Boulder triathlete Sue Shaedle.

Boulder County is proud of its Olympians and other elite athletes, but even here, professional athletes are a rarity. Most area runners, cyclists and skiers, even those who are sponsored and travel all over, have careers and a family life they work around. As time moves on and genetics kick in, competitive athletes and weekend warriors alike face diminishing returns. That’s usually when they learn to stop chasing dreams of gold and enjoy performing at their personal best.

Exercise scientists usually peg peak endurance at 35 years of age, with slow declines thereafter into the 60s. All athletes lose the race against time, but endurance athletes in general are outperforming the times and distances of the generations before them. These advances are founded upon improvements in nutrition, sport medicine and a refusal of more athletes to accept “too old” as an excuse.

Dave Jones during the Race Across America.

Dave Jones, of Longmont, is a FedEx pilot who’s been active most of his life. Over the years, he’s gone from recreational mountain biking to longer endeavors like cycling across the country. That’s something he’s done twice now, this year finishing the Race Across America as part of a four-man team (all fellow pilots) in less than seven days.

At 53, Jones can easily be called “ripped” when he’s at his cycling weight. He said diet has always been his weakness, and traveling around the world on a nontraditional schedule hasn’t helped either. Yet a lifetime of fitness and the addition of weight training have enabled him to push his limits. Next year he plans to transform himself from an endurance cyclist to a sprint-distance track cyclist.

When his doctor retired, Jones was referred to Dr. David Tusek, whose patients include several elite athletes, even a world champion track cyclist in the masters (over 50) division. For Tusek, modern medicine isn’t just about performance, it’s about optimal living. They two hit it off. “I just like his point of view toward health and modern medicine,” he said. Jones takes his training serious, up to a point. “Life is life, and life is to be enjoyed. I tend to push myself too hard and I’m trying to throttle that back.”

OPTIMIZATION

Besides the annoying reminders from friends, turning 40 marks the age doctors will run an extensive panel of tests. At that age, the body is changing in a way that it hasn’t changed in previous decades. Changes in diet, weight and energy levels often occur, and lethal risks can pop up. More bluntly, that’s when you’ll start to lose friends to disease and poor health.

“As a doctor, I’ve never treated a population. Yet all of our screening recommendations are meted out on massive population data,” Tusek said. “It’s great as a rough guideline – but you need personalized, unique interpretations.”

Tusek brought up the exponential growth of computers over the past 50 years, and how biotech is in a similar boom of rapid growth that the medical community is still deciphering. Yet despite all the recent medical advances, the typical checkup hasn’t changed. Many have argued it’s woefully outdated.

Dr. David Tusek in his Boulder office.

That’s where Diagnocity comes in. Beyond Tusek’s primary care practice, Diagnocity is an attempt to modernize health care and catch up to the available science, using some of the very new tests, to create a “prevention program to assess things that may or may not be early enough before things get bad.” He doesn’t think these test make sense for everyone, but his mission is to alert patients to these emerging tests, like genomics, and let them discuss and evaluate whether it makes sense for them, as individuals.

This isn’t biohacking on steroids, it is proactive medicine. Tusek argues that we as a society should be talking about these new technologies more. Casual sports fans may know that HGH stands for human growth hormone and is a banned substance for pro athletes, but not know why it is prescribed to patients. “I’m passionately convinced we need have to these conversations about things like ‘enhancement’ and ‘optimization.’ And what does that mean even? And is that ethical?”

At one end of the spectrum are people, especially tech industry biohackers, who take nootropics to enhance their brains, and at the other end are those who just want to find out what kinds of vitamins they may be missing from their diet. The side effects of eating better or taking a multivitamin definitely fall on the side of “least harm,” but for some there is always the hope of some new technology or pill that will unlock great potential.

For Tusek’s practice, he sees plenty of casual athletes with ordinary health concerns. But when it comes to options for those patients, he offers a lot more. “We have a lot of weekend warriors here in Colorado and they haven’t even had an EKG,” he said. Tusek said that’s something that competitive athletes, not just elites, should look into.

LATE BLOOMERS

The transition from active to competitive isn’t just for seasoned athletes. For some, it’s not until children are grown that they pick up a new pastime, especially ones with rigorous training plans. Through her daughter’s early childhood, Sue Schaedle stuck with “kid stuff.” When she turned 50, she decided to race a half-triathlon.

After she watched a full triathlon, she was inspired by the middle of the packers. “I know there’s so many pros in Boulder, half of them live in my neighborhood,” Schaedle said. “But it was seeing those other people come in later, you knew they had full-time jobs, and they were still able to do it.” So she made a full triathlon her new goal.

At 53, she’s still beating her recent personal bests at events like Bolder Boulder. “I started training for triathlon in August 2014, I began to experience considerable fatigue after my longer workouts, especially the runs,” she said. Her general practitioner suggested it was likely from working out too much for her age. She was underwhelmed and visited Tusek. He ran a panel of blood tests which revealed her deficiency in B vitamins and chromium. “Once I added these vitamins to my diet I felt less fatigued and much more energized.”

Schaedle said the bloodwork consult helped her feel more energized between workouts. While she takes a multivitamin to help out, she recognizes the importance of a sound diet for better health and performance. “Eating healthy, especially as you get closer to your ‘A’ race is also important.”

PRESCRIPTIVE DIET

It’s easy to get stretched thin while juggling work, home life and peak training. That’s when some athletes look for someone else to do the cooking. Athletes can find healthy, calorie-controlled meals prepared by businesses like Real Athlete Diets Boulder. Its menu emphasizes a balance of carbs and protein with organic and local ingredients. For athletes, the added variety to their diet and time savings is a bargain. “It’s such a big trend, at least in our area,” said RAD founder Kelly Newlon. “People out here are on the bandwagon.”

Newlon grew up working in kitchens and ran in her spare time. She never connected her passions until two years ago, when she started RAD. The idea came when she was teaching in a culinary school and a friend asked to hire her as a personal chef. She turned down that request, but then recognized a business opportunity, and was surprised to find that no one in Boulder was already doing it.

During big races, like the Hardrock 100 ultra-run, Newlon and her team prepare meals for several sponsored athletes and their support crews. Catering now makes up the bulk of RAD’s business, but her athlete clients can still get personalized meal plans. “I wanted to work with elites at first,” she said. “But this is Boulder and that grew to active people.”

When advising runners and cyclists, Newlon emphasizes the importance of diversity on the plate. The pros are up-to-date on new studies on superfoods or protein and carb balance and may ask for tweaks to their dietary plan. For the most part, they listen to their bodies if performance lags. “Our clients are really sort of holistic,” she said. “The first thing they go to change is diet if something’s not right.”

Newlon said casual athletes are more often set in their ways when it comes to diet, often following set, or restrictive, plans. “Just because this is how you started your season, or you eat something on a daily basis, you can still re-evaluate that every quarter or season,” she said. “You can change a few things in diet and see improvements.”

BIGGER REPAIRS

Joanne Halbrecht, MD is an orthopedic surgeon with more than 20 years of experience. She’s established a reputation for being conservative on prescribing surgery, and usually recommends rehabilitation when there is no tear. No surgery, no steroid injections. “A lot of patients feel if they see a surgeon it means they’ll need surgery,” she said. “90 percent of the time, the people I see who don’t have a tear just need physical therapy.”

Working with athletic patients who feel in tune with their body and accustomed to some aches and pains can be different. Halbrecht said she encounters active patients who come to her after they’ve tried some therapy on their own, even activity modification, but stubbornly fought through inflammation which created a longer healing time once the right kinds of therapy were prescribed.

Traditional doctors may treat symptoms with over the counter anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, but do nothing to resolve the underlying pain. When that nagging pain doesn’t go away and requires surgery, Halbrecht will incorporate stem cells. Stem cell therapy has plenty of baggage associated with it, and some uses are less legitimized by medical studies than others. Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) injections used to relieve ankle pains have been in use for decades, and while most patients report less pain one year later, the treatment does nothing for other patients.

Halbrecht uses stem cells in conjunction with surgery, since the intrusion has been made. She cited a French study which found that patients with bone marrow stem cells injected during rotator cuff surgery had a 10-year success rate of 87 percent, compared to 44 percent of those without cells.

It’s not always good news. The Boulder running crowd can be stubborn. They do get the knee problems, even meniscus tears and arthritis, and want to continue running long distances. Some even moved here specifically for running and biking. Halbrecht said the realities of genetics still trump medicine; “I used to be a runner, but when you start having knee pain it’s time to switch to a lower impact activity.” That’s when she recommends “wheels and water;” a switch to endurance cycling, swimming or water running.

One of the most common impediments Halbrecht encounters is poor posture. The 9-5 workday hunched over a keyboard causes bursitis, then the weekend comes and body is thrown into new, strenuous motions. That’s a recipe for injury, not because of the weekend pursuit, but the lack of activity the rest of the week. To help resolve this, she routinely puts patients in a posture shirt, which like the kinesiology tape seen on runners and swimmers at the Olympics, primes back muscles to engage.

PERFORMANCE BEYOND SPORT

If the discussion of performance sounds like the sole domain of athletes, it’s not. Health experts continue to expound the association between exercise and health. Cyclists and runners have long used their VO2 max, a measurement of maximal oxygen uptake, as a reference for training in different ‘zones’ below that benchmark.

In December, the American Heart Association released a statement recommending doctors consider a patient’s VO2 max as a vital sign. “A growing body of epidemiological and clinical evidence demonstrates not only that cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a potentially stronger predictor of mortality than established risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes mellitus.”

Numerous studies show running can prevent those risk factors as well as improve moods and even re-wire brains to reduce symptoms of depression. So for people in their 40s and 50s who want to continue being active into their 60s and 70s, or just continue living past that age, 30 minutes of cardio is the best prevention. We asked our Masters athletes for advice for other aging athletes and they offered similar tips: eat enough protein, lift weights, get plenty of rest and have fun. That’s good advice for everyone, especially those who subscribe to the notion of living one’s best life.

The post Staying in the Game appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

You know the drill. Winter arrives out of nowhere. One day you’re ambling along Pearl Street enjoying the warm air and sun or hiking the Front Range, staring at the snow-dusted peaks in the distance, and the next day there is a foot of wet snow on the ground.

And just as suddenly as winter hits, so too does the mass exodus from trails and neighborhood sidewalks into the gym. Now you have to wait 45 minutes for your favorite elliptical machine and then uncomfortably ignore the woman in the corner who has given you the stink-eye for every minute more than 30 you’ve been on your treadmill. Classes fill up, swimming laps become an exercise in underwater obstacle dodging and you have to park so far from the gym that walking from your car to the door, especially in snow, becomes a pretty good workout in and of itself.

So I ask you this: Why, oh why, don’t we just stay outside in the winter?

I discovered the joys of keeping my fitness routine outside—no matter the weather—while living in Alaska. The benefit of using weather as part of your workout—rather than a force that works against your fitness goals—is
immeasurable.

When others refer to the old adage, “The world is your oyster,” I prefer to think of the world as my gym and a snowy sidewalk or trail as my treadmill.

So, whenever I say the term “winter running,” I don’t mean heading outside when it’s 35 degrees and sunny. Sure, that counts, I guess. But I’m really talking about running outside when it’s 10 degrees and cloudy, 30 degrees with a wintry mix (if that isn’t the worst phrase in the English language, I don’t know what is), or 20 degrees with a thick sheet of ice on the ground and snow piled sporadically through every trail. And it includes those days when it looks like the trees threw up all over Boulder, when the wind feels like it will blow you over, and when most people don’t even want to walk to their cars from their front doors.

Running and persevering in this weather will give you better workouts, and it will make you feel like an all-around badass. These workouts will make your friends both question your sanity and become a little jealous. It will help prevent injuries, especially certain knee injuries and I.T. band problems associated with overuse, particularly for runners. You will burn more calories, you will get more out of shorter workouts, and you will notice results.

Running on snow and ice forces you to put your weight on your toes—thus minimizing the dreaded heel strike—and forces you to go slower, minimizing impact. Because snow and ice are softer than concrete, running on snow and ice engages the quads and hamstrings more and calls into action the stabilizing muscles in your core used to balance as you slip and slide through your workout.

You know how cranking up the resistance on the treadmill makes everything harder? Think of wind as nature’s resistance crank, or as that loathsome-yet-tender trainer, Sven, who wants you to look awesome and randomly switches the resistance on you without any warning whatsoever. He wants to pump you up. So does Mother Nature.

A few details to know about winter running: start slow. Watch out for sudden temperature drops. Going from hot to cold is tough on your systems. Go slower, and go shorter at first. Your muscles are going to get fatigued more quickly as well, so shorter distances will be more tiring.

For your footsies, try Yaktrax for snow and ice. They are super light, easy to get on your shoes, and make a huge difference when you need traction. For attire, apply your skiing mindset to running. As any good Coloradan knows, dress in layers. Your body can adjust surprisingly well to extremely cold temperatures, and if you keep running outside in cold weather you will be stunned at how effective you can become at warming yourself up.

Layering baselayers and throwing a light windbreaker or fleece on top is usually sufficient for most winter temps. When it gets really nasty, a ski shell can be a good weapon. The hardest part of the body to keep warm, I’ve found, is the legs. I always wear my ski socks pulled up to the knee, and I’ve taken to layering Spandex and baselayers on my legs instead of pants.

Finally, gloves and ear warmers are mandatory. The most common problem I’ve found with properly attiring oneself for frigid runs is that my legs are cold and the rest of me gets too hot. It takes some tweaking to figure out what works best, but that is part of the fun.

Shopping for all your new winter running clothes is also part of the fun, so check out the gear section on page 16, hit up stores like Boulder Running Company, Jax Outdoor Gear and REI to do some shopping, and wave a fond goodbye to that dusty, boring old treadmill. You aren’t going to need
it anymore.

The post Winterizing Your Workout appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Photo by Joe Hodgson

Paul Martin knows pain.

But often, it’s a different type of pain than most able-bodied athletes deal with. Stump pain happens because of damaged nerves near the site of the amputation. “It’s so much more frequent and debilitating than normal muscle pain,” he said. “It overrides everything.” He also gets massive blisters on his stump, which leave him unable to run for days.

He’s learned specific tricks, including special bandaging or finding better-fitting prosthetics, and he’ll swim and cycle on days when he needs to go easy on his stump.

Martin is a big fan of active release technique, commonly known as ART. ART is the analysis and treatment—by hand—of soft tissue impacted by overuse and injury, helping to release the tightness of the tissue. It’s kind of like massage and can be used to treat everything from plantar fasciitis to tendonitis.

The post Stump Pain and the Art of ART appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.

Photo by Joe Hodgson

One Man’s Leg is a memoir of Boulder County resident Paul Martin’s tragic misfortune followed by several superhuman victories: During a 1992 car accident, one of Martin’s legs was irreparably injured and doctors were forced to amputate just below the knee. Just three years later—like a force of nature—Martin completed the New York Marathon.

Today, he holds “the world-record in the Ironman for one-legged guys,” as he puts it, and he’s won both silver and bronze as a member of the U.S. Paralympic Cycling Team. He recently completed his first ultra-marathon, and he continues to compete around the world. The triathlon has officially been accepted as an event in the 2016 Paralympic Games, and Martin says he will pursue competing in an exhibition event in the 2012 London Games.

“I had no idea that I would be a better runner, biker, swimmer with one leg than I was with two,” he said. Despite the stress, pain and strain, this has been his “path to full self-confidence and purpose.”

Here, in an excerpt from One Man’s Leg, Martin talks about training, his first attempt at becoming a runner and his continued struggles with the appendage he calls Stumpie:

I was introduced to the sport of triathlon the following summer after picking up a triathlon magazine one day. I flipped through the pages and saw a photo of Cam Widoff crossing a finish line in a shirt that read Will Race For Food. This simple statement impressed me—triathlon must be a pretty hip sport.

My desire to complete a triathlon grew after I heard about Jim MacLaren. At 290 pounds, Jim played defensive end for the Yale football team in the mid-’80s. A collision with a Manhattan bus while riding his motorcycle led to the amputation of his left leg below the knee. The EMTs pronounced Jim dead, twice, en route to the hospital. Thankfully, he survived and went on to become a very competitive triathlete. Jim’s struggle expanded in 1993. While competing in a triathlon in Orange County, Calif., his bike, at full speed, broadsided a van that had illegally entered the course. Jim suffered a broken neck in the crash, rendering him quadriplegic. He now makes his way around in a motorized wheelchair, but his indomitable spirit is as mobile as ever.

Jim’s accomplishments awed me. Up until that time, I considered a marathon an incredible feat to tackle with a prosthetic leg. But an Ironman? It sounded so extreme. Still, it was motivating to know that the list of possible achievements had no apparent end. Jim became a role model and gave me confidence to begin training for some shorter triathlons.

I decided to buy a mountain bike to begin training for my first triathlon. When I picked up the bike I had ordered from the Cosmic Wheel in Ridgefield, N.J., I met Dr. Rob DeStefano, a chiropractor in nearby Lodi. Dr. DeStefano was talking about his own Hawaiian Ironman experience with the shop’s proprietor. I stuck my nose into the conversation, telling Dr. Rob of my triathlon ambitions, and mentioning Jim MacLaren. Rob was familiar with him from races they had both competed in on the Big Island of Hawaii. Without hesitation, he agreed to help me get started in the sport.

A week later I met Dr. Rob at the Hackensack YMCA for a swim lesson. He chuckled when I demonstrated my technique. One lap, a mere 50 yards, left me huffin’ and puffin’. He pointed out the gross errors, including a horribly inefficient and hastened stroke, a misaligned body and an improper kick. But by the end of the month, swimming two to three days a week, my ability improved, I quadrupled in distance and nearly doubled in speed.

Dr. Rob then set me up with a 12-week program to help me complete my first sprint triathlon. Sprint races vary in distance but typically involve a half-mile swim, a 10- to 15-mile bike ride, and a three- to five-mile run. I continued to swim at the Hackensack YMCA and usually ran and cycled on the streets near Weehawken. Central Park was only a 20-minute commute on any given weekend. I spent most Saturday and Sunday afternoons there getting ready for my first race.

I found the perfect event to test my new abilities in my hometown of Gardner. By race
day, my swimming technique was still weak, so I used a pull buoy to conserve energy. Flotation devices are usually not allowed in triathlon, but the sympathetic race director
let me use one.

The bike section felt good, and I passed several competitors along the way, including a high school buddy who was cycling for a relay team. Stomach cramps late in the race made for a difficult run, but once the pain subsided I reeled in a few runners who had previously passed me. In the finish line sprint, I matched a competitor along the last 50 meters before he got the best of me. My grandmother, aunt and uncle, and some friends were there to cheer me through the finish. I placed 44th out of more than 100 triathletes. I felt pretty damn good—despite a blistered Stumpie.

I had trained primarily for the run, which is the toughest discipline for an amputee. My running improved throughout that summer in both distance and speed. Mike and his head prosthetist, Erik Shaffer, made continual socket adjustments to help me run with less pain. “Pain free” running, I have discovered, may very well remain theoretical.

In the 18 months since I first ran on Mike’s treadmill, I had competed on a national level in track and field and had completed my first triathlon. I was mentally prepared for my next challenge: the 1995 National Amputee Track & Field Games being held in Boston at the MIT athletic facilities in June.

I was running three or four days a week; Stumpie couldn’t handle any more than that. I would run on the Hoboken High School track a couple of times a week and a day or two on the road. I was also making many trips to the prosthetic shop to try to find an answer to my blistering problems. We were making gradual progress.

My duties at work lost their priority. I was putting all my creative energy into training. That was all that mattered to me. And the training began to pay off.

In Boston, I set a new national 1,500-meter record with a time of 5:20:88. I also ran the 400-meter and managed both a second place finish and a personal record time of 64.95 seconds, not particularly fast. In the 100-meter race, not having yet mastered my new sprinting leg, I tripped on the prosthesis right out of the starting blocks, but still managed to set another personal best of 13.93 seconds. Again, not too fast. I didn’t even qualify for the final heat of six runners. Still, I was developing a passion for mastering the run.

For the remainder of the summer I focused on the race Mike Joyce had predicted less than two years before: the New York City Marathon. A newly found friend became a motivator and mentor: Kathy Holmes, who was a member of the Somerset circle of friends I had entered by way of the ice hockey team and who had run the race the previous year, 1994, dared me to match her courage. The seeds of 26.2 miles of self-induced punishment were sown. To help guide my training she bought me a book for my birthday, Making the Marathon Your Event, by Richard Benyo.

Distance running was teaching me a great deal about prosthetic equipment. The more I ran, the more often I had to make the two-hour trip to the leg shop. I discovered that skin breakdown problems were caused not only by pistoning but also by the changing shape of my stump. Training resulted in a loss of body fat, even in Stumpie. This meant a change in shape and socket fit.

Suspension was a huge problem now that I was running the longer miles. I found a partial solution in a clear silicone liner that Erik thought we should try. The primary suspension problem was the introduction of air into the 3S, eliminating the intimate vacuum fit and causing enough pistoning to create abrasions and blistering. I wore an off-the-shelf silicone liner—a tube with a closed, cupped distal end—over my 3S. We cut a hole in the end for my pin to protrude to the shuttle lock. Its flexibility allowed for a tight fit up through my mid-thigh, thus preventing air from entering the 3S while still allowing sufficient flexion at the knee; this key innovation would contribute to my early distance running success.

Marathon day: Nov. 12, 1995—cold and rainy, 29 degrees Fahrenheit at the start. Sixty-mile-per-hour winds blew across the Verrazano Bridge, the first quarter mile of the marathon. I was dressed in mid-thigh Spandex shorts, a cotton T-shirt, nylon shell, official John Hancock cotton race hat and cotton gloves. Jurassic run wear but, hey, I was a rookie.

My hockey buddy, Jack Barr, had also accepted Kathy’s challenge. He joined me for the race along with Joan Nevin, a volunteer from Achilles Track Club. I would be running the race as a member of a club that had been founded to promote physically challenged runners and wheelers.

The three of us took our own sweet time preparing for the start of the race and, as a result, ended up in the back of the pack…of 27,500 runners! The organizers had recommended self-seeding, whereby a competitor places him/herself within the masses according to his/her anticipated race pace. We failed miserably in this regard. We reached the start line 20 minutes after the gun fired.

Plastic bags by the hundreds, which athletes donned to stay dry while waiting for the gun to fire, blew by and got entangled in many racers’ legs, causing some to stumble and fall. We managed 9-minute miles for the first part of the race by bobbing and weaving our way through the melee. By Mile 4 we increased our speed to eight-and-a-half-minute miles, then to eight-minute miles by Mile 7. As I ran, the constant pounding and slightly less than perfect socket fit inhibited circulation, causing increasingly intolerable pain. At Mile 8, I had to pull over to remove the leg to restore desperately needed blood flow. The pain forced me to remove the leg more and more frequently as the race progressed.

At each pit stop, the same pair of women passed us. We would return to battle to regain the lead, each of us making some type of “you again” comment. (One of the women researched my name and contact information through Achilles after the race and wrote weeks later, praising of my efforts. In fact, Sarina Glaser kept up the correspondence and remained a self-proclaimed “No. 1 Fan” for quite some time.)

The run up First Avenue was fabulous. Millions of people were cheering for their friends and family members as well as for total strangers. We heard “Go Achilles!”—The official cheer for any challenged runner—over and over again. In classic rookie fashion, Joan and I had each written “Go Paul” on our shirts to spark a bit of encouragement from the spectators. It
actually worked.

The race crossed the East River again, this time eastbound, on the Willis Avenue Bridge. There, at Mile 18, I hit the infamous “Wall.” This unwelcome threshold is reached when the muscle glycogen stores, then blood glucose, become so depleted that further energy must be supplied through food intake. Otherwise, muscles will begin to cannibalize and the central nervous system will experience severe fatigue. Jack humbly held himself back. Joan, too, could have maintained a quicker pace but chose to hang back with us. The Wall slowed our troop of three from what had been a nine-minute pace to a struggling 12-minute pace.

It was in this section of the race that I learned how wondrous an orange slice can be, how splendid its juices running down my throat can feel, how much energy one slice can provide. The sustenance came from the volunteer aid stations every mile along the course. Each pit was staffed by 20 to 25 God-sent individuals distributing water, Gatorade, oranges, bananas and energy bars.

Until then, the crowds had graced us with desperately needed enthusiasm and encouragement, but on the other side of the bridge in the Bronx, the sidelines were considerably thinner than they had been on Manhattan Island.

On the streets of this northernmost New York City borough, the race took a very hard right turn, causing a bottleneck in the flow of runners. Jack pulled off to get a banana and that was the last I saw of him for the remainder of the race. He had a more aggressive goal than I did, so I was relieved that I was no longer holding him back.

From the Bronx, we headed south onto Manhattan Island and into Harlem, at approximately Mile 20. By then, Stumpie was bummin’ hard and I had to stop at least once every mile. I stopped at one park bench for nearly two minutes—two minutes that passed much too quickly. Then Joan and I went on. The crowds became thinner still and the surrounding athletes thinned also. It became a mental feat just to keep moving.

Miles 20 through 23, the toughest of the day, drilled down Fifth Avenue through Harlem. This was an interesting section of the race, highlighted by the wonderfully welcomed smiles from the elderly ladies and little kids who probably witnessed the rite annually. In the heart of that infamous part of town, I consoled myself with the knowledge that I had less than 10 kilometers to go, a standard run on any other day. But it wasn’t any other day. I was nearing the end of my first marathon, and Stumpie was killing me.

The inspiration to keep moving actually came from the other runners. All around me I could see that their legs were burning and their feet were getting heavy—but they were still running.

Paty and the others had planned to meet us again at the entrance to Central Park at Fifth Avenue and 102nd Street. That corner would be a natural energy boost for all the competitors. The park marked the beginning of the end, and all the spectators from First Avenue had meandered west to catch the big finish. …Just past Mile 24, I heard them all hollering my name as Joan and I came into view. Paty kept waving her big, happy sign. They were all glad to see me upright and likely to finish. I plodded along at nearly an 11-minute-mile pace. We’d have just two more miles to go when we got back into the pack.
I pulled off the road and sat on a wall with Paty and Kathy. I removed not just my leg but also the liner and 3S. Stumpie was so tender. Regardless, we laughed and cheered and began a premature celebration. Although I was in no hurry to put that damned leg back on, I re-donned the equipment, post-hug, and pulled myself together to get out there for the last of the punishment.

With only minutes left in the struggle, my psyche strengthened and I began to feel wonderful. The pace picked up as we passed a slew of runners through the southern progression of the park. We briefly ran along the westbound half-mile stretch of Central Park South, the section of 59th Street adjacent to the southern edge of the park. I became incredibly energized. I was running at nearly a seven-minute mile pace! I had to bark “On your left!” time and again to clear a path. When we turned north back into the park, we had just 0.2 miles left. The crowd had been cheering incessantly since our entrance at Mile 23. The finish line bleacher seats came into view. Beautiful…

There it was, the finish line of the New York City Marathon. I kicked it in for an honorable finish, remembering Kathy’s advice: “Make sure no one’s around you when you get to within 30 feet of the finish line and put your arms up in victory. You’ll get a great finish line photo.” I slowed it up to a standstill until the immediate crowd surrounding me dispersed. Then I howled and threw my arms toward the sky and proceeded at a trot across the white line. Despite coming up 30 minutes short of my goal, a victorious feeling overwhelmed me from the inside out. And the finish line photo was perfect.

I received my finisher’s medal and, like everyone else, plodded along in euphoric discomfort toward the family and friends meeting place another three quarters of a mile through the park.

On the way, a park bench lawlessly invited me over for a reflective moment. I ignored the “No Crossing” tape and accepted the invitation.

Joan asked if I was OK and I told her that I just needed to be alone for a short while. When she had gone, I sat and cried for a good five minutes. A race volunteer approached and put her arm around me for comfort. I assured her that I couldn’t be happier. She smiled and left me to my thoughts.

I had just completed a marathon—in New York City. It was an accomplishment I had never considered pursuing in my 10-toed days. The finish line, earned through hard work and determination, taught me a lesson: From that moment on, I knew that anything I wanted to do, in any field, for any reason, was possible. If I dedicated myself to any reasonable goal, I could ultimately achieve it.

It occurred to me then that I was not only “as good” as I had been before the amputation; I was better. This accomplishment would be the launch pad to a future of unrestricted possibilities. But the first step, no trivial task, was to get off that bench.

Paul Martin’s memoir, One Man’s Leg, can be purchased on Amazon.com. You can find his second book, Drinking From my Leg, there as well. For information on Martin or to have him speak at your event, visit onemansleg.com.

The post Iron Man appeared first on Yellow Scene Magazine.