The calm of a summer morning, still cool from the previous night's thunderstorms, is broken only by the sound of an occasional truck rumbling down US 1 and the faint whine of Japanese motorcycles. The whine gets louder for a moment as, in the distance beyond a ryegrass-blanketed earth embankment, a pair of motorcycles arc through the air, their mud-spattered reds, yellows and chromes momentarily vivid against the blue summer sky.

Six people sit at a round dining table in a shotgun-barrel-shaped room, completely dark except for the cold phosphorescence of a glow stick and a few other glow-in-the-dark items. Each rests his or her fingertips on the table edge, trying to maintain contact with whatever spirit from the other side has chosen to visit.
 
The table - or the spirit within - had attempted through a series of spins and raps to communicate with my wife. The medium leading this séance, Victor Vogenitz, tried to help her identify the spirit in the table.
 
"I sense a pain in the head - a really bad one," he said, touching his left temple. "Did you know someone who got shot in the head or something?"
 
That helped with the ID. My wife's grandmother died from bone cancer - in the skull.

I sat astride Cody, trying to get comfortable in the saddle. As I tried to will my hips to relax, I wished I had been taking yoga classes more seriously.
 
I imagined the tolerant, toffee-colored half quarter horse/half Arabian wished I had been eating fewer pepperoni pizzas.
 
"Well, he is more used to carrying little kids," said Hope Rosenthal, owner of Marcody Ranch. "But he's fine."

By Morris Sullivan
 
Every Fourth of July, all over the U. S., little cardboard cannons fire their projectiles into the night sky where they blossom into bright colors and dramatic shapes.
 
In cities like Port Orange, Lake Helen, DeLand, Ormond Beach and two dozen or so other cities in Florida and elsewhere, those fantastic fireworks come courtesy of a 127-year-old family firm headquartered in our own back yard.

 

 

A hazy film of thin clouds hung over the eastern horizon. The sun occasionally peeked through, a thin white disk floating a few degrees above a gray sea. I stood ankle-deep in the Atlantic Ocean, the bathwater-warm surf lapping around my ankles, surrounded by 150 or so triathletes, most of them a lot younger- and faster-looking than me.

 

A thought flickered across my consciousness: "What the heck am I doing here?"

 

I quickly shoved that thought aside. I'd put in several months of training, so now all I had left to do was swim a quarter-mile, bike 10 miles and run three. Then I could say I'd finished the 6th Annual Ormond Beach YMCA Tri-Y Triathlon.

 

I did a lot of triathlons during my late 20s and early 30s, but that was 20 years and a serious knee injury ago. This time around, I got some coaching--Debbie Tillman brought me up to speed on triathlon training while Ruth Thompson helped me improve my swimming technique.

 

An account of the training program appears in Sunday's Your Health magazine, which went to press before the event--the race was originally planned for Memorial Day weekend but was rescheduled for Father's Day because of flooding on the bike course.

 

"Tapering" is perhaps the best part of triathlon training--for a week or 10 days before a race, workouts are shorter and focus on intensity, not endurance. Thompson assigned me two pool workouts for the week before the race.

 

"With distance swimming, you just concentrate on speed the last week," she explained. "Do 100 (meters) to warm up, eight 50s, a 400, and another 100 to cool down."

 

"You will not gain any fitness this week, so don't do too much," Tillman added. "This is where you let the body rest and take in all the training that has built up. So cut down on volume, but keep some of the intensity--five or six bursts of speed in the middle of the workout is all you need."

 

She also counseled me on prerace nutrition. Two hours before the race I should eat some easily digestible carbohydrates and a small amount of protein. I should make it a point to drink lots of water the day before the race and on race-day morning. She suggested I try an energy-booster like GU gels, then use one just before the race and another while on the bike.

 

Finally, Tillman suggested I set up a transition area like I would on race day, laying out a towel with my bike shoes and helmet, running shoes and anything else I'd need, and practicing the transitions.

 

Thus prepared, I dutifully donned my bright yellow swim cap, secured my goggles and took my place in the surf. On cue from the official starter, I thrashed through the waves until it was deep enough to start swimming toward the first buoy.

 

It was the perfect day for a summer triathlon, with a calm ocean. Near-record heat might have slowed the field a little bit, but it didn't prevent 44-year-old John Dodd of Ormond Beach from winning the USA Triathlon-sanctioned event.

 

Dodd finished in just under 55 minutes--54:56, to be exact--completing the quarter-mile swim in 9:14, the 10-mile bike in 24:18 and the 3-mile run in 20:01, with 1:24 spent in transitions. Paul Rice (51, Daytona Beach, 55:17) and Todd Graff (45, Ormond Beach, 55:20) finished second and third respectively.

 

 

 

The female overall champion, Mallory Dunn (25, Daytona Beach) finished in 56:41, with swim/bike/run split times of 9:02, 26:34 and 18:56, with 2:11 in transitions. Colleen Nicoulin (35, Port Orange, 1:01:26) and Lauren Leffler (24, Ormond Beach, 1:01:26) finished second and third.

 

I was a bit slower, but that's okay. After about 16 minutes in the ocean, I ran up the Granada Boulevard ramp and across A1A to the transition area where my bike and other necessities waited.

 

The Tri-Y bike course was beautiful. I rode north through one of the city's nicest riverfront neighborhoods before cutting across the barrier island to head back down Oceanshore Boulevard, with its unobstructed view of the dunes and the ocean beyond. However, I was too preoccupied with keeping a competitor in my sights to enjoy it.

 

I had practiced the bike/run "brick," so my legs only felt a little bit like they were made out of concrete when I started the run, and they loosened up fairly quickly. I had already drunk the contents of my water bottle while on the bike (and probably a quart of the Atlantic Ocean during the swim), but the day was heating up. I took the water offered at the aid stations situated approximately every mile along the course and tried to ignore the aching in my bad knee.

 

 

 

There's a funny thing that has always happened to me during the last stretch of a race--no matter how tired I'm feeling, during that last 100 yards or so my pace quickens involuntarily, as if I'm being drawn by some mysterious power toward the goal.

 

After almost 1-3/4 hours, the finish line came into view. True to form, a tingle ran up my spine, the effects of an endorphin-and-adrenalin cocktail. I felt the "kick," my legs taking over, my head just going along for the ride.

 

"Oh, yeah," I thought. "That's what the heck I'm doing here."

 

For more on preparing for the Ormond Beach YMCA Tri-Y Triathlon, see "Training for a Triathlon" in Your Health magazine, distributed in subscription copies of the June 28 Daytona Beach News-Journal.

By MORRIS SULLIVAN

There are a few things every guy - and yes, some women - should do at least once in their lifetime. Driving a 600-horsepower NASCAR-style racecar around the 31-degree banked turns of the Daytona International Speedway belongs on that list.

Thanks to Richard Petty, any schmo with a few hundred disposable dollars can drive a racecar at the world's most famous speedway. The Richard Petty Driving Experience gives real people a chance to experience the thrill of driving a racecar - albeit in somewhat safer circumstances than those experienced by real NASCAR drivers.

Having read everything from Shakespeare to Steinbeck and written millions of words, one might imagine my first whoosh skyward on a parasail would have inspired a few eloquent phrases.

           
Alas, all I could manage was "Wow! That was cool."

           
Early one crisp morning, as spring breakers still slept off the damage of the night before, I arrived at the Silver Beach ramp where Daytona Beach Parasail had set up shop. I watched the surf roll in. The waves broke close to the sand, suggesting calm offshore waters.

           
On the beach sat a pair of big inflatable boats. They looked tough and practical, like something Jacques Cousteau might have kept handy. As the sun warmed the sand, the crew launched the inflatables. Offshore, colorful parachutes blossomed from the sterns of three "winch boats" that cruised slowly along the horizon.

           
A small crowd began to gather, signing up for the chance to dangle from a parachute at the end of a 2,000-foot rope.

There are still places on earth where one can camp in the untamed wilderness with nothing over his head but the milky way and nothing to break the midnight silence but the whispering breeze, the plaintive call of a whip-poor-will, and the far away cry of a lonesome coyote.

Hontoon Island State Park is not one of those places. Considering it's only a few miles from downtown DeLand, however, it's not a bad place to go for a little tete-a-tete with nature. We often take our dog, Faust, to hike the nature trail there.

Faust is a willful animal. Out of fear that he'd spend the night barking at every night sound or chewing through the fabric trying to go outside and play with the raccoons, we have never taken him camping.

By Morris Sullivan

             

When it comes to adventure, here's my philosophy: It ain't an adventure unless you risk death, dismemberment, or serious discomfort.

          

Normally, I would not consider a boat tour of the Halifax River between a seafood restaurant and the Ponce Inlet lighthouse an adventure. However, Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines "adventure" as the encountering of danger, a daring, hazardous undertaking, or an unusual, stirring experience.

           

But I thought a jet boat tour of the Halifax River might at least qualify as an unusual, stirring experience. Captain Bill Mullican assured me his jet boat gave a wild ride.

 

George Strait's on the boombox, and a haze of chalk dust and Biofreeze hangs in the air.

A squat rack dominates a wall of the one-car garage, surrounded by a weight bench, leg press, and other miscellaneous equipment slotted into the room like chunks of a heavy-metal jigsaw puzzle. Heavy steel plates rattle in off-key syncopation to the country music, underscoring Jim McCarty's chant:

"Down...down...downdowndowndown...UP!
"Down...down...downdowndowndown...UP!"

McCarty, aka Superman of the Century, crouches beside me, urging me to squat "below parallel." In powerlifting competition, the crease of the lifter's hip has to be lower than the top of the knee. I lived for 53 years without that information--yet here I am with more than 2/3 of my body weight lying across my shoulders, struggling to get down, down, down, down and down, and then back up.

In the late 1990s, Powerlifting USA magazine put McCarty's name at the top of a list of athletes who had set records in both Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting during the century--thus the "superman" title.

He started out in 1974, competing as a 93-pound teenager in Olympic lifting. Now 48 years old and weighing in at 185 pounds, he coaches everyone from athletes hoping to get an edge to boomers looking to lose weight. When I met him last year, I was working out, but not getting stronger. I asked for his advice, and that's how I ended up in his garage training for a powerlifting meet.

McCarty immediately started overhauling my workout routine and techniques. Bench pressing, I kept my wrists too straight and turned my elbows out--adjusting that brought more muscles into the lift. And I had been taught to lower and raise the weights slowly--McCarty wanted me to "explode" through each movement to build the shorter, fast-twitch muscle fibers needed for heavy lifting.

At 53, I didn't expect to gain much strength. But many people give up on their bodies long before their bodies are ready to give out, McCarty explains.

"With good training, you can keep increasing strength for a long time," he says. "A man age 45 to 55 is at his strongest. I trained a guy who when we started, could hardly get out of his car. But after two years, at age 81, he could deadlift 300 pounds."

After a few months, I started breaking personal records I had set in my 20s. My flexibility also improved. Because of knee and back problems from an old accident, I could barely squat below waist level at first, but to my surprise, my squats went deeper every week.

McCarty knows a lot about recovering from injuries. He was hit by a truck in 2003 and spent three days in a coma and another 12 days in intensive care. A year later, a stomach disorder sent him back to the hospital. Both times, doctors told him he wouldn't lift weights again. Both times, he went on to set world records.

"At the beginning, I didn't think we had any hope of getting you able to powerlift, because of your knee injury," McCarty says. But you've increased the flexibility in your legs a lot--plus added about 4 inches to your thighs."

"I'm putting together a team to go to a meet in Georgia," he said. "Want to compete? You'll have fun."

I have a new mantra: "You're going to be a little sore from that workout."

In powerlifting, competitors squat, bench press and deadlift. The winner is the one with the highest combined total. McCarty explained that we would lift in an "old school"-style American Powerlifting Committee meet with a "raw" division, meaning we would compete without the supportive Kevlar clothing some lifters use to add pounds to their lifts--and of course we would compete without performance-enhancing drugs.

"I like that much better," McCarty says. "It's not about whether you can afford a $500 suit that makes the lift for you, and it's not about ruining your health with steroids. It's just the lifter against the weight."

When he started competing, McCarty explains, virtually all weightlifters and powerlifters routinely took steroids--at the time, there was little information about their negative effects.

"We were getting them from the doctors, from the Olympic training center and everything," McCarty says. "Now people know how bad they are for you, but they still take them. I've had several friends die at 55 and younger, and I've had some health problems I think were probably from steroids."

We moved away from "remedial" work to focus on the power lifts. I counted 13 sets of bench presses one workout. I stopped counting sets after that. Muscle soreness became a lifestyle. Steroid-deprived though I was, my strength gains continued--I'd fail to make a 200-lb. deadlift one week, then easily make a 235-pound lift the next.

Powerlifting isn't necessarily the best way to build general strength, McCarty says. "It's great if you want to be a powerlifter," he says. "And some of the movements are good if you just want to stay strong throughout your life."

"For good quality of life, all you need is 45 minutes to an hour three days a week of weight training, plus cardio and a good nutritional program," McCarty says. "If you want to compete in a sport, that's a little different--find a coach that can help you attain your highest ability."

"One of the most useless things you can do is sit on a bunch of machines four or five days a week," he adds. "I've been in gyms all over the world, and probably 85 percent of people aren't working out properly."

 

There were some really big guys at the Moose Lodge in Buford, Ga., some of whom would lift the equivalent of a 1964 Volkswagen.

Taking my turn in the erstwhile warm-up room, I felt like a 198-pound weakling while bigger, younger guys did multiple 200-pound-plus squats to get ready for the real thing.

During the course of the day, however, I completed 8 out of 10 attempts. My three bests for the day totaled more than 600 pounds--a lot less than a Volkswagen but more than a deluxe refrigerator. But even though it was my weakest lift, I was happiest about the squat--a month earlier, we worried I might not manage a legal squat with an empty bar.

After I finished my last lift, I sat in the audience smelling of Biofreeze, my hands still caked with chalk and my legs still covered in baby powder, which is used to keep the deadlift from hanging up on the thighs.

I had won my class and even set a record--accomplishments perhaps made less remarkable by the fact I was the first and only 53-year-old, 198-pound male to lift in the federation's raw division. Those who follow will no doubt thank me for setting the bar so low.

I watched the weights go up as the big guys took their turns and reflected on the day. After all my years of striving, I had finally found the key to winning: get the best coach you can find, train hard, and be in a class by yourself.

For more information about powerlifting, visit the American Powerlifting Committee at americanpowerliftingcommittee-usa.com or visit Jim McCarty's website, supermanofthecentury.com.