The Race



The 2001 Ironman Florida Triathlon was held in Panama City Beach. As soon as you get there, you realize this isn’t a race, it’s a happening. There are meetings and dinners and banquets every night of the week leading up to the race. You get your gear ready for the race, and all set up at the race site days before the race. No scrambling before the event. Which is nice, as it lets you sleep worry free the night before the big day.

Standing at the starting line, its hard to believe I’m here. Sure, I was delusional in 8th grade when I thought cross-country was bad ass, but I was pretty sure this was the real deal. I wouldn’t be looking back on this 10 years later, thinking “how could I have thought that was so tough?”. Or could I?? God, Rick, put those thoughts out of your head now. The gun is about to go off.

Bang! Only 140.6 miles to go.

The swim portion of the race was in the Gulf of Mexico. The start is pretty crazy - roughly 1900 swimmers enter the water at 7am, in one large stampede. Getting kicked accidentally about the head and body, and kicking others accidentally is all part of the race, and in a crowd of 1900 it happens a lot. The swim course is actually 2 loops of 1.2 miles. Swimming 1.2 miles kind of beats you down, but to get out of the water, run through a check point, and then get back in knowing you have to do it AGAIN plays a bit of a mind game on you. Once I got out for the second time, there were strippers on the beach waiting for me. Lest you get too excited, these people are actually wetsuit strippers, whose job it is to help you out of your suit. They rip it off your shoulders, tell you to sit on your butt, and rip it off your legs and hand it to you.

Runners then run up the beach, then run down a chute lined with bags of gear, one of which I filled with my gear and placed on my numbered hook the afternoon before. There’s a change tent, and I put on my biking gear and head out of the tent. Right outside the tent, there are a dozen people standing there with rubber gloves coated with sunscreen. They lather me up and send me along as if they were a machine from The Jetsons.

Then on the bike and on the road. Oddly enough, Panama City Beach is where I went for spring break in 1995, for a week of drunkenness and laziness, during the period I mentioned earlier. Somewhere about 3am, spring breakers will stumble out of whatever bar they are kicked out of, and walk down the main drag towards their hotel or house. It was this very same main drag that I stumbled down repeatedly in a drunken stupor that I was now biking for the first 5 miles of the Ironman bike portion, and the first time I'd been down it in 6 years. How ironic. I went out a bit fast at about a steady 19 mph, but it felt ok, so I saw no reason to slow down. My memory of all the miles sort of blur together until about mile 70. My butt started to hurt about mile 40, but I had expected that, and I do remember thinking at mile 10 or so that I had to run a marathon tonight, and that most people preparing to run a marathon don't do silly things like this beforehand. In any case, the leg pains started in about mile 70 which I guess is why my memory sharpens after that point. I had planned to stop and stretch or perhaps massage my legs somewhere about that time, but convinced myself to just go 2 more miles. I kept doing that until the end of the race. The closer I got to the finish of the bike portion, the more I knew I could probably make it without stopping. Even though a 5 minute stop is so meaningless when thought of in terms of a 17 hour race, just the fact that you've stopped making forward progress does enough damage mentally (and letting lactic acid build in your muscles) its something you want to avoid if you can. At mile 100 of the bike, I knew I had it made. I don't know who ever thought to make the bike portion 112 miles, but those last 12 were the most painful. It would have been a completely different race without them. I averaged 17.7 miles per hour over the course of the 6 hour and 20 minute ride.

Getting off the bike, I was sure my legs would cramp massively as they had done in the Baltimore marathon just 3 weeks earlier, and figured that as long as I had to stop to change clothes, I might as well stretch. Oddly enough, I didn't twist up in to knots, and after changing, I only felt pain when I tried to stretch, so I decided to run instead of stretching as long as I could still move.

In the days before this race, the only part that really terrified me was trying to run after the bike ride. I'd been on long training bike rides throughout the year, and my legs always killed afterwards. During some of my longer brick (bike-to-run) workouts, I had a lot of trouble getting my legs to no cramp up at the start of the run. I knew that if I could run just the first mile of the running part of the race, all would be ok. As long as I had the *ability* to move forward for one mile, I knew I'd be able to find the determination to make the rest. The run course is also 2 loops, but this time they're 13.1 miles each. So, when I reached the first mile marker and threw up my hands victoriously, people around me thought I was on my second loop. I looked at them and smiled and said, "Nope, but I only have to run another 25 miles, and this race is in the bag." They thought I was loony. They can join the rest of the world that knows me.

I knew I wasn't going to be the fastest guy on the course, so I was bound and determined to be the most festive. I cheered for those spectators that cheered for me. I high-fived everyone along the race path that would let me. I repeatedly told the people at the aid-stations handing out Gatorade that they rocked, and that I owed them big time. I even proposed to one of the girls who was handing out gatorade when she asked me if I was single - I said I was waiting for her and asked her to marry me, all this without stopping. I joked with people, I pointed out things that amused me to other runners, and made as many friends as I could. That’s just my way - you know this. I walked for about 8 or 9 of my miles. Mostly because the knots in my legs wouldn't let me run. It was discouraging to know that I had the energy to run, but that my legs wouldn't let me, but oddly enough I laughed at that. Perhaps dementia setting in, or maybe I just needed to keep my spirits up. All along the race course, there are little "M-dot" guys painted on the roadway. The M-dot is the international symbol for the Ironman Triathlon, which can be worn as a badge of honor only by those who complete one of these races. I wanted that little guy, and every time I saw him painted on the street, it fired me up. Once I even looked down at an M-dot painted on the road and said out loud, "Yeah, that’s right you little son-of-a-bitch, I'm coming for you." There was a girl running a few paces ahead of me who turned around with a very troubled look in her eyes. I started to explain, "No, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to the street, no, the guy, I mean the paint, you know the guy on......". She had started running much faster. Oh well.

With 4 miles left to go, there was someone at an aid station on a walkie-talkie talking about someone who had passed out and was taken to the hospital. With 4 miles left. I couldn't imagine the let-down that would be. With 2 miles left to go, I began to get very dizzy and lightheaded myself. I freaked. If I passed out now, I would have been so angry. I walked at a much slower pace, and begged a spectator to walk with me and keep me talking, and he obliged. With one mile left he suggested I get some caffeine and sugar at the aid station, which I did, and it helped a little. My legs hurt real bad now, I had reached exhaustion, and I was feeling dizzy. One of the great things about the Ironman races, is that they allow crawling. No other race lets you do that. Either you walk, run, or drop out. Ironman races will let you crawl to the finish, and some people have. I was determined to make the human species proud and make it in an upright position. I walked until there was about 1/4 mile left to go, no scratch that, I trudged until that point. Someone right around that point said to me "This is where you put your kick on". I looked him square in the eyes and said "This *is* my kick. A definition of a kick is everything you've got left at the end of a race, and pal, you're lookin at it". Somehow, the cheers of a couple hundred people just beyond that point, down that home stretch can inspire anyone to break in to a brisk jog. So I did.

And then 13 hours 38 minutes and 38 seconds and one hundred and forty point six miles after I jumped in to the Gulf of Mexico, and 23 years after I beat Lyle around the baseball field, I was an Ironman.

Whew.