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OCTOBER 22,
2004:
Peter Reid and Lori Bowden
became the Ironman champions again this year. Their
respective races were both won on the same course, on the same
day but how they won was quite different.
Peter trains with a joy and
races with a fever. Lori doesn't bother differentiating. She
trains and races with joy.
I was running with my friend
Petr Schmidt the other day and I was commenting on the smile
pasted on Lori's face the whole day she was racing – and the
steel determination stuck on Peter's face. Petr, a former
member of the Czech national swim team, said he never could
understand that happy attitude athletes like Lori seem to
have. When he was racing he felt at times like he wanted to
rip the hearts from his competitors and stomp on their dead
bodies. You have to know this guy to appreciate this.
There's not a nicer guy out there but when it came to
competing he put on his game face and played hard. Peter Reid
does the same thing and it works for him. Lori's smile works
for her. The short email I got from her after the race said
simply, “I was psyched.. not for the win, just the fun day.“
I've done an Ironman. Fun is not the first word that would
come to my mind when describing the day, but she had fun.
This is the kind of thing that interests me. I'm also
interested to know what kind of nutrition they took in. I
heard Peter was given Cam's shoes in T2. Did he really throw
up nine times on the bike? That's some fascinating stuff. I
wonder what they'd have to say about those things.
But it's not what everybody
wants to talk about.
Now that they've won many
members of the press seem to be taking some joy in pointing
out that the couple are now estranged. Chat rooms are filled
with speculation about the whys and wherefores of the split.
It would be better for the couple if people would focus on
their athletic prowess rather than what went on inside their
house. But they are news and grousing against the inevitable
is as futile as trying to count a politician's lies.
Lori and Peter will go
through whatever it is they have to go through. They'll
either call it quits or they'll give it another shot.
Whatever they decide will be their business and no one
else's. Separating is never easy. Never. Let's celebrate
their achievements, beg them to tell us their training secrets
and pester them for autographs at airports and coffee shops.
Let's do that but let's try and leave their personal lives
personal. They're both good people and they deserve that.
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