Posts Tagged ‘performance’

A Peek at Peak Performance

First published August 31, 2007

Because of my amazing celebrity connections, I got an opportunity this week to try out the peak performance package at the Canyon Ranch health resort in Tucson, Arizona.

I will be spending four days being tested, poked, prodded, analyzed and examined like an alien abductee while expert exercise physiologists, sports physicians and nutritionists try to figure out why I’m so damned slow. Oh, and a behavioral specialist will determine if it’s because I am a generally warped human being.

I’m not the first person to go through this program. Kathryn Bertine tried it out for ESPN.com last year. This is especially daunting for me, because not only is Kathryn a former ice skater and professional triathlete, but she’s a helluva lot better writer than I am.

But while many elite athletes have completed this kind of program and gone on to do great things in the wide world of sports, I will be the first middle-aged, middle-of-the-pack distance runner to undergo the trials and tribulations of body scans and a VO2 max test in order to discover that I’m a middle-aged, middle-of-the-pack distance runner.

In the weeks to come, I’ll provide all the gory details, so stay tuned to this space to find out what happens when an average Joe gets the elite athlete treatment… if I live.