Frederik Van Lierde won the Abu Dhabi International Triathlon and Ironman Nice in 2011 and will return to the UAE in March to defend his title. But the fast Belgian is no longer flying under the radar.

I assembled Trek’s Speed Concept 9-Series tri bike last year. I was prepared for the integrated Bontrager aerobar to be a disappointment. I was more than pleasantly surprised.

The 2012 Outdoor Retailer Winter Market 2012 show in Salt Lake City, Utah is now in the books and we have a few images of items and folks we stumbled upon.

There is a growing awareness of the debilitating effects of gluten on nutrition – and some of the hardest hit cases are endurance athletes. Timothy O’Donnell discusses his recent diagnosis and its role in a rollercoaster year.

This week we came across the Asics Gel-Hyper Speed 5 racing flats, the Specialized Purist Hydroflo bottle, a bike parking sign, grass flip flops, a cool t-shirt and an entertaining video.

Marino Vanhoenacker combined a race-best bike split and 2nd-best run to top Ronnie Schildknecht by 6:31; Jodie Swallow dominates the field to repeat her 2011 victory at Ironman 70.3 South Africa.

Australia’s Aaron Farlow dominated defending champion Jamie Whyte of New Zealand and Kiwi Gina Crawford edged Britta Martin of Germany to win Challenge Wanaka Saturday.

Chrissie Wellington, the 4-time Ironman World Champion, the holder of the women’s Ironman distance and Ironman world best times, talks about her decision to take a year off from Ironman competition

Dirk Bockel recently announced that he was joining Team Leopard-Trek, but this does not mean that he’ll end his triathlon career and compete on the road. He sat down with slowtwitch on Fuerteventura.

On Jan. 18, Slowtwitch experienced a server outage of several hours. This was the result of damage to the fiber optic lines connecting our servers – and others – to the rest of the Internet. The outage came at a time when two bills in the US Congress threaten to make such disruptions more frequent. Here are our thoughts on both issues.

No, you weren’t banned. No we weren’t protesting PIPA and SOPA. An explosion blew up the fiber optic cables carrying our signal to you. Slowtwitch was down from 2pm Pacific to midnight.

This week in Fuerteventura, Spain Magura announced an exciting new hydraulic aerodynamic TT brake that they developed together with Cervelo.

Cervelo introduced the highly anticipated P5 to a fairly small group of triathlon journalists at the Playitas resort on Fuerteventura over the last few days and we were there to take a closer look.

We came to Fuerteventura for the launch of the new Cervelo P5 and will post details about this very cool bike tonight, but first enjoy these impressions from the Playitas resort in Fuerteventura.

The International Triathlon Union is raising its total prize payout for the 8-race World Championship Series by 15% – up to $2.06 million – and series winners will earn $60,000

The annual update to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prohibited substance list was published on October 1st and will be effective on Jan. 1, 2012. Each year WADA updates the list in accordance with evolving scientific principals, changing social habits and increased understanding of what constitutes an ergogenic substance or process.

Ty Butterfield of Bermuda and Sarah-Anne Brault of Canada won the men’s and women’s titles at the ITU PATCO Championship in La Paz, Argentina Sunday.

Guilherme Manocchio topped fellow Brazilian Santiago Ascencio and Carla Stampfli of Switzerland outran Valentina Carvallo of Chile to win Ironman 70.3 Pucon

Meb Keflezighi (2:09:08) and Shalane Flanagan (2:25:38) won and triathletes Tyler Stewart (2:44) and Joanna Zeiger (DNF) also ran in the US Olympic Marathon Trials

In this issue we have noticed the Saucony Amp PRO2 recovery suit, Panache G.S. Panache jersey, EvenOdd Creative messenger bag, Matuse Premium Tuna t-shirt and the Ai Weiwei Forever Bicycles exhibit.

Edward Dudlik III is another athlete who just recently fell hard for the sport of triathlon. Currently in law school in Washington, DC, this Willow Grove, PA resident is this week’s random age grouper.

With the Cervelo P5 launch only a few days away we noticed a strange new sponsor on the Garmin Barracuda team kit. Will that mean that the new P5 will feature a hydraulic brake from Magura?

Aussie Nikki Butterfield won 70.3 Syracuse and also added a 4th place at the HyVee 5i50 Championships to her resume in 2011. The recent mom, whose husband Tyler also races, shared with slowtwitch how she juggles it all.

Last weekend Jeremy Powers and Katie Compton stormed to the 2011 USA Cycling Cyclocross Championship titles and Ali Engin took some amazing photos of the event.