20 in 2: The Double Decathlon, or Icosathlon, is a track and field competition in which the athlete must complete all twenty track and field events over two days (which includes completing a standard decathlon in addition to the ten other events,) scoring points based on performance from the IAAF scoring formulas.  After finishing seventh in the 2005 World Championship, I began to train for the 2006 Worlds.  This is the blog of my journey, dedicated to promoting the Icosathlon, as well as promoting a friendly, healthy track and field community...

Back to: Dimitry's Double Decathlon Track & Field Blog

The 2005 Double Decathlon World Championship

Background:

The double decathlon is comprised of all nineteen "standard" men's outdoor track running, jumping and throwing events, with the antiquated 200 meter low hurdles added to make it an even 20.  The events are completed in two days of competition, using IAAF rules and scoring.   Athletes are given (but not guaranteed) at least twenty-five minutes between the finish of one event to the start of another.  The competition is 24 years old, has a governing body and is recognized by the IAAF.  Most meets are held in Europe.  Over 500 athletes, including former Olympians, Masters and All-American collegiate athletes have posted over 1000 marks in the last 25 years.  More info is at: http://www.dmultis.org .  The order of events:

Day 1: 100 Meters, Long Jump, 200 Meter Low Hurdles, Shot Put, 5000 Meters, 800 Meters, High Jump, 400 Meters, Hammer Throw, 3000 Meter Steeple Chase.

Day 2: 110 Meter High Hurdles, Discus Throw, 200 Meters, Pole Vault, 3000 Meters, 400 Intermediate Hurdles, Javelin Throw, 1500 Meters, Triple Jump, 10000 Meters.

2005:

Dimitry Yakoushkin recently competed in the 2005 World Championship Double Decathlon, hosted in Lynchburg, VA, with nine countries represented by over forty athletes, twenty athletes starting the men's open division.   This is his story:

I read about the double decathlon three years ago - an American Olympian, Kip Janvrin, just broke the world record and had an interview with ESPN.  Janvrin was a decathlete that was strong in the 1500 meters, a trait highly needed in the double decathlon, where five distance events (but only one throw and jump) are added to the standard decathlon.  There were some things I read in the interview that particularly got my attention, I'll paraphrase/exaggerate them here: Not being able to walk without severe pain for a few days afterwards.  Getting 30 minutes or less rest between every event.  Starting the twentieth event exhausted and still finding a way to hobble to a finish.  Competitors taken away on stretchers.  Janvrin's interview to me was Cruise's "hello" to Zellwegger.  Three years later, the world championships were being hosted in the US, and I purchased the airline tickets and hotel so far in advance I'd have no excuses.  This was it, I was back.  After a six-year hiatus from track or even casual running, I had four and a half months, some Empire Runners all-comer meets and a few old track implements to get me into shape.  If I had a lifetime, I would discover, it would be by no means enough. 

I arrived in Lynchburg, VA off a red-eye from Oakland at 10AM, twenty-four hours before my first event.  It started raining that morning, too; arriving from the opposite coast was our twenty-seventh competitor, Tammy.  Tropical Depression Tammy.  Tammy didn't make the news out West, and honestly, after Tammy I don't want to know what it takes to make the news out West.  Anyone that sits in their warm, dry California home and sees the results of a hurricane and thinks "boy are we lucky to live here" is either experienced or very astute.  There's a reason our homes are ten times more expensive than anywhere else.  Californians, pay your mortgage or rent next month with appreciation.

We had a dinner to meet the competitors - 26 entries in the men's open, 9 countries, lots of food.  I had some laughs, met all the officials, and met one of the original competitors from the first double-decathlon in Finland (Finnish come up with the craziest stuff - gotta love them.)  I slept soundly, and awoke to a monsoon at 6 AM. 

The walk to my car soaked everything I was wearing .  Power was out at the track, and they were installing two generators to power all of the equipment.  Everything was wet.  Ten people were turning the sand at the long jump pit to have fluffy stuff to jump into.  Six people pulled out of the meet without warming up.  I suppose if I lived in a five hundred mile radius, I would have, too.  I didn't pay $189 round-trip to go home wet for nothing.

A mile warm-up, many strides and two changes of clothes later - I was in the blocks for the 100 meters.  Slow start, but I won my heat.  I could not believe it - I focused on middle distance-to-distance, not sprints, which were usually my weaker event.  I learned throughout the day that I was wrong - you need to be a distance runner that can handle sprints, not the other way around.  There is so much to loose in the 3000, 1500 and steeplechase, but not much to lose in the sprints.

A recurring theme throughout the meet was changing clothes, finding ways and locations to stay dry.  The hotel's window-mount heater/AC unit dried everything I owned in five hours after day one, and when I was done, I drove four hours to the airport with wet clothes on the dashboard, defrost heater on full blast.  The poor woman that sat next to me on my flight home now has one of the greatest airline disaster stories to tell friends and family for the rest of her life - sitting next to a man that smelled worse than any wet dog that ever dragged his nappy hide through a shallow duck pond.  When I got home, my wife picked me up and we drove home with all of the windows down and not many words spoken.  My two year old got carsick for the first time. 

I took one jump in the long, and decided almost 20 feet and uninjured was better than 21 feet and hurt.  This would begin the universal double-decathlete's "PR-Awe", a term I made up that describes the shock and awe that occurs when you try your hardest but get nowhere near your PR.  For example, an athlete that ran a 2:12 800 meters had a PR about 20 seconds faster.  He was in PR Awe (pronounced PR Awwww) for most of the day. 

The 200 hurdles were a disaster and PR Awe increased.  Events began to go by in a blur.  Many athletes' "safety" throw or jump - a short approach or an early attempt at a height - were sometimes the only points they scored.  Sometimes people did not take a safety jump or throw, and settled for zero points in an event.  My safety high jump at 5'1" was the only mark I earned in that event, after a warm up at 5'5".  On my second jump, my takeoff knee sent shooting electric pains everywhere.

This multi-event is not like a decathlon, where you have to be great at everything.  This was much more like a long baseball season, where you have to stay "up" for each event and not let a poor performance get you down.   Athletes were dropping like flies, and by the 3000 steeple, everyone was wet, exhausted, and extremely fatigued.  "Adrenalitis" was the coined term - because by the start of the 800 meters, you're running as if in a workout - no adrenaline, no starting line jitters or nerves, just a bunch of wet track athletes joking around.  Camaraderie took the place of adrenaline, and it became fun - my first time I had real fun at a meet in many, many years.

Adrenalitis: n. 1. A condition occurring in the later stages of a multi-event track meet, in which an athlete loses adrenaline and must function, without.  2. 33 seconds.

I ran a slow 5000 (points lost in the 5000 could be made back in the 800-high jump-400 combo if you weren't fatigued from running a hard 5k, the IAUM president and world record holder for the 55+ age group suggested.)  I led the 800 meters through the first 200 (and on through about 750 meters.)  I felt great.  Then, my 200 split: 33.  My former coach, were she at the meet, would have pulled me out of the race by my ear and either eaten me alive or fed me to trolls she kept locked up under the track (we were fairly certain of their existence).  In the last 50 another competitor and I fought like Ben Hur and that Roman adopted-brother guy, in what must have been the most comical slow-motion race-finishing sprints of all time.   PR Awwwwww.

This is a great time to talk about the real reason I wanted to do the double decathlon: how easy it looked on paper.  The marks these guys were hitting were not great.   Some were bad, actually.  I plugged in my PR's and "best-case" performances for events I had not yet done (40 meters for the hammer, no problem!  4 meter vault?  Child's play!  Throwing the jav?  60 meters is nothing!), and voila, world record.  The double decathlon was for me - I could instantly dominate.  I found out later that this was also the draw for many of the athletes.  I also found out, as they all had, that everything goes out the window in the first lap of the 800.  If I had read this very article before my first competition, I'd use it as more fuel, more reason to prove them wrong.  So if anyone has that fire I'll tell you this:  the competition is impossible.  You can't do it, don't even try.  It will kill you.

After the 800: High Jump, 400, Hammer, 3000 meter Steeplechase (a distance/hurdle/water jump race).  The hammer uses every muscle in your body - my jaw would hurt after from the tension - and it finished off the last remaining unused muscles I had.  So, for the start of the 3000 Steeple I literally hurt head-to-toe.

Relevant numbers on the day thus far: 3500 calories of food consumed, (And, I hadn't eaten dinner yet, or my second dinner, desert, and night snacks) 6 liters of water and Gatorade, 9 changes of clothes, 2 toe nails gone, (one torn off and one just gone - don't know how) and a few other occurrences best shared around a campfire with friends that revel in gross stories.  (Your body doesn't like 12 hours of extreme stress, it seems, and responds in wonderfully expressive ways to tell you to slow down, stop, please stop, stop now.)

Some of the 6 liters I drank had to come out before the start of the steeple, and I did not want to trek to the restrooms and back, so I found a quiet corner behind a shed to do my thing.  The next part is hard to technically describe, particularly because of the absurd and non-obvious nature of what happened.  I did what all men wearing elastic shorts would do to pee standing up (elastic waistbands facilitate easy access to that region) and pulled open my shorts, and went.  About three seconds into it, I developed a sinking feeling that something was not right.   I thought about it more - something was definitely not right, I just couldn't grasp it.  Then it started to sink in.  Just before I went behind the shed and worried someone would see me, my logical brain decided that no one could see if I simply pulled my shorts out (to pee) but not down (so one would see.)  It was brilliant, but I missed the important aspect that I would be peeing into my running shorts, which I could have done at the start of the race, or at any time, for that matter.  There I was, in the pouring rain hiding behind a shed, peeing into my pulled-out shorts.  Thankfully, I was already drenched, and after ten seconds back into the rain, I was clean and ready to go.  The good news was that we did have seven water jumps, to rinse off whatever the monsoon missed.

But, my mental state should have been an indication of my overall condition.  I should have paid attention to me not being able to pay attention.  Three thousand meters, twenty-four hurdles, seven water jumps, a throbbing knee, a dizzy and pounding head and over thirteen minutes later, I wished I had not.  Thirteen minutes to complete a three thousand meter race is fine if you are jogging on purpose - but I was not; that was my flat-out, break-neck, all-I've-got run, and that has added detrimental effects to a mental condition that is already teetering on collapse.  PR Awwwww.

I was done.  Not happy, not relieved, because day two warm-ups were just thirteen hours away.  I went to the hotel, laid out my wet clothes on the AC unit, and went to Applebees where the waitress would try to talk me out of two appetizers and two entrees.  At the hotel, only my street clothes were being dried, on purpose.  If I was going to fly home tomorrow, they would be all I needed.  Warm dry sheets never felt so good.  My body ached, and only a few hours after competition, I was already sore.  And not pain, because I was in pain, but the kind of sore you get two days after a first hard workout.  Only it was hours, not days. If I felt worse tomorrow, I would be able to continue, and I would have to quit.  It was a comforting thought.  I slept, but not before I snuck my uniform onto the heater/drier.

 When I awoke it was to the expected all-over body ache everyone warned me of.  It was bad, but I could walk, and that was a good sign.  A few more athletes dropped without stepping foot onto the track, (but surprisingly, after the 13th event - the 200 - no one would drop.) 

At the start of the 110 high hurdles it was pouring again.  And I got on the cell phone, called my wife and told her I may be coming home early.  Healthy, fit and in good weather the hurdles were a daunting race.  In pouring rain on a devastated body it would not be worth an injury.   My only plan, then, was to run the race slowly - "4-stepping" at a reasonable pace - to avoid injury and be able to continue.  It was raining so hard that four officials with squeegees frantically brushed off the few feet in front of the blocks, and continued to do so until we were in the "set" position. 

The rest of the day became a blur after the gun went off, and I'm glad I started the eleventh event.  The Disc was so slippery you could barely hold it, not to mention footing in the ring.  We started to have fun.  Everyone gave each other advice, everyone had a good event or a specialty to offer their expertise, and I learned to pole vault that day.  (I was planning on no-heighting for extra rest, but was convinced to try it out.  Fifteen vaults, eleven misses and two hours later I finished with over 200 points in the event I planned to score zero in, and for an extra bonus I learned how tired your hands can get in a day.)

By the triple jump, (which follows the 1500, which is just about the ideal event to have before the triple jump if you really want to do poorly or blow out your legs - gotta love those Finnish track junkies for coming up with the order) we could speak a few words of the seven non-English speaking countries represented, and it was as if we were teammates; calling out splits, coaching and encouraging each other.  For some reason, I pulled out a jump that earned me a spot on the top-100 of all time list (there have been over 1000 marks, so it's a decent list, even though it's like saying you own the 3rd fastest Studabaker convertible on your street.)  I don't know where that jump came from - but for once during the whole competition, I felt like a world-class athlete; the few dozens of people there stopped to clap a beat for my approach, and when I landed the officials had to step a few feet further than they expected.   It was a great way to go into the 10000 meters - with some positive energy. 

So what better way to spend that energy than to run a 64 second opening lap?   That's what went through my mind as the starter raised his gun, and it's what I did.  Everyone including me thought I was crazy - but it was a memorable moment - I was out of the running for the next position up (there are only 36 points per minute difference and I was over 200 points behind sixth - who was also the former top US double decathlete) and it gave the race some good cheer. 

Tradition for the double decathlon is to conclude with an unofficial 4x100.  This is strange to me  - because for the track purist that obviously designed this event, you would figure you would have to end with a 4x400 - and although it would be comical, it would be the best thing to do.  I'll lobby the IAUM next year.  For the World Championships, it's USA vs. Everyone Else (Team International.)  Team International had the no. 1, 3, 4, 5 sprinters according to the 100 and 200 times on paper, but somehow team USA pulled it out by a wide margin of victory.  Go USA.

Next year, the World Championships are in Bendingo, Australia in late October.  More on the IAUM can be found at: http://www.dmultis.org.  Dimitry Yakoushkin will be training for this event throughout 2006.  You can contact him at dimitry400@yahoo.com

20 in 2 © 2005, 2006 Dimitry Yakoushkin