Jaja does Ironman

"Bill C" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Ryan Cousineau said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Dwayne said:

21st place in Swiss Ironman:

Quoted message said:

http://tinyurl.com/2fyq7n

It's so sad when a once-great athlete succumbs to triathlism.

Oh well, at least it's not RAAM,

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden]://www.wiredcola.com/
"I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics
to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." -Paul Erdos

I don't get the concept of wanting to increase your running to obscene
distances as you get older. Running is a young persons sport, or at
least for those with young joints. RAAM should be THE event for ex-
hippies gone clean. All the hallucinations you can handle, no drugs
involved, and legal too.
Bill C

As more a runner than a biker the last few years, I'd have to agree in one
sense - running is much more fun when you're younger when you can really
hammer without worrying what you will tweak: injuries when you're young
mostly heal quickly. But after several years of mostly biking and only
running occasionally, I got interested in running again when my friends
invited me to join them at some Orienteering meets.

In my late 30's I was one who thought my running days were well behind me,
with stiff joints, hip problems, and generally what I considered very
negative feedback my body was sending me after runs. But I always loved
trail running since age 15, and before that I'd thrived as a soccer
midfielder with a decent sprint that gave me a feeling of power throughout
my youth. After pushing myself on the orienteering circuit for several
years, I developed some running injuries that I didn't know how to deal with
at the time (early 1980s), and stopped running regularly, though never
totally.

Biking was also a passion of mine all my life, and I trained with my friends
who raced sometimes, though what I considered to be the unfairness of race
tactics - e.g.. the strongest rider doesn't always win - squashed any
interested I had in bike racing. I now appreciate race tactics much more,
but I still prefer watching the mountain stages or time trials far more than
the tactical or sprint stages. (I think allowing drafting in triathlons, as
they did in the last Olympics, ruins that sport, and penalizes the best bike
riders).

When I got into Orienteering again after a 20 year layoff, I found my bike
training crossed over pretty well, but It was just too hard on my joints at
the time, and it would take more than a week to recover from meets. After a
couple of years of o-meets here and there, I decided that I needed some
other running outlet, and I got interested in trail ultras. So what drew me
to want to run 'obscene distances'? That's a really good question that I
have no easy answer for, but I've never done more than a 50 miler, and doubt
I ever will, so that's not as obscene as some distances.

I guess the main reasons I tried an ultra were because I've always loved
trail running, and people would always ask me if I ran a marathon before
when I told them I was a runner and a biker. Since I always hating road
running, a road marathon was never a remote goal of mine. So, yea there was
a bragging rights reason in a way, but I also wanted to see how I stood up
to the challenge. Answer: not too well. That didn't stop me from running a
few more, improving some, but suffering horribly the last 3-4 hours of the
race, and taking many months to fully recover.

For now I've moved on to shorter trail races, and am running much more than
biking these days. I went from running 2 days a week 3 years ago, to running
about 6 days a week now, and I've found that while running isn't always
pleasant, the body does adapt and that age isn't as limiting as I once
thought it was. The feedback you get from your body in running is direct and
substantial, and if you try to learn from that, it can lead you to correct
imbalance problems and to work on your health in ways that others sports
don't require, and that's a good thing. In short, being running fit makes
you feel younger and it gives you a kind of physical freedom and robustness
that other sports don't, at least for me.

The above being said, when you push your limits in running it can be a
challenge to avoid injuries and it makes you more aware of your mortality
and limitations than biking does for example. I strongly believe that a
cross-training lifestyle is the best for most people, and though I've
experimented with somewhat higher running mileage this year, I plan to
settle on a more balanced approach in the future. A note to those who think
they don't like to run: try trails.

As for jaja in the Ironman -- I just hope it eventually causes Lance to try
it -- that's something many people wanted to see for a long time. Unlikely
that he would ever do it, but he's still young enough to give it a run. No,
I'm not particularly a Lance fan, but it would be worth watching him fry in
the lava fields 😉

-Tony