Ironman Arizona

Up ahead, I saw a willowy figure, shrouded in a shimmering mylar cape, limping along the walk between Tempe Town Lake docks and the bike corral, where rested over 2300 high tech time trial machines just returned from the 112 mile Ironman Arizona bike leg.

Jordan Rapp was barely moving, his deep set eyes glassy and tired. I wanted to let him go – after all, he’d just finished an Ironman, 4th place overall. But his story, and what I’d seen as he ran up to the finish, compelled me to stick out my hand, and ask, “Jordan Rapp?”

Rapp is a professional Ironman triathlete. He’s also a Princeton engineering grad, and thus qualifies as a nerd, I guess. But, he’s best known as a kind and helpful presence among the small triathlete community, freely giving of his knowledge and ambitions in the online world. And, he has been supporting World Bicycle Relief, which provides practical bicycles to African villagers, built and transported there at $134 apiece.

His career had slowly progressed through 2009, when in August he won Ironman Canada, and then in November, won again here at Arizona in course record time. I had been following a parallel arc, winning my age group twice in Coeur d’Alene and Arizona, both in course record time. We each paused then, and contemplated what the next step forward might be; he committed to “winning a world championship” in some triathlon discipline; I could not see that high up the mountain, but at least I knew now that it was there.

Then, on March 23rd of this year, out on his bike, he got blindsided by a hit and run driver. Glass from a shattered window sliced open his left jugular vein, and nicked his carotid artery. He has no memory of the incident, but does know that a good Samaritan was driving by shortly after he fell, a navy paramedic, who managed to tamponade the bleeding and thus save Jordan’s life.

The road back started slowly – 2 weeks in the ICU, then another 3 months on blood thinners, to allow the carotid to safely heal. Barred from any running or biking, or even swimming, Jordan vacillated between fear of getting back on the saddle, and intense desire to return to his previous life. Between July and September, he slowly built his strength and endurance, then raced the LA Triathlon (about 1/4th the length of an Ironman) in October. Successfully finishing, he then committed to going back to Tempe, and seeing what he and that course could do again together.

What transpired was, for me, well worth the effort and expense of my trip down to Phoenix for the race.

For I had been signed up to race again in Arizona. But a pickup truck I never saw got in my way on Sept 18th, and sent me to the ICU, with much blood loss and multiple injuries. Every day since then, I have both despaired of ever racing Ironman again, and angrily tried to do something – ANYTHING – every day, to get stronger, and faster, and back on the road to being a triathlete once again.

I look everywhere for signs and knowledge that what I’m trying is possible. The best motivation and inspiration comes from people like Jordan Rapp, who show what single-minded focus can do. Once I heard his story, and its eerie similarities to mine (we both won in AZ in 09, in course record time; his comeback IM was 8 months after his accident, just like my plan to race in Coeur d’Alene next June), I began to adopt him as my North Star, my role model for my route to success.

At noon, Cheryl and I had parked ourselves at the bike dismount line. She has worked as a bike catcher, and thinks this spot is one of the great viewing locales for an IM. The bikers have to slow down, and dismount. The drama of the race is often compressed into this little capsule of space and time. Some people make a flying leap and hit the ground running, grabbing a watch or bottle of salt pills off their bike as they fly by. Others wobble a bit, or do an endo by grabbing the front brake too hard while leaning towards the turf.

In any event, just as we arrived, the first two riders came flying down the narrow chute – Jordan Rapp and Timo Bracht (the eventual winner). I was thunderstruck – Rapp had said he didn’t even know if he could finish, and yet here he was, leading the race. Bracht has always been a faster runner, and Jordan did lose about 20 seconds a mile during the course of the next 26.2 miles. But still, when Cheryl and I saw him turn the corner towards the finish line less than 3 hours later, slowly running towards the clock, just 4 minutes slower than last year, my jaw dropped and I went a little limp.

The left side of his neck still had large jagged fading pink scars from that car window. His sunken eyes were clearly filled with tears. He weakly raised his arms to the crowd, then slowed and stopped 10 feet short of the line, to grab his girl and hug her for a full twenty seconds, racked with sobs of joy and awe. I sat down, and just let myself cry a little too.

So having gone through that, I just had to stop him down there near the bike racks, and let him know what I’d gone through, and the inspiration he’d given me. Bless him, he didn’t know me from Adam, but he took the time to listen for a minute to my brief story, and tell me that, yes you can, you can do it. Then his girl asked again for my name, and they both wished me well, and I felt like I had a fighting chance to myself back in gear.

Heck, it’s only been nine weeks since MY crash; he hadn’t gotten on his bike or run a step until 12 after HIS crash.