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January 19, 2004 Monday
To hear him tell it, he's just a regular guy. An "average Joe." He'll indulge in a glass of wine or two, slug down an occasional beer and pizza, and treat himself to a cigar. Then Joe Decker will go out and do something to blow his cover. Something crazy like a 135-mile race through Death Valley in temperatures reaching 133 degrees. A 150-miler through the Sahara Desert. Or a 520-mile trans-Himalayan adventure race. At 33, the man can't help it. "I love it," he said. "They call me all kind of crazy names—freak, fanatic, what have you. But I'm just finding out what this body can do." So far, it's done enough to earn him the unofficial title of "World's Fittest Man." He didn't ask for it, he says. It just came with the all that blister-bursting, joint-jolting territory. The catalyst was the Guinness Book of Records 24-Hour Challenge, a series of endurance, athletic and strength events that makes an Ironman triathlon look like a warm-up. The feat catapulted Decker, a Rockville, Md.-based personal trainer, into a national media spotlight and helped spawn a newly released book: The World's Fittest You: Four Weeks to Total Fitness (Dutton). Unable to complete a two-mile run in 16 minutes, he was rerouted to the Army's "fat boy" shape-up program. It was a wake-up call no reveille could match. Fast forward to December 2000. That's when a remodeled, fiercely disciplined, 5-foot-9, 190-pound Decker morphed into a media-celebrated marvel by breaking the Guinness 24-hour challenge record. No problem. Just to push the record beyond the comfort zone, he did an extra 2,000 abdominal crunches, 100 push-ups and 100 jumping jacks. Then he lifted a total of 278,540 pounds, exceeding the event record of 50,160 pounds. All this after 100 miles of cycling, 10 miles of running, 10 miles of hiking, five miles of power walking, six miles of kayaking, 10 miles on a cross-country ski machine, 10 miles of rowing and two miles of swimming. "When I got up the next day, I was tender all over," he said. A modest price to pay for a guy who suffered what could be permanent lung damage in early 2000 in the first of four 100-mile-plus events that comprise the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning: the Raid Gauloises, a 520-mile ordeal from Tibet to northern India. "I suffered a major lung infection before I had to cross the Himalayas," he said. "Pulmonary edema. I thought I was gonna die. My lungs were 70 to 80 percent clogged up." Decker went on to complete the event, which left him with scar tissue on the lungs. His reaction: "If it gets worse, if it forces me to stop racing, at least I can say I had a great time at what I was doing." But why stop there? "If you always do things in life that are easy, where does that get you?" he wonders. "For me, the mental challenge is to run because it makes me a stronger, better person." And for the rest of us underachievers? "Mix it up. Have fun with fitness. Don't look at it as a horrible thing you have to do. It can be a rewarding, exciting, adventuresome, life-changing thing."
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