Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Ironman 17-hour cut off time

With the Ome Trail Run behind me, again my life is devoid of meaning and purpose.  So today I glanced at the Japan Ironman website.

I am shocked and dismayed to see that the cutoff time for the Japan Ironman is only 15 hours.  What is up with this?   Ironman events uniformly start at 7am and end at midnight  - providing the participants with 17 hours to finish.  This is the definition of ironman.  There is a simple, elegant logic to finishing at midnight. 

Why does the Japan Ironman cruelly cut people off at 10pm?   I was told that they might need to reopen the streets to vehicular traffic.  Traffic?  At 10pm on a Sunday night on an isolated island with a population of 47,000 people?

My goal is to finish an ironman within 17-hours, but Japan Ironman won't give me this opportunity so I didn't sign up. 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pussy!

Anonymous said...

Jay why do u keep doing this to yourself? Just sign up and do it, if u want. It's like a perpetual Jay-lament. Makes me want to sign up and beat you, despite not being able to swim...what a puss! Where's the freakin' tiger in you? I feel like vomiting...Mike-lurker

Jay said...

True. Also I like to take advantage of any opportunity I can to pontificate about what I see as the "elitist attitude among Japanese race officials". Not 100% positive that is what is really going on with this cutoff time business, but this is my gaijin soapbox issue of the moment..

Anonymous said...

I am looking forward to reading another 100 reasons for not doing IM Japan. ;-)