FEATURES

What Ironmaning Does to Your Bod...

Wednesday, 10 April 2013 01:10

The following story explains exactly what the body goes through over 140.6 miles of racing. This story originally appeared in the January/February, 2009 edition of Inside Triathlon magazine.

By Matt Fitzgerald

From the outside, swimming, cycling and running appear as movement. But from inside the triathlete

mitochondria at a breakneck pace, as though someone has put a DVD of the process at rest on 4x fast forward. Armies of oxygen radicals punch holes in muscle cell membranes, causing a general deterioration that calls to mind those computer animations that show a person aging 20 years in 10 seconds.