Triathlon: Aran Gordon

February 21, 2005

EnduranceRadio.com

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Welcome back to www.EnduranceRadio.com.  Thanks for joining us for another interview today.  We’re going to be speaking with Aran Gordon.  He’s an endurance athlete and he got into the sport sometime back and he’s going to talk about his history there and some of the specific challenges that he’s had in the sport.

 

First thing we’re going to talk about is the Race of the Day.  Today it’s the Baltimore Marathon and it’s on Saturday, October 15th, 2005.  You can find out more about the Baltimore Marathon by clicking on the Race of the Day Link right below the link to this audio interview.

 

So we’re going to be right back to speak with Aran Gordon in about 30 seconds.

 

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<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Aran thanks very much for talking to us today, I appreciate your time.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Sure, thank you.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Well talk about your background in the sport, endurance sports, because you’ve got kind of an unusual way you got into that and some of the challenges you’ve have to overcome.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Sure.  Well I was actually a competitive swimmer all my life probably until about age 20 and then I moved to New York City and started running marathons in ’84 and really got hooked on the distance and I just felt like it took you somewhere that you don’t normally get to go to in everyday life, and I really enjoyed that and so I started running marathons just about every year after that until about 1998 when I started to have some problems physically, medically and we can talk further about that if you’d like me to?”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Sure, yeah, because your story is interesting in the fact that you had an iron issue, an iron disease I guess.  Talk about that.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Yeah sure, not to be confused with Ironman, but I actually have what is called Hereditary Hemochromatosis and interestingly enough its one of the most common inherited diseases in the United States and yet its an incredibly under-diagnosed disease, one in 200 people have this, one in eight people are carriers, but the fact of the matter is that my body doesn’t metabolize iron or process iron the way a normal human being would process or metabolize iron and as a result my iron stays in my system, eventually stores itself in the major organs of the body and ultimately diseases them and shuts them down, in other words eventually killing the person.  So I ended up being diagnosed after three years of seeing a doctor and was told that I had over five times the normal level of iron in my system, which was devastating and it probably was going to kill me within about five years.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Now you have been running marathons and such though for a while before you were diagnosed.  Did this come on as a result do you think of this or it just came on at a certain point?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “It comes on at a certain point because over the years, I’m 44 and over the course of my 44 years my body was basically holding on to this iron and storing it and eventually what happens is you start to have certain symptoms; you start to have chronic fatigue, you start to have heart palpitations or arrhythmia, you start to have shortness of breath, they call it Iron Rust, your joints start to hurt.  It’s just basically diseasing the organs or bones of the body and eventually just killing them.  Its actually otherwise known as The Silent Killer.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Now when you were running in these events did you have some of these symptoms and you were thinking, ‘Well this is just because I’m running a marathon, obviously I’m going to be tired.’?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Yeah, good question.  Everything was going great.  In fact in ’98 I felt like I was at the top of my game but at the same time, later in ’98, I started to fell something was wrong and I remember saying to a running partner, ‘I can’t do this anymore.  My body literally hurts,’ and I couldn’t figure out what was going on so I kept going to the doctor and the doctor told me first that I was maybe stressed out and depressed and probably needed to talk to a shrink.  A year and a half later they kept doing all these blood tests; they showed me that my liver function tests were off the chart, they told me that I was drinking too much.  These are all very very common reactions by doctors because they don’t normally look for Hemochromatosis; they’re not doing the blood tests for this particular disease so they’re associating the symptoms with something else.” 

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Now Marathon De Sabre, talk about your participation in that.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Marathon De Sabre was a race I’ve always wanted to do.  I think I came across it on National Geographic or something when Boyd Maxson was running it, and I thought, ‘Boy, that looks very very interesting,’ so I started studying it and trying to find out more and thought, ‘This is something I want to do,’ but when I was about ready to do it, or when I was planning to do it, I started to fall victim to this disease about two or three years before. I wasn’t able to do it in 2000 when I wanted to do it, and the problem I was facing was I went through blood therapy for a year and that was pretty devastating and then after that it took me about a year and half to recover, so that took me to the end of 2003, when I started to feel a little bit better.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Well I want to stop you there for just a moment.  We’re going to take a quick break.  We want to hear about what happened after that and this race, so we’ll be right back to speak with Aran Gordon in about 30 seconds.”

 

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<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Aran, so unfortunately you weren’t able to make it the first time you had planned on doing it because of the iron disease, so talk about what happened in 2003.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Sure, well I think there is something to be said for fate because at the end of 2003 my wife said, ‘Aran, I think you’ve woken up.  You seem different, you seem like what you used to describe as your old self,’ because we were only married for a couple of years.  My wife really never knew me in this other more athletic oriented person, so I started to try and walk around the block, walking our dog actually, and huffing and puffing, but at the same time I started to feel better and I just kept gradually increasing it.  But then I started looking at the race again, the Marathon De Sabre, and I thought that I’ve got to have some type of a training regime here, and I contacted Lisa Smith-Batchen at www.dreamchaserevents.com, and the woman has been just an incredible inspiration to me and an incredible coach because she had taken me from barely walking around the block at January of 2004; I’ve run four or five marathons in the last three and a half months, so she’s really done an incredible job for me.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Now what kind of things are you having to do that maybe the typical runner is not having to do during these races to make sure that your body is okay?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Well it’s not so much always during the race as much between races or throughout the year.  Theres no cure for this disease; I go to the NIH, National Institutes of Health, every eight to ten weeks where they do labs, and they basically try to identify whether the iron levels are actually increasing, or whether they need to do some type of a treatment, blood therapy, at that interval to make sure that everything continues to stay in balance, and if I stop doing that then I would start to have these problems again, the iron would build up and then I would eventually be running into that same wall that I ran into before and that was the organs become diseased and then eventually shut down.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “So training wise, how are you feeling now?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Fantastic.  I think, as I said earlier, the fact that Lisa has gradually moved me up to where I am today is just unimaginable.  For me to go out and run three or four hours now is not an issue.  There are a lot of people that run rather than that, but when I look back a year ago and think I couldn’t even do that or think about it, let alone do it.  So now I’m able to do the three to four hour runs and feel just fantastic after it.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Now let’s get away from talking about the Aran that has the special challenges and just talk about you and why you enjoy this ultra-running and long distance running.  What does it do for your personally Aran?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>:  “As I was saying earlier, I think it takes you places that you just don’t get to go in everyday life, and even a 5K can be inspirational to someone, but a marathon, at 26 miles; you know I was telling someone the other day this preparation for the Marathon De Sabre I’m using marathons as a means to an end and I never in a million years would have thought that I would eventually be thinking about running in that context where a marathon was the ultimate goal; well no longer, it’s a means to an end to help me achieve the Marathon De Sabre.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “When is that race, and talk about what you’re doing to prepare specifically for that?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Sure.  The race is from April 8th to the 18th, and in terms of my preparation Lisa Smith-Batchen has me doing an incredible amount of cross-training in addition to the actual long runs, and it has really been helpful.  I can’t say enough about how much I’ve never really appreciated cross-training until this past year where I seem to be less prone to injury and when I do have an injury I’m capable of recovering much more quickly than had I just been running, which is what I used to do and I guess it tells you how much I didn’t know.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Well talk about the race specifically in terms of the length and stages and how it all works.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Its 150 miles, there are six stages.  Each stage is a certain distance so, for example, stage one might be 20 – 23 miles, stage two might be about the same, stage three is what they call ‘Dune Day,’ and that’s up and down sand dunes for probably close to 20 plus miles, stage four is 50 miles, and you have, I think, 33 hours to complete that, and then stage five is a marathon and then the last stage is about 10 to 15 miles.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “And all of this is in the middle of the desert of course.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Yeah, that’s the catch.  All of this is in the middle of the desert where the temperature, at night, can go down as low as into the 30’s and during the day I understand its well up into the 120’s.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Now obviously hydration during the race is going to be a challenge for everybody to do that.  Is there anything you’re doing special before the race to get your body prepped for that?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Yeah, I paying very close attention to having a regular consumption of different types of fuels, and one of the things I’ve learned recently, that I actually didn’t realize I liked until I actually started doing it, and that is while I have my drink, the Hammer Nutrition, whether its Perpetuem or Hammer Heed, I also have water and I’ve found that I really enjoy having the water there in addition to the sport drink.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “So just making sure that you’re well hydrated, obviously, going in is important.  Do you have a support crew that helps you during the race nutrition wise?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “No, actually I guess I left this out.  You’re totally self-sufficient.  Everything has to be carried in your backpack, so that includes sleeping bag, that includes your clothes, that includes all of your food and each day you have to have at least 2,000 calories of food for each of the days remaining in your backpack or you’re either given a penalty or possibly even disqualified.  It’s taken very very seriously.  The only thing that they provide you is nine liters of water a day.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “And I’d imagine in the middle of the desert you’re going through those pretty easily?”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Yeah, and I guess one has to be quite diligent about it, but also prudent in terms of not consuming too much because that can be just as bad as not consuming enough.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Aran, we’re just about out of time.  Talk about the institute that you mentioned to me and we’ll have that linked so our listeners can check that out as well.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Sure.  It’s the Iron Disorders Institute and the website is www.irondisorders.org.  This is an organization that is really the marquee entity, non-profit organization that managers information, educates the public, educates physicians.  We’re working right now to create centers of excellences around the United States, the first one will possibly be Penn State Hershey Medical Center, where these centers of excellence will focus exclusively on iron and what it can actually do to the system, and theres just so much incredible research going on, the most recent being a question that was researched by a medical doctor at Penn State Hershey; is there a link between iron and Alzheimer’s or some of these neurological disorders, such as Lou Garricks disease or MS, and they have found some correlation between the two, so the Iron Disorders Institute is just an incredible organization in terms of getting information out to the public in a useable, readable, understandable form.”

 

<<Tim Bourquin>>: “Excellent, well Aran thanks for your time.  Listeners, you can go to either of the sites that we’ve talked about, www.dreamchaserevents.com and also the www.irondisorders.org by clicking on the links below the links to this audio.  Aran thanks very much for sharing your story, I appreciate it.”

 

<<Aran Gordon>>: “Thank you very much.”

 

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