Interesting Endurance Article (Very Long)

[Stu Gotz]

The endurance guys on the board might find this most interesting, but a good read for all nonetheless. A word of caution, the article is very long. (3 parts)

That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stranger
By DANIEL COYLE

Jure Robic, the Slovene soldier who might be the world's best
ultra-endurance athlete, lives in a small fifth-floor apartment near the
railroad tracks in the town of Koroska Bela. By nature and vocation, Robic
is a sober-minded person, but when he appears at his doorway, he is smiling.
Not a standard-issue smile, but a wild and fidgety grin, as if he were
trying to contain some huge and mysterious secret.

Robic catches himself, strides inside and proceeds to lead a swift tour of
his spare, well-kept apartment. Here is his kitchen. Here is his bike. Here
are his wife, Petra, and year-old son, Nal. Here, on the coffee table, are
whiskey, Jägermeister, bread, chocolate, prosciutto and an inky,
vegetable-based soft drink he calls Communist Coca-Cola, left over from the
old days. And here, outside the window, veiled by the nightly ice fog, stand
the Alps and the Austrian border. Robic shows everything, then settles onto
the couch. It's only then that the smile reappears, more nervous this time,
as he pulls out a DVD and prepares to reveal the unique talent that sets him
apart from the rest of the world: his insanity.

Tonight, Robic's insanity exists only in digitally recorded form, but the
rest of the time it swirls moodily around him, his personal batch of ice
fog. Citizens of Slovenia, a tiny, sports-happy country that was part of the
former Yugoslavia until 1991, might glow with beatific pride at the success
of their ski jumpers and handballers, but they tend to become a touch
unsettled when discussing Robic, who for the past two years has dominated
ultracycling's hardest, longest races. They are proud of their man,
certainly, and the way he can ride thousands of miles with barely a rest.
But they're also a little, well, concerned. Friends and colleagues tend to
sidle together out of Robic's earshot and whisper in urgent,
hospital-corridor tones.

''He pushes himself into madness,'' says Tomaz Kovsca, a journalist for
Slovene television. ''He pushes too far.'' Rajko Petek, a 35-year-old fellow
soldier and friend who is on Robic's support crew, says: ''What Jure does is
frightening. Sometimes during races he gets off his bike and walks toward us
in the follow car, very angry.''

What do you do then?

Petek glances carefully at Robic, standing a few yards off. ''We lock the
doors,'' he whispers.

When he overhears, Robic heartily dismisses their unease. ''They are
joking!'' he shouts. ''Joking!'' But in quieter moments, he acknowledges
their concern, even empathizes with it — though he's quick to assert that
nothing can be done to fix the problem. Robic seems to regard his racetime
bouts with mental instability as one might regard a beloved but unruly pet:
awkward and embarrassing at times, but impossible to live without.
''During race, I am going crazy, definitely,'' he says, smiling in bemused
despair. ''I cannot explain why is that, but it is true.''

The craziness is methodical, however, and Robic and his crew know its
pattern by heart. Around Day 2 of a typical weeklong race, his speech goes
staccato. By Day 3, he is belligerent and sometimes paranoid. His short-term
memory vanishes, and he weeps uncontrollably. The last days are marked by
hallucinations: bears, wolves and aliens prowl the roadside; asphalt cracks
rearrange themselves into coded messages. Occasionally, Robic leaps from his
bike to square off with shadowy figures that turn out to be mailboxes. In a
2004 race, he turned to see himself pursued by a howling band of
black-bearded men on horseback.

''Mujahedeen, shooting at me,'' he explains. ''So I ride faster.''

His wife, a nurse, interjects: ''The first time I went to a race, I was not
prepared to see what happens to his mind. We nearly split up.''

The DVD spins, and the room vibrates with Wagner. We see a series of surreal
images that combine violence with eerie placidity, like a Kubrick film.
Robic's spotlit figure rides through the dark in the driving rain. Robic
gasps some unheard plea to a stone-faced man in fatigues who's identified as
his crew chief. Robic curls fetuslike on the pavement of a Pyrenean mountain
road, having fallen asleep and simply tipped off his bike. Robic stalks the
crossroads of a nameless French village at midnight, flailing his arms,
screaming at his support crew. A baffled gendarme hurries to the scene,
asking, Quel est le problème? I glance at Robic, and he's staring at the
screen, too.

''In race, everything inside me comes out,'' he says, shrugging. ''Good,
bad, everything. My mind, it begins to do things on its own. I do not like
it, but this is the way I must go to win the race.''

Over the past two years, Robic, who is 40 years old, has won almost every
race he has entered, including the last two editions of ultracycling's
biggest event, the 3,000-mile Insight Race Across America (RAAM). In 2004,
Robic set a world record in the 24-hour time trial by covering 518.7 miles.
Last year, he did himself one better, following up his RAAM victory with a
victory six weeks later in Le Tour Direct, a 2,500-mile race on a course
contrived from classic Tour de France routes. Robic finished in 7 days and
19 hours, and climbed some 140,000 feet, the equivalent of nearly five trips
up Mount Everest. ''That's just mind-boggling,'' says Pete Penseyres, a
two-time RAAM solo champion. ''I can't envision doing two big races back to
back. The mental part is just too hard.''

Hans Mauritz, the co-organizer of Le Tour Direct, says: ''For me, Jure is on
another planet. He can die on the bike and keep going.''

And going. In addition to races, Robic trains 335 days each year, logging
some 28,000 miles, or roughly one trip around the planet.

Yet Robic does not excel on physical talent alone. He is not always the
fastest competitor (he often makes up ground by sleeping 90 minutes or less
a day), nor does he possess any towering physiological gift. On rare
occasions when he permits himself to be tested in a laboratory, his ability
to produce power and transport oxygen ranks on a par with those of many
other ultra-endurance athletes. He wins for the most fundamental of reasons:
he refuses to stop.

In a consideration of Robic, three facts are clear: he is nearly
indefatigable, he is occasionally nuts, and the first two facts are somehow
connected. The question is, How? Does he lose sanity because he pushes
himself too far, or does he push himself too far because he loses sanity?
Robic is the latest and perhaps most intriguing embodiment of the old
questions: What happens when the human body is pushed to the limits of its
endurance? Where does the breaking point lie? And what happens when you
cross the line?

The Insight Race Across America was not designed by overcurious
physiologists, but it might as well have been. It's the world's longest
human-powered race, a coast-to-coast haul from San Diego to Atlantic City.
Typically, two dozen or so riders compete in the solo categories.

Compared with the three-week, 2,200-mile Tour de France, which is generally
acknowledged to be the world's most demanding event, RAAM requires
relatively low power outputs — a contest of diesel engines as opposed to
Ferraris. But RAAM's unceasing nature and epic length — 800 miles more than
the Tour in roughly a third of the time — makes it in some ways a purer
test, if only because it more closely resembles a giant lab experiment. (An
experiment that will get more interesting if Lance Armstrong, the seven-time
Tour winner, gives RAAM a try, as he has hinted he might.)

Winners average more than 13 miles an hour and finish in nine days, riding
about 350 miles a day. The ones to watch, though, are not the victors but
the 50 percent who do not finish, and whose breakdowns, like a scattering of
so many piston rods and hubcaps, provide a vivid map of the human body's
built-in limitations.

The first breakdowns, in the California and Arizona deserts, tend to be
related to heat and hydration (riders drink as much as a liter of water per
hour during the race). Then, around the Plains states, comes the stomach
trouble. Digestive tracts, overloaded by the strain of processing 10,000
calories a day (the equivalent of 29 cheeseburgers), go haywire. This is
usually accompanied by a wave of structural problems: muscles and tendons
weaken, or simply give out. Body-bike contact points are especially
vulnerable. Feet swell two sizes, on average. Thumb nerves, compressed on
the handlebars, stop functioning. For several weeks after the race, Robic,
like a lot of RAAM riders, must use two hands to turn a key. (Don't even ask
about the derrière. When I did, Robic pantomimed placing a gun in his mouth
and pulling the trigger.)

The final collapse takes place between the ears. Competitors endure
fatigue-induced rounds of hallucinations and mood shifts. Margins for error
in the race can be slim, a point underlined by two fatal accidents at RAAM
in the past three years, both involving automobiles. Support crews, which
ride along in follow cars or campers, do what they can to help. For Robic,
his support crew serves as a second brain, consisting of a well-drilled
cadre of a half-dozen fellow Slovene soldiers. It resembles other crews in
that it feeds, hydrates, guides and motivates — but with an important
distinction. The second brain, not Robic's, is in charge.

''By the third day, we are Jure's software,'' says Lt. Miran Stanovnik,
Robic's crew chief. ''He is the hardware, going down the road.''

[Stu Gotz]

Stanovnik, at 41, emanates the cowboy charisma of a special-ops soldier,
though he isn't one: his background consists most notably of riding the
famously grueling Paris-to-Dakar rally on his motorcycle. But he's
impressively alpha nonetheless, referring to a recent crash in which he
broke ribs, fractured vertebrae and ruptured his spleen as ''my small
tumble.''

His system is straightforward. During the race, Robic's brain is allowed
control over choice of music (usually a mix of traditional Slovene marches
and Lenny Kravitz), food selection and bathroom breaks. The second brain
dictates everything else, including rest times, meal times, food amounts and
even average speed. Unless Robic asks, he is not informed of the remaining
mileage or even how many days are left in the race.

''It is best if he has no idea,'' Stanovnik says. ''He rides — that is
all.''

Robic's season consists of a handful of 24-hour races built around RAAM and,
last year, Le Tour Direct. As in most ultra sports, prize money is more
derisory than motivational. Even with the Slovene Army picking up much of
the travel tab, the $10,000 check from RAAM barely covers Robic's cost of
competing. His sponsorships, mostly with Slovene sports-nutrition and
bike-equipment companies, aren't enough to put him in the black. (Stanovnik
lent Robic's team $8,500 last year.)

Stanovnik is adept at motivating Robic along the way. When the mujahedeen
appeared in 2004, Stanovnik pretended to see them too, and urged Robic to
ride faster. When an addled Robic believes himself to be back in Slovenia,
Stanovnik informs him that his hometown is just a few miles ahead. He also
employs more time-honored, drill-sergeant techniques.

''They would shout insults at him,'' says Hans Mauritz. ''It woke him up,
and he kept going.''

(Naturally, these tactics add an element of tension between Robic and team
members, and account for his bouts of hostility toward them, including, in
2003, Robic's mistaken but passionately held impression that Stanovnik was
having an affair with his wife.)

In all decisions, Stanovnik governs according to a rule of thumb that he has
developed over the years: at the dark moment when Robic feels utterly
exhausted, when he is so empty and sleep-deprived that he feels as if he
might literally die on the bike, he actually has 50 percent more energy to
give.

''That is our method,'' Stanovnik says. ''When Jure cannot go any more, he
can still go. We must motivate him sometimes, but he goes.''

In this dual-brain system, Robic's mental breakdowns are not an unwanted
side effect, but rather an integral part of the process: welcome proof that
the other limiting factors have been eliminated and that maximum stress has
been placed firmly on the final link, Robic's mind. While his long-term
memory appears unaffected (he can recall route landmarks from year to year),
his short-term memory evaporates. Robic will repeat the same question 10
times in five minutes. His mind exists completely in the present.

''When I am tired, Miran can take me to the edge,'' Robic says
appreciatively, ''to the last atoms of my power.'' How far past the 50
percent limit can Robic be pushed? ''Ninety, maybe 95 percent,'' Stanovnik
says thoughtfully. ''But that would probably be unhealthy.''

Interestingly — or unnervingly, depending on how you look at it — some
researchers are uncovering evidence that Stanovnik's rule of thumb might be
right. A spate of recent studies has contributed to growing support for the
notion that the origins and controls of fatigue lie partly, if not mostly,
within the brain and the central nervous system. The new research puts fresh
weight to the hoary coaching cliché: you only think you're tired.

From the time of Hippocrates, the limits of human exertion were thought to
reside in the muscles themselves, a hypothesis that was established in 1922
with the Nobel Prize-winning work of Dr. A.V. Hill. The theory went like
this: working muscles, pushed to their limit, accumulated lactic acid. When
concentrations of lactic acid reached a certain level, so the argument went,
the muscles could no longer function. Muscles contained an ''automatic
brake,'' Hill wrote, ''carefully adjusted by nature.''

Researchers, however, have long noted a link between neurological disorders
and athletic potential. In the late 1800's, the pioneering French doctor
Philippe Tissié observed that phobias and epilepsy could be beneficial for
athletic training. A few decades later, the German surgeon August Bier
measured the spontaneous long jump of a mentally disturbed patient, noting
that it compared favorably to the existing world record. These types of
exertions seemed to defy the notion of built-in muscular limits and, Bier
noted, were made possible by ''powerful mental stimuli and the simultaneous
elimination of inhibitions.''

Questions about the muscle-centered model came up again in 1989 when
Canadian researchers published the results of an experiment called Operation
Everest II, in which athletes did heavy exercise in altitude chambers. The
athletes reached exhaustion despite the fact that their lactic-acid
concentrations remained comfortably low. Fatigue, it seemed, might be caused
by something else.

In 1999, three physiologists from the University of Cape Town Medical School
in South Africa took the next step. They worked a group of cyclists to
exhaustion during a 62-mile laboratory ride and measured, via electrodes,
the percentage of leg muscles they were using at the fatigue limit. If
standard theories were true, they reasoned, the body should recruit more
muscle fibers as it approached exhaustion — a natural compensation for
tired, weakening muscles.

Instead, the researchers observed the opposite result. As the riders
approached complete fatigue, the percentage of active muscle fibers
decreased, until they were using only about 30 percent. Even as the athletes
felt they were giving their all, the reality was that more of their muscles
were at rest. Was the brain purposely holding back the body?

''It was as if the brain was playing a trick on the body, to save it,'' says
Timothy Noakes, head of the Cape Town group. ''Which makes a lot of sense,
if you think about it. In fatigue, it only feels like we're going to die.
The actual physiological risks that fatigue represents are essentially
trivial.''

From this, Noakes and his colleagues concluded that A.V. Hill had been right
about the automatic brake, but wrong about its location. They postulated the
existence of what they called a central governor: a neural system that
monitors carbohydrate stores, the levels of glucose and oxygen in the blood,
the rates of heat gain and loss, and work rates. The governor's job is to
hold our bodies safely back from the brink of collapse by creating painful
sensations that we interpret as unendurable muscle fatigue.

Fatigue, the researchers argue, is less an objective event than a subjective
emotion — the brain's clever, self-interested attempt to scare you into
stopping. The way past fatigue, then, is to return the favor: to fool the
brain by lying to it, distracting it or even provoking it. (That said,
mental gamesmanship can never overcome a basic lack of fitness. As Noakes
says, the body always holds veto power.)

''Athletes and coaches already do a lot of this instinctively,'' Noakes
says. ''What is a coach, after all, but a technique for overcoming the
governor?''

The governor theory is far from conclusive, but some scientists are focusing
on a walnut-size area in the front portion of the brain called the anterior
cingulate cortex. This has been linked to a host of core functions,
including handling pain, creating emotion and playing a key role in what's
known loosely as willpower. Sir Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA,
thought the anterior cingulate cortex to be the seat of the soul. In the
sports world, perhaps no soul relies on it more than Jure Robic's.

Some people ''have the ability to reprocess the pain signal,'' says Daniel
Galper, a senior researcher in the psychiatry department at the University
of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. ''It's not that they don't
feel the pain; they just shift their brain dynamics and alter their
perception of reality so the pain matters less. It's basically a purposeful
hallucination.''

Noakes and his colleagues speculate that the central governor theory holds
the potential to explain not just feats of stamina but also their opposite:
chronic fatigue syndrome (a malfunctioning, overactive governor, in this
view). Moreover, the governor theory makes evolutionary sense. Animals whose brains safeguarded an emergency stash of physical reserves might well have survived at a higher rate than animals that could drain their fuel tanks at
will.

The theory would also seem to explain a sports landscape in which
ultra-endurance events have gone from being considered medically hazardous
to something perilously close to routine. The Ironman triathlon in Hawaii —
a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and marathon-length run — was the ne
plus ultra in endurance in the 1980's, but has now been topped by the
Ultraman, which is more than twice as long. Once obscure, the genre known as
adventure racing, which includes 500-plus-mile wilderness races like Primal
Quest, has grown to more than 400 events each year. Ultramarathoners,
defined as those who participate in running events exceeding the official
marathon distance of 26.2 miles, now number some 15,000 in the United States
alone. The underlying physics have not changed, but rather our sense of
possibility. Athletic culture, like Robic, has discovered a way to tweak its
collective governor.

[Stu Gotz]

It's a gray morning in December, and Robic is driving his silver Peugeot to
one of his favorite training rides in the hills along Slovenia's Adriatic
coast. The wind is blowing 50 miles an hour, and the temperature is in the
40's. If Robic's anterior cingulate cortex can sometimes block out negative
information, this is definitely not one of those times.

''This is bad,'' he says, peering at the wind-shredded clouds. ''It makes no
sense to train. You cannot train, and I am out there, cold and freezing for
hours. I am shivering and wondering, Why do I do this?''

Robic often complains like this. Even when the weather is ideal, he points
out the clouds blowing in and how horrible and lonely his workout will be.
At first it seems like showboat kvetching that will diminish as he gets more
familiar with you, but as time wears on it's apparent that his complaints
are sincere. He isn't just acting miserable — he is miserable.

The negativity is accentuated, perhaps, by the fact that Robic trains
exclusively alone. What's more, he's famously disinclined to seek advice
when it comes to training, medical treatment and nutrition. ''Completely
uncoachable,'' says his friend Uros Velepec, a two-time winner of the
Ultraman World Championships. Robic invents eclectic workout schedules: six
hours of biking one day, seven hours of Nordic skiing the next, with perhaps
a mountain climb or two in between, all faithfully tracked and recorded in a
series of battered notebooks.

''I find motivation everywhere,'' Robic says. ''If right now you look at me
and wonder if I cannot go up the mountain, even if you are joking, I will do
it. Then I will do it again, and maybe again.'' He gestures to Mount Stol, a
snowy Goliath crouched 7,300 feet above him, as remote as the moon. ''Three
years ago, I got angry at the mountain. I climbed it 38 times in two
months.''

Robic goes on to detail his motivational fuel sources, including his
neglectful father, persistent near poverty (three years ago, he was reduced
to asking for food from a farmer friend) and a lack of large-sponsor support
because of Slovenia's small size. (''If I lived in Austria, I would be
millionaire,'' he says unconvincingly.) There is also a psychological twist
of biblical flavor: a half brother born out of wedlock named Marko, Jure's
age to the month. Robic says his father favored Marko to the extent that the
old man made him part owner of his restaurant, leaving Jure, at age 28, to
beg them for a dishwashing job.

''All my life I was pushed away,'' he says. ''I get the feeling that I'm not
good enough to be the good one. And so now I am good at something, and I
want revenge to prove to all the people who thought I was some kind of
loser. These feelings are all the time present in me. They are where my
power is coming from.''

As a young man, Robic was known as a village racer, decent enough locally
but not talented enough to land a professional contract. Throughout his
20's, he rode with small Slovene teams, supporting himself with a sales job
for a bike-parts dealer. It was with the death of his mother in 1997 and his
subsequent depression that Robic discovered his calling. On the advice of a
cyclist friend, he started training for the 1999 Crocodile Trophy, a
notoriously painful week-and-a-half-long mountain bike race across
Australia. Robic finished third.

In October of 2001, Robic set out to see how far he could cycle in 24 hours.
The day was unpromising: raw and wet. He nearly didn't ride. But he did —
and went an estimated 498 miles, almost a world record.

''That was the day I knew I could do this,'' he says. ''I know that the
thing that does not kill me makes me stronger. I can feel it, and when I
want to quit I hear this voice say, 'Come on, Jure,' and I keep going.''

A year later, he quit his job and volunteered to join the Slovene military,
undergoing nine months of intensive combat training (he surprised his unit
with his penchant for late-night training runs). He earned a coveted spot in
the sports division, which exists solely to support the nation's top
athletes. For Robic, the post meant a salary of 700 euros (about $850) a
month and the freedom to train full time.

This day, despite the foul conditions, Robic trains for five and a half
hours. He rides through toylike stone villages and fields of olive trees; he
climbs mountains from whose peaks he can see the blue Adriatic and the coast
of Italy. He rides across the border checkpoint into Croatia, along a
deserted beach and past groves of fanlike bamboo. He rides in a powerful
crouch, his big legs churning, his face impassive.

While I watch from the car, I'm reminded of a scene the previous night.
Robic and his support crew of fellow soldiers met at a small restaurant for
a RAAM reunion. For several hours, they ate veal, drank wine out of small
glass pitchers and reminisced in high spirits about the race. They spoke of
the time Robic became unshakably convinced his team was making fun of him,
and the time he sat on a curb in Athens, Ohio, and refused to budge for an
hour, and the time they had to lift his sleeping body back onto his bike.

Stanovnik told of an incident in the Appalachians, when Robic, who seemed
about to give up, suddenly found an unexpected burst of energy. ''He goes
like madman for one hour, two hours,'' Stanovnik recalled. ''I am shouting
at him, 'You show Slovenia, you show army, you show world what you are!' I
have tears on my face, watching him.''

At the end of the table, Rajko Petek wondered whether he could continue to
work on the crew. ''It is too much,'' he said to a round of understanding
nods. ''This kind of racing leaves damage upon Jure's mind. Too much
fighting, too much craziness. I cannot take it anymore.''

Robic sat quietly in their midst, his eyes darting and quick. Sometimes he'd
offer a word or a joke, but mostly he listened. At first it seemed he was
being shy, but after a while it became apparent that he was curious to hear
the stories. The person of whom they spoke — this sometimes frightening,
sometimes inspiring man named Jure Robic — remained a stranger to him.

Robic finishes his ride as the winter sun is going down. As we drive back
toward Koroska Bela, a lens of white fog descends on the roadway. We pass
ghostlike farms, factories and church spires while Robic talks about his
plans for the coming year. He talks about his wife, whose job has supported
them, and he talks about their son, who is starting to walk. He talks about
how he will try to win a record third consecutive RAAM in June, and how he
hopes race officials won't react to the recent fatalities by adding
mandatory rest stops. (''Then it will not be a true race,'' he says.) In a
few months, he'll do his signature 48-hour training, in which he rides for
24 hours straight, stays awake all night, and then does a 12-hour workout.

But this year is going to be different in one respect. Robic is going to
start working with a local sports psychologist who has previously helped
several Slovene Olympians. It seems that Robic, the uncoachable one, is
looking for guidance.

''I want to solve the demon,'' he says. ''I do not want to be so crazy
during the races. Every man has black and white inside of him, and the black
should stay inside.''

He presses the accelerator, weaving through drivers made timid by the fog.
''This will be good for me,'' he adds, his voice growing louder. ''I am
older now, but I have the feeling that I am stronger than ever before. Now I
am reaching where there is nothing that is too hard for my body because my
mind is hard. Nothing!''

Robic attempts to convey the intensity of his feeling, but can only gesture
dramatically with his hands, which unfortunately are needed to control the
steering wheel. The car veers toward a ditch.

Acting quickly, Robic regrips the wheel. After a shaky second or two, he
regains control of the car. We barrel onward through the mist. His sidelong
smile is pure confidence.

[bigtrubs]

Well, I actually got through all of it. Interesting article- if you liked this, you should read a book called 'The Ultimate High' by a now-deceased Goren Kropp. It is a first person account of someone who sounds almost as crazy as this guy.

[gincognito]

Didn't think I'd read this, but couldn't stop once started. Very interesting stuff in there.

Sick and ashamed and happy (and not so crazy),
d.

[wicked_sick]

That was a good read. The bit about fatigue and will power was especially interesting. How athletes like this can stand the pain of being on a bicycle for so long and the torture of 100% exertion for days at a time with no sleep is amazing.

[Viva]

I love that they mentioned Tim Noakes. Great guy doing cool research on human performance. Never met him personally, but, back in the day, we exchanged several e-mails on training and injury issues. Always available for discussion.

On another note, my friend Jamshid back in 93 ran Western States 100, then finished RAAM a week or two later, and then, swam around Manhatten Island to make it a truly "ultra" ironman. I don't recall if he became sick from the swim part.

[The AD]

swam around Manhatten Island to make it a truly "ultra" ironman.

That Manhattan swim is an interesting event. I know a guy in his 50s who swam it last year. He got into the Hudson River (final leg) and they pulled everyone out of the water due to lightning! How much would that suck?

[schindlerpiste]

Real life Jason Bourne? I'm surprised that this guy has not been recruited by some ultra-secretive organization.

[Dug]

That was a good read. Where'd you pull this from?

[Agent 00X]

Interesting.

I've fallen asleep enough while biking to backtrack/loop and have had very mild halucinations. Definitely interesting. Highly recommended.

[Pedro]

Id like to see a re-enactment of his mind during the races Especially

"In a 2004 race, he turned to see himself pursued by a howling band of
black-bearded men on horseback."

[satori]

Damn thats impressive - longest endurance race Ive done is a half-ironman. Those ultra-endurance athletes truly are remarkable.

"''It was as if the brain was playing a trick on the body, to save it" sounds like a quote from Mark Allen, 5(?) time Ironman world champion about how your body isnt to smart and your mind can fool it into doing what you want. Nice read.

[JoeStrummer]

Bump since RAAM is underway and this guy is flying.

http://www.jurerobic.net/cms/

[Stu Gotz]

That was a good read. Where'd you pull this from?

I can't even remember posting that.

[str8line]

He's starting the race by riding 724 miles nonstop, through Death Valley, and including some big climbs. What a total FREAK.

[ArmadaBC]

Dude was on Fresh Air or This American Life a few years back, if I remember he isn't all that great at actually riding a bike but you can't ever get him off the damn thing.

[fool]

Well, I actually got through all of it. Interesting article- if you liked this, you should read a book called 'The Ultimate High' by a now-deceased Goren Kropp. It is a first person account of someone who sounds almost as crazy as this guy.

An amazing book about a pretty amazing guy, from what I can tell.

Great article: thanks for posting it originally and for the bump!

[Meathelmet]

Damn good stuff there. Mind is a awesome piece of machinery.

[Tuckerman]

So its my brain that is causing all that pain, I knew it. Problem is when your in a hospital bed with Rabdo you think, maybe my brain was right 25 miles ago.

Good read.

[kingdom-tele]

great read - you can see this every Feb in Boston at the CRASH-B's - its usually the insane ones that make the finals, rowed with an olympic light weight(collegiate heavyweight) who could pull until he passed out - everyone thought he was crazy too, some people are just off enough.

[Edgnar]

Apparently Jure Robic was killed today after being hit today by a car in Solvenia.

The guy may have been slightly unhinged, but he was an incredible athlete.

++++Vibes+++++ to his family and friends.

[JoeStrummer]

RIP.

"Occasionally, Robic leaps from his bike to square off with shadowy figures that turn out to be mailboxes. In a 2004 race, he turned to see himself pursued by a howling band of
black-bearded men on horseback.

''Mujahedeen, shooting at me,'' he explains. ''So I ride faster.''

His wife, a nurse, interjects: ''The first time I went to a race, I was not
prepared to see what happens to his mind. We nearly split up.''