Marathon vs. Triathlon

Lately, and long before that, there seems to have been a little, uh, difference of opinion about which is the better masochistic pursuit: marathon or triathlon? A couple of things got me thinking about this, one of which was the July 4th Ironman tauntfest going on at Angry’s Place, accompanied by much gnashing of teeth and the realization that life would be given over to training for the next year or two. AR’s inner turmoil sounds familiar, because I’ve heard that frightening inner voice dangle flat tires and mouthfuls of salt water at me before, too. The other thing was an evening running seminar at my gym a couple of weeks ago, where the first speaker was a sports doctor with a triathlon problem. Well, no problem for him, but before he finished his remarks, he described runners as generally ‘neurotic’ in their training; while I briefly considered raising my hand and ever so nicely requesting, if he had the time, to please S.T.F.U., I decided this in itself was proof of some running neuroses, and by doing this, the triathletes would win. Zen hits you in the weirdest places, doesn’t it? Anyway, he did go on to say that he sees far fewer injuries among triathletes because they cross-train. And sooner or later, all runners will become injured. Did you get that? As if to drive home the point, a week later the owner of my gym (who weight-trains runners, too), asked me what I thought of the seminar and I expressed some reservations about the non-constructiveness of the tri-doctor’s remarks. With Nietzschean finality, said owner stared directly into my eyes and informed me that ‘all runners will become injured’ sooner or later, just like that creepy old man in Poltergeist II who told JoBeth Williams ‘You’re gonna die!’. There’s nothing like getting news that drops your core body temperature by five degrees.

Hmmm.

Having completed around 600 miles worth of marathons and ultras, and 0 miles of triathlons, you can guess where I’m usually at on all this, but I still have big respect for those who can swim, bike, run, and throw up breakfast on cue. Since I’m always looking for a tortured, goofy and perhaps, sly metaphor for blog issues du jour, I kept thinking about how one pursuit/one sport could compete with three damn sports at one time. And taking a turn to the goofy, I quickly remembered a battle between two favorites from my larval stage: Godzilla and Ghidrah. Yes, he’s getting ready to compare a man in a rubber suit fighting a three-headed rubber dragon hanging by fishing line, to a marathon versus a triathlon. A tortured metaphor for torturous experiences.
So like our pal Godzilla (or Gojira as he’s known in Tokyo), the marathon is the monster (race) many of us end up ‘enjoying’ sooner or later. And Ghidrah’s three heads, like the three sports you triathletes embrace, is destructive and over-the-top in pain and ‘what was I thinking’-ness. By movie’s end, Godzilla always bitchslapped Ghidrah around cardboard suburbs, so that’s where the metaphor ends... I think.

So is the marathon ‘better’? Are marathoners more attuned to running, and better athletes because they are more focused on doing one sport better rather than three at one event? But are triathaloners better athletes because they’re less prone to injury? Did you notice that the word ‘trathaloner’ contains the word ‘loner’? Looks like I’ll be asking more questions today than answering them. You’re welcome.

Well, I don’t know the answers to all that, but I gotta say that you’re going to see many more participants in marathons than triathlons, which may mean… just running 26.2 miles is relatively easier (a no-brainer when compared to the endless Ironman. Whoops, did I just mention having no brain and an Ironman in the same sentence? OK, OK, I’ll give it a rest). Easier may not mean better, though, and I imagine the triathlete would agree with that. So if personal challenge is your game, the triathlon is the way. Then again, why not just add another event? Push yourself to the edge with another sport, why don’t you? Scrapbooking, anyone?

And are triathletes just bicyclists who decided to tack on swimming and running? What’s the motivation? At least a marathon has ONE finish line, you’ve got 2 plus a final, final one you can crawl across and collapse on. I ain’t lyin’, I once watched the typically sentimental highlights of the NYC Triathlon on TV on a Sunday afternoon and saw the winner go across the finish line, hug his girlfriend, turn his head, open his mouth wide, and jettison every Gatorade and gel product he’d ingested over the last ten years. To be honest, it made me feel kind of glad to see that the super-fit could be so mortal.

Well, I haven’t answered much here beyond discussing cross-training as a way to lessen running injuries. And somehow tying the ‘-Thon War’ concept into 40 year-old Japanese monster movies. But I do know we’re probably doing it all for the same reasons, and I guess some soul-searching is in order. The divide may not be so great, after all, and when you get down to it, why put your body through that much stress? Something tells me the real question and answer session arrives on race day, starting around 3 miles before the finish line.