I upload my last column for the magazine BB (No. 37)
Where is the line?
When I write, I have still very cool images of ultra-endurance runners while participating in the wonder of torture that is the Race Across America (which you have a story in this issue). Commenting
with friends this race, there is always the debate of whether this type of testing is about finding where the limit of human endurance. Are 5,000 km non-stop, and they are lucky that the tectonic plate width leave what is now U.S. at this distance, because if they would also be 7,000 km cyclists willing to complete the course. In fact, between the origins of the race, is the feat of an American rider who did the double transcontinental, that is, going from New York to Los Angeles and back again along the same path. His name is Lon Haldeman and completed this double feat in 24 days and 2 hours. This was in 1981. The next two years won the first two editions of the RAAM and then made it three times second in the Solo category, and won the race well in tandem.
Perhaps one could say that this double transcontinental Lon Haldeman is a limit difficult to overcome, but I'm sure that he, and others, could cause even more miles. Some think that the limit of each is when you can not really give a pedaling again, that is, when the exhaustion is so complete that should take you to a hospital emergency department (or directly to the morgue, I would say otherwise).
do not know. Maybe you can always go one step further. How many times have we seen in the races that a runner approaches handed goal and seeing how you miss the victory, almost no power or stand, and suddenly, seeing the runner who was already having a problem per winner , nearly sunk revives and begins to sprint motivated for a possible victory was already a lost cause.
I also remember the first edition of the former cyclist Jesus Loroño up, a participant who reached the finish line of Urkiola pale, and just inside the desired line began vomiting and had to be attended by health and was completely groggy. Well. I'd bet anything that if a cyclist that he had been told that the arrival was 500 meters down this mile had before collapsing as it did.
all in the head. Our mind, and motivation we have inside, is the best muscle we have and what really makes us excel. And all this we will change as we cycle through the different stages of our life as cyclists.
When I was a boy of fourteen, I started in this to give the pedals, do 100 km followed seemed an insurmountable challenge. One day I passed that figure with a few friends and did not seem so complicated.
took me several years to overcome the next milestone, which was 200 km, a brand that today seems like a normal distance for a bike, especially since I started doing 300 km brevets. And now this figure is my limit, yes, seasoned with many ports, all that is in the Bayonne Luchon, my greatest achievement in long distance (for some middle distance, course).
So, seeing RAAM racers, Julian Sanz and colleagues Ultradistance, I almost feel ashamed to tell my feats, which they are no more than training normalito.
And if we left our little world of cycling, we find many challenges that seem to exceed any reasonable limits of human endurance, such as those involved in races of 1,000 miles (1,609 km) running on foot, or those who do triathlons long distance Tenfold an Ironman distances, ie swimming 38 km, 1,800 km in 420 km bike and then running. Will
right who say that the limit is when you organize a competition anyone can complete? It sounds like what he said an old director of the Tour de France, speaking of the epic and the hardness of the test, when he noted that he would like to organize a tour in the end only a runner.
more ... 
0 comments:
Post a Comment