Finding Ultra (17 page)

But that denial was about to morph into acceptance. I began with a very light jog to warm up, and after five minutes or so, I checked my heart rate to make sure I was in the proper zone—in other words, heart rate below 140 beats per minute.
150!
It must be a glitch, I thought, since I was barely moving. The GPS signal on my watch bounced off an invisible satellite overhead to register my pace at a slovenly ten minutes per mile. No, it was accurate. My aerobic system, it seemed, was simply so undeveloped that even the slightest jog had pushed my heart rate above my aerobic threshold into verboten
gray zone
terrain. I couldn't believe it. In fact, I had to slow to almost a shuffle just to settle in the 140s. And when I hit even the slightest hill, I had to walk just to keep it in check. Meanwhile, I suffered the humiliation of allowing more than a few less-than-svelte joggers fly past me on the trail. Chris said it would take discipline to rebuild. I was now starting to understand what he meant.

At this rate, the idea of competing in the Ironman suddenly seemed all the more impossible. But I trusted Chris. And I stuck to the plan.

But what's a plan without a goal? A road to nowhere. I still needed to find that Ironman I'd sheepishly avoided committing to. My enthusiasm ran high, and I didn't want it to wane. Unless I soon found a race to zero in on, I knew I'd lose focus.

So after a month under Chris's wing, in early June 2008 I logged on to the official Ironman website, naively assuming that I'd have my choice of the twenty-five-odd Ironman-branded races offered throughout the year and across the globe. What I failed to realize was that these races sell out a full year ahead of time. Entries open the day after each race and generally sell out before day's end, often in a matter of hours. Needless to say, every race from 2008 through May 2009 was completely sold out.

Damn
. I knew Ironman was popular. I'd watched the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii on television many times and seen the thousands of bodies strewn across Kailua Bay and the famous lava fields of the Queen K Highway. I just had no idea it was
that
popular.

What now? For the next two weeks I was depressed. I'd come so far. I ached for an endurance challenge to celebrate my life overhaul. But the door to the dream suddenly seemed closed. To be sure, there were plenty of other races out there. Shorter-distance triathlons. Century rides, trail runs, and open-water swims. But none of them had that Ironman mystique.

“Why not just start with a local half-Ironman this year? We can always do a full Ironman next year,” said Chris. But his comment left me unsatisfied. No, a half-Ironman wasn't going to cut it. And I didn't want to wait a full year to do an Ironman, either. But I'd essentially left myself with no options. In retrospect, it's ludicrous
that I would scoff at a challenge I'd yet to conquer. My only attempt at a half-Ironman had resulted in a DNF. And my lactate test proved that my aptitude for endurance sports—if any—was at best embryonic, more likely just a pipe dream. I was in no position to be haughty. Yet much like that moment I walked out on a secure corporate career, or the first instant I laid eyes on Julie, I just knew that the proper objective would soon present itself.

And sure enough, it did. Only a week later I found myself at Jamba Juice, awaiting a large carrot-and-orange concoction after a morning run, when I casually picked up a copy of
Competitor
magazine lying on the countertop. One of those free multisport-focused periodicals with race schedules and obligatory running-shoe reviews found in most large cities, a piece in the magazine featured a picture of a large and impossibly muscled African-American man running shirtless in Hawaii. Entranced, I began reading the amazing story of a Navy SEAL known as David Goggins.

A former football player and power lifter who once tipped the scales at 290 pounds, Goggins decided to honor the tragic death of several of his fellow SEALs and raise funds for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation by competing in some of the most difficult endurance challenges in the world. “When I joined the military, I couldn't run to the mailbox,” he once famously said. Yet in 2006, he nonetheless completed an event I'd never heard of called Badwater—a 135-mile jaunt through Death Valley in heat so intense that it melts the rubber right off your running shoes.

And three months after Badwater, he participated in a mysterious event called the Ultraman World Championships. A three-day stage race circumnavigating the entire Big Island of Hawaii, which is roughly the size of Connecticut, the event entailed swimming 6.2 miles, cycling 260 miles, and, on the third day, running 52.4 miles.
More than twice the distance of an Ironman!
And despite
having never before competed in a single triathlon or cycling event, and riding much of the course on a borrowed bicycle in his running shoes, Goggins finished second overall. Unbelievable.

“I'm nobody special,” he often repeats. And his mantra isn't false humility. He believes it. Yet his story struck a major chord with me. The farthest thing from a born runner or triathlete, I identified.

But what really captured my imagination was Goggins's vivid description of Ultraman. No prize money. No closed roads and entirely self-supported (by your own crew). Nary a shred of media coverage, let alone television time. More spiritual quest, it seemed, than spectacle race.

Ultraman
. No question about it, I'd found my goal.

I must be mentally ill
was my next thought, a waterfall of self-doubt working overtime to douse my fragile flame of inspiration. The idea of completing an Ironman was lunacy enough given my current state of endurance acumen. But Ultraman? Even considering it was over the top. Yet for the next week, I could think of nothing else. What most worried me was the implausibility of someone with my utter lack of credentials ever securing entry. Limited to just thirty-five carefully vetted international competitors each year, Ultraman was, and to this day remains, invitation-only.

Nonetheless, against all logic and reason, I knew with utter conviction that somehow, someway, I'd be lining up to participate in the event come November—then just six short months away. The first step was picking up the phone. I called Jane Bockus, Ultraman's grande dame and chief gatekeeper.

After I introduced myself and explained my fascination with the race, I received the predictable inquiry: “So what have you done?” Jane asked.

“Nothing.” I couldn't lie. “But if you can find it in your heart to let me in, I'll be ready. I promise.”

There is earnestness. And then there is idiocy. My words fell
somewhere in between. Jane made no promises, but she didn't say no, either. It was all I needed. By hook or by crook, I'd find my way into the race.

First, though, there would be the distressing business of breaking this secret news. Julie's response was predictably optimistic. “I think it sounds awesome!” But that didn't mean she knew anything about undertaking a challenge of this magnitude.

Then came the terrifying call to Chris. “I found my race,” I began, my voice trembling in expectation of the inevitable reality check. “Ultraman.”

“Whoa!” he responded with a gleeful chuckle, followed by an interminable silence. I braced myself for the stern rebuke.
You are way out of your league.… It will never happen.…
But to his great credit, Chris swallowed what had to be prodigious doubt and left me with one simple comment: “Okay, let's do it!”

Now a man possessed, I continued to pester Jane over the next several weeks, making sure she understood just how serious I was. Later, Chris even e-mailed her in support, letting her know he'd have me ready. And finally, she relented.

I was in.

So it began. With fewer than six months to steel my body, mind, and soul for this seemingly insurmountable adventure, I had absolutely zero room for error.

Chris and I began by building my training volume slowly to ensure against injury, no small possibility given my body's previous dormant decades. At first, it was around ten hours a week. A couple one-hour swims. Two or three Z2 runs of only an hour to ninety minutes maximum. A longer bike ride on Saturday morning,
anywhere from three to four steady hours. And a longer run on Sunday, generally about 90 to 110 minutes in length.

In a perfect world, I would have supplemented my rotation of swimming, cycling, and running with a wide variety of cross-training and rehabilitative pursuits: a modicum of weight lifting to improve overall strength, which wanes with age, particularly past forty; weekly massage and use of foam rollers to remove scar-tissue buildup and enhance blood flow to aid in muscle recovery and further ensure against injury; yoga for flexibility; core workouts to improve body stability and enhance my swim, bike, and run form; and spinal adjustments to correct body alignment. These are all things I now incorporate into my regime. But there are only twenty-four hours in a day. And back in 2008, I simply didn't have the time. With that six-month clock ticking, I was compelled to devote all available training hours to one of the three specific race disciplines. And I almost never missed a workout. Not because I sought Chris's approval. But because I was terrified.

By mid-summer, my body was beginning to acclimate to the volume, and the hours increased—up to fifteen hours on average, with the occasional eighteen- to twenty-hour week, always followed by a light rest week of easy workouts and reduced volume. It wasn't until September that the volume escalated to a ceiling of twenty-five hours. But the approach always remained the same—a prescription of steady Z2 medicine. The midweek rides and swims just got a bit longer. I never ran two days in a row—a key reason I was able to avoid a run-related injury—but Tuesdays turned into double-run days. That Saturday ride just got longer and longer. And the same for the Sunday run.

True to Chris's word, unwavering adherence to the plan began to pay significant dividends. I found myself able to run quicker without my heart rate escalating. What started at a 10:15-minute-per-mile run pace at 145 beats per minute was soon a 9:30 pace. Before
long, an 8:30 pace morphed to 8:00—all within the sacrosanct Z2 range. But the bulk of my training was spent on the bike. Because the body can ride many more hours than it can run or swim, it's the optimal and most time-efficient way to build endurance fitness without risking leg and shoulder injuries.

And by sticking to the ethos of Z2, I was surprised to never experience the debilitating fatigue I'd grown accustomed to as a collegiate swimmer. Escalating volume very incrementally gave my body time to adapt without suffering exhaustion, the idea being that aerobic zone training allows the body to train day in and day out without heading into that black hole of fatigue that can bury an athlete for weeks, sometimes months, and destroy a season.

Then there was this bizarre training approach called
periodization
. It stipulated that a block of heavy training weeks should always be followed by a rest week. Further, it declared that every week should include at least one rest day in which I did absolutely no training. The objective was for my body to repair itself in between heavy loads. Seen another way, all my improvement was slated to take place in those periods
between workouts
. Fail to properly recover, and I'd limit my overall potential. But set periods throughout the season when my body could heal
—absorb the training
—and I'd lay the groundwork for maximum performance gains. The concept seems self-evident, and, in fact, it's the current operating system for most endurance, track, cycling, swimming, and triathletes today.

But to me, these ideas were anathema.
Go slow to go fast? Rest to improve? What is this craziness? I can't spare the time to rest!
During the heyday of my swimming career in the 1980s, conventional wisdom called for pushing oneself to one's absolute limit for up to eight months straight.
Aerobic zone? What's that?
Before I hooked up with Chris, I'd never heard of a rest week, let alone anything resembling active recovery.

But armed with these insights, I soon became a geek for performance technology and data. For example, I grew to love my Garmin bike computer, a device latched to my bike's handlebars that received important data points wirelessly and via satellite—everything from heart rate to pedal cadence, location, speed, elevation, grade, and more. Perhaps the most important contraption I acquired told me what level of power I was generating—or, more specifically, the force exerted by my legs with each and every stroke of the pedals. By contrasting my legs' watt and kilojoule output with my heartbeats, the road incline, the air temperature and elevation, and the miles per hour I was traveling, I was able to set what was for me an optimum training intensity.

I grew to love the numbers. After every workout, I looked forward to uploading the data accumulated from my various training devices to the analytical software on my laptop. Eventually, I utilized Web-based services like Strava to keep track of my progression on local climbs and share my rides with friends. And I began to rely on programs like TrainingPeaks, WorkoutLog, and Golden Cheetah, which lend meaning to the numbers by producing a dizzying array of graphs and metrics. Always, I scanned the data for insight into how I could improve, which I'm sure has contributed greatly to my ability to enhance my performance with each successive year.

Only as I began to understand how to train optimally did I realize how little I knew—and how much there remained to learn. This was particularly evident when it came to running, something I enjoy but that has never come easy. I am the farthest thing from a natural-born runner. In fact, I don't really consider myself a runner at all. Any success I've achieved on foot is more a matter of
fitness and discipline than innate ability. And in 2008, the only subject I knew less about than cycling was running. I was downright clueless—particularly when it came to shoes. Utterly naive and susceptible to bad advice, I haplessly went through a dozen pairs of running shoes trying to find a model that would suit my maladroit stride, keep me erect, and prevent my knees from buckling under the stress of my impending double-marathon attempt. But nothing seemed to fit quite right. Seeking counsel at my local running-shoe chain retailer, I had my gait videotaped on a treadmill. Then it was “analyzed” by an “expert,” who informed me that I required a shoe with a big foamy raised aft section and very firm custom-molded insole inserts to further raise my heel and arch. This predated the minimalist running craze ignited by Christopher McDougall's bestselling book
Born to Run
, and I was in no position to argue. Thus, through the remainder of 2008, I found myself clodhopping in shoes that were seemingly more suitable for snow skiing than running.