By  Jo Murray
On The Water Columnist Jan 3, 2020

The 11th Annual Aquatic Capital of America (ACOA) Awards Banquet will be from from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 16, at the Keesal, Young & Logan law offices, 400 Oceangate #1400. Awards will be presented in seven categories.

Here is a list of awards and 2019 winners:

• Athlete of the Year — Jack Nunn, This year has been the highest and most diversified he has ever been able to achieve in the same year. In 2019 he celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Roworx Fitness Indoor Rowing Gym located in Long Beach. He was a 2019 Ultraman Florida Finisher: 6.2-mile swim + 270-mile bike + 52.4-mile run and was featured in 2019 Triathlete Magazine for using rowing as a major part of cross training for the Ultraman Competition. Jack also qualified, competed, and finished the 2019 Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. He won the 2019 US Rowing Indoor World Championships Team Event at the Pyramid in Long Beach as well as winning numerous rowing races on the water during the Long Beach Southwest Regionals and Christmas Regatta competitions. He placed 3rd in his age group at the USA Triathlon Legacy Sprint Triathlon Sanctioned event in Long Beach (Future site of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games Triathlon Venue). He also coached athletes from his Roworx Fitness Center to complete their first Full and Half Ironman competitions through cross training with indoor rowing at his facility overlooking marine stadium. Jack rounded out the 2019 calendar year by competing and finishing Ironman Arizona in Tempe, Arizona as well as Iroman 70.3 St. George, Utah and Ironman 70.3 Oceanside, San Diego.

Read more here for the list of winners and more on this incredible honor… 

 

USA Triathlon Magazine Winter Issue January 2020

Written By: Dustin Renwick

Olympic reminders surround Jack Nunn, all the way down to his weekly workload. “Every day when I teach a indoor rowing class at Roworx Fitness I’m looking out on the water in Long Beach Marine Stadium,” Nunn says. “That’s where my Alma mater won the gold.” But Nunn isn’t talking about swimming. He jokes that he was cut from the junior high water polo team, a team that didn’t have mandatory roster trimming. Instead, Nunn comes to the multi-sport world from crew, and the waves of Alamitos Bay, near Los Angeles, reflect his family’s past and present.

John Nunn, Jack’s father, moved to southern California in the mid 1960’s to train for the Olympics at a world-class facility, the famed Long Beach Marine Stadium, which was built for the 1932 Games. John earned an Olympic Bronze medal in 1968 in Mexico City, and he subsequently raised his family in the Los Angeles area. Jack picked up the oars in the same bay where his father practiced.

“That changed my whole life,” he says.”That’s my identity. I started rowing in 1996 for the junior national team right there in Marine Stadium. I would go to Long Beach every day in high school and throughout my college career to train.” He won multiple Pac-10 Conference championships at the University of California Berkeley. The Bears represented Team USA on their home water in 1932 and edged Italy by .2 of a second to secure Olympic gold. Nunn, 40, teaches classes at Roworx, the indoor rowing center he owns situated next to the rectangular block of water that constitutes Marine Stadium.

“If you’re a strong rower, you can turn it into being a strong cyclist with the legs and lungs,” he says. Nunn estimates that 70 percent of the multi-sport training comes from his rowing workouts at Roworx Fitness in Long Beach. Part of that philosophy originates from the practical realities of operating a gym. His job, like most age-groupers, requires a significant portion of his time. In his case, the longer hours of a small business owner mean more opportunities for fitness.

“My dad told me growing up, ‘if you want to get better at something, you have to do that thing,’ Nunn said. “The argument is yes, you will improve if you do the actual sport, but with rowing you can get close.” Nunn has raced more than 100 triathlons since diving into his first race, a 2008 Ironman event in Nice, France known for it’s difficult cycling course that features a segment of the Tour de France route. Even as he progressed down the distance ladder to shorter events in recent years, Nunn focuses on rowing as the main component of his training. “I’m a bigger guy. The longer [a race] goes, the worse I get,” he says with a laugh. “My favorite distance is the sprint.” He registered for the inaugural Legacy Triathlon as part of the 2019 schedule. USA Triathlon launched the new event in Long Beach and will continue it each year leading into the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in LA. Nunn earned the bronze medal for his age group in the sprint distance. “It’s cool to race in your hometown at a big USA Triathlon event,” Nunn says. “There was no doubt I was going to do it. I like to compete on that formal level, but it’s an individual sport, which I love. It’s you against you.”

Nunn says he understands skeptics who push for more discipline-specific swim, bike, run workouts, but he also sees plenty of people who dismiss rowing too easily or only use a rowing machine as a warm-up for something else. Five minutes here. Ten minutes there. Nunn points to those early exists as missed opportunities. “Try rowing for an hour,” he says. “Try to get some intervals going for 30 minutes. Everyone 

wants the greatest full body low impact workout – rowing will give it  to you.”