An announcement was recently made that Ironman St. George will no longer be a full Ironman distance race. It's being reduced to a 70.3 race, and they've asked for submissions for finisher stories. Here's what I wrote and submitted:
Ironman St. George, 2010, was a life-changing day for
me. I walked into the race
not really knowing how I felt about the sport of triathlon, and the universe
conspired to give me that direction at mile 37 of the bike course.
The days leading up to St. George were what anyone would
expect going into an Ironman. I
got a cold a week before the race.
I was stressed about every detail—I was worried that I would get sunburned
while simultaneously freezing to death on the bike course while facing horrible
winds on one of the 13% grades the race was promoted to have. Luckily, none of that
happened. The winds were
reasonable, the sun was tempered by sunscreen, and the 13% grades…well, they
actually happened. But they
weren’t as bad as everyone made them out to be.
What did happen to me was a broken spoke on my rear wheel
somewhere around mile 35 of the bike course. I heard a loud “THWANG” and the guy passing me and I both
looked up and both dismissed it since neither one of us could figure out what
had happened. Suddenly my
effort level picked up—I assumed it was just that the incline was more than I
perceived it to be. People
started passing me, and I sweated more heavily. I decided about a mile later to hop off my bike and
see what was going on, and I found out that I had broken a spoke. Since I was riding a
reduced spoke count wheel, the lack of balance in the wheel pulled it far
enough out of true that it was rubbing against the frame. Opening the rear brake was useless, but
I did manage to get it to spin freely by putting the wheel back into the frame
in a lopsided manner. I thought
“Great! I’ve only got 77 miles to
go—I’m sure this will hold.” And
it did, for about a quarter of a mile. I tried again and made it another quarter
mile. And then I tried
again, and went another quarter mile.
I studied my bike, and tried a number of adjustments, and
eventually remembered reading that you might be able to bang a wheel against a
rock to get into shape to finish a ride. I wonder what was going through the minds of people
who were passing me as I slammed my wheel repeatedly into a rock on the side of
the road.
At this point, my bike computer was at 37 miles, and I made
my peace with the race, and decided to flag down someone for technical support,
and assumed they would just tell me my day was over. I saw 2 of my friends during the 40 minutes that I
waited, and wished them luck and told them to keep going—it was a long day. I didn’t break down and cry, but
I became very upset that the chance to finish what would have been my second
Ironman was being taken away from me.
I vowed to come back to the race with a vengeance if I didn’t
finish. I think those were
the very moments I actually became a triathlete. Until then, I was just someone doing triathlons.
Bike support on the course was amazing. The guy who fixed me up got me a
loaner wheel, swapped out my cassette, and even took the time to place my speed
magnet so my bike computer would work. I lost a sum total of about an hour due to my broken
bike wheel, so I wasn’t going to have my fastest bike split ever, but some
quick calculations told me I could still make the cutoffs for the race, and I
busted my butt to do it! I would
find out the next day that I made the intermediate bike cutoff by about 10
minutes—the realization was frightening to me. I made the final bike cutoff by a larger margin, and
realized I never bothered to find out what the first run loop cutoff was, so I
decided I needed to push the pace a little on the first loop. I saw my partner and
several of my friends on the run course—I was happy to still be a part of it. I wound up running a
marathon PR that day, bettering my previous standalone marathon time by about
15 minutes, and in the process bettering my previous Ironman PR by about 20
minutes.
Something just clicked inside of me when I was stranded at
mile 37 of that bike course. Ironman makes me feel whole—and the near loss of the
opportunity to finish St. George steeled my resolve to continue as a triathlete. Since that race in 2010, I’ve been
working with an amazing triathlon coach, and under her guidance, was able to
take 3 hours off of my best Ironman time in 2011.
I have that wheel, complete with the broken spoke, hanging
in my garage to this day. I’m grateful it decided to speak
up so I could find my way in this sport.
