Stuff You Should Know - How Ironman Triathlons Work

Episode Date: November 6, 2019

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.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello Seattle, we're coming to see you and Frazier. Yep, we're going to come see you guys and Frazier on January 16th.

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 Moore Theater, our home in Seattle for stuff you should know. That's right, everybody. January 16th, come out and see us. Tickets go on sale this Friday, which is November 8th, and you can get all the information about tickets at sysklive.com or just go to the Moore's website as well.

We'll see you guys in January. Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. Hey, 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 Coost. Wow. Yeah, he's getting all sorts of great nicknames.

You got any more? No, no, that's it for now. Sorry, Dave. I think, what was that, two or three? That 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 some of our recent negative reviews on iTunes. Oh, no. Hadn't done that in a while. Yeah, because it's mentally unhealthy. I don't mind. It's kind of good comedy for me because I'm fairly secure in year 11 that we're doing okay, but it is always funny. Most of them 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 they are. I mean, they kind of hit it on the head with that one. Yeah, it was good. And then the ones that kill me are the ones that, you know, like they're clearly reading Wikipedia and Reddit is their number one source. I'm like, I've literally never been to Reddit in my life. And I like Reddit, but I don't get our ideas from it.

Oh, man. It's always so fun. Sure. Well, I'm glad that you did that for both of us and you distilled it into like a friendly, affable version. Yeah. Sure. These guys are so dumb and boring.

That was a refrain. Dumb and boring. Right. It was like, interesting. We're sort of known for being funny and smart, but I guess that's in the eye of the ear of the listener. It totally is. I mean, like we've got 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. Yeah. Almost like any other piece of art or culture 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 literally seen that?

Yeah. That was like the first piece of data art, I believe. Is that what that's called? Data? Data. Yeah. What does that mean exactly? I think it was purposefully mean, purposefully, that word for a second just suddenly didn't

sound right. That's because you're dumb. Right. I'm boring. I think it's a purposefully meaningless word. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I guess.

Like a toilet. If you're into that kind of thing. Other people might find that dumb and boring. Interesting. Yeah. It's a urinal that was upside down and then signed by the artist. I can't remember who it was. Was it signed in urine?

No, I think it was signed in maybe paint or something like that. I can't remember. Well, now we're doing the third thing that people complain about, which is not getting to the point quickly enough. I think you could call it moseying. Although it's funny as well and those reviews, people are like, they literally spend 20 minutes talking nonsense. Like, man, it's what the deal is, is five minutes seems like 20 because we're dumb and

boring. Sure. But anybody who really appreciates stuff you should know knows that it's a contest of endurance. To see who will get to the topic first? Exactly. Or just to 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 SYSK fan. Agreed. That's kind of how it works. It's just like the way that it is with the Iron Man triathlon too. If you complete it, you're an Iron Man. If you complete it within the required amount of time. You're right.

Yes. There are rules. There are limitations. I guess the same thing goes with us. If you complete the episode within 17 hours of beginning it, then you win. Well, we did an episode on marathons almost one year ago. Oh, really? A little more.

October 9th, 2018. We did a lot of joking about marathons and how we're not into running those. We should define here in minute 21 what an Iron Man race is. Because an Iron Man race is a 2.4 mile swim. That's 3.9 kilometers. That's a lot. And then that's a lot of swimming. Then they say, all right, get out of the water, everybody.

Now go ride your bike 112 miles. Right, like two days later though, right? No, right afterward. What? 180.3 kilometers. And then when you're done with that, they say, all right, who wants to run a marathon? And then people like us, or most people I think in the world, probably 99% of the people in the world think, what is wrong with you people?

Yeah. And not a half marathon, quarter marathon, 10th of a marathon, a full 26.2 mile marathon. More than 42 kilometers on, and all of this by the way, if you're at the World Championships is taking place in the lava fields of Kona, Hawaii, where it's very hot. Yeah. Good coffee too. It is okay, I guess. I'm not huge on Kona coffee.

Oh, really? No. Okay. Did you hear there was once a coffee heist in Hawaii where somebody somehow stole something like $2 million worth, either a million or $2 million worth of Kona coffee beans. That sounds like a short stuff. It does. Maybe we should do that sometime.

The great Kona coffee heist? Yep. There's your title. Of ought six. Is that when it was? I don't know, but it sounded pretty good. Oh, okay. That's the other big complaint on iTunes is that we just make out facts.

That's true. Right. So I think you kind of laid it out there. Three big reasons why you and I will never do an Ironman triathlon. The swimming, the biking, and the running. That's right. That's right. But all of them combine too.

That's why if you put all of them together, you understand why the Ironman has this kind of aura of just all among athletes because the people who participate in these are the fittest of the fit. They have the greatest endurance of any other athlete around, especially ones who make it to the championships in Hawaii. It has like kind of a mystique. And here's the thing. The term Ironman is gender neutral.

So wherever you fall on the gender spectrum, and you complete the race, that's an important part of this, you will be called an Ironman. And I guess if you are collective, you have a bunch of people who have completed an Ironman race that would be called Ironmen. But if you're talking about different Ironman races collectively because they have them all over the world now, I believe they have 260 races a year. And 44 different countries that are official Ironman races. You would call those Ironmans.

That's right. I left a little glossary in this article. Up next, we'll talk about whether you call your desktop mouse a mice or a meese. So the Ironman race is, we're going to get into some of the history here. It's a triathlon, and there were triathlons before the Ironman competition. Yeah, I think starting a few years before the first Ironman, so it actually kind of caught hold pretty quick. But technically, a triathlon can be any three sports.

But when you say triathlon, and then you follow that up with, yeah, I'm going to play some basketball, toss a football around, and then maybe take a few swings with a tennis racket. Yeah, you'd be like, that's three disparate sports that's wrong with you. People are going to say you're weird because when you hear triathlon in this new, not new, I guess fairly new since the 70s, you're really talking about swimming, cycling, and running. Right. Not necessarily in that order or whatever, but as long as those three are together, that's a triathlon.

And the first triathlon from what we understand came out of San Diego, actually, from the San Diego Track Club who put the first one together in 1974. And it just so happened that in that first triathlon in 1974, 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. That's rough. Yeah, really. It's a rough move.

What a terrible life. He was just chasing UFOs in San Diego. Next thing you know, he's sipping my ties on the beach in Honolulu. But we do thank him for his service. Sure. So John Collins ends up in Hawaii. He's like, hey, you rubes, you hicks, I've got a great idea, it's going to blow your heads off.

You ready? A triathlon. And everyone said, what's that? Yeah, 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. Sure. There was something called the Waikiki Rough Water Swim.

Have you ever been to Waikiki? I've never been to Hawaii, man. Oh, man, you got to go. It's really a wonderful place. It's Emily and I were talking about going away for a birthday weekend and just, you can't do Hawaii in a weekend from Atlanta. No, it's a long, it's a little too long. Yeah.

It's much more realistic. Sure. It's the Hawaii of the Southeast. That's right. That's what everyone in Savannah will tell you. And then they had something called the Around Oahu Bike Ride. And so as endurance athletes like to do, and all athletes, I like to get together and tease each other about who's the best athlete.

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. They're not really athletes who drive a car. So I think my brother and I actually had one of our rare arguments about 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 into NASCAR, but these guys are athletes. My brother's saying, not I'll buy it. And then we say, let's go play ping pong. Yeah. You guys are like, well, this is getting out of hand, peace brother. Let's reconcile with some ping pong. So Collins, all this arguing was going on about who was the most fit. And he said, you know what, let's throw all these together.

Like you said, we'll call it the Ironman. And in 1978, there were 12 finishers. I'm not sure how many people entered that race, but 12 people finished it and were named Ironman. Right. And they all got little handmade iron statuettes or whatever. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

It was kind of a thing. And it was really crazy. One guy ran out of water. So everybody had to have their own support staff with them, like supplying a water and stuff like that. Before they had people along the route? Yes. And one guy named Dunbar, I can't remember his first name, but he was in the first competition.

They just called him Dunbar. Probably. He ran out, or his support staff ran out of water. So toward the end of the marathon, he had nothing to drink but Budweiser. Shut up. No, I'm not kidding. But John Collins, who was the guy who brought it to Hawaii, he stopped for a bowl of chili at one point to refuel.

Wow. Yeah, it was nuts, but it was just basically like some crazy athletic military guys just having fun. A bowl of chili, huh? A bowl of chili. Like go ahead and draft behind me, I dare you. Right, exactly. I mean, you just eat it and it just passes right through your mouth and out of your rectum,

right onto the street in Oahu. So, but this first one, it was fun, it was crazy, but there's this ongoing dispute to this day that I read, I think in an article in the New York Times, that said that in the rule book, if you ran in that first or you participated in that first Iron Man competition, part of the entry fee was agreeing to sign on to be the organizing committee for the Iron Man. And 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, dropped dead

or something. Interesting. But some people, including Dunbar, have interpreted that to mean that they were part owners of Iron Man, which has now become like a billion dollar global franchise. And the people in charge are like, no, you don't have anything to do with that. You can get sued, but you can't reap the benefits. Right, exactly. But it was a pretty interesting article, I can't remember what it was called, but it's

worth looking up. Wow, that is interesting. I thought so too. So soon after this, it started to become a media event in that, we've talked before about the greatest show, sports show in the history 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.

I mean, that's where, as a kid in the 80s, you got introduced to ski jumping and curling and Iron Man-ing. But that was sort of the deal if you never watched that show is it was the wide world of sports. So it was lumberjack competitions and all these sort of to the side sports that you had never heard of before. It was pretty cool. Fringe sports.

Yeah. Sports Illustrated started covering it, which was a big deal. That really gave it a shot in the arm because that was 1979, the second one. And Sports Illustrated did like a 10 page spread on it basically and really gathered attention for it. And they're still one of the top sports rags, but back then, they weren't the only one, but they were sort of the 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, this 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 my first issue too, still it was Muhammad Ali was on the cover, believe it or not. Of the swimsuit issue? No. Was it the one where he's standing over as a Joe Frazier? 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, he kind of boxed beyond his prime. Oh, I didn't know that. Because I'm not 70 years old, you realize. Sure. So I just did the math and I was like, oh, I hope Chuck likes this one passed by. But no.

You mean Joe Frazier? No, that was before my time, but yeah, just for some reason that always sticks out is the cover said, look who's back, Muhammad Ali and then parentheses with mustache. I want to say, I want to say here, everybody, Chuck does not have this cover in front of him right now. I don't know. It's 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 illustrators. Yeah. No, what do you mean? But I saved the bathing suit issues. Sure. Your mom never saw those.

You had like a air vent cover that you could just pull off of the wall. Yeah, I had a false floor under my bed. All right, so back to the event. It's being covered by the media and 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 going to get into this.

And it grew to the point where they moved it finally in 1981 to 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? Sure. Because she pretty much single-handedly launched Iron Man into the status, the legendary status that it has today. Very soon after it was originated.

She was a kinesiology student at, I think, Cal Poly 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 portrayed it or not. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Sure. I said that.

That's what I said. Yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, she was a kinesiology student. That part's wrong. No, it's not. I'm just kidding. Okay.

And her dissertation was participating in the Iron Man competition in 1982 in Hawaii. And so she went and she ran, and she could not believe it, but all of a sudden she's in front. She's in the lead. She's barely trained for this thing. She done some running before, and now all of a sudden she's winning the fourth ever Iron Man competition. And as she got like within something like 40 yards or some ridiculously short distance

from the finish line, after she'd swam, biked, and run almost an entire marathon, her body gave out. Yeah, man. And she- I remember this. On the wide world of sports, it was being covered on the wide world of sports. 20 million people were watching, and Julie Moss collapsed and then crawled across the finish line.

To finish second. To finish second. She was lapped. And I think the winner, her name was- Kathleen McCartney. Kathleen McCartney 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?

Right. Was a runner? My waffle print shoe mark is on their backs though. And Julie Moss like just became just an amazingly like celebrated sports figure overnight from showing this 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 finish line because it required that much of the human body, but also because they were that determined to reach that goal.

And that was it for the Iron Man. It just became hugely popular overnight. We were talking about how much participation grew. I saw that in 1982, the year Julie Moss entered, there were 60,000 people who entered 400 triathlons, not necessarily Iron Man competitions. In three years, 1.1 million people competed in 2100 triathlons by 1985. So she definitely boosted the popularity a tad bit. Well why don't we take a break and we'll come back and talk a little bit about the science

of why people other than Julie Moss pass out right when they get to the finish line. Does that sound good? Yes. Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home.

Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so you sent me a little article why endurance athletes struggle there at the very end, aside from the obvious, that what they're doing is super hard.

But it turns out that it's overheating largely, isn't it? So there's a great debate, like either they run out of fuel, like they basically just use up all of their stores of energy and their body can't go on any longer. Or they have overheated. This is what this article is basically saying in Outside Magazine. The other big one is that the lactic acid, in particular the hydrogen ions, have built up in the muscle and are causing cramping and everything going haywire. 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 going to let you lift your foot any longer. Like you physically can't do that with your muscle because I'm not allowing it. Yeah, because the brain, he says, is sending you these messages a lot before this happens. Like stop, stop doing what you're doing. You better stop. You better stop.

I'm going to stop for you. And this is not necessarily dehydration either. Like he said, you can be plenty hydrated and drinking tons of water. But the heat at some of these Ironmans is pretty punishing. And especially, he said, after you've done the swimming event, which can keep the temperature down, obviously, because of the water, and then the cycling where you've got a lot more breeze generally, especially coming out of swimming. So your perspiration is doing a better job of cooling you off.

Yeah, but when you get to that marathon, 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 going down. Right. And like your movements become uncoordinated, like your actual brain might start malfunctioning as well, where it's just, you're not thinking clearly any longer, you become distracted. Like if you've ever watched, it's actually, it's really weird to watch these things,

but there's plenty of like finish line footage from Ironman competitions of these, some of the fittest athletes on the planet collapsing before the finish line, like collapsing after the finish line is one thing, collapsing before they get to the finish line, because their bodies, their brains have said, this is it, I'm done. 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, like where, like when you see the finish line, if something happens in your brain, like physically seeing it with your

eyeballs, kind 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 holding it, you're holding it. And then when your hand touches the doorknob to your house or 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, you're not supposed to poop your pants when you touch a doorknob, it's unusual.

Well, there have been triathletes too and endurance athletes that have pooped 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 going on. But yeah, I'm sure that seeing that finish line has some sort of effect because there's also, there's a documented effect called the post-Iron Man Blues where people will enter like a state of depression for a couple of weeks following completing an Iron Man. And they actually can't quite explain it, but they think that it's probably related

to having set such a lofty goal that once you achieve it, like life kind of loses its luster for a little while. Other people think that your brain is sending you into 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. Yeah. So Iron Man's started growing and growing.

The World Championship in Kona, and they have championships, we should point out, and on most continents, 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 only

about 500 people, you have earned your way in by qualifying in another sanctioned Iron Man event. Right. And I actually saw that they did away with the lottery. Oh, really? Yeah. 2015 was last year they did it. And it was a really great thing because you could pay 50 bucks to enter a lottery and

to win a slot, there were 500 slots like you said. 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 tens of thousands of people who are like possibly able to reach the state. You're 1500 of those people. This lottery gave people 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. Oh, interesting. So Iron Man had to stop doing the lottery. Now they have something called the Legacy Program, which says that if you've competed or completed, I believe, in 12 Iron Man competitions that aren't the championship, you can apply

to get a legacy slot where they're basically saying, 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 is that you don't pay for that opportunity. No, I got you. I think. In 1994, they eventually added triathlons to the Olympics, and we'll get to different distances.

They certainly don't want to knock Olympic triathletes, but... No, but I could complete one. It's nothing like the Iron Man. Let's just say that. It's much shorter. It's smaller, for sure. But if you're talking Iron Man, it starts out with a swimming leg. And as we said earlier, that's the 2.4-mile swim.

And how do you pronounce that? Well, I think in Hawaiian, you say all of the vowels. Ka'ialua? I think so. Okay. Ka'ialua, Kona Bay. Yeah, I think you just nailed it, man. We'll see.

Okay. It depends on the water temperature, whether or not you're allowed to wear a wetsuit. But the wetsuit gives you a little bit of a buoyancy advantage. So I think the... Well, I'm not going to get in the head of triathletes, but if it was me, I would hope for a little bit colder water so I could wear my wetsuit. Plus, it would keep you cooler, too. Right.

But if the water is warmer, then you don't need the wetsuit. 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 I was reading about injuries and deaths, which we'll 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 and yeah, you can sweat while you're swimming and all of that. But at least you're staying cool. But supposedly, somebody did a study of deaths between, I think, 1985 and 2016 in triathlons, not just Iron Man. And they found that of 135 deaths, sudden deaths in heart attacks and stuff, 90 of those took place in the swim leg and 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 like age 40 or something like that. While they stagger the beginning, obviously, like most races and foot races, they stagger them in the water because you can't just throw all those people in the ocean at once. Your pros are going to start out first, again, like most road races, 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. And then you finish the swimming leg, hopefully, unless you dive a heart attack, right? And then you go to what's called T1, the first transition area. And that's where you change your clothes and you put on your clothes for the next thing, which in this case is biking. They try to make it where it's a loop, so there's only one transition area. So you finish the bike race where you started and that's where you will also start the run.

But I love this one line in the article here. I did too. It stood out to me as well. How stuff works. Racers must find their bike in rows of racks with hundreds of other bikes. That sounds like part of the game, almost, the way it's written. Right. And they call the transition point where if you can't find your bike, the TS point.

No, they don't. No. 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 taken somebody's bike, but how would you identify who took your bike so you could take their bike? I don't know how you would do that because it would be a bad jam if somebody took your bike because apparently the bike leg is where you're doing the most other stuff, like eating, refueling, that kind of stuff. Interesting. So you probably have a significant amount of 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. That's true. It'd be a big deal, I'm sure. So I don't know how they keep up with that kind of thing and prevent that from happening. And that's where you have your Netflix queued 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 miles, 100 plus miles. Yeah, and I saw it's something like the average completion time for this bike leg is something like six hours, although they give you 10, I believe. That's the bulk of the Iron Man is the biking part. Yeah, because it's 100 something miles. What was it, 112?

Yeah. So I'm fine with 100 something because I'll never come even remotely close to it. And depending on what Iron Man course you're on or what triathlon you're participating in, the train's going to be a little worse or better depending on where you are. Apparently in Kona, 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.

Yeah, it's brutal. It's a terrible thing to do. Like you have to be insane to try this kind of thing, especially the championships. Yeah. So like we mentioned, you do have 17 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 something called the midnight finish where people who've completed the run and like started to feel sore and have eaten and started drinking beer and everything afterward,

probably just make a little ultra though, I'm sure. They will go around midnight to see the very last people coming through. That's great. And it's supposed to be super inspirational because these are people who, as far as the Iron Man site describes it, they're like just getting to the Iron Man to compete has probably been a tremendous amount of, has really been in struggle. And so these people are finishing one way or another. So I guess people who've already finished are there to kind of cheer them on.

That's awesome. And we'll talk more about this later, but there are people with prosthetic limbs and wheelchair athletes that complete this stuff. And this one, well, we'll talk about the father and son team, which is just incredible. Yeah. But we're going to save that. Right. So people stick around.

Yes. Through the dumb and boring. Right. So. And the moseying. That's right. You're not allowed to draft like in some bike races, drafting just like NASCAR. You can get behind another biker and cut down on wind resistance.

But in most of the Iron Man, man competitions, that is not allowed. No. And there was one case in 86 where a race winner, Patricia Punthouse, was disqualified for drafting. Is that how you'd say your name? Punthouse? I want to say like Pontius, like Pontius pilot, but that's not right. P-U-N-T-O-U-S.

Yeah, I think you got it. I'm just going to go with the standard Punthouse. I'm going to go with the Hawaiian pronunciation and say Punthouse. Maybe Punthouse. Maybe Punthouse. That's good. Punthouse? Punthouse.

I like that the most so far. And then you can win money. I looked up the world championships and I think there's like a $650,000 total purse. And it looks like is it $150,000 for each male and female winner? Yeah, somewhere around there, something like $115,000 or $150,000 or something like that. But I mean, like if you are a high-end elite triathlete. High-ranking? Yeah.

Yes. Whatever you want to call it, 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 make it from triathlon to triathlon. If you're not literally 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 purses that you'll win for winning these triathlons, you will also get sponsorships

as well. So you can make a pretty decent living being an elite triathlete. I saw, for example, there's this guy right now, Jan Frodeno. He is from Germany and he is as good as they've ever come as far as male competitors go. And in 2015, from purses, from winning events, over five events, he made $213,000, which is a pretty decent living for competing in five Ironmen or Ironmans. The guy who made the most that year from winnings was a guy named Javier Gomez. He won $287,000, which is really even better.

But he had to compete in 14 Ironmans to make that. So I think the real cheese is in the sponsorship. Yeah. And I think 14, like, I don't think they recommend you do that many. 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 ready?

How many has he done? 15, my friend. James Lawrence, also known as the Iron Cowboy, competed in 50 Ironmans in 50 states in 50 days. Wow. Over the course of 50 consecutive days, he competed in 50 Ironmans, an Ironman a day for 50 days. They should just call him the ultimate Ironman and just shut everything else down.

They did. They're not going to shut it down because again, it's pretty lucrative, but they did. They just basically, so no one could ever top that. That's insane. The fact that he's still alive is really impressive. That is amazing. Yeah. He was eating like 6 to 7,000 calories, I'm sorry, 7 to 8,000 calories a day.

Every morning he said his toenails are falling off. 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. Should we take another break? Sure.

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. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for

her travel. So, yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to HeyDude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, we should probably qualify this with saying we're going to tell you how to train from stuff we've read about training, not from any life experience.

No. If you're going to train, and we did the same thing in the Marathons podcast, we are not experts, but here's what they say. Let's do say. Sure. If you're going to train for a triathlon, especially an Ironman, you're going to 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 just point one, is your training for endurance. Your training to increase what's called your VO2 max, which is the amount of oxygen you can take in and your body used to burn fuel. Right. You're also going to 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 got to rest and give your body a chance to recover. Right. That's a big one. I think that that's just like your body's going to tell you to do that regardless. They say train to your weakness. So. That was a surprising to me, but it makes sense when you think about it.

Yeah, like 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 closer to time, you want to go back to your strength and remember to boost that up again. Yeah. You can't forget about running that 26 miles.

Right. Oh, I haven't done a marathon in 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. And then, I mean, these last ones are kind of dumb and boring. Well, no more dumb and boring than us.

I guess this makes sense. Use the equipment that you're going to use at the event. So like. Right. Don't switch bikes before. No. Or for God's sakes, don't switch out your speedo. Right.

You want to wear your lucky speedo that you haven't washed all year. That's right. So that makes sense. Also, this is a Grabster article, we should say, and Ed makes a pretty good point. You need to train just to be able to start training for the Ironman. This is not something you just start where you go from couch to Ironman. That doesn't exist. There's no such thing.

You want to start to get in shape first and then you can start training for the Ironman. He makes a pretty good point and I think it's worth saying here. 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 is some biology or biological science that says, 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. Science is a little bit confounded 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 fibrillation. There was one out of Norway, which is probably what you were talking about, that says you're two times at the risk of developing pancreatic cancer. That's, I mean, twice as likely.

Yeah. I mean, they're saying they think what happens is, and they did blood tests to people like at 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 keep doing this over and over, it could have an overall cumulative effect. Yeah. Because your inflammation is so set off because your body's like, what is going on? Their inflammation markers from one test I saw are up like 250% over just normal resting

rate. And they think that your immune system stands back because if it tried to deal with all of the different inflammation going on, it would overexert itself and you'd be toast in a different way. 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 experience. Have you heard of doubling?

No. So there are endurance athletes that practice doubling and there's specifically people who 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 the start line and then run the regular marathon. I actually have. And I think I ran across that as well. And I think we should do like an episode on ultrathons or ultramarathons because there

are some crazy stuff that goes into that too. Oh yeah, like let's run 120 miles to the desert. 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. Sure. But like. Not for fun. Yeah, not for fun.

And they would always drop dead upon delivering the message it seemed like. Right. They'd go, it's. And then fall over dead and somebody else would say, multi-pythons flying circus. Message for you, sir. So there are no statistics from the USAT, but Ed picked out a 16-year-old statistic from the Lake Placid Iron Man and said that this was a low number of injuries where they sent 14 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 line or whatever, what you're putting your body through is just astounding. You burn something like about 6,000 calories throughout the day of competing in this Iron Man competition. Yeah. And you'll replenish a lot of it from like sports drinks and energy drinks and stuff, but you lose about 20 pounds of water weight.

Wow. About nine kilograms of water weight during the course of running and competing in an Iron Man. Amazing. Yeah, 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 body's normal biological responses to slowing down, to sending cramps to the muscles, to basically keep your motor

functioning 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 paltry little Olympic triathlon and we're kidding, but when you look at the distances, it is not close to an Iron Man. It is a 0.93 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? What's this weird imperial? Yeah, exactly. And then that's followed by a 24.86 mile, 40 kilometer bike ride. And then only a 6.21 or a 10 kilometer run. Right, which is, again, I could do that. I mean, that's 20 miles shorter on the run side and 80, close to 80 miles shorter, or

yeah, a little more actually, on the bike side. And then about a little less than half on the swim side. Right, which again, is why people say like the Iron Man 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 as bad as they come. Yeah, I like this sprint one though, the sprint triathlon.

It's a, depending on which one it is, either like anywhere from 0.3 to 1 miles in the water, eight to 25 miles on a bike, and then one and a half to five miles running, but you are all out 100% full tilt the whole time. Right. That's amazing. This is like something that an elementary school could do on field day or something, you know? Remember those?

Yeah, I love field day, but it definitely reeks of something like an 11 year old makes up. Right. Right. But there's no tree climbing involved. Right. And if somebody touches you, you have to freeze until somebody else comes along and touches you again.

Oh, I love field day. Yeah. 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. It was, I think your own little Olympics to celebrate sport and introduce kids to different sports.

I got you. Okay. It was school. I was like, what's your angle here? What's really going on? You were, you had a sit in that day? Yeah, I did. I protested.

You sat in your potato sack by yourself. That's right. That my mom made me wear. So 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've been others too. There was a pair of people, a man and a woman who were kind of known as like the, the best of the best for a while.

The guy was named Luke Von Leerd, I believe, I think I said that right. He held the course record for a while at Kona at eight minutes or eight hours, four minutes and eight seconds, which he set in 1996. But that guy that I've, I spoke about earlier, Jan Frodeno, he's just like, he's as good as they come as far as male triathletes go. He currently holds the course record that I believe he just set like a week ago in October 2019 at seven hours, 51 minutes and 13 seconds. Wow.

So it's sub eight hours. Yep. There's another woman competing right now who is just the best of the best. I don't know if she's the all time best. I think that still is held by Paula Newby Frazier, but her name is Daniella Lyff, L-Y-F. She's a German too. She holds the Kona course record now at eight hours, 26 minutes and 18 seconds. She set that in 2018.

I can't even lay around and watch movies for eight hours. You know? Yeah. I think that's part of this too, is having the mental stamina to stave off, you know, the voice in your head that's like, stop, stop, go eat a hot dog, stop, stop. There's a gentleman named Mark with a C, a Herrmann's, and he is a wheelchair athlete who has completed several Ironmans. There's a nun in her 70s, Sister Madonna Booter, who every year that she competes,

they have to create a new age group, which is amazing. All right. Did you look her up? No, I didn't. Oh man. She's a total B.A. Nice. So she's still competing because this is an old article.

Well, I don't know if she is now, but I just looked up photos of her in competition. Yeah. So she was competing at age 75, right? Yeah. And there's a man named Jim Ward who competed into his 80s. Wow. And I think he was not finishing the races by that point, but he did complete the race at age 77.

Man, that's crazy. Yeah. And you mentioned a father-son team, Team Hoyt. Yeah, man, Team Hoyt. So the dad, Dick Hoyt, is charged with assisting his son, Rick Hoyt, who has cerebral palsy, who's Iron Man, and has done this more than once. Yeah. 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 a schoolmate of his was paralyzed in an accident, and Rick said, dad, can we run a 5K benefit race for my friend? 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. Yeah. That's pretty impressive.

You remember in our Cerebral Palsy episode, we talked about Kyle Pease. He's from Atlanta. He's one of our listeners and fan. He and his brother, Brent, have competed in Iron Man competitions too. I think they competed at the championship as well. Amazing. Yeah. It's pretty amazing.

Check out pictures of team Hoyt because the sun rides in a raft while dad tows him in the water and then rides a bike with the seat up front for Rick. And it's just amazing. And then pushes him in a wheelchair for the running leg. Yeah. Pretty great stuff. Yeah. I can't imagine doing it myself, but also doing it with your son who has Cerebral Palsy.

It's got a... I mean, that's just amazing. Although, I'll bet you have just this built-in source of inspiration every time you start to get tired. Like, I better keep going. Totally. You know? Yeah. Very inspiring.

Which actually, I mentioned, that's kind of cheating. So, I got a couple other things. All right. Chris Lee, very famously, I think they made like a Gatorade commercial out of it. In the 1997 Kona Championship, collapsed right before the finish line, had to have emergency surgery to remove half of his colon because it had become so oxygen-starved during the race that it died. Wow.

Okay. That's a big deal to have happen to you while you're in the Ironman race. And then there was also some other famous collapsing and crawling. You really ended those, huh? It's just amazing that people not only collapse, especially when you understand what's going on in their body, but then the fact that they pick themselves up and keep going or crawl. I think Shan or Sean Welch, S-I-A-N, I can't remember the Gaelic pronunciation. And Wendy Ingram, where both women competing in the Ironman, I can't remember what year,

but they came in fifth place and fourth place respectively and they crawled. They were like competing against one another, crawling over to the finish line. Wow. It's really something to see. As a matter of fact, let's just all go watch those things now. You know what I like is when you see those things where the person is, there's one person crawling and the person can win, but they go back and they pick that person up and they cross the finish line together.

Yeah. Nothing better. No, there really isn't. There's one other thing, Chuck, and there's a ongoing dispute among marathoners and Ironman competitors over which is harder. And a lot of people say, no, a marathon is way harder because you're competing flat out the whole time. Ironman is more about endurance and Ironman's like, they're like, you clearly have never

been in an Ironman. 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 35 minutes. Okay. Okay. So that's pretty good. It's a great time.

I would love to have that. In an Ironman, the average time to finish the marathon section was four hours and 54 minutes, less than 20 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 Ironman is tougher because most people are still running flat out in the marathon portion on top of having already done the swimming and the biking. Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's not even a debate. I didn't even need those numbers. Well, some people did and now they've been swayed and they'll never open their mouths about it again. Good. Uh, if you want to know more about the Ironman, 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 Grabinowski.

Agreed. Since I say Grabinowski, it's time for 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. Uh, I often make learning, uh, with personal connections, but hesitate to pest you about 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 II as interpreters, uh, some maybe even as spies, a friend of mine 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. Wow. Uh, also when you mentioned the Navajo influence at Guadalcanal, I wondered if you had ever done a segment on the battle of Sebo Sound, the first ever nighttime naval battle, uh,

in that battle my father ship and many others went down because of a sly attack from the Japanese and a series of communication errors. It was quite a debacle. Wow. Uh, 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 Betty.

Thanks a lot, Betty. 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, uh, Cajun thing for maybe a short stuff. Yep. If you want to suggest a short stuff or a topic idea or anything like that, you can

go to StuffYouShouldKnow.com and check out our social links and get in touch with us that way. Or you can send us an email like Betty did to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. The podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.