Twenty Years, thirty-seven races…it’s time for a look back at my experience with racing the 140.3 distance triathlon.
WHY DID I START?
It all began in the Spring of 1979. Or maybe in the summer of 1956, I’m not sure. When I was 7, the Cincinnati Reds had a powerhouse team, featuring Frank Robinson, who would become the Rookie of the Year and Ted Kluzewski, who had hit 49 homers in 1949. Girded by Gus Bell, the patriarch of 3 generations of Bells who played MLB, Wally Post, and Ed Bailey, they would set a record with 221 homes runs that season. Sports Illustrated, just a few years old then, featured them on the cover, grinning in their sleeveless uniforms, menacingly aiming their bats skyward. My grandmother knew I had become hooked on their exploits, so she sent me a copy. My mother, wanting to encourage my already voracious reading habit, got me a subscription, which I continued for the next 3 or 4 decades.
The May 13, 1979 issue featured an article by Barry McDermott, covering the second Hawaiian Ironman, held in January of that year on Oahu. I had just finished my second year as a ski bum, heading up every day from The Avenues above downtown Salt Lake City to Little Cottonwood canyon, where I learned how to navigate the steep and deep at Snowbird. Downhill skiing is not usually considered an endurance sport, but hitting the slopes every day, no matter what, especially on the difficult terrain there, uncovered an athletic persistence and commitment which tapped into the stick-to-itiveness I had honed for the past 15 years or so as I wound my way through high school, college, medical school and residency. Ready for some time off, I moved to Utah to be with my soon-to-be life partner, Cheryl, bought a house, and daily drove my yellow VW camper van 45 minutes to the powder heavens in the Wasatch.
McDermott’s dramatization of the participants who shared “an addiction to inordinate amounts of exercise”, coming two weeks after I’d ended my season among the dirt bags who daily rode the tram to satisfy their own addiction to floating downhill, often in blinding snow fall, entangled me. I had been a mediocre scholastic swimmer, always the worst on my high school and collegiate teams (but still good enough to earn a letter in each), a bicyclist all my life (every year, I would buy a new one at a police auction for use on campus), and now an addicted powder hound. When I had the chance, I would backpack the Sierra and Rockies wilderness. The life style he simultaneously romanticized and questioned, of people who would do 400 sit ups in a sauna to win a bottle of beer, both attracted and scared me. Over the next twenty years, as we grew our family and I hit the prime of my career as a physician manager, that story stayed with me, waiting to bubble to the surface of my thoughts when given the proper trigger.
My first retirement came in June, 1997, from an all-consuming job as President, CEO, and Board chair of a 1000 member physician group in Washington State. Going back, at age 48, to being a full-time physician, seemed to leave me with too much time on my hands. The very first thing I did was haul my family in an RV to the East Coast, and then bicycle back home while our 16 year old son drove. I got deeper into mountain biking and shorter multi-day bike trips. I started bike commuting 3 times a week, whatever the weather or hour. The next year, while shopping in the local Performance Bike shop, I saw a flyer for the “Triple Threat”, a series of three triathlons held on the local military base. I picked it up, expecting to find the insane distances of 2.4 miles swimming, 112 miles biking, 26 miles running. Instead: a half mile swim, 15 mile bike, and 3 mile run. I remembered instantly the drama of that all day event on Oahu. Then I remembered: I hate running. When I was twelve, and a Boy Scout, I earned to Running merit badge, which required me to cover three laps of a track. I did it, but vowed never to run again, a feeling reinforced as the jogging craze hit the country in the late 60s and 70s. Friends who picked this up became gaunt, asthenic, constantly complaining of back, knee and foot pain. Besides, they always came back from a run exhausted and sweaty.
But…3 miles. I could do that! On January 1, 1999, Cheryl and I went up the hill to the local middle school track, around which I ran 3 times. I had six months from that point to June 26 to build up to 3 miles. I bought a sleeveless wet suit that spring, and slapped some aerobars on my commuting/touring bike. I ran 3 or 4 times a week, on the seriously steep hills surrounding my home. I arrived ready to go.
I remember two things about that first race day. Number one, I worked hard from the start of the swim. Number two, I finished second in my age group, out of about 8 other 50-54 year olds. I got a MEDAL! I was hooked, just as I had been the very first time I slid down a hill on skis. I entered the next two events at the base, earning another 2nd, and a 3rd. I searched the nascent internet for other races. I even went to San Diego in October, ostensibly to see my mother and sister, but actually to do a late season triathlon starting in the breakers at the Oceanside pier. Another medal in that race as well. A friend, who was both a runner and cyclist herself, said, “I see an Ironman in your future, Al.” I scoffed. A medical colleague who had done Hawaii himself in the 80s, before qualification was needed, told me I should think about that as a goal. I laughed and told him, “No way I’m ever going to run that far, Charlie.”
By March of 2000, I found myself doing longer and longer runs on Sundays: 90, 100, 110 minutes. As I finished my first 13 miles run in under 2 hours, I said to myself, “I think I might actually be able to run twice this far.” That was the fateful moment. Why I ever said that to myself, I can not fathom. I still hate running longer than 2 hours to this day, but that inner pronouncement set in motion a two-decade long journey that has led to so much more than I could have imagined. When I got home, I went online and tried to sign up for the first Ironman California, to be held that May. SOLD OUT!!! What??? Before, I had been able to just show up and race. Likewise the next Ironman, Lake Placid in July – sold out. But not Florida, November 2000. I scrolled and clicked, paid my $450, and began to think about where to stay, how to get there, and whether I should have a real triathlon bike.