THE IRONMAN COMETH

PROVOST GARRO FINISHES 10th IN WORLD TRIATHLON CHAMPIONSHIP

By Maria Castro

Call him Ironman. On his recent vacation, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Anthony Garro was not exactly drinking pina coladas under a palm tree and enjoying the sun of Hawaii-that's not his idea of fun. He was busy showing Hawaiians that at 60, he is one of the top triathletes not only in the United States, but in the world. Dr. Garro finished tenth in the Male 60-64 category of the so called "world's most grueling athletic competition," the 2002 Ironman Triathlon World Championships in Kona, Hawaii.

What earned Dr. Garro his title was his ability to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, and run 26.2 miles in less than 14 hours during some of the toughest weather conditions in the history of the Ironman Triathlon World Championships. His finish time even beat the performances of 130 male athletes whose ages ranged from 35 to 59.
The competition, which this year accepted only 1,600 athletes out of nearly 50,000 hopefuls, started at 7:00 a.m. on October 19, 2002 in the waters of Kailua Bay. The athletes were given 17 hours to complete the race, and according to the official site for the Ironman World Championship, only 1,455 athletes finished what the editor of ironmanlive.com, Rick Martin called the "brutal course," because it began with heavy rains that continued through the beginning of the bike race, followed by strong winds and temperatures in the 90's.
But despite everything, the Provost, who resides in Tenafly, New Jersey with his wife, Mary Ann, was one of the athletes who finished the only race in the world where approximately 600 bottles of sunscreen are used, 100,000 gallons of fluid replacement are offered by nearly 7,000 volunteers and $100,000 goes to the male and female winners. He placed 1212th overall, clocking an official finish time of 13:26:06 in his first ever Ironman World Championship.
"I really wanted to place in the top 10 in my age group, and I did it. For that I am very happy," says Dr. Garro, still walking slowly because of the soreness on his legs. Though his finish-time was almost an hour more than his July 2002 qualifying time (12:18:01), he is not disappointed. "The conditions of the race were really different from those we had here at Lake Placid; that really affected everybody."
Even pros like Chris McCormack from Australia, Zack Jurgen and Thomas Hellriegel both from Germany, Christopher Bastie from France, and James Bonney from the U.S., all favorites to place in the top 15, dropped out of the race after discovering that "no amount of training and racing elsewhere prepares you for the rigors of Kona," as a press release for the event stated it.
The average tri-athlete, according to Kelly Mione from ironmanlive.com, spends from 18 to 24 hours each week training for any Ironman Triathlon. The event, which was originally the idea of a Navy Commander named John Collins in 1978, was supposed to settle the argument of who is more fit: swimmers, runners, or other athletes. But the argument was never settled. Dr. Garro for example, was a swimmer in college, then became a marathoner, then started biking to alleviate some of his running injuries. He began participating in triathlons about 20 years ago. "I don't think is a question of who is more fit, but who has more skill, especially in the swimming event, which in fact requires more skill than strength."
Dr. Garro perhaps doesn't have all the time he would like to dedicate to his training. Visit Shuster hall, and you'll find him in the hallways rushing from meeting to meeting, in his office going through tall piles of correspondence, or in front of his computer reading one of his hundreds of daily e-mails. He looses track of time and sometimes leaves his office as late as 9:00 p.m., according to his office staff. But he still finds time to bike approximately 100 miles, run 45 miles, and swim 9000 meters every week.
"I am only hoping that I can qualify earlier in the year for the 2003 Ironman World Championships," says the Ironman. "Two races of this magnitude in one summer are a little too much."