The Nautica Malibu Triathlon, set to kick off bright and early this Saturday morning at 7 a.m., has been an annual local athletic tradition for 25 years.
More than 5,000 athletes are expected to take part in this year’s event. On Saturday, the International Race will feature a 1.5K ocean swim, a 40K bike down Pacific Coast Highway and a 10K run alongside Zuma Beach. On Sunday, the Classic Distance race involves a half-mile swim, an 18-mile bike ride and a four-mile run.
Not much about that is different from the past 25 years. But one of the more interesting “tri” trends emerging for the 26th version of the event is big companies, such as Warner Bros. Studios, encouraging company-wide participation and rewarding their employees for competing in the race.
Doug Maxfield, WB’s fitness director, has organized a studio-wide tri team as part of a broader companywide program, “Time Warner Fit Nation” (Warner Bros. is a subsidiary of Time Warner.). Headed by health expert Dr. Sanje Gupta of Time Warner-owned CNN, Fit Nation is “pushing an active lifestyle to all of our employees across the country,” Maxfield says.
This weekend, 114 employees from the company’s Burbank office will compete in the triathlon as part of the program. Their counterparts at the company’s New York and Atlanta offices have also been taking part in local triathlons.
The program got underway last spring when Gupta gave keynote speeches at all three Time Warner headquarters, pitching the program to 1,500 employees.
Brian Mullin, WB’s vice president of employee benefits, has been training weekends at Zuma Beach for six months and helped organize the Fit Nation initiative.
“WB has always had our triathlon group,” Mullin said. “It started in 2007 with 25 people.”
However, after Jim Cummings, Time Warner senior vice president of compensation benefits, participated last year, “He thought, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we did it across all of WB,’” Mullin said. “We wanted to give people something to do, instead of just giving information.”
Through the program, WB subsidizes jerseys, half of employees’ registration fees, and hires Mary Kane of TriLife Coaching, who has led Team WB in a half-mile of swimming, bicycling 18 miles from the Zuma Beach parking lot to Leo Carrillo State Beach and back, and a four-mile Westward Beach run.
Mullin, who had not exercised, has lost 25 lbs. since March. He hopes to make it last.
“Exercise will probably be a bigger part of my life than it’s been before,” Mullin said. “It’s helped me with sleeping, dealing with stress at work.” Mullin, who plans on competing again next year, says the training has established a circle of work friends who like to exercise. “I have a group of friends now who invited me to go riding. I like to swim, I’ll continue that.”
Stephanie Arnoldy, WB’s employee communications manager, says Malibu is a perfect setting for a triathlon.
“The terrain for Malibu is kind of ideal. The run is flat, the bike is rolling hills, it’s manageable and fun for some of the more experienced folks. It’s one of the most gorgeous courses I could imagine.”
She loves the biking but is most proud of her swimming progress. Getting up so early to embrace the ice cold Pacific has become routine, whereas “three months ago, it was brutal.”
With a company as big as WB, it is only natural many employees have been introduced to their corporate cousins from other departments through tri training. That will continue Friday, when the WB gang gets together to celebrate with a “carb load” pasta dinner in anticipation of Sunday’s race.
“I’m definitely not the best athlete, but even the best athlete has been encouraging,” Mullin said.