Vinnie Tortorich

Early in 1985 I made a bet with a guy at Tulane University. The bet was whether or not I could jump rope for three hours nonstop. I was allowed to miss four times per hour. But I would have to immediately start up as soon as I missed. Any misses I didn’t use per hour could be carried into the next hour. I think I used nine or ten of the possible misses. I won the bet. One 32 ounce bottle of Gatorade was mine. The guy’s name was David Rothenberg. I then locked up the Tulane field house where I was working as a student coach. David and I got into my Alfa Romeo Spider. I drove him to a 7-11 where he bought a bottle of Gatorade. I then drove him to his apartment in uptown New Orleans. When I turned on the news the next morning, I saw my friend being carried off by officials in handcuffs. The allegations: gambling. How could one bottle of Gatorade get him into so much trouble? David had bigger problems. He was part of a point-shaving scheme (read more in the Sports Illustrated link) that brought the Tulane basketball team to its knees. I told you that to tell you this. Neither Rothenberg or myself realized that our lives would be forever changed that night in the Tulane field house. The next day as he contemplated his future as a criminal, I was trying to figure out how to go longer. I didn’t care how or why. I just wanted to go longer. Thinking back on it, the most incredible thing about my three-hour rope session was that I didn’t stop once for water. Things started to happen. Instead of running three to six miles (mileages that would mimic the 5 and 10K events I was doing), I would just jog around New Orleans. I would grab coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde for fuel to run back uptown. Instead of taking my car to Donaldsonville, Louisiana to visit my parents, I began taking my bicycle 80 miles one way. I would turn around and ride right back. It was around this time I read a story in a magazine about a race called RAAM, also known as the Race Across America. I read about a guy named Pete Penseyres. In 1986 he set the all-time RAAM speed record of 15.4 miles per hour over a course of 3,107 miles with a time of eight days, nine hours and forty-seven minutes. The record has stood for more than 20 years. If I’m not mistaken, he built the first set of aerobars. These are used across the biking and triathlon world today. I remember sitting in my office at Newman School where I was employed as a strength and conditioning coach for all sports, thinking one day I too would be an ultra athlete. I figured all I would need was a lot of money so I wouldn’t have to work all the time. That way I could train long hours. Like most people in the world today, that day never comes. In 1993 I entered my first 12-hour mountain bike race. At that time it seemed almost ludicrous to ride a bike for that amount of time. Within a year I had entered my first solo mountain bike race. Within two years of that day, I made it to the world solo finals in 24-hour mountain bike racing. What does all of this have to do with what’s going on today? Everything. What people like myself were doing in the mid to late 90s was considered crazy. By today’s standards, it’s considered nothing. People regularly ride these distances in races around the world. It’s considered common. I have a friend, Shannon Farar-Greifer, who does several 100-mile foot races per year. One of the first times I met Shannon she was pregnant and about to deliver her third or fourth child. I was shocked to read that four or five months later, she had entered a 100-mile off-road foot race. Ultra sports are not for everyone. It just shows our willingness as humans to see just how far we can go. It makes me that much more excited about the next ten years and the ten years after that.

My mom sent me an e-mail the other day. It had a video attached of a young kid doing what I would consider some unbelievable basketball skills. Some of it was so remarkable that it would leave the Harlem Globetrotters scratching their heads in disbelief. There was something that bothered me about the whole thing…the omni-present dad. Meanwhile, a reporter interviewed the kid and egged him on to do more tricks, almost like a trained monkey. I figured there had to be more of this out there. Sure enough, there were other kids doing the same tricks in other videos on YouTube. It was as if they all went to the same circus school and graduated in ball handling.

If you watch the video I put up, young Jaylin is bragging about colleges offering scholarships. Last time I checked, that’s illegal. To be honest with you, I wouldn’t put it past any NCAA team. I remember back when I was being wooed to different schools, they would try to impress me with prostitutes. I wonder what they offered young Jaylin. A Snickers bar? A video game? I told you that to tell you this. I have a nephew who is around 11 years old. He’s been in athletics since he was 5 or 6. According to his parents, he’s picked up my gene for wanting to be the best. He works hard at it. I’m told he wakes up at 5 a.m. and shoots baskets until breakfast time, then goes off to school. Do I think there’s anything wrong with it? No, for one reason only. No one is making him do it. He wants to do it and he wants to get better. His mother told me back when he was 9 that they went out and bought baseball equipment. He got his own bat, a special glove, cleats, helmet and so on. The whole set up cost my brother and his wife around $800. Are you effing kidding me? I asked her why she spent the money. She said she didn’t want to, but didn’t want to be the one parent who didn’t do all of that. It’s the whole being judged thing I guess. What happened to the days when a coach showed up with a bag full of bats, helmets and balls. He would then eye up where the bases were supposed to be, and there you have it, we were practicing. Sometimes there were cow chips on the practice field. What are we teaching these kids? Unless they have the same stuff the pros use they’re worthless? Should kids be talking about scholarships and contracts? I don’t think so. We already see a separation in this country. We have a very wealthy rich upper class and we have poor people. Our economy has obliterated its middle class and it gets worse every day. It seems as though we’re doing the same thing with our youth. We have extremely out of shape, obese kids on one end of the spectrum, and on the other end we’re creating mini A-Rods and mini LeBrons. These classes of kids exist during a time when we’ve cut the middle class of kids out, generally speaking, the P.E. classes.

A lot of times in fitness, we create words. These words generally mean something else. Take the word “calorie” for instance. A while back, maybe a year ago, I was talking to this teeny bopper aerobics instructor who felt compelled to tell me about a boot camp she ran, along with a stretch class and a spin class she taught. She was trying to explain to me that a hamburger I was going to eat would kill me. She started talking about total calories in and total calories out, and just how many calories that hamburger had. She told me just how many aerobics classes I would have to take just to burn off that one hamburger. She must not have noticed I’m a very lean person. She was too busy waxing poetic about what she knew of fitness. So when she paused for a moment to take a breath, I stepped in as only I could, and threw a Vinnie-ism at her. I asked, “What is a calorie?” With a confused look on her face she said “Uhhhhh.” I think a lot of people who talk calories don’t understand what it means. Here’s a simple definition…it’s a measurement of heat. It’s the amount of energy it takes to raise a drop of water one degree. I never cared to mention this to her. Even giving her that answer, she still wouldn’t understand what it means. We use that measurement in discussion of food and exercise. It’s become part of the fitness lexicon. Another one of my favorites is “aerobic.” A doctor named Kenneth Cooper. He took the Greek word aerobic, which basically means with oxygen. He coined the phrase “aerobic exercise.” It means any exercise that goes past our anaerobic ability and causes our Krebs cycle to use oxygen as a fuel. Again, most people don’t know exactly what it means. Yet it is part of our fitness lexicon. I told you that to tell you this. So-called fitness experts are always looking to coin a new phrase. It’s difficult to do. It generally happens by accident, in my opinion. Such as with the phrase I’m about to tell you about. There was once an ultracyclist back in the late 80s named Johnny Goldberg. I’ve heard a few stories about the next few sentences I’m about to tell you. Johnny would generally run out of daylight while training. I’ve also heard his wife was pregnant and he wanted to be home with her, but still needed to train. So he built a bicycle of sorts in his kitchen. It had a direct drive wheel. He called it a spinner. The makeshift spinner worked so well, he hooked up with Schwinn. The company built the Johnny G. Spinner. Take the next part with a grain of salt. I only have one side of it. I dated a girl years ago in L.A. who was one of the original queens of aerobic dance classes. It was literally this woman and Jane Fonda who started the craze. Her name is Karen Voight. According to Karen, she brought Johnny into her studio to teach the very first spin classes in this country. The rest is history. Classes have been going on all over the world for the better part of 20 years. You know what? Spinning is a good idea. For one, you can work harder and not worry about pounding your knees, ankles and hips so hard just to get your heart rate up. I don’t think it’s going away any time soon. I think as a society we have a better chance of seeing a Kardashian fuck a white guy who doesn’t wear a jersey to work than seeing spinning go away any time soon. I’ve been to a few spinning classes. I’ve considered teaching one. But with my schedule, time doesn’t permit. I purchased my own spinner back in 1999. I use it religiously. I’ve been on it from an hour a day to as long as eight hours a day. The thing is covered in rust. But it works like new. The pads have been replaced more times than I can count. I still have the original heavy duty chain that came with it. I have it in the corner of a room. My friends call it the corner of pain. When I’m training hard for competitions, I may ride outdoors all day long, come in and continue riding at night on my trusted spinner. The price can be a deterrent for some. A good one runs from$800 to $2,000. Take it from me, you’ll have it forever. If you’re in the market and can’t spend that much, I’ve picked them up at gyms closing down for as little as $200 and brand new. Best bet would be to find one on eBay. It can be just as good as a brand new one. As for brands, I would stick to Schwinn, Johnny G (no longer associated with Schwinn) and CycleOps. You may notice the CycleOps are a little more expensive but the seat and handle bar adjustments are infinite. They also tend to be quieter.