Courtesy USA Today

(October 9, 2009) On Saturday morning, six days after he turned 60, Mike Adamle will step into the ocean off Hawaii's Kona Coast with about 1,800 of his closest friends to begin a 2.4-mile swim.

When — or if — he finishes that swim through sometimes brutal ocean waves, he'll jump on his bicycle and pedal 112 miles around the island, after which his legs will feel like, in his words, Jell-O.

At that point, a normal man would crawl to the nearest pub, plop down and order one cold beer after another.

Clearly, Adamle is not your "normal" man. He is a fitness freak who is somewhat obsessed with the Ford Ironman World Championship Triathlon, the most grueling test of endurance on the planet.

Adamle will then begin running … and running, for 26.2 miles — a marathon — over rough lava-covered terrain.

When he finally reaches the most beloved sight for any triathlete — the finish line — he will have earned bragging rights as perhaps the real "Iron Mike" of his generation and done his part to fortify the notion that "sixty is the new 40."

"Two things happen to people once they cross the finish line of the Ironman," says Adamle, who has finished the race twice before, once in his 40s and once in his 50s. "One, they check it off their list of things to do before they die, or two, they get hooked on it. I got hooked on it."

Anyone over 50 will remember Adamle as an All-American running back at Northwestern, and as a mostly backup running back for six years in the NFL, with the Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets and Chicago Bears.

The 40-somethings might have more vivid memories of Adamle as the host of what he calls the original TV reality show, American Gladiators, from 1983-89.

And anyone younger may remember Adamle as an interviewer and play-by-play man for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), where his biggest claim to fame was slapping wrestler Randy Orton on the air, after Orton insulted him.

Today Adamle is a sportscaster at WMAQ-TV in Chicago, as well as unabashed Northwestern fan, and, yes, fitness freak.

He says he first thought about the Ironman when he was in his late 40s. "When I was 48, I had arthritis, gout, my knees hurt, I was about 20 pounds overweight and I told my wife that I need to do something epic," Adamle says. "I can't go on like this anymore.

"I told her, 'I'd like to do the Ironman.' she said, 'yeah, sure.' "

Even for a man who fancied himself as an adventurer — "I've done everything from bull-riding to skydiving to scuba diving" — competing in the Ironman was about as extreme as it gets.

"Most (former professional athletes) need goals in lieu of playing football on Sunday or Monday or Saturday afternoon," says Adamle. "I needed something to fill that void.

"This is like the one thing I've been able to sink my teeth into because it requires a lot of hard work and preparation. It's doing the same type of things you used to do in training camp when you're getting ready for the season."

Adamle believes that when pro football players' careers end, they're just happy to get rid of the drudgery of getting ready for the season and enjoy relaxing.

"Then two or three or four years go by and all of a sudden you get a knock on the door, so to speak, because your body's aching, you've got gout, arthritis, a slew of maladies that grab athletes after they're done playing, especially in football," he says. "Doing this is one way of keeping the wolves away from your door."

The older you get, Adamle says, the more stretching and core exercises you have to do. His training routine runs about four hours a day, five days a week.

"You have to basically do the same things you're going to do on race day. And that is, turn in 100-mile bike rides, then get off your bike and make sure you run to get the lactic acid out of your body," he says. "Because when you get off the bike after 112 miles, your legs feel like Jell-O and it's almost impossible to run unless you've trained for it."

The one part of the race that scared him most was the swimming.

"It's like golf, we always practice the thing we do best and never practice the things we do worst," Adamle says. "The thing I did worst was swim so I practiced that very little, figuring I could fake my way through it. Boy, was I wrong."

The first year Adamle did the Ironman he went to a camp in Boulder, Colo., run by Paula Newby-Fraser, the seven-time women's Ironman champion. "I was voted as the camper not only least likely to finish an Ironman, but most likely to drown during the swim," he laughs. "And I almost did. I was getting out of the water with people who used Polident for their dentures. I felt horrible. And I thought, 'How am I going to do this?'"

One thing that gives athletes an advantage in something like the Ironman, Adamle says, is that they know their body, their pain threshold, what's debilitating, and what's just something you have to work your way through.

"If there's such a thing as a fountain of youth, it can be found in the precepts of cross-training — swimming, biking, running," he says. "I don't think everybody should do an Ironman. That requires a lot of time and preparation and hard work, and fatigue and stress on your body. But if you do a little bit of something every day, you can do these things when you're 60."

Besides satisfying his need to compete, Adamle says there's something else that drives him to do the Ironman — his pet charity, the Gridiron Greats Assistance Program, which he works tirelessly for to raise funds for all the retired NFL players who can't get disability insurance.

"The guys who played before the arthroscopic procedure was developed, who had a lot of bad, invasive knee surgeries, sometimes eight or nine, a lot of those guys are in pretty bad shape, and it's sad to see," Adamle says. "But I'm convinced that if these guys can take the bull by the horn once they're retired and stay fit and lose a little weight, I think the litany of things that happen to players, the morbid obesity, arthritis, gout, diabetes, will take care of themselves.

"There ought to be some kind of universal wellness program for them."

While he's happy to see the NFL finally dealing with its former players, whether forced to or not, a lot more needs to be done.

"Tom Brokaw wrote the book, The Greatest Generation. The people I'm talking about were pro football's greatest generation," Adamle says. "If it wasn't for them, the guys playing today wouldn't enjoy the money, success and the power of the game on network television, and to completely forget them is wrong.

"One of the things (Gridiron Greats founder) Mike Ditka says is that if the NFL would just set aside 1% of its annual revenue, you can take care of all these guys. And it's not about them getting rich. We're not talking about the pension plan or anything like that. We're just talking about them being able to die with dignity."

Adamle is thankful every day for being able to walk and run, but one of the reasons is because "you have to stay active. Whether you're a football player or not," he says.

Some of the best advice he received for the Ironman was from a friend, who told him recently, "Just relax, Mike, have a great time and pretend you're a little boy again. Because what little boy wouldn't want to swim, bike and run all day long."

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