside this sport since before they could drive? This episode brings you inside the world of a man who didn't just grow up loving triathlon but grew up building it, race by race, cone by cone.

Tommy Struzzieri, USAT certified race director and founder of Alpha Win Racing, has worn nearly every hat in this sport: athlete, volunteer, age group All-American, Division I runner at Syracuse University, coach, and now the person making it all happen for thousands of participants across the country. His guiding belief, that there is a distance for everyone, shapes every decision he makes, from offering an open entry-level distance designed to welcome true first-timers to keeping race-day logistics as convenient and stress-free as possible.

This season, Tommy is bringing triathlon back to New York City with the Big Apple Triathlon on October 10, 2026. Hear what it took, what it means, and what he hopes every athlete feels when they cross that finish line.

Whether you're lining up for your first sprint or your first time standing at a starting line, this one is for you.

Join the Tri Beginner's Luck Community: Enjoyed this episode? The best way to support the show is to leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Follow us on Instagram: @TriBeginnersLuck Connect on Facebook: Tri Beginner's Luck Page Questions or Feedback? We want to hear your story! Send your questions to tblpodbiz@tribeginnersluck.com, and we may feature them in a future episode. 

Let's tri this!