Jersey Training, Doping, and Action Park

Somehow the weather out here in Jersey has been awesome this week making for some good training. Recovered Monday with a 4500y swim and short run. Tuesday was a 2:30 ride along the shore and an ocean swim. There were loads of jellyfish but they didn't sting, still weird to constantly bump into them. Yesterday 1:30 bike then an 11 mile run in the afternoon. Met Scott from the duathlon and we ran at Manasquan Reservoir, a nice 5 mile dirt loop with marked miles. Ran the 1st lap normal then for the 2nd ran 4 miles at 6:00 pace and a 5:30 to finish it off before a short cooldown. I was drenched in sweat, not used to that. Today so far I swam 3600m, finishing it off with 3 all out 100's on 4min at 1:09, 1:10, 1:10. Solid.
There's an excellent article in the Washington Post today about doping among amateurs. What I like about it is it treats OTC performance enhancers as what they are - performance enhancing drugs. Sudafed, inhalers (although those need a prescription of course) for those that don't need such things. And my favorite peev, caffeine. This is the first article that I've seen that challenges the common use of low dosage caffeine in endurance sports. It's beyond me why all the big gel makers make gels with caffeine. Do people take these gels when they roll out of bed in the morning? Can I buy a gel with r-EPO in low dosage? I just don't get why it's so commonly accepted to take caffeine during a race when everyone is so supposedly anti-doping.
On a lighter side. Amy's brother Tim has oft recounted tales of the now defunct amusement park Action Park. He's regaled us descriptions of their dangerous rides like the one where there's a giant fan that blows a rider up into the air (Tim went up into the air then off to the side a bit, causing him to come crashing down and injuring his back). So this week I did a little research and found a lengthy Wiki article on Action Park
Some of the descriptions in the article are hilarious. This sounds like the amusement park that I dream of. I always wish you could mix rides with rider skill, kind of like a mash up between skiing and a roller coaster. Give the rider some control and things would be way more fun. I guess this is what Action Park sought to do, "They gave patrons more control over their experience than they would have at most other amusement parks' rides, but for the same reason were considerably riskier." They had an alpine slide which is a favorite of mine where you go down a concrete quarter pipe down a mountain on a sledlike contraction. There's always a real danger that you'll go into a turn with too much speed a pop off the track like my friend Dan Shea did once, causing nasty cuts/burns.
Action Park also had diving cliffs, with cliffs of 23 and 18ft. Awesome. The Aqua Scoot also sounds impressive, a brilliant mix of a waterslide and alpine slide where you go down a track of rollers like the kind used in warehouses. At the bottom of the rollers your roll on into water where you skim along the surface. "The patrons' inability to follow these directions resulted in numerous severe head lacerations weekly. There were also some rare occurrences where a patron's hair became entangled in the rollers when their head made contact with the rollers. If the rider found themselves fortunate enough to make it down the descent unharmed, they were not out of harm's way yet. If the plastic sled the rider was on was facing any direction off center, the sled would, instead of skipping, fling the rider off upon impact into the water. Or the sled would veer sharply to the right or the left upon impact with the water. At times, this led to the patron on the veering sled colliding with other patrons whose ride had finished and were in the process of walking their sleds out of the water."
And best of all. "The one ride that has come to symbolize Action Park and its extreme thrill-seeking was, paradoxically, almost never used.
In the mid-1980s GAR built an enclosed water slide, not unusual for that time, and indeed the park already had several. But for this one they decided to build, at the end, a complete vertical loop of the kind more commonly associated with roller coasters.[15] Employees have reported they were offered hundred-dollar bills to test it. "It didn't buy enough booze to drown out the memory", said Fergus.[11]
It was opened for one month in summer 1985 before it was closed at the order of the state's Advisory Board on Carnival Amusement Ride Safety, a highly unusual move at the time.[13] One worker told a local newspaper that "there were too many bloody noses and back injuries" from riders, and it was widely rumored, and reported in Weird NJ, that some of the test dummies sent down before it was opened had been dismembered.[13] A rider also reportedly got stuck at the top of the loop due to insufficient water pressure, and a hatch had to be built there to allow for future extrications.[13]"
I like the riskiness factor involved in these rides. I like that you kind of have to decide for yourself whether you think you're up to the task of taking on the ride, you can't just assume that you plop yourself into it and be alright. "Ride designers may have had insufficient training in physics or engineering. "They seemed to build rides," one attendee recalls, "not knowing how they would work, and [then let] people on them."" The old staffs views seem in harmony with mine. "The staff's indifference to many of the park's own rules led to a similarly lawless culture among riders, who generally liked the high level of control they had over their experience and felt that any accidents were the fault of the victims."
Wow, what a place. If only I could time travel I would most certainly go to Action Park circa 1985.