A trinity of Long Island triathletes tell their stories
Herewith, three life stories of Long Island go-getters competing in Sunday's New York City Triathlon; a trinity of unrelated souls, except in their representation of the very antithesis of indolence, challenged by the endurance troika of swimming, cycling and running:
ODD SANGESLAND, Plainview, 79.
Most likely, Sangesland already is the event's age-group champion. "I don't believe there'll be any others of that age" in the competition, he said. "But I just race after myself."
The retired aerospace engineer has "been able to swim probably before I could walk" and was a high school track and cross-country runner at Fort Hamilton High in Brooklyn.
But he didn't try a "tri" until he was 59. "I had become physically inactive after I got out of the army," he said, "then, someplace around 1965, when my kids were old enough for Boy Scouts, I became a scout master and had troops for 10 years. I'm good at survival stuff; we went camping once a month and I had kids sleeping in the snow, hiking."
When his youngest daughter began running track in junior high school, "naturally, I had to go out and help her" and ended up competing in a 10-kilometer race. Ten years into his running career, injuries caused him to "switch off to biking and swimming, and now I don't get any injuries."
MICHAEL TONER, South Setauket, 68.
" 'Athlete' is an exaggeration" as a description, Toner argued, but he was co-captain of his college swimming team at Holy Cross and remains a member of a Holy Cross alumni swim team that, in 2004, formed a six-person relay to swim the English Channel.
He also will be part of a relay effort in the New York Triathlon, taking on the swimming portion before Bob Rothberg takes over on the bike. If the team's third man, Al Finger, is unable to run, Toner will do that, too.
He was a swimmer and track man at Xavier High in Manhattan, but it wasn't until the late 1990s that he saw a newspaper blurb for a triathlon event and wondered, "Can I do that?" He "tried it and didn't kill myself. Well, I broke some bones subsequently, but one thing about this triathlon is that it's very addictive."
SAM CILA, Riverhead, 36.
It was when Cila was recovering from severe injuries sustained on duty in Iraq - he underwent 16 surgeries on his left hand alone and ultimately had the hand amputated last December - that a friend, "an avid cyclist and triathlete," visited him. "And I got suckered into trying it."
He had been a wrestler and football player at Patchogue-Medford High School, but "when I started my new injured life, it was a crawl-walk-run scenario," Cila said. "I basically walked 10 minutes and ran for a minute, but it began to come back."
He ran a couple of road races, then "went out and got a bike." Because he had lost function in his left hand, "swimming was a bit of an issue" and "the biggest challenge was holding onto the bike." Riding one rigged to allow all the braking and shifting to be done with his right hand, he proceeded to schedule his many operations around a competition schedule.
"Then, when I had the hand amputated, I had to start all over and got a specific prosthesis for the bike. Amputation basically eliminated the entire pain issue. It's a little tough to wrap you hand around, no pun intended, having you hand cut off halfway up your arm. But I talked to a lot of guys who've had amputations, and once I got comfortable with that, I found the prosthetic hand is better."
Also competing in the event from Long Island will be Michele Henschel.
