He's 50 and Going Strong
He's 50 And Going StrongA veteran triathlete sticks with a winning program
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John Hanc is a regular contributor to Newsday.
August 4, 2003
He doesn't look 50. He doesn't act 50. And recently, Fred Neinast did something that very, very few other 50-year-olds have done: He won a triathlon. That's win, as in first place, ahead of 398 other athletes, most of them in their 20s and 30s.
"He defies age," says 40-year-old Jose L. Lopez of Mineola, a triathlon coach who finished second in that race, the Long Island Gold Coast Triathlon in Port Washington, on June 15.
"It's a sign of how far we've come and how far athletes have advanced," said Tim Yount, deputy director of USA Triathlon in Colorado Springs, the governing body for the sport.
Neinast, who turned 50 on April 8, has been involved in triathlons since 1984, when a friend persuaded him to enter a now-defunct Coney Island event. Neinast grew up surfing in the Rockaways, so he knew how to swim, and he was captain of the cross- country team at Nazareth High School in Brooklyn in the early 1970s. For the third part of the tri, Neinast dragged out a rusty old bike that had been in his garage. Mistake. "I got killed on the bike," Neinast recalled. "I finished something like 42nd out of 400."
But, he said, he was "hooked" on triathlon, which was then just emerging as an interesting alternative to road running. (In 2000, it became an Olympic sport.) Neinast bought a racing bike and began training more seriously, although it took him two more years before he won anything. That was a race on Staten Island in about 1986. "I was always in the back of the pack," he said. "So I did this race, went home and a week later, an award came in the mail. I was like, 'Wow!'"
Neinast had come in second in his age group. But he was only scratching the surface of his potential. Triathlon is contested at several distances; Neinast soon realized his strengths weren't in the super- long Ironman distances but in the shorter, "sprint" triathlons, usually consisting of about a half-mile swim, 10- to 15-mile bike and 3.1-mile run. It was in a race of roughly that distance, the Town of Hempstead Tri in 1990, where Neinast made his big breakthrough. "I was looking around on the run, and saying, 'Wow! No one's ahead of me, I'm going to win this,'" he recalled. "In that last mile, I said, 'Let's take it all in, it might never happen again.'"
It did happen, with increasing frequency: Over the next nine years, he won 12 races, including the largest local race, the Vytra-Tobay Triathlon in Oyster Bay, which he won four times. (Neinast will be back at this year's edition, on Aug. 17.)
Neinast just seemed to get better as he got older. What's his secret? Steve Tarpinian of Franklin Square, who coaches multisport athletes through his company Total Training Inc., thinks he knows. "Fred is a balanced athlete and a balanced person," Tarpinian says. "He has other interests besides triathlon ... he is enjoying the journey."
A licensed pharmacist, Neinast is a manager for a home health-care company in Plainview. His wife, Patricia, is a vice president for a real estate firm. The couple, who live in the Belle Harbor section of Rockaway, have two daughters, Kelly, 23, and Kristin, 20. Fred still likes to surf and spends weekends on one of the family's two boats, a Hobie catamaran and a 19-foot sailboat.
To get his workouts in, Fred focuses on quality. He averages 10 to 15 miles a week running; 2 to 3 miles swimming; 80 to 120 miles biking every week. For some triathletes, that's barely a warm-up. But while Neinast doesn't train for long, he does train hard. "The way I train is low mileage, high intensity," he says. "I always have my eye on the clock."
While some might say the clock on his career is ticking down, Lopez disagrees. "He's always a threat to win," Lopez said. "It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but Freddie could always take it from you."
Which is what happened at the Gold Coast Tri, which is a "sprint" event. Neinast and Lopez were leading the race, but at about a mile and a half into the run, they both went off course. "There was probably a volunteer who was supposed to be there directing and missed us," Neinast said. But the two found their way back on the course, and finished together, Neinast a stride ahead of Lopez. "To be with him at the finish line was awesome," Lopez said.
Although Neinast knows that the Gold Coast win could be his last in an open competition, he still intends to compete and train hard. "My goal is to stay healthy and be in it for the long haul," he said. "It's not just about triathlon, it's about fitness."
John Hanc is a regular contributor to Newsday.
Come Join the Show
You don't have to swim, bike and run to participate in the 16th annual Vytra Tobay Triathlon & Tri Relay, coming up Aug. 17.
If you enjoy any one of those three activities, you can still compete as a member of a relay team. About 100 three-person teams and 1,000 individual triathletes competed in last year's event, which consists of a 0.62-mile swim in Oyster Bay Harbor, a 9-mile bike ride and a 3.1-mile run through the communities of Mill Neck, Brookville, Laurel Hollow, Oyster Bay and Oyster Bay Cove. "We get family teams, company teams, sibling teams, elite teams, all we're missing are clowns and jugglers," says Mike Polansky, president of the Greater Long Island Running Club, which organizes the event.
There are even political entrants this year: A team representing Nassau County government will include County Executive Thomas Suozzi on the bike leg.
For many, the team triathlon is a gateway toward completing the entire triathlon as an individual. For others, the annual team event is a tradition, and some amateurs see it as just a nice way to get some exercise and enjoy the company of friends.
Registration is $45 per team member. For more information on the competition, which starts at 7:30 a.m. at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park in Oyster Bay, visit www.glirc.org or call 516-349-7646. -John Hanc
"He defies age," says 40-year-old Jose L. Lopez of Mineola, a triathlon coach who finished second in that race, the Long Island Gold Coast Triathlon in Port Washington, on June 15.
"It's a sign of how far we've come and how far athletes have advanced," said Tim Yount, deputy director of USA Triathlon in Colorado Springs, the governing body for the sport.
Neinast, who turned 50 on April 8, has been involved in triathlons since 1984, when a friend persuaded him to enter a now-defunct Coney Island event. Neinast grew up surfing in the Rockaways, so he knew how to swim, and he was captain of the cross- country team at Nazareth High School in Brooklyn in the early 1970s. For the third part of the tri, Neinast dragged out a rusty old bike that had been in his garage. Mistake. "I got killed on the bike," Neinast recalled. "I finished something like 42nd out of 400."
But, he said, he was "hooked" on triathlon, which was then just emerging as an interesting alternative to road running. (In 2000, it became an Olympic sport.) Neinast bought a racing bike and began training more seriously, although it took him two more years before he won anything. That was a race on Staten Island in about 1986. "I was always in the back of the pack," he said. "So I did this race, went home and a week later, an award came in the mail. I was like, 'Wow!'"
Neinast had come in second in his age group. But he was only scratching the surface of his potential. Triathlon is contested at several distances; Neinast soon realized his strengths weren't in the super- long Ironman distances but in the shorter, "sprint" triathlons, usually consisting of about a half-mile swim, 10- to 15-mile bike and 3.1-mile run. It was in a race of roughly that distance, the Town of Hempstead Tri in 1990, where Neinast made his big breakthrough. "I was looking around on the run, and saying, 'Wow! No one's ahead of me, I'm going to win this,'" he recalled. "In that last mile, I said, 'Let's take it all in, it might never happen again.'"
It did happen, with increasing frequency: Over the next nine years, he won 12 races, including the largest local race, the Vytra-Tobay Triathlon in Oyster Bay, which he won four times. (Neinast will be back at this year's edition, on Aug. 17.)
Neinast just seemed to get better as he got older. What's his secret? Steve Tarpinian of Franklin Square, who coaches multisport athletes through his company Total Training Inc., thinks he knows. "Fred is a balanced athlete and a balanced person," Tarpinian says. "He has other interests besides triathlon ... he is enjoying the journey."
A licensed pharmacist, Neinast is a manager for a home health-care company in Plainview. His wife, Patricia, is a vice president for a real estate firm. The couple, who live in the Belle Harbor section of Rockaway, have two daughters, Kelly, 23, and Kristin, 20. Fred still likes to surf and spends weekends on one of the family's two boats, a Hobie catamaran and a 19-foot sailboat.
To get his workouts in, Fred focuses on quality. He averages 10 to 15 miles a week running; 2 to 3 miles swimming; 80 to 120 miles biking every week. For some triathletes, that's barely a warm-up. But while Neinast doesn't train for long, he does train hard. "The way I train is low mileage, high intensity," he says. "I always have my eye on the clock."
While some might say the clock on his career is ticking down, Lopez disagrees. "He's always a threat to win," Lopez said. "It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but Freddie could always take it from you."
Which is what happened at the Gold Coast Tri, which is a "sprint" event. Neinast and Lopez were leading the race, but at about a mile and a half into the run, they both went off course. "There was probably a volunteer who was supposed to be there directing and missed us," Neinast said. But the two found their way back on the course, and finished together, Neinast a stride ahead of Lopez. "To be with him at the finish line was awesome," Lopez said.
Although Neinast knows that the Gold Coast win could be his last in an open competition, he still intends to compete and train hard. "My goal is to stay healthy and be in it for the long haul," he said. "It's not just about triathlon, it's about fitness."
John Hanc is a regular contributor to Newsday.
Come Join the Show
You don't have to swim, bike and run to participate in the 16th annual Vytra Tobay Triathlon & Tri Relay, coming up Aug. 17.
If you enjoy any one of those three activities, you can still compete as a member of a relay team. About 100 three-person teams and 1,000 individual triathletes competed in last year's event, which consists of a 0.62-mile swim in Oyster Bay Harbor, a 9-mile bike ride and a 3.1-mile run through the communities of Mill Neck, Brookville, Laurel Hollow, Oyster Bay and Oyster Bay Cove. "We get family teams, company teams, sibling teams, elite teams, all we're missing are clowns and jugglers," says Mike Polansky, president of the Greater Long Island Running Club, which organizes the event.
There are even political entrants this year: A team representing Nassau County government will include County Executive Thomas Suozzi on the bike leg.
For many, the team triathlon is a gateway toward completing the entire triathlon as an individual. For others, the annual team event is a tradition, and some amateurs see it as just a nice way to get some exercise and enjoy the company of friends.
Registration is $45 per team member. For more information on the competition, which starts at 7:30 a.m. at Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Park in Oyster Bay, visit www.glirc.org or call 516-349-7646. -John Hanc
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