Bruce, the Athlete:
I am five foot nine inches tall and not particularly strong. As a basketball player when I was a youth, my saying was: “I’m small but I’m slow.” I think I was average or below average at almost every sport, but that didn’t hold me back as I tried a ton of things and had some successes interspersed with many failures.
Ironman Races: This was by far my biggest success, and until I was 65 years old, my only success. I finished the Ironman race at Lake Placid in 2006 and then I finished the Ironman race in Kona in 2007.
I won no trophies – as it took me about 15 hours and 30 minutes – but I crossed the finish lines successfully.
Getting over the finish line (half dead) in the rain near midnight in Lake Placid was possibly the single greatest moment in my life. There I was on the Jumbo-Tron, on the hallowed ground where Eric Heiden won 5 gold medals in the Olympics, which boomed out:
Bruce Stachenfeld – you are an Ironman!!!
The races almost killed me but I kept going. If you are only an average athlete but don’t quit you can be an Ironman, I learned.
Basketball – As a kid I wanted to be a professional basketball player more than anything! I played basketball probably more than 50 hours a week. School, sleep, and life were all afterthoughts. Of course this didn’t work out, but it was all I cared about as a kid. If you told me that a five foot nine Jewish kid from Scarsdale who couldn’t even touch the rim was not likely to make it in the NFL, I would argue doggedly to the contrary. This stands out as probably the first — of many — times when I picked a goal, and worked like crazy to achieve it, but failed. That is what I do.
Martial Arts – Martial arts have been a major part of my life since my early teens when I started to take Tae Kwon Do in high school. This persisted through college where I earned a red belt long ago — it is one degree below black belt.
Along the way, I competed in tournaments, smashed my hand to smithereens trying to break a brick — a bad idea — and got to the point where I had some really nice kicks, including my specialty, which was an axe kick to the collarbone. No, I never actually broke anyone’s collarbone.
There are a bunch of war stories, but the one I will mention is that one summer I started taking Kyokushin Karate. Two things stand out:
First — this place was 100% full contact — no holds barred. I got the sh_t beaten out of me, including broken ribs.
Second — this is where I met my wife – now of almost forty years. When I walked in the first day, there she was. She smiled at me is my recollection. I long ago gave up martial arts but she continued and is now a sixth degree black belt in Isshin Ryu.
So I got a solid beating, but I got the girl!!!
I keep thinking about going back to martial arts. So far I am at the limbering up stage stretching out long-since unused muscles — and kicking and punching heavy bags and speed bags and other stuff. It is so much fun to hit things. So I am saying (sort of) yes but at this point in life it is probably best for me to hit things that don’t hit back.
Getting Ripped at 65 – I have no idea at all why I decided that this would be a good idea, but sometimes you just have to do things for no apparent reason, and this is one of those times. And it is kind of cool sounding isn’t it? I mean it is at heart the ultimate Old Guy thing to do.
So I decided in January of 2023 that I would get ripped during my 65th year of life, starting on July 19, 2023. I should have a before and after picture shouldn’t I? Well, this is a bit of a saga that you might read with some caution….
It started out well enough, and within about six months I looked – well – sort of almost-ripped except for this annoying paunch that covered my (underneath) six-pack. I knew it was there somewhere.
Then my son-in-law – who is the definition of ripped – started to help me out. He showed me how to lift weights properly, and I started taking Creatine to buff up further. Notably, Creatine is NOT a steroid, although it does have some health risks, and I am NOT recommending it here. And good grief. I was getting closer and closer to being f_cking ripped! I mean I looked in the mirror and the body of a – dare I say hot – forty-year old man started back at me. My wife said:
Wow – you look good!
And she is my worst critic so I know she meant it. Woohoo!
Then it all turned to sh_t……
Just like Icarus – who flew too close to the sun – my body started to let me down and in a pretty dramatic way.
First – just before my 65th birthday – July 12th to be exact – I had a stroke! What a nice birthday present. Happily – if one can be happy about having a stroke – it was a super mild stroke. And I had no symptoms other than some numbness. And now – eighteen months later – there are no vestiges of it. But probably too soon to breathe a sigh of relief.
Second, it also turned out that there was another birthday present coming – that my heart was running out of steam. I had an enlarged aortic root that had been stable for years but was now growing. And this meant I needed (open) heart surgery. Yuk!
I am nothing if not resourceful, so I quickly changed my goal from Ripped at Sixty-Five to
Ripped Open at Sixty-Five
Woohoo!
As an aside, my surgery was (very) major. They took out my aorta, my aortic root, my aortic valve, my ascending aorta and some other stuff I don’t really remember. The doctor – at NYU – allowed my son in law – the ripped one – who was then at NYU Medical School – to watch the operation. He came away with just a few words to describe my doctor as “A Rock Star.” So, yes, if you need heart surgery at some point, give me a shout as I have a referral for you.
As another aside, for those who relish ghoulish pleasures, and hopefully without giving you TMI, they use a rotary electric saw to get through the sternum and then……Well, that’s enough about that.
The recovery was not as horrible as I thought it would be.
It was a week of Power Whining – my wife knows what I mean.
Then, a couple of weeks of being sentient but weak.
Then I started to recover. Some super light semi-workouts – like wall pushups and hundred-yard super slow walks
And then – about 45 days after – I turned a corner – and started to feel like the Monty Python guy who said: “I’m not dead yet!”
At this point I had a rendezvous with one of my closest friends coming up. It was planned – long ago – to be at the end of January – about three months after surgery. When we get together, we do what we call Bodily Destruction. It means five (hard) workouts in the morning – followed by lying around – a massage – a couple of cocktails – and dinner. We do it for three days in a row and whoever feels worse at the end loses.
So would I be ready for him? Damn straight! I trained hard. No way I would let him kick my ass.
So we met in late January and had a great time taking turns trying to make the other miserable. I must admit he won, but I didn’t go down easy.
Now, I was pretty close to ripped — i.e., ripped at 65 — but being honest with myself, I wasn’t quite there yet. I had work to do. It was time to bear down, but God (or whoever was messing with me) had some other plans and gave me yet another 65th-year birthday present — a hernia!
If you’ve ever had a hernia it doesn’t hurt but it looks kind of disgustingly yucky and — no — you can’t get ripped with a hernia. So another surgery coming. But they couldn’t do that till six months after the heart surgery. This meant waiting till April 1st.
That got done but I had to wait two more weeks to work out a gain. Time was running out as I only had till July 19th, but finally I could really pour it on.
Nope!
The heart doctor jumped back into the fray. He didn’t like the way my heart was beating and wanted to put a loop recorder into my heart.
Yikes that wouldn’t get done till May 1st and then two weeks before I could work out again. Time was really running out now.
But as you can see, I don’t give up easy and I was a man with a mission. I had from roughly May 15th to July 19th to pull it off.
It was — finally — game time.
And I am proud to say I won the game!
I have tried many crazy things in life – most ended in failure — but not this one.
Check out the pictures. Before I turned 65. In the hospital getting ripped open. And just before my 66th birthday.
Before
During getting Ripped Open
After
Woohoo! I admit I was really proud of myself. That an Old Guy could do this.
…
Now the question arises — what should I shoot for next? Should it be Fat & Happy at 60-something? Or something else. After deep pondering — for about 60 seconds — I decided:
More Ripped at 66
A last note is that despite being ripped, I have a big scar down the center of my chest where they sawed me open. It is starting to fade but is still pretty prominent. And a woman I respect told me this – truly she did:
Chicks dig scars
I hope she is right.
Crazy Workouts: I have created (proprietary?) workouts mixing everything from boxing, to martial arts, to weightlifting, to cardio aerobics and even dancing. I keep myself in strong athletic shape.
Golf: I suck at golf, and am possibly the worst golfer in my golf club. But I really love it anyway. I live in the dream that someday I will get good at golf, even though I know it isn’t going to happen.
Running – I have run for years. I am guessing I started in high school and then for another 50-ish years. I got lucky that my body parts didn’t break down.
By far the best of this was me and my older daughter going on long runs together. We started out with short runs but they got longer over time and in the end some of our runs were over two hours long.
To avoid the boredom I started making up stories during our runs and — this is weird — when we would start running the stories would just flow out of me — almost like someone else was telling me what to say. I hope I don’t sound too strange here, but that is what happened.
There were a whole bunch of stories, but the one that stands out by far is the story I made up that eventually became my 850 page fiction book — Faythe of North Hinkapee. My daughter actually helped me when I got stuck on the plot. If you go to the James T. Hogg website there is a whole Hogg-Blog about how I wrote the book.
Anyway, my running today is limited as I like my other workouts better, but every year on Thanksgiving I run the 5K Turkey Trot in my hometown.