I had a bone to pick with the whole thing because as somebody that has done 10 self-supported ironmans and a self-supported ultraman, for charity btw, I knew how insanely difficult they are to pull off even for somebody with lots of experience. The logistics and redundancy planning for contingencies is crazy. And you simply can't know what to plan for unless you've done lots of ironmans and know all the things that could go wrong. So here was somebody bragging how she is going to do 50 in 50 different places in a row with no experience? It was basically impossible, and we saw that on day one where Haiti wouldn't even let her bring her bike in. No amount of sweet spot intervals are going to get you past that. You have to have traveled to an Ironman and had your bike lost or smashed by the airlines to remember to have backup bikes. Yet here she was getting even more attention than our best pros for having done nothing yet.
So I had an idea for the thread - the Deadpool. There was a guy a few years ago that was going to swim the length of the Amazon River. Our office put up a bingo chart where you could put what week he would quit or die and from what cause. Weeks were down the left, reasons were across the top. You pick a spot and put in 5 bucks. 5 weeks, malaria. 2 weeks, killed by natives. 6 weeks, "that fish that swims up your peehole and thrashes around." Whatever week, whatever reason, we had it. It was a huge hit and people loved keeping up with his status.
I started the deadpool for this 50/50/50 thing and that took off, probably because everybody finally had a place to put their own reason why her goal was ridiculous and when it would happen. What was very interesting was nobody really gave her more than a few days. I was an outlier at "5 days, hydration issues." There was nothing like "30 days, blisters" not to mention 50 days. This really got people debating and the thread rolling.
And to the point some people try to make that her doing whatever doesn't affect your own accomplishments... yes it does. She didn't even have to do
any to get the idea in a lot of people's head that she could, would, even
did do 50/50/50. So when you say you've done and ironman, now you have to deal with the general public saying, "I heard they aren't that hard. Didn't some lady do 50 in a row with no training?" No, she didn't. She said she was
going to, but couldn't. But the public doesn't remember that part. All they hear is you did (a proper) one but didn't somebody else on ESPN do 50 in a row? How hard could it be if somebody else did 50 nonstop? More than a few rounds of golf?
So once she got started, We kept repeating if you do them, you have to do the full distances or they don't count. Actually a lot of people started saying that. Then we got blowback from some people that don't know any better saying it doesn't matter. Yes, it does matter if you want to parade the ironman name around and get fame and fortune from it. And we have the technology to check. It's easy... do the whole distance and you can call them an ironman. Don't and it's not. And don't blame the pool owner or the airlines. You planned this mess, so own this and you can get the credit if you do it. We got a lot of pushback on that with all the "for the children" stuff whenever she had logistics and measurement issues, but she found no sympathy from us. If she had actually gotten some ironman experience, she wouldn't have had those kinds of problems. Her failures where totally her own making.
She did do two ironmans in a row, which got my respect for her fitness in general. That's pretty badass. And I think people should lay off of her now since she's retreated home and licking her wounds. There's a lot of unnecessary piling on and being mean now by people, and they forget she's a person and we all make mistakes and it's over so let it go. I don't think she's this horrible liar and fraud that intentionally wants to ruin the ironman world. I think she is a victim of the "social media as a career" disaster nowdays and got herself surrounded by yesmen that allowed her mouth to write checks that her lack of experience couldn't cash. It affects us, but it wasn't totally on purpose.
And that's the story.
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