What's interesting to me is that it says more about the people who undertake these "adventures" and do it with pretty much no rules/verifications. I can't think of many modern endurance events that simply let you do whatever you want. I think even swim crossings around the ocean has observers or the attempt gets clowned. But that's what they have to do in order to brag about "finishing it". There are some concessions that I think reasonable people allow for in an undertaking of this magnitude, but the issue becomes where does it stop? Treadmill ok? Elipitical, no? Trainer yes, Trainer with no resistance, no? So when you start blurring the lines of what you accept and what you don't but yet you apply it in an "standardized" event such as an IM (that has defined distances), you blur your reality. And then YOU are the one that becomes the person that says you did it or not. IC was the one telling us if he did it or not, even though he uploaded almost every file (i dont know what the power files looked like on the trainer set, but he never did any "fake" trainer riders of 112 miles in 4:30, etc). But he was doing things that the "hardcore" people thought auto DQ'd the attempt, but did that stop IC from claiming he did it? Nope.

So it says a lot about the person undertaking these challenges when they then provide very little direction of what they are going to do. Which is fine, but it then completely devalues the actual event you are trying to do, but they have one thing going for them. It fools the general public because they have no clue.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II