At age 51, Dave Voss doesn't talk about himself as a master triathlete. More like a conscientious worker: "I'm pretty good, but I love it, I work at it, and I just never quit."
"Some people think I'm nuts," he added. "Look at my face at Mile 22, say, and maybe all you see is the pain and the strain. But I'm on such a high. Even if I'm not doing well, I'm figuring out how to get on track."
Voss has been active all his life -- a little soccer, baseball, jogging, biking, chasing after bad guys as a Minneapolis cop. But not until age 40 did he run his first marathon, and at 46 took on grueling triathlons -- at maximum "ironman" distance, that includes swimming 2.2 miles, biking 112 miles and running 26.2 miles over 12 to 14 hours.
"Winning is great. Completing is important. But I love just doing it," he said. "Competing or training, it's almost the same thing."
Married to a Minneapolis police lieutenant, Voss is a sergeant who has worked assaults for six years and homicides for a decade before that. He grew up in the Chicago area and was a police officer in California before Minnesota.
In front of his wall of medals and plaques, he talked about mastery and why it matters.
What is mastery? "It's experience plus will power. Mastery is knowing I can pace myself, but still push a little farther, a little faster, a little smarter, even if I'm exhausted. It's not being better than anybody else, but being the best I can be. I'm still the student but I'm the teacher, too, helping rookie athletes or rookie cops."
How did you start? "After my first marathon, I was on a hotel bed in Duluth with ice packs on my legs and I'd had it. No more. Until I woke up from a nap and thought, gee, I should be able to do better than 3:57 [Last year, he ran that marathon at 3:02.] The triathlon seemed like a good challenge. After my first triathlon, I was hooked for life. Now I use marathons to train for triathlons."
