How Ironman Triathlons Work

Sure, you could train for months to finish a marathon, but why not make things interesting? Ironman triathlons add a 2.4-mile swim and a 112-mile bike race before the marathon leg. It’s as grueling as it sounds. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, Seattle, We're coming to see you and Frasier. Yep,
we're gonna come see you guys in Fraser on January six.
That's a Thursday night, which is the official beginning of
the weekend in Seattle, as we all know. And we're
going to be there at our beloved More Theater, our
home in Seattle for Stuff you Should Know. That's right, everybody, January,
come out and see us. Tickets go on sale this Friday,

(00:23):
which is November eight, and you can get all the
information about tickets at s y s K live dot
com or just go to the Moor's website as well.
We'll see you guys in January. Welcome to Stuff You
Should Know, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

(00:44):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and there is Grandmaster Dave over there, Dave
C the coust Wow. Yeah, he's getting all sorts of
great great nicknames. You got anymore? Um no, no, if

(01:06):
that's it for now, sorry, Dave. I think what was
that two or three? It was like two and a
half at best. You know what I did this morning
for a little while yes, I do. You trained hard. No,
I went through and read uh some of our negative
recent negative reviews on iTunes. Oh, I hadn't done that
in a while. Yeah, that's because it's mentally unhealthy. I

(01:31):
don't mind. I literally it's kind of good comedy for
me because I'm I'm fairly secure in year eleven that
we're doing okay. But it is always funny. Like most
of them were I had to do with politics, but
some of them were just like, these guys are so
boring and stupid. I can't believe how boring and stupid

(01:54):
they are. I mean, they kind of hit it on
the head with Allen. Yeah, it was good. And then
the ones that killed me are the ones that you like.
They're clearly reading Wikipedia and there and read it is
their number one source. And I'm like, I've literally never
been to read it in my life. Yeah, and I
like redd it, but I don't get our ideas from it.
Oh man, it's always so fun Sure. Well, I'm glad

(02:15):
that you did that for both of us, and you
distilled it into like a friendly, affable version. Yeah, these
guys are so dumb and boring. That was a refrain
dumb and boring. It was like interesting, we're sort of
known for being funny and smart. But I guess that's
in the eye of the list or the ear of
the listener. It totally is. I mean like, we've got

(02:37):
some really hardcore fans, we have some casual fans. We
have people that like us. We have people that are
just like I like what they're doing. Don't necessarily like
those guys. It doesn't matter as long as there's people
out there liking what we do. Of course, there's going
to be people out there who dislike what we do,
and because it's the Internet, they're going to vehemently dislike it.
But it doesn't mean anything. It's fine. They don't have
to listen. Almost like any other piece of art, culture

(03:00):
or media you would put out in the world. That's right.
We're basically like an upside down urinal in a museum.
Have you have you literally seen that? Yeah, that was
like the first piece of data art. I believe that
there was data mean, um, what does that mean exactly?
I think it was purposefully mean purpose purpose yeah, purposefully

(03:22):
that's right. That word for a second just suddenly didn't
sound right because you're dumb, right, am boring? Um. I
think it's a purposefully on um meaningless word. Oh interesting, Yeah,
I guess that kind of thing. Other people might find
that dumb and boring interesting. Yeah, it's a a urinal

(03:43):
that was upside down and then signed by the artists.
I can't remember who. It was signed in urine. No,
I think it was signed in uh, maybe pain or
something like that. I can't remember. Well, now we're doing
one of the third thing that people complain about, just
not getting to the point quickly enough. I think you
could call it moseying. Although it's funny as well, and

(04:04):
those reviews people are like they spend they literally spend
twenty minutes talking nonsense, Like, man, it's what the deal
is is five minutes seems like twenty because we're dumb
and boring. Sure, right right, but but is anybody who
really appreciate stuff you should know knows that it's a
it's a contest of endurance to see who will get
to the topic first, exactly or just just just to

(04:25):
make it through an episode. It's very much chuck if
you ask me, like an iron Man triathlon, you lose.
Anybody who completes an episode, though, is an s Y
s K fan. That's kind of how it works. And
it's just like the way that it is with an
iron Man triathlon too. If you complete it, you're an
iron Man. If you complete it within the required amount

(04:47):
of time, you're right, you're right, Yes, there are rules,
there are limitations, Like I guess the same thing goes
with us. If you complete the episode within seventeen hours
of beginning it, then you you Well, we did an
episode on marathon's um almost one year ago a little
more October nine, two thousand eighteen, and um, we did

(05:12):
a lot of joking about marathons and how we're not
into running those. So we should define here in minute
one what an iron Man race is, because an iron
Man race is a two point four miles swim. That's
three point nine kilometers. That's a lot. And then that's

(05:32):
a lot of swimming. Then they say, all right, get
out of the water, everybody, Now go ride your bike
a hundred and twelve miles right like two days later though, right, no,
right afterwards? What a hundred and eighty point three kilometers?
And then when you're done with that, they say, all right,
who wants to run a marathon? And then people like

(05:54):
us or most people. I think in the world. Probably
the people in the world think what is wrong with
you people? Yeah, and not a half marathon, quarter marathon,
tenth of a marathon, a full twenty six point two
mile marathon more than forty two kilometers on it. And
all of this by the way, um, if you're at
the World Championships is taking place in the lava fields

(06:15):
of ConA, Hawaii, where it's very hot. Yeah. Good coffee too,
it is, Okay. I guess I'm not a huge on
ConA coffee. Okay. Did you hear there was once a
coffee heist in Hawaii where somebody somehow stole something like
two million dollars worth of either a million or two

(06:35):
million dollars worth of ConA coffee beans. That sounds like stuff,
it does. Maybe we should do that something great cut
ConA coffee heist. Yep, there's your title of six. Is
that what it was? I don't know, but it sounded
pretty good. Okay. That's the other big complaint on iTunes
is that we just make up facts. That's true, right,
So I think you kind of laid it out there.

(06:56):
Three big reasons why you and I will never do
Iron Man triathlons, swimming, the biking, in the running, that's right,
that's right. But all of them combined too. That's why
if you put all of them together, you understand why
the iron Man has this kind of aura of just
just all among athletes. Because the people who participate in

(07:17):
these are the fittest of the fit, that they have
the greatest endurance of any other athlete around, especially ones
who make it to the championships in Hawaii. UM, and
it has like kind of a mystique. And here's the thing.
The term iron Man is gender neutral. So wherever you
fall on the gender spectrum and you complete the race,

(07:41):
that's an important part of this. Well, yeah, you will
be called an iron Man. And I guess if you
are collective you have a bunch of people who have
completed an iron Man race, that would be called iron men.
But if you're talking about different iron Man races collectively,
because they have them all over the world. Now I
believe they have two sixty races a year and forty
four different countries that are official iron Man races, um,

(08:05):
you would call those iron Man's. That's right. I love
the little glossary in this particle. Up next, we'll talk
about whether you call your desktop mouse a mice or me.
So the iron Man race is, uh, we're gonna get
into some of the history here. It's a it's a triathlon,
and there there were triathlons before the iron Man competition. Yeah,

(08:29):
I think starting a few years before the first iron Man,
so it actually kind of caught hold pretty quick. But technically, um,
a triathlon can be any three sports. But when you
say triathlon and then that you follow that up with yeah,
I'm gonna play some basketball, toss the football around, and
then maybe take a few swings with the tennis racket,

(08:50):
you'd be like, that's three three disparate sports. People are
gonna say you're you're weird because when you hear triathlon, uh,
in this new not new, but I guess fairly nuisance
is seventies. You're really talking about swimming, cycling, and running, right,
not necessarily in that order whatever, But as long as
those three are together, you're that's a triathlon. And the
first triathlon, from what we understand, came out of San Diego,

(09:12):
actually from the San Diego Track Club who put the
first one together in nineteen four, and it just so
happened that in that In that first triathlon in nineteen
seventy four, there was a guy named John Collins who
was an officer in the Navy, who said, hey, this
is kind of fun and ended up being stationed from
San Diego to Hawaii in yeah, really put in a

(09:34):
terrible life. He was just chasing UFOs in San Diego.
Next thing you know, he's sipping my ties on the
beach in Honoluh. But we do think him for a service. Sure,
so um, John Collins ends up in Hawaii's like, hey,
hey you you uh Rubes, you Hicks. I've got a
great idea. It's gonna blow your blow your heads off.
You're ready a triathlon And everyone said what's that? Yeah,

(09:56):
because Hawaii already had it, had it going, except not
all combined. It had endurance sports, so there was obviously
always marathon, so Honolulu Marathon. There was something called the
Waikiki Rough Water Swim. Have you ever been to Waikiki?
I've never been to Hawaii. Man, man, you gotta go.
It's really a wonderful place. It's Uh. Emily and I

(10:17):
were talking about going away for a birthday weekend and
just you can't do Hawaiian a weekend from Atlanta. No,
it's a long, it's a little too long. Yeah, Savannah
is much more realistic. Sure, it's the Hawaii of the southeast.
That's right, it's that everyone tell you. Uh. And then
they had something called the around Oahu bike Ride, And

(10:37):
so as at endurance athletes like to do, and all
athletes I like to get together and tease each other
about who's the best athlete. Uh. The NASCAR guys are
always there saying we're athletes too, sure, right, And they
always get tickled by the football guys like stop, stop,
you're not really athletes who drive a car. So I

(10:59):
think my brother and I actually had one of our
rare arguments about the NASCAR guys being athletes. It's better
than that stupid thing about a hot dog being a
sandwich or not. Well. And when I say argument, as
much as my brother and I get into arguments, which
is me saying, hey, I'm not in a NASCAR but
these guys are athletes, my brothers saying not will buy it.
And then we say let's go play ping pong. Yeah,

(11:19):
you guys are like, well this is getting out of hand. Piece, brother,
let's reconcile with some ping pong. So Collins, all this
arguing was going on about who was the most fit,
and uh, he said, you know what, let's let's throw
all these together, like you said, we'll call it the
iron Man. And in there were twelve finishers. I'm not

(11:40):
sure how many people entered that race, but twelve people
finished it and were named iron Men, right, and they
all got little handmade iron Um statuettes or whatever. Yeah,
it was. It was kind of a thing. And that
first Iron Man it was really crazy, like one guy
ran out of water and so everybody had to have
their own support staff with with them, like supplying the

(12:02):
water and stuff like that. Before they had people along
the route. Yes, and one guy named Dunbar. I can't
remember his first and but he was in the first competition.
Was probably he ran out or his support staff ran
out of water, so he towards the end of the marathon,
he he had nothing to drink. But Budweiser, shut up,
I'm not kidding John Collins, who was the guy who

(12:24):
brought it to Hawaii. He stopped for a bull of
chili at one point to refuel. Yeah, it was nuts,
but it was just basically like some some crazy athletic
military guys just having fun a bowl of chili which
is in draft behind me ad area, right exactly. I
mean you just eat it and it just passed right
through your mouth and out of your rectum right onto

(12:46):
the street. You know. So. Um. But this first one
was it was fun, it was crazy. But there's this
um ongoing dispute to this day. I read, I think
in an article in the New York Times that is
that said that, UM, in the rule book, if you
ran in that first or you just paid into that
first iron Man competition, part of the entry fee was

(13:08):
agreeing to sign on to be the organizing committee for
the iron Man and UM, they put that in there
to basically say, like, if you sue, you're actually suing
yourself too. So you probably don't want to sue if
you get injured or fall over, drop that or something. UM.
But some people, including Dunbar, have interpreted that to mean

(13:29):
that they were part owners of iron Man, which has
now become like a billion dollar global franchise, and the
people in charge of like, now you you don't have
anything to do with that. You know, you can get sued,
but you can't reap the benefits, right, exactly, but it was.
It was a pretty interesting article. I can't remember what
it's called, but it's it's worth looking up. I thought

(13:49):
so too. So uh soon after this, it started to
become a media event in that um we've talked before
about the greatest show sports show in the his three
of sports shows, which was ABC's Wide World of Sports Fantastic.
I never really watched it. I was always like, this
means cartoons are over for this Saturday. Man. I loved it.

(14:11):
I mean that's where, you know, as a kid in
the eighties you got introduced to ski jumping and curling
and iron manning and but that was sort of the
deal if you never watched that show, is it was
the Wide World of Sports, so that it wasn't just
it was you know, lumberjack competitions and all these sort
of to the to the side sports that you had
never heard of before. It was pretty cool fringe sports. Yeah.

(14:33):
Sports Illustrated started covering it, which was a big deal.
That was that really gave it a shot in the
arm because that was the second the second one, and
Sports Illustrated did like a ten page spread on it
basically and really gathered attention for it. And there's still
one of the top sports rags. But back then they
weren't the only one, but they were sort of the

(14:54):
name in sports writing for sure, so it was a
big deal. I had a subscription for many, many, many years.
And then came the Swimsuit Issue, and You're like, no,
he has nothing to do with sports. I looked forward
to that so often as a young church boy. Sure,
ladies in their bathing suits. What was better than that?
As far as I knew, it's sports. So I remember

(15:15):
my first issue to still it was Muhammad Ali was
on the cover, believe it or not, of the swimsuit issue.
Was it the one where he's standing over is it
Joe Frasier? No, no, no, no, this was after that.
This was in his sort of sad last comeback attempt.
I'm not familiar with that. Yeah, when he was older,

(15:35):
he you know, he kind of boxed beyond his prime.
Oh I didn't know that, because I'm not seventy years old.
He realized, sure, So I just did the math. I
was like, I have Chuck likes this one passed by,
but I mean Joe Frasier, No, that was before my time.
But yeah, just for some reason that always sticks out.
Is the cover said, uh, look who's back Muhammad Ali

(15:58):
and then parentheses with mustache. I want to say, I
want to stay here, everybody. Chuck does not have this
cover in front of him right now. From memory, totally
from memory, it's impressive. I saved all those for many years,
and then I think my mom finally got rid of him.
I had just an attic full of sports illustrated you
know what you mean. But I saved the bathing suit issues.
Sure those you had like a air event cover that

(16:25):
you could just pull off the wall at a false floor. Um. Alright,
So back to the event. It's being covered by the
media and with within just a few years after that,
people started entering the race. More and more people saw
it on TV. They're like, hey, I'm an extreme athlete,
I'm gonna get into this. And it grew to the

(16:46):
point where they moved it finally in N two, it's uh,
it's now home forever home in Kona, Hawaii. If you're
talking the World Championship, right, and can we talk for
a second about Julie Moss here, because she pretty much
single handedly launched iron Man into the status, the legendary

(17:08):
status that it has today. Very soon after it was originated.
She was a kidnesiology student at UM. I think cal Pouli,
san Luis Obispo, Did I say that? Right? I don't know.
You just sound so sure of yourself. Well you lived
in California, so I didn't know if I just San

(17:29):
Luis Obispo I said that, that's what I said. Yeah, okay,
Well anyway, she was a kindnesiology student. No, it's not
okay UM, and her dissertation was participating in the iron
Man um competition in Hawaii, and so she went and
she ran, and she could not believe it. But all

(17:51):
of a sudden she's in front. She's an elite, she's
barely trained for this thing. She'd done some running before,
and now all of a sudden, she's winning the fourth
ever iron Man competition. And um, as she got like
within something like forty yards of some ridiculously short distance
from the finish line, after she'd swam, biked, and run

(18:12):
almost an entire marathon, her body gave out and she
she you did on the Wide World Sports. It was
being covered on the Wide World Sports. Twenty million people
were watching, and Julie Moss collapsed and then crawled across
the finish line to finish second. She was lapped, and

(18:33):
I think the winner, her name was Kathleen McCartney. Kathleen
McCartney was was what had to be told that she
just won. She didn't realize what had just happened. She's like,
you mean that person I just stepped on a run
My shoe, my waffle print shoe mark is on their
backs though. Um, but Julie Moss like just became just
an amazingly like celebrated sports figure overnight from showing this

(18:57):
kind of grit and determination and it became like kind
of a hallmark of the iron Man competition that people
would collapse and then crawl over the fish finish line
because it required that much of the human body, but
also because they were that determined to reach that goal.
And um, that was it for the iron Man. It
just became hugely popular overnight, and you were talking about

(19:18):
how how much participation grew. I saw that. Um. In
two the year Julie Moss entered, there were sixty people
who entered four hundred triathlons, not necessarily iron Man competitions.
In three years, one point one million people competed in triathlons,

(19:39):
so she definitely boosted the popularity a tadbit. Well, why
don't we take a break and we'll come back and
talk a little bit about the science of why UM
people other than Julie Moss pass out right when they
get to the finish line. So it sounds good, yes,

(20:14):
all right, So you sent me a little article, UM
why endurance athletes UM struggle there at the very end
aside from the obvious, So what they're doing is super hard,
But it turns out that it's uh there, it's overheating largely,
isn't it. So there's a great debate like either they
run out of fuel like they're there, they basically just

(20:36):
use up all of their stores of energy and they
just their body can't go on any longer, or um,
they have overheated. Is that this is what this article
is basically saying in Outside magazine. The other big one
is that the lactic acid or in particular, the hydrogen
ions have built up in the muscle and are causing

(20:58):
cramping and everything going, Hey, why are but this guy
Brent Ruby, who's a physiologist at University of Montana, he's
basically saying, no, all of it comes down to overheating.
And at this point, like your body enters a shutdown
mode where your brain is like, okay, lights out, I'm
not gonna let you lift your foot any longer, Like
you physically can't do that with your muscle because I'm

(21:20):
not allowing it. Yeah, because the brain, uh, he says,
is is sending you these messages a lot before this happens,
like stop, stop doing what you're doing. You better stop,
You better stop. If you don't stop, I'm gonna stop
for you. Uh. And this is not necessarily dehydration either,
like he said, you can be plenty hydrated and drinking

(21:41):
tons of water. Um, but you know that the heat
at some of these Iron Man's is pretty punishing, and
especially he said, after you've done the swimming event, which
can keep the temperature down obviously because the water and
then the cycling where you've got a lot more breeze generally,
especially coming out of swimming, so your perspiration is is
doing a better job of cooling you off. Yeah, but

(22:01):
when you get to that marathon, that that final leg
it can be pretty brutal, and eventually your body, after
sending all those messages, just says you're not listening to me,
so we're we're going down right, and like your your
your movements become uncoordinated, your like your actual brain might
start malfunctioning as well, where it's just you're not thinking

(22:22):
clearly any longer. You become distracted. Like if you've ever
watched it's actually it's it's really weird to watch these things.
But there's plenty of like finish line footage from Ironman
competitions of of these some of the some of the
fittest athletes on the planet. Collapsing before the finish line,
like collapsing after the finish line is one thing. Collapsing

(22:43):
before they get to the finish line because their bodies,
their brains have said, um, this is it. I'm done
you you haven't listened, So I'm just taking charge here
and you can't. I'm not letting you move any longer
because you need to cool down. Yeah, I wonder too
if anyone has explored the mental um like where like
when you see the finish line, if something happens in
your brain, like physically seeing it with your eyeballs kind

(23:07):
of like if you have to if you have to
poop really bad, or that brain bladder connection we talked about, well, yeah, exactly,
bladder or poop. You know, you're you're holding it, you're
holding it, and then when your hand touches the door
knob to your house for your apartment, that is when
some release happens in your brain or something. I wonder
if that happens when you see that finish line. You know, Chuck,

(23:29):
you're not supposed to poop your pants when you touch
a door knob. It's unusual. Well, there have been triathletes too,
and endurance athletes that have pooped their their pants near
the finish line. It's very sad. Yeah, I think we
talked about the marathons that there's a lot of pants pooping, yeah,
going on. But yeah, I'm sure that seeing that finish
line has some sort of effect because there's also there's

(23:51):
a documented effect called the post iron Man blues where
people people will enter like a state of the pression
for a couple of weeks following completing an iron Man
and they actually can't quite explain it. They think that
it's probably related to having set such a lofty goal
that once you achieve it, like life kind of loses

(24:14):
its luster for a little while. Other people think that
your brain is sending you depression so that you have
no will to get out there and try that again
anytime soon. Both of them make a lot of sense,
and maybe it's a combination of the two. Interesting. So
iron Man, uh, iron Man's started growing and growing the

(24:35):
World Championship in Kona, and they have championships we should
point out in on most continents um they have their
own championship, like the African Championship, South American, European, Right,
but the World Championship is the Hawaii one. Yeah, that's
still the one in Kona, and the entries there are
limited and generally unless you win the lottery, which is

(24:56):
only about five people, you have earned your way in
by qualified rying in another sanction iron Man event, right,
And I actually saw that they did away with the lottery. Yeah,
two thousand fifteen was last year they did it. And
it was a really great thing because you could pay
fifty bucks to enter a lottery and to win a
slot five hundred. There were five hundred slots, like you said,

(25:17):
and if you because you might not qualify because to
qualify for Hawaii you literally have to be one of
the most fittest, most well trained athletes on the planet
we're talking out of, you know, tens of thousands of
of people who are like possibly able to reach the state.
You're fifteen hundred of those people. This lottery gave people

(25:40):
who wanted to give it a try but weren't professional
endurance athletes a chance to get in there. So it
was a great program. But at the same time, the
federal government said, actually, what you're doing is running an
illegal gambling operation. We want you to shut it down.
So the iron Man had had to stop doing the lottery.
Now they have something called the Legacy program, which says

(26:00):
that if you've competed or completed I believe in twelve
Ironman competitions that aren't the Championship, you UM can apply
to get a legacy slot, where they're basically saying like,
this is what we're trying to encourage, so come on
and try your hand at the World championships. So they
renamed the lottery the Legacy But I think the difference

(26:20):
is that you don't pay for that opportunity. Now I
got you, I think. Uh. They eventually added UM triathlons
to the Olympics. Uh, and we'll get to different distances. See,
certainly don'tant knock Olympic triathletes, but no, but I could
complete one. It's nothing like the Iron Man. Let's just
say that it's it's much shorter. It's smaller, for sure,

(26:43):
But if you're talking iron Man, it starts out with
a swimming leg. And as we said earlier, that's the
two point four miles swim. And how how do you
pronounce that? Well, Hawaiian, you say all of the all
of the vowels. I think, so okay, kailua kona bay. Yeah,
I think you just nailed it. Man, we'll see okay.

(27:06):
And uh, it depends on the water temperature whether or
not you're allowed to wear a wet suit. But um,
the wet suit gives you a little bit of a
buoyancy advantage, so I think the uh, well, I'm not
going to get in the head of try athletes, but
it was me. I would hope for a little bit
colder water so I could wear my wet suit. Plus
it would keep you cooler too, Right, But if the

(27:27):
water is warmer than you don't need the wet suit,
you know what I mean? Right, you can just swim naked,
I think, is what you're saying. That's exactly what I'm saying.
So the I was reading about, you know, UM injuries
and death was just talk about a little more. But
the swim leg sounds like it would be not the easiest,
but maybe the most comfortable because you're in the water,

(27:48):
and yeah, you can sweat while you're swimming and all
of that, but at least you're staying cool. But supposedly
something like that, somebody did a study of UM deaths
between I think two thousand team in triathlons, not just
Iron Man, and they found that of a hundred and
thirty five deaths sudden deaths and heart attacks and stuff,
ninety of those took place in the swim leg. And

(28:11):
they think, possibly possibly that people are so amped up
about participating in this Iron Man that once they start
exercising in the water, they just have a heart attack.
And these are people who are in the fittest possible
state they can be in and they're still dying of
heart attacks at age forty or something like that. Well,
they staggered the beginning, obviously, like most races and foot races, UM,

(28:36):
they stagger them in the water because you can't just
throw all those people in the ocean at once, Um,
your pros are going to start out first again like
most road races, uh, foot races. But if you're non professional,
I guess everyone in there is professional now then, is
what you're basically saying, right almost everybody? Yeah? Okay? Uh?
And then you finish the swimming leg hopefully unless you

(28:58):
dive a heart attack, right, And then you go to
what's called T one, the first transition area, and that's
where where you you change your clothes and you put
on your clothes for the next thing, which in this
case is biking. Uh. They try to make it where
it's a loop, so there's only one transition area, so
you you finish the bike race where you started, and
that's where you will also start the run. But I

(29:20):
love this one line in the article here how stuff works.
Racers must find their bike in rows of bracks with
hundreds of other bikes. That sounds like part of the
game almost the way it's written right, right, And they
call the transition period the transition point where if you
can't find your bike the TS point. No, they don't know.

(29:42):
Don't you remember where you put your bike? Or did
they mix them up? Is that part of the fun?
I don't know, like I put it here, man, I
put it here. I don't know. Surely somebody's accidentally taking
somebody's bike, So I mean, but how would you identify
who took your bike so you could take their bike
like you'd just be I don't know how you would
do that, because it would be a a jam if
somebody took your bike, because you're apparently the bike leg

(30:04):
is where you're doing the most other stuff like eating, refueling,
that kind of stuff, So you probably have a significant
amount of like calories that you're planning on consuming on
your bike that you've been training to eat during this
race all this time. So if somebody takes your bike,
they're taking more than just your bike, they're taking your fuel.

(30:24):
It would be a big deal. I'm sure. So I
don't know how they how they keep up with that
kind of thing and prevent that from happening. And that's
where you have your Netflix cued up on your phone
that's mounted on the front of your bike, that's right,
so you can watch a couple of movies. Yeah, that's
a lot of a lot of miles, a hundred plus miles. Yeah,
and I saw it something like the average completion time
for this bike leg is something like six hours, although

(30:45):
they give you ten. Yeah, that's that's the bulk of
the iron Man, it's the biking part. Yeah, because it's
a hundred something miles. Yeah, I'm fine with a hundred
something because I'll never come even remotely close to it. Uh.
And depending on what Iron Man course you're on or
what triathleon you're you're participating in, the train is gonna

(31:07):
be um a little worse or better depending on where
you are. Apparently in Kna it's pretty rough because of
the winds and they can just flat knock you off
of a bike. Well. Plus you're also going through active
lava fields, so the winds are blowing like a furnace
of hot air onto you while you're biking. Geez. Yeah,
it's brutal, this terrible thing to do. Like you have

(31:29):
to be insane to try this kind of thing, especially
the championships. Yeah. So, like we mentioned, you do have
seventeen hours to finish, and after that, even if you finish,
which is a great accomplishment, you're not dubbed an iron Man,
which is kind of sad. So there's so there's something
called the Midnight Finish where people who have completed the

(31:49):
run and like you know, started to feel sore and
have eaten and started drinking beer and everything afterward. Um
probably just Michaelo Ultra though I'm sure um they will
go around midnight to see the very last people coming
through in that's great, and it's supposed to be super
inspirational because these are people who, as far as the

(32:09):
iron Man site describes that, they're like, just getting to
the Iron Man to compete has probably been a tremendous
amount of um, has really been struggle. And so these
people are finishing one way or another. So I guess
people who have already finished are there to kind of
cheer them on. That's awesome. Uh, and we'll talk more
about this later. But there are people with prosthetic limbs

(32:30):
and uh, wheelchair athletes that complete this stuff. In this one,
well we'll talk about the father and son team, which
is just incredible, but we're gonna save that, right, So
people stick around through the dumb and boring, right. So,
and that's right. Uh, you are not allowed to draft,
like in some bike races drafting just like NASCAR, you

(32:55):
can get behind a another biker and cut down on
win resistance. But In most of the iron in man
competitions that is not allowed, and there was one case
in eighty six where a race winner, Patricia uh punt
House was disqualified for drafting. Is that how you say
your name Puntos? I want to say like punchius, like

(33:15):
punchos pilot, but that's not right pu in t o
u s. Yeah, I think you got it. I'm just
gonna go with the standard punt House. I'm gonna go
with the Hawaiian pronunciation and say Puntos, maybe punch choose.
That's good, punch choose, punch joose. I like that the
most so far, and then you can win money. Um.

(33:37):
I looked up the World Championships and I think there's
like a a six d and fifty thousand dollar total
purse and it looks like is it a hundred and
fifty grand for each male and female winner? Uh? Yeah,
somewhere around there's something like a hundred and fifteen or
a hundred and fifty or something like that. But I mean, like,
if you are you know, a high um how I

(34:00):
end elite triathlete? Yeah, ranking, yeah, yes, whatever you want
to call. If you're like the best of the best,
you can make a decent living doing this, and this
is like what you want to do anyway, so you
can certainly make enough to you know, make it from
triathlon to triathlon. You're like you. If you're not literally

(34:21):
the best of the best, you're not ever going to
get rich off of it. But if you are up there,
and especially if you're visible and people like you, in
addition to the um purses that you'll win for winning
these triathlons, um you will also get sponsorships as well,
so you can make a pretty decent living being uh
an elite triathlete. But I saw, for example, there's this

(34:42):
guy right now, um Jan ferdan No. He is from Germany,
and he is as good as as they've ever come
as far as male competitors go. And in two thousand
and fifteen from purses from winning events over five events,
he made two hundred thousand dollars, which is a pretty
decent living for competing in five iron Men or iron

(35:06):
Man's um. The guy who made the most that year
from winnings was a guy named Javier Gomez. He won
two seven thousand, which is really even better, but he
had to compete in fourteen Ironman's to to make that
so I think the real cheese is in the sponsorship. Yeah,
and I think fourteen. Like, I don't think they recommend

(35:26):
you do that many. No more than one a month
is not recommended. But we need to talk about this
guy named James Lawrence. Then if we're talking about doing that,
you're ready. How many has he done? In two thousand fifteen,
my friend James Lawrence, also known as the Iron Cowboy,
competed in fifty iron Man's in fifty states in fifty days.

(35:49):
Over the course of fifty consecutive days, he competed in
fifty iron Man's and iron Man a day for fifty days.
They should just call him the Ultimate iron Man and
just shut everything else down. They did. They're gonna shut
it down because again, it's pretty lucrative, but they did.
They just basically said, there's no no one could ever
top that. That's insane. Like the fact that he's still
alive is really impressive. That is amazing. Yeah, he was

(36:11):
eating like six seven thousand calories so I'm sorry, seven
to eight thousand calories a day every morning he said
his toenails are falling off. Um, Like he was like, yeah,
it was impressive to say the least that he did that. Yeah,
what's going on in his brain? I don't know. He
really doesn't like himself. Uh, should we take another break?

(36:32):
All right, let's take another break and then we will
do the very unlikely thing where and Josh and I
will talk about how to train for a triathlon right
after this. Okay, Chuck, we should probably qualify. This was

(37:04):
saying like, we're gonna tell you how to train from
stuff we've read about training, not from any life experience. No. Uh,
if you're going to train, and we did the same
thing in the Marathons podcasts, we're not experts. But here's
what they say. Experts do say if you're going to
train for a triathlon, especially an iron man, you're gonna

(37:25):
need to take your time. If you've never done it.
It could be an entire year of training if you're
new to this kind of stuff, And they say generally,
obviously you need to really build your endurance up, not
worry about your speed yet. Yes, well that's a that's yes, Yeah,
that's just point one. Is your training for endurance. You're
training to increase what's called your v O to max,

(37:48):
which is the amount of oxygen you can take in
and and your body used to burn fuel. Right, You're
also gonna need to rest, even though you really really
want to do this and you're super fired up to train.
If you don't, you gotta rest and give your body
a chance to recover. Right, that's a big one. I
think that that's just like your body is going to
tell you to do that regardless. They say, trained to

(38:10):
your weakness. So this is surprising to me, but it
makes sense when you think about it. Yeah, Like if
you're if you run marathons or long distance bike races
and you're used to that and you're good at that,
and you think, hey, I want to add these other
two things, then maybe work on those other two things
a little bit more, at least in the earlier part
of your training. Right, But as you get a little

(38:30):
closer to time, you want to go back to your
strength and remember to boost that up again. You can't
forget about running that twenty six miles, right, Oh, I
haven't done a marathon and over a year I've just
been biking and swimming, and now it's time to run
a marathon after biking and swimming. That's not a situation
you want to be in. That's right. Uh, and then
I mean these last ones are kind of kind of

(38:51):
dumb and boring. Well no, no more dumb and boring
than us. I guess this makes sense. Use the equipment
it that you're going to use at the event. So like, right,
don't switch bikes before or or for god's sakes, don't
switch out your speed Oh right, you want to wear
your lucky speedo that you haven't washed all year. Um,

(39:13):
so that makes sense. Also, this is a grab store article,
we should say, and Ed makes a pretty good point,
like you need to train just to be able to
start training for the Iron Man, Like this is this
is not it's not something you just start where you
go from like couch to iron Man. There's that doesn't exist.
There's no such thing. You want to like start to
get in shape first and then you can start training

(39:34):
for the Iron Man. And it makes a pretty good point.
And I think it's worth saying here, Um, talk to
a doctor first, especially if you're not in the best
shape or you know you have an existing medical condition,
because a lot of people don't realize this, like yes,
it's crazy what the body goes through and that you know,
these are amazing feats of endurance, but it's possible. There

(39:55):
is some biology or biological science that says, at actually,
if you're engaging in endurance sports over time, you're actually
more likely to do things like die of a heart
attack or get pancreatic cancer than somebody who doesn't participate
in endurance sports. And science is a little bit confounded

(40:16):
by this. Yeah, there was one study out of the
University of Toronto that said endurance athletes are three to
five times likelier to experience atrial fibrilation. UM. There was
one out of Norway, which is probably what you were
talking about. It says you're two times uh at the
risk of developing pancreatic cancer. That's I mean twice as likely. Yeah,

(40:40):
I mean they're saying they think what happens is that
And they did blood test to people, um like the
beginnings and during the middle and at the end, and
they said they think your body goes into sort of
a temporary state of immunosuppression and that if you just
if you keep doing this over and over, it could
have an overall cumulative effect. Yeah, because your inflammation is

(41:02):
so set off, because your body is like what is
going on, um, Their inflammation markers from one test I
saw are up like two fifty percent over just normal
resting rate. And they think that your immune system stands
back because if it over if it tried to deal
with all of the different inflammation going on, it would
over exert itself and you'd be toasted in a different way.

(41:24):
So they think that all of this damage from inflammation
and then a lowered immune response to the inflammation creates
these prolonged problems that only endurance athletes can can experience.
Have you heard of doubling? No, So there are endurance
athletes that practice doubling, and there's specifically people who do

(41:47):
do it's called the Double Boston, which is they get
up in the middle of the night and they run
the Boston Marathon in reverse and then stop at the
finish at stop at finish at the start line, and
then run the regular marathon. I actually have and I think, um,
I ran across that as well. And I think we

(42:07):
should do like an episode on ultrathons there ultra marathons,
because there are some crazy stuff that goes into that too.
Oh yeah, like you know, let's run the hundred and
twenty miles through the desert, right, which is that's a
terrible idea, but people do it, and I think it's
worth talking about. Yeah, people used to do that in
biblical days to deliver messages of war, but like not

(42:32):
for fun, Yeah, not for fun. And they would always
drop dead upon delivering the message. It seems they go
it's and then fall over dead, and somebody else would
say Monty Python's flying circus message for you, sir. Uh. So,
there are no statistics from the U s A t
um but Ed picked out a sixteen year old statistic

(42:54):
from the Lake Placid iron Man and said that this
was a low number of injuries where they sent fourteen
people to the hospital from everything from just standard injuries
to your body to obviously heat exhaustion and dehydration and
stuff like that. And like even when you're when you
complete this without injuries and without collapsing before the finish

(43:14):
line or whatever, what you're putting your body through is
just astounding. Um, you burned something like about six thousand
calories throughout the day of competing in this Ironman competition,
and um, you'll replenish a lot of it from like
sports drinks and energy drinks and stuff, but you lose
about twenty pounds of water weight about nine kilograms of

(43:35):
water weight during the course of running and or competing
in an iron Man. It is literally amazing that that
happens to the human body, and that people do that
on purpose, and that there are people out there who
have trained at this so long and have built up
their endurance so much that they can overcome their bodies
normal biological responses to slowing down, to sending cramps to

(44:00):
the muscles, to basically keep your motor functioning from from
going forward as much as you wanted to. They can
overcome this stuff, but sometimes to their own detriment, which
results in collapsing and things like that. Well, we mentioned
earlier the uh, the paltry little Olympic Triathlon, and and
we're kidding, but when you look at the distances, it

(44:21):
is not close to an iron Man. It is a
point nine three mile swim one and a half kilometers, yeah,
which is I guess why they settled on that, because
I was like, what a weird right, why not just
go a mile? But there? What's this weird imperial exactly? Uh?
And then that's followed by a twenty four point eight
six mile fort kometer bike ride and then only a

(44:44):
six point to one or a ten kilometer run, right,
which is again I could do that. I mean that's
twenty miles shorter on the run side and eighty you know,
close to eighty miles shorter or yeah, a little more
actually on the on the bike side, and then about
little less than half on the swim side, right, which
again is why people have say like the iron Man

(45:05):
itself is just the endurance sport of endurance sports, and
the iron Man in Hawaii in particular is like the
pinnacle of it. So if you complete the iron Man,
especially if you win the iron Man Championship in Hawaii,
you're you're as bad as they come. Yeah. I like
the sprint one though, the sprint triathlon, Uh, it's a

(45:25):
depending on which one it is either like anywhere from
point three to one miles in the water, eight on
a bike, and then one and a half to five
miles running, but you are all out full until the
whole time. Right, This is nice, amazing. This is like
something that um an elementary school could do on field
day or something, you know, remember those. Definitely I love

(45:46):
field day, but it definitely reeks of something like an
eleven year old makes up right, right, But there's no
tree climbing involved, and if somebody touches you, you you have
to freeze until somebody else comes along and touches you again.
Oh I'd love to day. But looking back, I have
no idea what that was for. Was it just a
teacher free day or something or what was the point? No,

(46:08):
it was I think your own little Olympics to celebrate
sport and introduce kids to different, uh two different sports.
I got you, okay, it was school. I was like,
what's your angle here? What's what's really going on? You
were you had to sit in that day? Yeah? I did.
I protested you sat in your potato sect by yourself.

(46:31):
Um that my mom made me wear so Um. We
talked about Julie Moss, like, over the years have been
some people who have kind of risen to the to
the cream of the crop from the Ironman triathlon, and
Julie Moss was definitely the first, but there have been
others too. Um. There was a pair of people, a

(46:52):
man and a woman who were kind of known as
like the best of the best for a while. The
guy um was named uh Luke von leird I believe
I think I said that right He held the course
record for a while at knat eight minutes for eight hours,
four minutes and eight seconds, which he said in But
that guy that I've spoke about earlier Yon for Dano,

(47:15):
he's just like he's as good as they come as
far as male try athletes go. He currently holds the
course record that I believe he just sat like a
week ago in October two thousand nineteen, seven hours fifty
one minutes in thirteen seconds sub eight hours. Yep. There's
another woman competing right now who is um just the

(47:36):
best of the best. I don't know if she's the
all time best. I think that still is held by
Paula Newby Frasier. But um, her name is Daniella lift
l y F. She's a German too. She holds the
ConA course record now at eight hours, twenty six minutes
and eighteen seconds. She said that in two thousand and eighteen.
I can't even lay around and watch movies for eight hours,

(47:56):
all right? You know? Yeah, I think that's part of
this too, is having the mental um stamina to to
stave off you know, the voice in your head that's
like stop stop, got a hot dog? Stop? Stop? Uh,
there's a gentleman name Mark with a C. Harman's and

(48:16):
he is a wheelchair athlete who has completed several Iron Man's. Uh.
There's a nun in her seventies, sister Madonna Booder, who
every year that she competes, they have to create a
new age group, which is amazing. Did you look her up? Uh? No,
I didn't. Oh, man, she's a total b a nice.

(48:36):
So she's still competing because this is an old article. Well,
I don't know she is now, but I just looked up,
looked up photos of her in competition. Yeah. So she
was competing at age seventy five. Right. Yeah. But there's
a man named Jim Ward who competed into his eighties
and I think he was not finishing the races by
that point, but he did complete the race at age

(48:58):
seventy seven. Man, that's crazy. Yeah. Um. And you mentioned
um of father's son Team Team Hoyt Yeah, Man, Team Hoyt.
So the dad, Dick hoyt Um is charged with assisting
his son Rick Hoitt, who has cerebral palsy, through the
Iron Man and has done this more than once. Yeah.

(49:19):
So Rick was born with brain damage because of a
problem at birth and he can't walk or talk, but
he has a communication device where he was able at
one point to communicate that he loves sports and of
schoolmate of his was paralyzed in an accident and Rick said, Dad,
can we run a five k benefit race for my friend?

(49:41):
They did that with Dick pushing Rick in a wheelchair
and then said let's just keep the party going and
moved up to marathons and eventually triathlons. That's pretty impressive.
You remember Um In our cerebral Palsy episode we talked
about Kyle PA's Um. He's he's from Atlanta. He's one
of our listeners and fan. He and his brother Brent

(50:04):
have competed in Iron Man competitions too. I think they
competed at the championship as well. Amazing ye yeah, check
out pictures of Team White because Um the Sun rides
in a raft while Dad tows him in the water. Uh,
and then rides a bike with the seat up front
for Rick and it's just amazing, and then pushes him

(50:26):
in a wheelchair for the for the running leg. Pretty
great stuff. I can't imagine doing it myself. But also
doing it, you know, with your son who has cerebral palsy.
It's got a I mean, that's just amazing. Although I'll
bet you have like a just this like built in
source of inspiration every time you start to get tired,
like I better keep going, you know which, actually not

(50:49):
I mentioned it's kind of cheating, so um, I got
a couple of other things, all right, Um, Chris Lee
very famously. I think they made like a Gatorade commercial
out of it. Uh. In the ConA Championship, Um collapsed
right before the finish line, had to have emergency surgery

(51:11):
to remove half of his colon because it had become
so oxygen starved during the race that it died. Okay,
that's a big deal to have happened to you while
you're in the Iron Man race. And then there was
also some other famous um collapsing and crawling. Um. That's
just amazing that people not only collapse, especially when you

(51:34):
understand what's going on in their body, but then the
fact that they picked themselves up and keep going or crawl. Um.
Shan I think shann or seawan welch u s i
a n I can't remember the Gaelic pronunciation. And Wendy
Ingram were both women. Competing in the Iron Man. I
can't remember what year, but they came in fifth place

(51:55):
and fourth place respectively. Um, and they crawled. They were crawling,
like competing against one another, crawling over the to the
finish line. It's really something to see. As a matter
of fact, this is I'll go watch those things now.
You know what I like is when the uh you
see those things where the person is there's one person
crawling and the person can win, but they go back

(52:15):
and they pick that person up and they crossed the
finish line together. Nothing better. No, there really isn't. Um
one other thing chuck. And there's a ongoing dispute among
marathon eors and iron Man competitors over which is harder,
And a lot of people say, no, marathon is way
harder because you're competing flat out the whole time. Iron

(52:37):
Man is more about endurance and iron Man is like
they're like, you clearly have never been in an iron Man.
So I looked, and I think I've settled this once
and for all. Okay, the average finisher in a marathon,
just a marathon in the United States, I think a
year or two ago, was four hours and thirty five
minutes Okay, so that's that's pretty good. It's a great time.

(52:59):
I would love to have that in an iron Man.
The average time to finish the marathon section with four
hours and fifty four minutes less than twenty minutes longer.
And this is on top of already having done the
swim leg and the bike ride leg. So I think
that definitively proves that the Iron Man is tougher because
most people are still running flat out in the marathon

(53:20):
portion on top of having already done the swimming in
the biking. Yeah. I mean, it's not even a debate.
I didn't even need those numbers. Well some people did.
Now they've been swayed and they'll never open their mouths
about it again. Uh. If you want to know more
about the Iron Man, go out and start training. You
could also do worse than going and reading this article
on how stuff works by our dear friend Ed Grabmanowski. Agreed.

(53:42):
Since I say Grabmanowski, it's time for a listener mail.
This is from our our new friend Betty. Betty says this.
From the time I was introduced to your show, I've
been listening and trying to catch up on as many
of your previous shows as possible. I also make learning
uh with personal connections, but hesitate to test you about

(54:03):
all of my thoughts. Recently, though, I completed a couple
that convinced me it was time to write in specifically
the Navajo code talkers. I wondered if you knew that
another group contributed in a somewhat similar way. Louisiana Cajuns,
who like the Navajo were not allowed to speak French
on school grounds, served in World War Two as interpreters,
uh some maybe even as spies. A friend of mine

(54:24):
shared with me that his dad went ashore at Normandy
acting as an interpreter, and this is the first time
I had heard of that. Also, when you mentioned the
Navajo influence at Guadalcanal, I wondered if you had ever
done a segment on the Battle of Sabo Sound, the
first ever nighttime naval battle. In that battle, my fathership
and many others went down because of a sly attack

(54:45):
from the Japanese in a series of communication errors. It
was quite a debacle. Keep up the great work, guys.
My phone travels with me all day, and I'll be
listening almost all of my waking hours trying to catch
up and that is from Petty. Thanks a lot, Petty,
good luck with catching up. Thanks for that awesome email.
One of the better stories I've heard that I didn't
know about already. Yeah, we'll look into the Cajun thing

(55:07):
for maybe a short stuff. If you want to suggest
a short stuff for a topic, idea, or anything like that,
you can go to stuff you Should Know dot com
and check out our social links and get in touch
with us that way, or you can send us an
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dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of

(55:29):
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