Hero

What it's like to be John Stamstad:


From a 1996 article in Outside Magazine:


A typical day for Stamstad begins with a five-hour ride, followed by a one-hour jog from his house to the University of Cincinnati physics building, where, with his hands clasped behind his back, he makes ten trips up and down 16 flights of stairs, taking three steps at a time. It's Stamstad's favorite, most unfun workout: no windows, no distractions, no relief. The Alaskan tundra looks like Maui after months of stairwells. The day concludes with an hour on the wind trainer. Stamstad says that he knows he's mentally ready for a race when he can do a five-hour stint on the wind trainer, maintaining a heart rate of 155 beats per minute while staring at a blank wall.

Two years ago at the Iditabike, an exercise physiologist at the Medical University of South Carolina named Steve Bailey conducted a study of Stamstad and several other top competitors. Throughout the race, Stamstad's mood didn't fluctuate; he remained calm and focused. In a test that measured bewilderment and fatigue, he scored the same results at the finish of the race as he did at the start. During prolonged exercise, says Bailey, glucose stores go down and levels of free fatty acids and free tryptophan (an amino acid) go up, boosting energy. According to one school of thought, the increase in free fatty acids and free tryptophan also results in elevated levels of the brain chemical serotonin. Bailey is among those who believe that high amounts of serotonin make athletes more sensitive to fatigue.

"The hypothesis we're working with," he says, "is that fatigue during long periods of exercise isn't muscular in nature, but a perception in the brain." If that's the case, it could partly explain Stamstad's high pain threshold. According to Bailey's Iditabike data, Stamstad's blood analysis showed significantly lower levels of free fatty acids and free tryptophan than those of the other athletes in the race. "Either John doesn't experience pain like other people do, or he's better able to deal with it," says Bailey. "My guess is that it's probably a little bit of both--part training effect and part genetics."

Oh yea, in 1999, he rode the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (all of the nearly 2,500 miles of it) in nineteen days.  Bad. Period. Ass. Period.