Turning a Bobsled Cheetah into a Marathoning Tortoise

Everyone knows the tail of the tortoise and the hare, where the slow and steady wins the race.  But, you may not know why.   Sprinters and Marathoners are a different breed. Sprinters have been blessed with fast twitch type 2 muscle fibers.  Marathoners with type 1 muscle fibers.  One can go very fast, but for very short distance.  Then they are done.  Spent up their energy.  The Marathoner can go very slow for very long periods.  There is a debate if one can switch from one fiber to another,  but realistically one that has been blessed with speed will never do great at distance races and vice versa.

In fact, if you gravitate towards speed and power or to distance activities you usually hate the other.

Running a 5k to me would be like telling me to go jump off my roof 10 times.  (my joints would feel the same) But repeat sprints up stairs, that sounds fun.

"Everyone is a genius.  But if You judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life thinking it is stupid. "  Albert Einstein

The only thing I'm trying to say, it takes a lot of hard work to get a fast athlete to compete and run slow.    Not only physically, but mentally.  Most of our past workouts as speed and power athletes never even went longer then 50-60 minutes.

So to do long runs that can reach 4-5 hours.  The body and brain are saying, "Dude, what are you doing to me?"

My good friend Lorenzo Smith is doing the NYC marathon this weekend to help raise money for some local charter schools that are trying to change inner city education in the NYC area.

Lorenzo is the definition of a Cheetah.  Sprinter for United States Military Academy (West Point)  Olympic bobsled brakemen (fastest position) for the United States in the Torino Olympics.

So through determination and probably a whole lot of discomfort.  Lorenzo will be running this weekend to raise money for the Success Academies of NYC.

Here is a link if you want to donate to help.  At the end is a pretty awesome video showing real life students talking about education.     DONATION LINK