Ed Whitlock - I Can Only Wish to Run Like This...

Ed Whitlock's still going at 80

Ed Whitlock holds 13 world records in the specialized field of seniors long-distance running.

‘I’m happy to be lazy,” says Ed Whitlock, the 80-year-old Canadian man who holds most of the world’s records in the specialized field of seniors long-distance running. Whitlock, who ran a marathon in under three hours at 73 years old, lost some time to knee arthritis in 2008, and was told that he’d never run again. He took it in stride.

“I don’t find all this training particularly enjoyable, it’s kind of a drudge,” says Whitlock, a resident of Milton, Ont., who’s lived with his wife Brenda for 52 years. “I saw a joint specialist and her verdict was that my running days were over, but you don’t necessarily have to take the expert’s verdict. I’ve basically done nothing at all to treat it, just take a rest.”

Ed Whitlock’s rest is over and the holder of 13 world records will be running the Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon in Toronto this October. Whitlock, who doesn’t stretch or do yoga, generally runs solo and cuts the heels off his running shoes, pays no mind to his diet and aims to run every day for three hours to train.

“I don’t measure my pace or anything like that. I just try and run conservatively and not pound my knees,” says Whitlock, who heads out to California next week to compete at the World Masters, a track and field event that will also feature Saskatchewan’s Olga Kotelka, 92, competing in 13 events, including the pole vault and high jump. “I don’t think I’m a terribly inspirational person. I’m sure this is all some kind of ego trip in a way.”

However, for kinesiology experts, Olympic athletes and Canadian coaches, the former mining engineer has become a hero, and not just for his times. Scotiabank’s race director Alan Brookes recalls being with Whitlock at a race in Rotterdam and marvelling at his stature in the running world.

“Guys were just blown away by him,” says Brookes, who recalls that many of the younger Kenyan athletes wanted to meet this elite runner old enough to be their great grandfather, yet could still run a three-hour marathon. “If you’re 25 and training your eyeballs out, three hours is something phenomenal. Then there’s Ed, this self-effacing, dapper octogenarian floating by you with a smile. It adds up to a special mystique.”

That mystique has only grown through the years as Whitlock battled back from injury and is now attempting to run another marathon in the fall. Last September, Whitlock competed in the half-marathon and set a world record for the fastest time ever by a 79-year-old, 1 hour and 34 minutes. Today, still running without a coach and free of any commercial endorsements — and sitting with Brenda, enjoying the odd glass of wine — Whitlock says he can envision himself running marathons for another 10 years.

“When I’m racing it doesn’t really feel any different, when I look at the clock it’s a big difference, but when I’m running it basically feels the same way it did in my teens,” he says. “It’s more difficult to get going, I creak out of the house, but once I get the bones moving, I still have a fair amount of speed.”

Ed Whitlocks's five rules for marathon running

Ed Whitlock is 80-years-old and holds 13 world records in long-distance running. As he prepares to run the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, we asked him for his best five tips on how to replicate his extraordinary running career.

5. Personalize your training: “Everyone has to find what kind of training works best for them. For me, three hours of running every day works best. But you need to find out what works best for you.”

4. Take each run in stride: “I used to run on the outskirts of Milton and I’d get into these competitions with myself: ‘God, I’m slow today.’ Now, runing these small loops in the cemetary, I don’t count them or time them. I try not to get in those competitions with myself.”

3. Run alone: “It’s more enjoyable running in a group, but then you have to run at someone else’s pace and not your own. Sometimes my youngest son joins me, but I don’t particularly welcome him. He’s generally a couple of paces in front of me, saying, ‘Why are you running so slow?’ I prefer not to run in a group.’

2. Don’t over-think stuff: “I don’t do any real stretching and eat far more fats than would be recommended, including terrible stuff like trans fats and butter. I’m not feasting on Big Macs and chips, but I do eat fish and chips on occasion, and Brenda and I probably drink a fair amount of wine. I try and avoid any stress.”

1. Enjoy your finish lines: “I don’t actively dislike running, but I don’t suffer from runner’s high or any of that kind of stuff. Training’s something to be endured rather than be enjoyed, but I’m always very happy when it’s over.”


be inspired
johnny boy


**credit to the Nat'l Post

Just Think It

How to motivate your brain to motivate you

Motivation – the sense of drive that energizes our actions – can often seem elusive. Important goals can take a frustrating amount of time and effort to achieve. And the mere thought of such exertion can be enough to put one off task.

What does it take to push through these mental blocks and accomplish what we so desperately want? An entire industry of “you-can-do-it” books and pep-talk speakers offers a variety of solutions from action plans to attitude makeovers.
But advances in neuroscience suggest that it ultimately boils down to competing signals in the brain and understanding how to influence the outcome of this competition. Simply put, our drive to do something arises from the brain’s calculations of what we can expect to get out of it (the pros) and at what cost (the cons).
Human neuroimaging studies suggest that the nucleus accumbens, a basal ganglia structure deep within each of the brain’s hemispheres, is critically involved in anticipating potential reward. This structure seems to work with other regions, such as the lower and innermost areas of the prefrontal cortex, to provide signals about how rewarding it would be to accomplish a potential action. The larger the potential benefit, the stronger the motivating signals.
Activity in other brain regions signal potential costs. The front-most section of the insular cortex, nestled between the frontal and temporal lobes, seems to be particularly sensitive to potential losses, along with the nearby amygdala. Activity in these regions has been linked with feelings of anxiety, which may explain the sense of unease we feel when faced with a risky prospect.
Brain scans suggest that de-motivating signals are also provided by other regions. Consider the putamen, for example, located above the nucleus accumbens and resembling a pair of small oblong earmuffs. Activity in a part of this structure has been shown to reflect the amount of effort required to do something. Other dampening signals arise from doubts about our chances of success or how long it could take.
Our sense of motivation can thus be seen in terms of a battle in the brain. The “do-it” signals constantly compete with the “don’t-do-it” signals to determine our course of action (or inaction).
The challenge for many people is that the “don’t-do-it” signals are more salient than they need to be. The sting of a prior failure, for instance, can increase our sensitivity to the possibility of failing again, giving extra strength to the “don’t-do-it” forces.
Fortunately, recent research suggests that we have far greater control over the signals in our head that we might imagine. Indeed a number of simple mental strategies can help us to bias the competition in favour of the “do-it” signals to increase our sense of drive and motivation to accomplish our desired goals.
Attention is one of the most effective means of battling de-motivating brain signals. The brain’s attention system, which includes some of the top and outermost regions of the frontal and parietal lobes, acts to enhance neural activity in areas that contribute to whatever we are focused on and reduce activity and potential distraction from other areas of the brain.
Reminding yourself how nice it will be to accomplish a specific goal, for example, can be an important crutch. Attending to the potential reward increases activity in reward-related areas, and reduces activity in areas that might otherwise bog you down with fear of failure or concern over how difficult the task is.
Ultimately, the greatest motivational tool may be the realization that you can take control of the various signals in your head. And like most things, the more you do it, the better you get.


so, think "fast"...
johnny boy

10% Rule - Whatever.

When Running Up Mileage, is the "10 Percent Rule" Bunk?

A runner friend of mine, Martin, suffered an injury that laid him up on crutches for 3 months. Before the injury he was running 100km weeks - and wants to get back to that as soon as possible., but also avoid re-injuring himself [esp with overdistance]. So: what's the best way to do this, ad, more importantly, how quickly can he ramp up the miles?

Martin decided to follow the 10 percent rule, one of the most widely known in running. It does not specify a starting distance but says you should increase your mileage no more than 10 percent a week. The idea is that this is a safe way to increase your distance without risking injury.
(Within limits, of course; if you started at 30 minutes a day and kept increasing 10 percent a week, after 41 weeks you’d be running 24 hours a day.)
Martin’s first run was on March 15. He ran half a mile, on a treadmill. Over the next five weeks, he increased his distance to ten miles a week, then began using the ten percent rule. Last week he ran 22 miles, including a long run of 10 miles. He calculates that it will take him a total of 18 weeks from when he started his program to get back to running 60 miles a week.

I, like most runners, have heard of the rule and, like most, tried it once. But, like many, I did not stay with it. Another friend, Rafael Escandon of Philadelphia, tried it years ago when he was training for his first marathon. It was the slowest marathon he ever ran, slower even than one when he tore his calf muscle at mile 17 and somehow forced himself to finish the race, limping for the last 9 miles. Cliff Rosen, a distance runner in Maine, said he tried it once but “it didn’t seem to work.”

That made me wonder, Where did this rule come from?

Carl Foster, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse, said its origin “is lost in history,” and added, “Whether it is right is undocumented.”

It might be more correct to say “almost undocumented.” There is at least one large and rigorous study of the 10 percent rule, the sort of study that is a rarity in exercise science. Conducted by Dr. Ida Buist, Dr. Steef W. Bredeweg, Dr. Ron L. Diercks and their colleagues at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, it’s one of a continuing series of studies on how to prevent running injuries.

The injury problem is huge, said Dr. Diercks, head of the sports medicine program at the university — as many as 40 percent of runners are injured, usually to their feet, ankles, knees or legs. At his university’s running clinics, 30 to 40 percent of beginning runners gave up because of injuries.

Although there are many training programs for beginning runners, none are based on good scientific evidence, Dr. Diercks said. He and his colleagues decided to conduct such a study.

They investigated the 10 percent rule because it is so popular and seemed to make sense with its gradual increase in effort. The study involved 532 novice runners whose average age was 40 and who wanted to train for a four-mile race held every year in the small town of Groningen.

Half the participants were assigned to a training program that increased their running time by 10 percent a week over 11 weeks, ending at 90 minutes a week. The others had an eight-week program that ended at 95 minutes a week. Everyone warmed up before each run by walking for five minutes. And everyone ran just three days a week.

And the results? The two groups had the same injury rate — about 1 in 5 runners.

Maybe, the investigators thought, they might prevent injuries with a conditioning program before the training started. So they did another clinical trial, randomly assigning one group of novice runners to a four-week program of walking, hopping and jumping rope before starting the running program. The others started right in with running.

The conditioning program had no effect. Once again, about 1 in 5 runners in both groups wound up with injuries.

The researchers are at a loss. Most people who take up running, Dr. Diercks says, think it will be easy — all they need is a pair of shoes. But in fact, running is a difficult sport, and most people quit before it becomes fun, often because they are injured. Experienced runners know how to adjust and return to the sport. Novices usually do not, he says.

Now the Groningen group wants to do a large and rigorous study of barefoot running, comparing it to running with shoes — another study that has never been done.

For now, though, the lesson is that running lore often is just that. And the 10 percent rule is a case in point.

“Nobody found out if it works or what is the basis of it,” Dr. Diercks said.

And that is the way it often goes in exercise science. People “hear something, they read something,” he said, “and then it’s like a religion.”

So, bottom line: ran further and faster - you may live longer (see yesterday's Blog!).

     "2006: racing 280km across the Atacama Desert"

Johnny Boy

**credit to the NY Times

See? I TOLD You This Was Fine!

How much exercise is too much?

("well, that hurt")

A little bit of exercise is good for you, but too much is bad for you. That seems to be a fairly widespread societal view — certainly anyone who trains seriously as a runner or cyclist or other endurance athlete is familiar with all the comments about how training so much can’t be good for you. And to be fair, there has been some recent research that raises questions about whether running multiple marathons over an extended period of time can damage your heart.

So I was very interested to see a study, forwarded by Brian Taylor (thanks!), that just appeared in the International Journal of Sports Medicine.  Spanish researchers decided to study the records of cyclists who rode the Tour de France between 1930 and 1964 — an example of “extreme” exercise if ever there was one — and see how long they lived compared to the general population. They focused on riders from France, Italy and Belgium (who comprised 834 of the 1229 riders for whom birth records were available), and they compared the longevity of those riders to the general population from their home country in the year of their birth.  Here are the aggregate results in graphical form:

The trend is pretty clear. The age by which 50% of the population died was 73.5 for the general cohort, and 81.5 for the Tour de France riders — who, according to the paper, ride about 30,000 to 35,000 km per year (though I’d be surprised in the riders competing in the 1930s were training as hard as modern riders).

So what does this tell us? Well, as in any case-control study, there are plenty of limitations on the conclusions we can draw. First of all, this doesn’t prove that “extreme” exercise is better than “moderate” exercise. It may be that riding 30,000 km/year is significantly better than doing no exercise at all (or than doing the relative pittance that the average modern person does), but is still worse for you than riding, say, 10,000 km/year. But it’s pretty clear that extreme levels of aerobic training don’t shorten your life. As the authors put it:

In our opinion, physicians, health professionals and general population should not hold the impression that strenuous exercise and/or high-level aerobic competitive sports have deleterious effects, are bad for one’s health, and shorten life.

It’s also worth mentioning some potential confounding factors. The paper notes that former athletes tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol and have a healthier diet than the general population. Fair enough: these factors almost certainly contribute to the increased longevity of the riders. Again, the conclusion we can draw isn’t that extreme riding makes you healthier; it’s that it doesn’t make you less healthy.

What about genetics and selection bias? Maybe the Tour de France riders tend to be the type of lucky person with a great metabolism who’s destined to be healthy for his entire life no matter what he does, and it’s those great genetics that predisposed him to become a competitive cyclist. Again, not an unreasonable point. In response, the authors point out a 2010 British Journal of Sports Medicine paper in which researchers in Sweden compared the genetic profiles of 100 world-class male endurance athletes (”Olympic finalists or Europe/World Champions and Tour de France finishers”) with 100 matched controls. They looked at 33 “risk-related mutations and polymorphisms” associated with cardiovascular disease, hypertension, insulin resistance, cancer, and other major causes of mortality — and found no difference:

[T]he overall picture suggests that there is no evidence that elite male world-class endurance athletes are genetically predisposed to have a lower disease risk than non-athletic controls. Thus, the previously documented association between strenuous aerobic exercise undertaken by elite athletes and increased life expectancy is likely not biased by genetic selection.

Bottom line: if the question is “How much exercise is too much?”, I still think the answer is “Way, way more than you think.”

*credit to Alex Hutchinson

Less is More?

When Warming Up for Exercise, Less May Be More

Few aspects of sports are as wrapped in myth as the warm-up. Most of us dutifully warm up in some way before we work out or compete, but according to a new study, “little is known about how an athlete should warm up.” In fact, as that study and other recent research make clear, the more scientists study warm-ups, the less they seem to understand about the practice.

The new study found, for instance, that some athletes warm up so thoroughly that they are too tired to perform well afterward. In the study, which waspublished last month in The Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at the University of Calgary in Alberta asked track cyclists to complete, on alternate days, their usual warm-up or a shorter, easier version. Cyclists, especially those who sprint around a circular velodrome, are well known (even notorious) for the length and intricacy of their warm-ups.Few aspects of sports are as wrapped in myth as the warm-up. Most of us dutifully warm up in some way before we work out or compete, but according to a new study, “little is known about how an athlete should warm up.” In fact, as that study and other recent research make clear, the more scientists study warm-ups, the less they seem to understand about the practice.

“We suspected that that warm-up was harder than it should be,” said Brian R. MacIntosh, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Calgary and an author of the study, along with Elias K. Tomaras, a graduate student.In this case, the volunteers, highly trained male racers, first followed their standard warm-up routine, beginning with 20 minutes of riding. The intensity of the pedaling increased until it reached about 95 percent of each rider’s maximal heart rate. That session was followed immediately by four hard intervals, or timed sprints, during which the rider would pedal as hard as he could for eight minutes.

A year earlier, Dr. MacIntosh had studied sprint skaters’ warm-ups as part of the national skating team’s preparation for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The skaters “were warming up for two hours for a 35-second race,” Dr. MacIntosh said. Afterward, he found, the skaters’ leg muscles contracted with less force than they’d generated before the warm-up. In warming up their muscles, they’d fatigued them.

The cyclists, as it turned out, were similarly tiring their muscles during their standard warm-up. When the researchers stimulated the riders’ leg muscles electrically, they found that the muscles contracted more forcefully before the riders’ usual warm-up than after it.

After a more leisurely 15-minute warm-up, though, with the highest intensity reaching only about 65 percent of each rider’s maximal heart rate and including only one interval, the riders’ legs were significantly less fatigued, the researchers found. Their muscles contracted with more force during electrical stimulation than after the standard warm-up, and the riders performed significantly better during a 30-second all-out pedaling effort on a specialized stationary bicycle.

“This research provides an argument against the traditional ‘more is better’ warm-up concept that is adopted by many competitive athletes,” Dr. MacIntosh and his colleague wrote in their study, which they helpfully titled “Less Is More.”

Unfortunately, the study did not answer some fundamental questions about warming up, beginning with whether most of us need to be engaging in the practice at all.

“We don’t know the answer to that question,” Dr. MacIntosh said. A warm-up is thought to allow tissues literally to become heated, to reach a temperature at which they are, presumably, more flexible and malleable and ready for the demands of further exercise. But it hasn’t been proved that warm muscles perform better than colder ones or that they are less prone to injury, Dr. MacIntosh said.

According to the largest review and analysis to date of the research on warm-ups, which was published last year in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, a warm-up was “shown to improve performance” to a limited extent in most of the sports studied, which included running, swimming, cycling, golfing, basketball, softball and bowling. But as the review’s lead author, Andrea Fradkin, an associate professor at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, told me, most of the studies were small-scale and short-term, and their methods were inconsistent.

In some studies, people stretched to warm up, she said. In others, she said, “they did jumping jacks or passed a medicine ball around and then raced bicycles.” None of the studies persuasively showed that any one approach to warming up was best, or even that a warm-up necessarily would make you significantly better at your sport or prevent injury.

The science about how to warm up “is not well advanced,” Dr. Fradkin said. “We haven’t answered the big questions yet,” she said, about whether to warm up or why to warm up, “let alone the smaller, specific ones” about how.

Which may leave many of us wondering if those 15 or 20 minutes (or, rarely, two hours) that most of us have been devoting to preparing our bodies for a full workout may have been wasted.

“I wish I could say, one way or the other,” Dr. MacIntosh said. “But we don’t know. My guess is that, if you’ve been following a warm-up routine for a while and you haven’t gotten injured and you perform well when you race, then that warm-up is working for you. Keep it up.”

On the other hand, if your legs feel heavy and slow after your warm-up, you might be overdoing it. Experiment with shortening and reducing the intensity of your warm-up, Dr. MacIntosh suggests. “And if you find something that works, let us know,” he urged. You will notably have advanced the state of knowledge in this particular field of exercise science.

Rant #3: Self Seeding and Egos

Ok - rant #3 - self seeding.

Yes - self seeding. There, I said it again.

What in the world, aside from (i) stupidity, (ii) ego and/or (iii) a combination of stupidity and ego - possesses people in races to start right on the line WHEN THEY SUCK???!!!

It happens every race I enter - there are always one or two runners [or triathletes - more on that below] who who insist on creeping up, all the way up, to stand with their toes on the starting line.

Now, don't get me wrong: I myself am by no means racing elite/pro times, and am aware of the fact if I stand dead centre and on the line, I am going to get passed [or tripped and elbowed, and not in that order!] within about .7 seconds! It does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that if you are standing among 2 dozen skinny, racing-flat-wearing, angry, anxious and really-friggin'-fast looking guys [and gals], well, chances are they are likely (likely, but there are occasional posers, but let us disregard them for this rant!) - they are pretty much faster than you.

Case in point - I raced the Toronto Marathon 5km a few weeks ago.

There were no corrals to assist with seeding - it was "mano a mano", but, most of us in the first three or four rows "self seeded". You look around, ask what someone will likely run, and step aside if they are going sub 15...like a capitalist market economy [can you say "Reaganomics"?], we self regulate.

But not everyone; no, that would be tooooo easy.

Dead centre on the starting line, two overweight, jeans-wearing, flannel-shirt-clad women, just stood there. Hell, I think they were also wearing those old Cougar boots with the orange tongues that the skanky girls used to tuck their striped Jordache jeans into (ya, they were that old). Um, someone said, you ladies may want to sort of move over to the side 'cause there are some pretty fast people all around and behind you (I personally wanted to say something but was worried they may throw a smack down and they outweighed me and my (SHAMELESS PLUG) Brooks T7 by about 40lbs - discretion is indeed the better part of valor). Their response was blunt and to the point: "no - we paid the same amount you did and we have every right to stand where we want" Blah blah blah blah.

No one else dared or wanted to continue pissing into the wind on this issue, and so, sure enough, the guns goes off and within a nanosecond or three, they were caught up in the frenzied start like sand in a wave (I just thought of that simile - pretty catchy, no?).

And down they went - as I passed by them a few feet away, out of the corner of my eye I saw the larger Hudson Bay blanket wearing momma-runner hit pavement like the Titanic smacking the first 'berg (that would be my second simile).

Howls of protest, fading as my lightning feet whisked me far, far away, were heard from both. Sucks to be you, a few guys up front wryly noted; too bad, so sad, was the general theme.

None of us was being elitist; no one was saying that these 2 should not come out and run or race. Rather, it was simply a question of common sense and a small amount of good judgment - which was clearly lacking with the Hoser Twins, Barb and Diane McKenzie. Look around and use your head was all that was being suggested.

Would you stand on the cusp of a Double Black Diamond at Sunshine if you had only ever skied at Mt St Louis on the bunny hill? Would you take an F-18 Hornet out for a spin if you had just finished your first flying lesson? Dive the Mariana Trench after an introductory scuba course at Club Med pool? No. No And no. So why risk fate, get in everyone's way, and ruin your own experience, all too stand up front in a fast running race?

Stupid is as stupid does.

Now, triathletes do the same thing - be it an Ironman or Sprint, there are always "athletes" who start up front on the swim start and would have trouble drown-proofing to the finish. Why? God only knows - but in deep, open water, it is not only stupid, it is really dangerous...

these are probably the same people who insist on jogging and walking in Lane 1 at the track; who do side stroke and elementary backstroke in the Fast Lane at the pool, and then getty pissy when you either (i) suggest politely they may enjoy their swim more in Lane 12 [haha - pools are at most 8 lanes] or (ii) pass them down the middle and when they stop at the wall in the middle of your flip turn, bellow at the lifegurds that you are "interfering with their swim".

As my old friend Jack Nicholson so regally stated in his speech as President in Mars Attacks: "why can't we all just get along".

And use some common sense.

run fast

Johnny Boy

$1000 Race Entry - Ironman morphs in to "Goldman"

So, i'm back - sorry for the break, just got lazy and training was killing me. 

C'est la vie.

I am racing this weekend -  and was miffed the cost is $40 - and then I read this:

New York Ironman Will Be World’s Most Expensive Triathlon at $1,000 Entry

By Michael Buteau - Jun 8, 2011

New York’s inaugural Ironman could cost as much as $1,000 to enter, making it the world’s most- expensive triathlon.

Officials at World Triathlon Corp., Ironman’s parent company, said they’ll have to spend “several million” dollars on permits, law enforcement, medical personnel and other race- related expenses for next year’s endurance event.

“We’re still in the process of getting in all of the final bids and contracts,” Steve Meckfessel, chief operating officer of World Triathlon, said in an interview.

World Triathlon yesterday said the 140.6-mile (226.2- kilometer) competition will be held in the New York metropolitan area on Aug. 11, 2012. Athletes will race through parts of New York City and suburbs in New York and New Jersey.

In addition to permitting expenses, organizers plan to lease six barges to be placed in the Hudson River to be used for the start of the 2.4-mileswim portion. A platform will also be constructed across the river to enable swimmers to exit the water and begin the 112-mile bike leg in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Costs will exceed those at other Ironman events, such as the World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, and the European Championship inFrankfurt, Germany, Meckfessel said. An entry fee for a typical Ironman event is $575.

“$750 is certainly a given,” Meckfessel said. “Most of our prices worldwide are about $600. It’s going to be higher than that.”

Title Sponsor

The company expects to have a corporate title sponsor in place before the race, Chief Sales Officer Mike Pine said.

“Being in New York, there’s so much opportunity with title sponsors that we haven’t been able to attract in the past,” he said. “Things like airlines, hotel chains, health insurance or even an alcohol partner.”

Registration for the race will open June 15 on a first- come, first-serve basis. The field will consist of about 2,500 professional and amateur athletes.

“The first year of a triathlon, you don’t really know what the course can handle,” said John Korff, president of Korff Enterprises, which will organize the race in partnership with World Triathlon. “It could grow to 2,800, 3,200 or even 3,500.”

Korff has staged the Nautica NYC Triathlon at the Olympic distance of 31.9 miles for the past 11 years. That race is now part of the Ironman 5150 Series.

The New York Ironman race is being put on in partnership with the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity that helps fund poverty programs and groups in New York. The goal is to raise $250,000 this year for the charity.

‘Tough Ironman’

Robin Hood Foundation team member Charles Macintosh, a mortgage trader at Morgan Keegan Inc., has done more than 100 triathlons and won the Janus Corporate Challenge division of the Nautica NYC Triathlon in 2008 and 2009.

“I suspect it will be an extremely fast swim,” said Macintosh, who’s done Ironman France and is shooting for under 10 hours at Ironman Florida later this year. “It’s probably going to be a pretty hilly bike course. All in all it’s going to be a tough Ironman.”

The cost may not deter competitors. About 2,000 of the approximate 3,000 competitors in the 2010 NYC Triathlon worked in the financial services industry, race officials said, and Ironman competitors have an average annual income of $161,000, according to World Triathlon.

Race Course

The Hudson River swim will be followed by a bike ride from the Palisades Parkway on the west side of the Hudson to Fort Lee, New Jersey, after looping through New Jersey’s Bergen and New York’s Rockland counties. The race concludes with a 26.2- mile run from Fort Lee to Riverside Park in Manhattan.

Competitors have 17 hours to finish, making it difficult to close large sections of the city, organizers said. Because of this, most of the race’s bike portion will take place outside of Manhattan.

The event joins 26 other long-course races held around the globe by World Triathlon. The company yesterday also announced a new Ironman-distance event in Mont-Tremblant, Quebec, to be staged Aug. 19, 2012.