Weekend warriors - amateur athletics; includes related article on athletic shoes

Black Enterprise, April, 1992 by Oliver Gibbons

These athletes have been in constant training for months, alternating their exercise schedule to include bicycling, running and swimming--the sports they must master to complete a grueling triathlon. The ultimate in athletic contests, a triathlon requires its participants to endure a strenuous workout in these three sports to be victorious.

But these African-American men and women are not professional athletes; rather, they are weekend warriors. While they have the same instinctive urge to compete as professionals do, they cannot devote themselves to the pursuit of sports full-time. Instead they travel across the country and to the Caribbean to compete in races, often while vacationing with their spouses and children

Making Time To Train And Compete

Take Harlem, New New York-native Luther Gales, for instance. A former police officer, Gales now works as an administrator of a city shelter and as a loan collector for Citibank. But he is thinking of giving up one of his jobs. The reason: "I'm working too hard now. I need more time to train."

Gales, 52, works out at least two hours a day. In the winter he alternates between swimming and running, putting of cycling until the spring when the weather is better. He recently started lifting weights to "get a stronger upper body" and improve his conditions and stamina.

Gales has always pursued athletic competition with enthusiasm. He learned to swim early, competing on his high school team. "I always had good endurance," he explains. "Then, in the 60s, running became the thing to do and I pursued that."

Gales say he first heard about triathlons in the early 1980s. "I knew I could do it and then I found out I was good." He started entering events sporadically, sometimes winning races in the masters and over-40 age categories.

What started out as a hobby quickly became a way of life. He began planning his vacations around races. "My vacation is taken around triathlons. My wife hates it, but she loves it. I took her to Bermuda and she asked me, 'Why are you taking your bike? I said, 'Because there's a race down there. And she said, 'I knew there was a reason.'"

Men are not the only weekend athletes who gear their vacations around competing in sporting events. Paulette Meggoe, a medical records analyst for North Central Bronx Hospital, Bronx, New York, and student at the College of New Rochelle, makes time to train in running, swimming, cycling and the martial arts. "Its very hard to find time. But I try sports on alternate days," says Meggoe, 36, a Bronx resident. Her schedule includes cycling in the morning, followed by a brisk run on her lunch hour. In the evening, Meggoe, a black belt in tae kwon do and hap ke do, does stretching exercises. "Considering the amount of training I do, I'm an athlete. You have to have discipline and [be willing to] sacrifice," she explains.

She prefers cross training to concentrating on one sport because it improves her overall endurance. "You don't just use one muscle. You use them all," says Meggoe.

"Employing different muscles and not relying on the same ones also reduces the likehood of injury," says Dr. Thomas Dickson, former team physician for the United States Olympic cycling team and director of the Allentown Sports Medicine Clinic in Allentown, Pa.

"The greatest benifit of cross training is that you're putting stress on different parts of your body. So, you don't get a lot of injuries all the time," explains Dickson. He adds that cycling, running and swimming are all good for the cardiovascular system.

Cross Training: A Growth Trend

Flavia Marin, a 42-year-old runner from Trinidad, who has also entered several triathlons, was forced to cut back from running and try other sports because of a foot injury.

"I now prefer to cross train," says Marin. "It's better for me. As I get older, I think that it's better to do a little of everything, rather than a lot of one thing."

Marin, who works as a Delta Airlines sales agent in New York City, is often able to fly to meets as part of her vacation itinerary. "I'm trying to reschedule my days off to enter events," she explains.

"If I'm able to get in a race, I think it's a good vacation. If I can't, it's not a good vacation. I carry my running shoes wherever I go," she says.

Marin is part of a growing breed of athlete that major sporting shoe companies are gearing their products toward. For example, Nike Inc., which resigned baseball and formel football megastar Bo Jackson last year to a four-year deal, will reportedly pay him $ 2 million a year to promote cross-training shoe. The Beaverton, Oregon-based athletic footwear company developed the cross-training shoe in 1987. In 1990, it earned $ 350 million from the sales of its cross-training shoes, which accc\ounted for nearly one-third of the company's $ 1.2 billion in annual shoe sales, according to Nike spokeswoman Liz Dolan.

"There's been a huge growth in cross training. We needed a shoe that would satisfy athletes who are involved in a lot of different sports," say Dolan. "Because Bo was a two-sports athlete, it helped people to see the purpose of the cross-training shoe," she adds.