The search for the Ultimate Athlete is an intriguing question.
Soccer players endurance is legendary, but does it make them the Ultimate athletes?
Motorcross racers endure so much over the course of a race, and must train their bodies accordingly to withstand the rigours, but are they the Ultimate athletes?
With the emergence of extreme sports, and multi-sport athletes, and the ability of being good at several disciplines it requires us all to step up our game just to compete.
Are we the Ultimate Athletes? We all want to assume so, but what it comes down to is the ability to adapt, and learn new sports, and the pace at which we can do this. I myself am an adventure racer of mixed pedigree. What I lack in talent, I make up for in my ability to process information, and use my training, my endurance, my flexibility, ability to adapt quickly, and my balance to adapt to whatever sport is thrown at me.
In adventure racing we have to be experts in many disciplines just to be competitive:
ALL paddle sports, mountaineering; fast packing; running; road and mountain bikes; rope work from rapelling/jumarring/tyrolean traverse etc. From inline skating, to navigation/orienteering, sky-diving; scuba diving; white-water rafting; riding a scooter; snow-shoeing; cross country skiing; using a kite sail in paddle events; back country; first aid; nutrition; ability to work within a team, and much more.
During the off season we gravitate to other extreme sports to recover, rest and strengthen our bodies for the upcoming year of endurance sports. Having to race for sometimes up to 10 days at a time, we tend to have the best endurance of any athletes out there. Forget the Tour de France. The toughest endurance race in the world is the 600 mile PrimalQuest of which our team just finished on Sunday and was 10th place against the best in the world. Go Team Tecnu Extreme/StaphAseptic!
Save the time and trouble. A handful of us adventure racers are the Ultimate Athlete, hands down. Just for our sport alone you have to grasp at east 10 different disciplines just to be good. We are the ultimate jack of all trades. Sure there are sports we are not good at. But unlike any other sport out there, we need to be good at so many sports that our learning curve is SO much shorter than most, we don’t get frustrated very quickly, we adapt fast, we are cool under pressure, and we just don’t give up. Are there better athletes than me? Yes, there are. But being a good athlete is recognizing our weaknesses and facing them head-on, and doing the best with what you have, and adapting rapidly so that you can master something uncomfortable at a fast pace.
Adventure racers are insane. We do a sport where we constantly put our lives on the line, and develop a comfort level doing it. How many can say that? And so the question still remains unanswered. Who is the ultimate Athlete? Well… I will put my skills on the line, and tempt fate. Will you?? ”
See you there babyee. Let the games begin.
Earring Doug Judson-Captain of Tecnu Extreme/StaphAseptic adventure racing: www.espritdecorpadventureracing.com
