Macca’s Last 7 Miles At Kona & My Next Race

I was watching a post by Biestmilch of his interview with Australian Ironman champion, Chris ‘Macca’ McCormack on his final seven miles with German Andreas Raelert in Kona last year. This is Macca at his passionate and introspective best!

Next weekend, I run in a 12K race – the equivalent of Macca’s last seven miles in the marathon. Macca expressed his maturity and expertise as a strategist when he raced. He stated that ‘training was the easy part. The hardest part was the racing.’ Love him or loathe him, he does play the ‘head game’ very well. He is akin to bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was vying for the Mr Olympia competition. He used to resort to psychological tactics like stealing competitors’ posing trunks, and pretending to eat before the competition. This upset contenders like Sergio Oliva (1970’s) and Mike Mentzer (on his 1980 comeback trail in Australia) who thought that he was superbly prepared; in fact, Arnold was not in peak condition but won because he upset the equilibrium and psyche of his adversaries.

Last night, I watched the docu-film, Fire on the Track – The Steve Prefontaine Story and observed film footage of the famed American national record holder (for all run events over -2 miles) and once-National Public Relations Manager for Nike, Inc. Steve was courageous in the way he attacked the track, always leading, and never relenting. This 58-minute film is supplemented with 3.5 hours of interviews with his coaches, team-mates and competitors; an interview with Bill Bowerman on his shoe designs; and a featurette of the Steve Prefontaine’s Trail (which was restored and used by runners in Oregon).

Another ‘Pre’ film that meets the exacting standards of a biopic of the legendary track runner is Without Limits. It was written with Pre’s training teammate, Kenny Moore (twice Olympic marathoner) and produced by Tom Cruise (who initially wanted to play Pre’s role).

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This week, I have been creative with my training sessions – doing stationary-bike/treadmill bricks. Having returned from the UAE on Tuesday, I completed a tempo/time trial run; several pool interval runs, and a moderate ride. As I was fatigued from a busy week teaching workshops, I missed my early ride this morning, as I slept another two hours. My lack of discipline proved to be useful as I rode for three hours, taking on a few slopes in the process, and then constructed it into a brick-session with a 45-minute pool run (with pyramid running intervals, i.e. 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 minutes of higher intensity, higher cadence running with one minute jogging between bursts).

I bumped into Ironman finishers Tee and Luke. Luke and I shared a 30K loop, and chatted about our similar approaches to training. For the Masters age-grouper, it seems like less is more. We both run three times a week, stopping when our form diminishes. We ride about 3-4 hours per session, however with intensity – rarely do we crank out junk miles (distance for the sake of chalking up mileage). Seven more weeks to Ironman Lanzarote, and this week will be a brutally honest week with tough sessions punctuating my pre-travel week. I intend to incorporate intense, Spartan circuit training sessions, too. Stay tuned!

Is Generation Y the Sporty Generation?

I ran at the Nike Human Race on Saturday (24 October 2009); Singapore was the only Southeast Asian country to host this event amongst 23 others worldwide. There were about 7,877 participants (of the registered 10,000 for this sold-out event) who ran the 10km route. What was significant about the profile of the group was, there were many women and about 80 percent of the population was Generation Y. Both emcees were MTV hosts and fit the Gen Y profile and preferences.

Generation Y are those who are about 15-30 years old. So, is Generation Y a more sporty generation than Generation X and the Baby Boomer?

In this fast-paced, iPod-connected, rollerblading era I have observed that many sports events sell out fast. There is almost one sporting event every weekend. The combinations of multi-sport events are also getting creative. The recent Quadrathlon, organised by SAFRA was a triathlon that included a rollerblading leg. For those of us rollerblade-challenged athletes, that curbed our interest to participate.

Whether triathlons, marathons, cycling or road-runs the participation numbers and rates are increasing. This contrasts with community-level activities that are highly subsidized and deliberately integrates all social levels and age.

By the way, Generation Y included seasoned and elite runners who did the North Face 100, an ultra-marathon event that routed harsh and hilly terrain. Hey, those over-35-year-olds did very well, and survived a longer and hotter day! More mature athletes seem attracted by the longer formats, instead of the faster-paced, shorter format events. Due to an upcoming A-race, I ran the 10km as a tune-up and, gratefully, earned a personal record (PR) and an overall 97th placing. I can't help being a slow-twitch sort of runner.

So, who do you think is the more sporty generation: X or Y? Let us know your opinion and reason.