Ironman

"If you can't win, make the other person ahead of you break the record." - Unknown

I am sorry for those of you who are wanting to read this blog, and are getting ready to discover that it is not about Ironman the Marvel comic character, but Ironman, the most grueling, demanding, multisport in the world. Yes that is right, a full Ironman competition is a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride, and a full marathon run (26.2 miles). Are you kidding me!? There is a strict cutoff for a time limit at 17 hours for most Ironman competitions. Can you imagine working your body for that long of time? Now there are less crazy distances, but still not for the feint at heart. There is a half Ironman which is a total of 70.3 miles. It consists of a 1.2 miles swim, a 56 mile bike ride, and a half marathon (13.1 mile run). I know a few people that train for these and let me tell you, they are in crazy good physical shape. There is no joke when it comes to a iroman's personal lifestyle either. They train nearly everyday for several hours, they do brick workouts, which consist of doing maybe a mile swim, then immediately getting out of the pool and jumping straight on their bike to ride 20-30 miles or more. Their eating habits must be perfect as well. They have such a demanding lifestyle and workout regime that there are are specific guidelines to follow in order to get the best out of their triaing as possible, while staying healthy and functioning as well. I can definitely say that I will probably never do an Ironman by myself, but I am a triathlete and do compete in triathlons, just not the huge ones like this. I do ones that are called sprint triathlons. My distances are on average, a 500 meter swim, 15 miles ride, and a 5k run. Although I am training as well to do a team ironman event, where you have three people on a team and I do one event, like biking, the other two are done by the other two team members. We'll see how that goes, but as for the true ironmen out there, I have much respect for you all. Keep being the greatest athletes in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironman_Triathlon

http://www.trifind.com/iron-h.html

http://www.whenbigboystri.com/quotes.htm