A close friend of mine completed the 70.3 Ironman today, and after a brief glance at his racing stats, I was left with a single, unexpected realization: my vampires aren’t tough enough.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the 70.3 Ironman, just think about that number – 70.3 – and accept that it’s every bit as bad as it sounds.
70.3 miles. These super-powered masochists (and I mean that in the best way possible) start out with a 1.2 mile swim, then transition to a 50+ mile bike ride, and top it off with a 13 mile run.
I spend a lot of time running, and that is the kind of mileage I put in over the course of a week. 13, not 70. I cannot imagine what it would be like to run 13 miles at a 7 minute pace after I’d already traveled 50+ miles biking and swimming. And anyone who’s spent some time in the pool knows that swimming 1.2 miles is no joke. This Insane-A-Thon starts out with the swim for a reason—because if the race ended with a 1.2 swim, they’d need scuba divers to fish out the incredibly fit dead bodies.
70.3 miles in less than a day—approximately the same mileage it takes to cross the state of Massachusetts
If that’s not superhuman, I don’t know what is. And maybe my vampires rip off arms and crush skulls and miraculously avoid contracting so much as the flu despite biting and/or kissing pretty much everyone, but they’re seeming less superhuman by the minute.
So, what I’m really thinking is that the difference between my Big Bad Bloodsuckers and my real life friend has nothing to do with superhuman feats.
Maybe it’s just the black leather body suits.