Do you really want to do an Ironman?

--amadeus--

Thinking of doing an Ironman? This is the battle for 4th / 5th in the Womens World Championships 1997...

Link, in case embedding fails

Funkyzeit

Oh the pain the pain !!!! :eek:

Ps - I feel terrible for laughing as one of them was like she was from the ministry of funny walks....

Krusty_Clown

Jesus. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry....

digitalage

Ah man that was funny

shels4ever

oh what a post, have to be impressed by their will to finish.. Fairpaly for the first one you noticed that she could crawl faster then run.

plodder

Gawd. That cannot be good for you :eek:

RacoonQueen

Saw that before. To be honest, it makes me want to do it more. Looks like fun.

MCOS

There is giving your best and then there is giving EVERYTHING!! How many of us are afraid to hurt like this..

I will do one in this lifetime and I will finish:D

robinph

I did try not to laugh.

uglyjohn

that scared the hell out of me. they didnt look like healthy athletes, they looked like famine victims or terminally ill people. i was expecting slim and toned not anorexic looking.

Seres

i have to say i found it hilarious but on a more serious note , why do this to yourself , i dont get ironmans anyway , cant see how it can be good for your body , i think at the point those women were at defeats the point of exercise , think i might watch it again though

In the Woods

Tried not to laugh...couldn't do it. Very funny. Somehow I don't think I'm ready to do an Ironman.

daymobrew

MCOS wrote: »

How many of us are afraid to hurt like this..

As insane as the video is, in our more moderate races we never push ourselves that hard.

In the second run of one of the Phoenix Park duathlons this year, a guy taking photos (a member of a tri club but racing) said "You're not hurting enough" as I passed. He was right. I was pushing myself a bit but I know I had a lot more before I reached my limit but I'm afraid to go to there.

MCOS

Having laughed, cried or whatever at the link posted above... what has been one of your defining moments of hurt to date? A moment where your mind won over your body?

A few years ago after returning from Living in the land of Sushi I decided to return to rowing after a couple of lazy years off. I arrived down one September saturday morning to get back in the boat and get a feel of it. I was expecting a gentle paddle and maybe some technique...

The weather was poor which caused swells that meant we couldn't put boats on the water. The head coach drafted a 'duathlon' of sorts to keep us entertained.

2k rowing ergo + 4k run (local loop beside the boat house).

Most of the guys Junior and Senior had just come off a hard season and turned this into a competition. Sam Lynch was even there! There were about 4 concept 2 ergos lined up and business ensued..

a 2k rowing ergo test for a rower is normally about 6'+ of agony. Its a measure of your strength endurance prowess on a machine and a benchmark of your fitness post winter training.

The smart guys did an easy ergo and posted fast run times for good overall scores. Others went all out on the machine and didn't bother with the run. One of the Juniors 'beat' Sam on the machine but then again the junior was 6ft 7" and weighed 105kg! Sam scorched around the run posting the fastest overall time of the day.

My tactic should have been the easy ergo, survive the run plan but when my turn came up and I was sat beside one of the Big guys. I used to take pride in getting close to or matching the scores of the heavyweights in college. We set off and a furious pace and in the excitement my splits were lower than the Heavy. I rationalized however that this was suicide and would surely result in a DNF of which we had seen a couple that morning already. At 1k the Heavy pulled away but I was not far behind. My lungs however were on fire, my body just felt as though only lactic acid coursed through my veins. At 1.5k I was losing sight of the screen. My body was toast after 5 minutes and I was just hanging on. The big guy finished about 10 strokes before me but I had to throw the sink at it just to pull those last 10 strokes. I fell off the machine with the 5th best ergo time that morning. I was completely spent, and just hobbled outside and got sick into the river. I remembered that there was still a run to do so I began to walk. My legs were just too tight to run. My body was screaming to get back into the club and sit down. I convinced myself that it was only a 'loop'. It was normally a warm up to a session for us mid season. However, this Saturday morning it may as well have been a 100 miles after the ergo. The next wave of juniors ran passed me which brought a jog out of me. There was definitely a crystal clear moment where my mind was stronger than my legs. Some oxygen returned and I finished the run catching a few people. All in all it was only about 30+ minutes of exercise but its a memory that helps me push myself on a tempo run or a hard session when the body wants to give up.

I can only imagine what it must be like to endure this torture* towards the end of 140.6 miles or 15 hours of testing your personal limits and even more... to push through it:eek: I have complete admiration for anyone that completes an Ironman. I remember when I was a kid my PE teacher did an Ironman and told us what it was. We thought he was superman!


* not comparing the pain of lactic acid vs complete glycogen depletion:pac:

Long'n'slow

Slighty off topic, but you may not have seen this photo, which has to win the prize for the worst finisher photo ever