Ironman

I will never ride in the Tour de France. In fact, I doubt that I will ever set foot in France. There are entirely too many Frenchmen over there for my taste. But, I do know how it feels to ride in the Tour de France.
Last Sunday, after circumstances defeated me twice, I finally completed a full Ironman race. And, as in the Tour, I got to finish in a narrow chute formed by rows of cheering fans. What a rush! The final 6 blocks of the race went right down Coeur D’Alene’s main downtown boulevard. A crush of excited fans narrowed the path to barely three or four feet, much as one sees near the finish of mountain top stages in France. It’s hard to imagine that the excitement attending the completion of an Ironman could be enhanced, but sharing that excitement with those cheering throngs elevated my experience by a quantum leap.
Some years ago, I set my sights on competing in an Ironman triathlon. Originally, I was mostly motivated to infuse my workouts with a little variety. Training for triathlons seemed just the ticket. And being the obsessive sort that I am, I decided that the Ironman would have to be the ultimate goal.
The Ironman is often called the most grueling one-day endurance event in sports. Beginning at 7:00 AM, aspiring Ironmen and women plunge into a lake for a 2.4 mile swim. Upon exiting the water, the athletes climb upon their bikes as quickly as possible (the clock is running all the time), and head out into a challenging, hilly, 112 mile bike course. Once the Ironman finishes with this bike, the real work starts. Again, with the clock running, the Ironman changes shoes, removes his helmet and charges out to run a full marathon. That’s 26.2 miles, the distance between the classical Greek cities of Marathon and Athens.
Two years ago, my Ironman dreams were blown away by a severe storm. Just as the race was about to get underway, winds in Provo, Utah, site of the ill-fated and short-lived Ironman Utah, gusted to over fifty miles per hour, raising 3 and 4 foot swells that killed one competitor and left the swim course unnavigable. The winds and waves threw swimmers ashore over more than a mile of lakeshore. By the time that the survivors were rescued and accounted for, there were not enough hours left in the day for a proper race and the course was shortened to fit within the available time.
I earned an Ironman medal and finisher’s tee shirt, but I never did feel that I had satisfied the criteria for being called an “Ironman.”
Last year, I was supremely well conditioned, but was defeated by luck as my bicycle broke down. Last year, whenever friends wished me “good luck” before the race, I responded somewhat ungraciously that luck would have nothing to do with it. My success would depend upon the years of work that I had invested in this endeavor. Either I was prepared, or I was not. It turned out that I was wrong. All my preparation went for naught as a series of mechanical malfunctions knocked me out of the race.
This year I graciously thanked well-wishers. And a harsher winter ensured I was not so well conditioned as the previous year, but I made sure that I had a perfectly prepared bike waiting for me in the transition area. It paid off.
Injuries had prevented me from working out either in the pool or on running trails for most of the previous 6 weeks, and I had not the slightest idea how long my knee would hold up during the race. Covering 140.6 miles in one day is an awful lot to ask of a gimpy knee.
The knee held. The bike performed flawlessly. All that was required for me to finish with a respectable time was an iron will. I had it. And all the pain I suffered was more than rewarded by the elation at the finish. And I was already planning my next Ironman race – Ironman Arizona, in 2006.
What drives the Ironman is usually incomprehensible to his friends and family.
The daughter of a friend of mine always cries when his race ends. She gets it.