The 68-year-old engineer who hacked triathlon training

In 2015, on a weekend camping trip in Maine with MIT fraternity friends and their families, Bruce Kirch ’81 got up early to do a triathlon for the first time in 30 years. “Early Sunday morning while everybody else was sleeping, my wife and I slipped across town so I could do the race,” he recalls. Having completed several triathlons in his 20s, he wanted to revisit the sport and knew the distances of this “sprint” triathlon were manageable—a .75-kilometer swim, a 24-kilometer bike ride, and a 5.8-kilometer run. He figured he could probably be back before the group had eaten breakfast.

At 58, Kirch didn’t expect an impressive finish, but he was pleasantly surprised. “I ended up about two minutes short of the podium—fifth place in my age group,” he says. “My engineering instincts took over, and I realized that in an hour-long race, there must be ways to shave off those two minutes between me and the podium.”

Kirch was no stranger to hands-on tinkering. He’d always had a “take things apart and figure out what makes them work” mindset, which led him to Course 2 at MIT and saw him through a 39-year career engineering jet engines at General Electric. “Cutting-edge design and manufacturing processes make jet engines a mechanical engineer’s dream product. If I think back on every class I took in the mechanical engineering curriculum, I can see where it applied to designing or building a jet engine,” he says. The job remained a continual source of fascination. “Most days I still learned something new, and that fueled me,” he says, “along with the emphasis on making things better.”

His propensity for learning and iteration also fueled Kirch’s mission to eliminate those two minutes from his triathlon time. He began by getting a tracking watch and a heart rate monitor, and the resulting data drove the improvements. “Each small change buys you some amount of time (or reduced risk of injury), whether it’s swim technique or flotation from your wetsuit, changing bike position and kit to be more aerodynamic, better running shoes supporting more balanced, powerful form, or adjustments to stride length and cadence to reduce joint impact,” he says. “It’s just one improvement at a time, and a few seconds here, a few seconds there.” Kirch also discovered that many of his coworkers at GE in Lynn were also triathletes, and they began training together. “We had a team of active triathletes, most of whom were engineers,” he says. “And we focused on actions to help each other improve.”

By the spring of 2016, Kirch had made enough improvements to log his first sprint win in his age group. “The feeling of making the podium is addicting,” he says, “and it makes you wonder what else is possible.” 

Now 10 years in, Kirch has completed more than 40 triathlons, at distances up to a half-Ironman (two-kilometer swim, 90-kilometer bike ride, 21-kilometer run), and he frequently finishes on the podium. 

Career highlights also include adventure races such as the “Escape from Alcatraz,” which starts with a 1.5-mile swim through currents and cold water from “The Rock” to San Francisco. He says he is most proud of qualifying for Team USA and competing in the 2022 World Triathlon Age Group Championship Finals in Abu Dhabi.

All his training has afforded Kirch other opportunities for adventure too. For example, in 2021 he completed a memorable 17-mile “rim-to-rim” day hike in the Grand Canyon, down the South Kaibab Trail and back up the Bright Angel Trail. Last summer, he biked up the Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway in the Colorado Rockies, climbing 7,000 feet to the 14,140-foot summit. 

“It’s been incredibly positive. Triathlon has made for a forward-thinking retirement,” says Kirch. “I feel good, and with what I have learned, I’m always looking ahead for the next challenge or adventure.”