As usual, Tony was very strong in all three sports, finishing IMC in 29th overall in 9:52. This was his 15th straight IMC going back to 1991 ! Not bad for a 44 year old. The guy is solid every year. Age has no effect on him.
Tony qualified for Kona at St. Croix, and is doing the IMC-Kona double, passing up this year on Ultraman where he has finished 2nd for three straight years. Last year he opened the day 3 double marathon from Hawi to Kona airport in sub 3. Imagine running the Hawaii Ironman bike course, and having the balls to open with a sub 3 knowing that you still have to run another full marathon in the heat of the lava fields. Amazing.
Congrats Tony. Us young guys have no excuse. Keep it up !
Imagine running the Hawaii Ironman bike course, and having the balls to open with a sub 3 knowing that you still have to run another full marathon in the heat of the lava fields. Amazing.
I’ve got the balls for that! I just don’t have the athletic ability…
The funny part is that if you ask Tony, he’d be the first guy to say that he does not have the athletic ability to have run that sub 3 to start the ultraman double marathon. What he does have is the will to work harder than pretty well anyone on this forum and the ability to race at the point of blowup for hours on end (thus the statement of “imagine having the balls…”).
Get up at 5 am. Out on the road by 5:30 am in minus 20 degree temperature. Run 30K to work. Showered and in the office before 8 am. Swim 4 K at lunch (you know those military guys get 90 min if they are training at lunch…). Run 30K home in minus 15. Both runs in the dark. No way you’d get me to do a training day like that. 60K of running and 4K of swimming in one day ! The guy is a total stud. No wonder he can leave winter in Kingston Ontario and show up in St. Croix and clean up and get a kona slot. Amazing !
Man, all you have to do is put “ultraman” in the title, and you get all the stud, like Gordo and Seth coming out.
As a point of clarification, not only did O’Keeffe run sub 3 for that opening day 3 double marathon, but so did Seth Bitting (sp ?). Seth, you might want to clarify, but I believe Jonas Colting also ran sub 3 as you guys tried to do the WWF tag team effect and bury him for the second half :-).
Seth, I have sent you Tony’s work email address via PM.
Guys, I wrote a little profile on O’Keeffe in this xtri article on the Peterborough half Ironman:
Pass on my congratulations to Tony. The guy is a stud as well as being a hell of a nice guy. At UM Tony was just under 3 for the first 26.2 and Lon and Jonas were right on 3hrs. Seth ran a saner pace but still fast as hell.
Seth,
I was going to send you the pictures from UM but I couldn’t read the e-mail address you wrote down. I also have a copy of the TV show if you don’t have it yet. You and Tony are in it together in one part.
Sorry, had Set and Lon counfused for a moment. To me, these guys are all unreal !
I was just thinking of that O’keeffe 30K run to work - 4K swim and lunch -30K run home training day. The more I think about it, this is insanely difficult. That’s more mileage than my average running WEEK !
Sorry, had Set and Lon counfused for a moment. To me, these guys are all unreal !
I was just thinking of that O’keeffe 30K run to work - 4K swim and lunch -30K run home training day. The more I think about it, this is insanely difficult. That’s more mileage than my average running WEEK !
LOL…I was thinking the same thing. I was working on my '06 ATP last night when you post his workout. Suddenly my big run focus weeks didn’t look that tough.
