The competitive spirit has been alive in man since the dawn of time, when the swiftest were running, not for laurels, but to keep one step ahead of a saber-tooth tiger. With natural selection at work, only the strongest survived to pass along their genes to new generations. That same competitive drive, tempered by time and refined by a sense of camaraderie, keeps three area physicians striving to stay at the top of their game in their respective athletic endeavors. Team Spirit Internal medicine specialist Andreas (Andy) Maddux, MD began cycling simply to get fit, but after dropping almost 40 pounds, his interest was aroused and he found a group to ride with. “I met some talented cyclists through those group rides,” he said. “I rode more and lost more weight and enjoyed it. Then I started riding bicycles competitively.” Maddux joined an Alabama Masters’ Cycling team and has raced for almost three years with great success. In 2006 and 2007, he won the Road Race Championship of the Masters’ Division, a 60-mile race held in Huntsville. According to Maddux, support from his teammates is crucial. “I come home with medals from winning, with prize money of maybe $150 that has to be divided among the team members,” Maddux said. “If I only bring home $50, that’s the greatest $50 I have ever earned and ever will earn. Our team has placed in the top 10 every time — all year long in every state we’ve been in. You can’t win without strong team members.” Along with the small cash prize, winners take home a great treasure — a coveted yellow jersey, made famous by Lance Armstrong’s multiple wins of the Tour de France. “Lance Armstrong has been a role model for me,” Maddux said. “I had the privilege of meeting him through a mutual friend, Ron Williams, an outstanding Paralympics athlete. He came to my house, and we went on a long jog and chatted. He’s a witty gentleman.” In fact, Maddux is now using Carmichael Training Systems, the same coaching group as Armstrong, to design his training program. A Kansas-based coach reads performance data sent from a computer on the physician’s bicycle, from which the coach determines areas that need improvement and develops a 12 to 15 hour per week training regiment. Maddux also schedules two Wednesdays a month to meet other riders for a training ride and he often competes on Saturdays in Birmingham Bike League races, where cyclists max out their abilities in competitions that award winners of “attack zone” races, akin to wind sprints for runners. A couple of times a year, he travels to Athens, Georgia, where winter bike leaguers compete on weekends, to test his mettle against top athletes. “Many pros show up for these things,” Maddux said. “It’s one of the best training rides around the southeast.” Maddux is always pressed for time in his career and in his avocation, but putting in those training hours reaps great rewards. Now at his ideal body weight at age 43, Maddux intends to race competitively for years to come. “I’m just embarking on my racing career,” Maddux said. “I plan to race well into my 50s.” The Long Haul Jack Hasson, MD of Princeton Pulmonary Group, has found the social and competitive aspect of running to be as important as the fitness benefits. “When I started running with people who enjoyed running like I did, I found the competitive spirit kept me motivated,” Hasson said. “For me, if you stay competitive, you will continue with exercise.” Hasson ran his first marathon in Huntsville in 1987. In December, he ran the Huntsville marathon again, continuing a 30-year tradition. “I think when you get older, the competition is less, but it also gets more intense,” Hasson said. “Those people who do continue in marathons are older, but they are very serious about it.” According to Hasson, the key to his athlete achievement is setting aside the time it takes to exercise, finding a balance between dedication to his practice and determination to make time for fitness. This requires some level of sacrifice, which for Hasson might mean missing a couple of hours of sleep, as he runs most mornings before 6:00 a.m. “Once the day is going, it can be very difficult, Hasson said. “The nice thing about modern conveniences is that a cell phone can go with you. If I’m on call, I have the cell clipped to my shorts. I’ve gotten to the point where I can run and talk.” He rarely misses his daily runs, regardless of the weather. “Cold doesn’t stop me,” Hasson said. “Rain doesn’t. Lightning stops me. The hardest thing to run in is the heat. This summer was brutal. You have to be careful in the summer. If it’s unbearably hot, you can never keep up with the fluid balance, so I try to cut back in the hot months.” Having run 96 marathons, he is on the final stretch toward the elite 100-marathon club, though it wasn’t something he ever planned. “I never had a goal for that,” he said. “I always run because I enjoy it. I’m not obsessed with a certain number. When it happens, it happens.” Hasson said if that happens in Boston, a city steeped in marathon tradition, it will be especially satisfying. After nearly 100 races, he doesn’t have to be at the front of the pack, but he has been known to set a mean pace. His personal best was 2:46, his response to a necessity in years past to run in under 2:50 to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Qualification times have changed, but the level of training required for a marathon is still intense. Attaining that pace is accomplished, in part, from being urged on to greater successes by his peers. “Excellence comes from people around you,” he said. “If they are training toward the same goal, it pushes you to do your best.” Variety Is Spice of Life On any given day, Dr. Bradly Goodman’s automobile is a rolling sports locker. Inside, you’ll find three or four tennis racquets, a couple of squash racquets and balls, a lacrosse stick and a Frisbee or two. For Goodman, a physiatrist with Alabama Orthopedic Spine and Sports Medicine, variety is the spice of life. He is a competitive tennis player who was captain of his college team at Vanderbilt. While for many athletes, excelling in one sport would be enough, Goodman has a sport for each season — tennis and Ultimate Frisbee during the warm months and hockey and squash for winter. Goodman played hockey as a child, dropping the sport at 12 and picking it up again in medical school when he played on the Emory college team. He now plays with the Firebirds, a men’s hockey league team playing Sundays in Pelham, which won the league championship three out of the last four seasons. He picked up Ultimate Frisbee during his residency, and says it combines many “elements of tennis, as well as hockey, in that you have various ‘throws’ in Frisbee similar to strokes in tennis.” And you’re constantly running. He added squash in the mix when some of his tennis friends picked up the sport. “I enjoyed playing squash and I was so bad, I could only improve,” Goodman said. As a tennis player, Goodman already was at the top of his game and has represented Alabama the last two years in the invitation-only Senior Cup Tournament. He also was selected to represent the United States on the tennis team in the Pan American Maccabi games in Buenos Aires in the mid 1990s. In Ultimate Frisbee, Goodman has competed on the national level in the masters’ division. Goodman said injuries are inevitable in competitive sports, and he feels fortunate that his body has withstood the punishment it sometimes takes. Being in the field of orthopedics, “I sometimes have some decent insights on how to adjust or accommodate if I have setbacks.” He says the key, in his life, is balance, allocating time for work and sports, but leaving ample time to spend with his wife and children. “I spend a lot of time with my family,” he said. “I’m not playing sports all the time. I play in very small chunks. I may play an hour of hockey on Sunday, and an hour of tennis twice a week. It varies. Today, I played about 40 minutes of squash before I picked up the kids from piano. You just have to find the time where you can and enjoy it.” April 2008