Roy M. Wallack

Roy M. Wallack is no mere desk jockey. A long-time L.A.Times fitness columnist, magazine editor (Triathlete, Bicycle Guide), freelance writer (Outside, Bicycling, Runner's World, Westways and many others) and best-selling author of eight books about high-level fitness ("Bike for Life: How to Ride to 100" is a legitimate best seller with 100,000 copies sold, while "Barefoot Running Step by Step" is considered the bible of the minimalist running movement), he gets out there — biking from the sea to the summit of a 13,796-ft. Hawaiian volcano in a day, debating persistence hunting with a barefoot Kalahari tribesman in a loincloth, and talking his way out of the gulag when he got caught illegally in the USSR. Relentlessly curious and optimistic, he's eagerly and naively subjected himself to crazy athletic events he isn't trained for (which is how he became the World's Second-Fittest Man —read on), and is obsessed with trying to figure out how to run and ride to age 100 or more. ("For proof, get back with me in 50 years," he says.) Here's his story:

FITNESS FOR THE LONG RUN -- AND LONG RIDE

An unremarkable Baby Boomer runner/rider/triathlete/tennis player determined not to slow down, this former collegiate wrestler started researching athletic longevity when he hit 40 -- and struck paydirt. Roy "broke the news" on several important quality-of-life, fitness-performance, and injury-prevention stories in the L.A Times and magazines like Bicycling, Runner's World and Outside that became pillars of his books and common fitness knowledge. Give him a beer or two and a couple of hours and he'll regale you with reasons why hardcore cyclists get osteoporosis (lack of weight-bearing and skeletal impact); why barefoot running will save your knees (less impact); why you're toast if you don't correct your posture; why cyclists and runners need to blast their butts in the weight room if they want to go faster; why intervals and to-failure weight lifting are like a fountain-of-youth (they spur release of hormones such as HGH), and why you need to stay of of the "Black Hole" (a detrimental training-zone almost every athlete unknowingly stays in most of the time).

Of course, Roy has used himself as a "guinea pig" for the all that cutting-edge training, technique, and nutrition trivia he's learned — somehow surviving some of the world's most extreme endurance events. Yes, I said extreme: The Himalayan 100-Mile Stage (running) Race, the Badwater UltraMarathon (135 miles in 120-degree Death Valley heat), the week-long, round-the-clock Eco-Challenge and Primal Quest adventure races, the 750-mile Paris-Brest-Paris randonnee, and multi-day mountain-bike races such as the Trans-Alp Challenge, BC Bike Race, Trans-Rockies Challenge, Breck Epic, and the event he loves the most and has done seven times, Costa Rica's La Ruta de los Conquistadores, often labeled "the hardest race on the planet."

Despite all that, Roy says that his greatest physical, mental, and emotional test actually came in 1994, when he rode 800 miles on a tandem bike from Nice to Rome with his earnest but unathletic bride on their honeymoon. The ride resulted, 9 months later, in the birth of a son, now in college, and the future Bike for Life's Chapter 12, a detailed study of the tricky issue of reconciling significant cycling and significant others. In 1999, in the name of science, he ran the Boston Marathon on five days and 34 miles of training while adhering to a radical new forefoot-landing "soft running" technique -- and almost set a new PR. The lessons learned that day in Boston became Chapter 1 of Run for Life.

SECOND-FITTEST AND TRYING HARDER

Finally -- proudly -- Roy is officially the world's "Second Fittest Man," having finished second in the World Fitness Championship in 2004. In fact, it looks like he'll be the second-fittest man for the rest of time, as the event, sort of "an Ironman with iron" that was sanctioned by the Guinness Book of World Records, was disbanded thereafter. Held in a gigantic YMCA in Plano, Texas, it included a 2-mile swim, 10-mile run, 10-mile power hike, 100-mile Lifecycle, 20-mile row, 20-mile elliptical, 500 squat thrusts, sit-ups, and hanging legs lifts, and lifting 500,000 pounds of upper-body weights. He completed it in 21 hours and 59 minutes, putting him several time zones behind Rob Powell, the Guinness Book champion, but comfortably ahead of Dan de Jager, a young adventure racer from Sacramento who couldn't swim. Since only these three people (out of hundreds supposedly registered) showed up for the contest, that guaranteed Roy the athletic immortality he'd long dreamed of. ("With great achievement comes great responsibility," he said when it was over, just before collapsing into a deep, 13-hour sleep. Bike for Life and Run for Life soon followed.)

Want more detail on the amazing Second-Fittest triumph? See Roy's TV appearance with "Brady Bunch" star Florence Henderson (and his poetry-laden induction into the 24 Hours of Adrenalin Solo Hall of Fame) by clicking on the two videos on this page.

For a look at many of Roy's best recent magazine and L.A. Times stories, go to:

https://muckrack.com/roy-wallack