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An Ironman is Forever

(written by Tammy Smith)

It's Saturday morning at 5 am and they aren't sleeping. In fact, they've already been awake for a half hour. They've eaten breakfast and gotten dressed. They've pumped up their tires and greased their chains. They've mixed their electrolyte powders in their water bottles and stuffed electrolyte gels and salt capsules in their jersey pockets. The garage door opens and before the sun rises they ride off on their carbon fiber road bikes hanging on only to their aerodynamic handlebars.

This and other mornings like it are just basic training rituals for the individuals striving to compete in an Ironman triathlon. It known as Ironman 140.6 because that is the number of miles an athlete must swim, bike and run in succession to finish. 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking and 26.2 miles of running are completed, and all in less than 17 hours.

"You have to enjoy the training," says 2000 Ironman California finisher Kelly McDonald, 35. "If something happens during the race and you don't do well or you don't finish, it can't be all about the race day. It's about what you learn along the way."

Actually the result of a drunken bar discussion, the Ironman 140.6 began in Hawaii in 1978. The testosterone levels skyrocketed in a Kona bar as Navy officer John Collins and his buddies argued which type of athlete was the fittest; the swimmer, the biker, or the runner. In the heat of the moment, Collins puffed up his chest and decidedly made a bold announcement. He challenged all in attendance to compete the following year in a race that consisted of a rough ocean water swim, a bike around the island and a marathon to finish. Whoever finished first, he declared would be the strongest and they would call Him the Ironman.

The next day the beer goggles wore off, but the idea of the race of which he had boasted had not. He posted fliers all over the island with the catchy slogan, "Swim 2.4 miles, Bike 112 miles, Run 26.2 miles. Brag for the rest of your life!" While only 15 people showed up for that first race, he had laid the groundwork for the Ironman triathlon that now includes 21 locations from Malaysia to Brazil to Switzerland with the World Championships to remain in Kona, HI.

"Ironman needs to be a lifestyle," says UC Davis Triathlon Team coach Bryan Pro, 28, "it's not just something that you pick up and do. A lot of people can take only three months and get ready to do a [sprint or Olympic distance] triathlon. You can't do that with an Ironman. In order to finish an Ironman you have to have endurance but you also have to know a lot about the sport and your body. Nutrition, pacing, training, recovery, all those things become huge key factors. It is one of the ultimate tests in endurance."

"Every individual is different but training should involve roughly 3 days a week of swimming, 4 days of riding and 3 days of running," says Pro. "And bricks [two workouts of separate disciplines stacked one right after the other] should be thrown in at least once a week."

Now that does sound tough, but the kind of people who chose to do these races still put on their multi-colored spandex cycling shorts one leg at a time. From undergraduate students to graduate students to professors, computer programmers to lab technicians, from mothers to fathers; the Ironman triathlete takes on many forms. These individuals volunteer and coach the Special Olympics. They design elaborate websites for their local triathlon club teams free of charge. They take French classes at their local French club. They restore old cars. They raise children. Many played soccer or other ball sports, some were swimmers or runners, and some were mountain climbers. But most just said the cross-over from one sport to three just kind of naturally occurred.

For 2005 Davis Caliman Finisher Matt Roper, 25, the running took a little getting used to. A more than gifted swimmer, former NCAA athlete Roper didn't know how to ride a bike when he came to Davis. Nor could he run. "My freshman year when I would have to run with the swim team my coach told me, "Roper- you run like a drunken chicken!"

Another time a friend from the Triathlon Team asked him to run a few miles with him. "Three miles!" the UCD Computer Science PhD candidate recalls saying, "I've never run more than one mile in my life!" "I went," he says, "and I think I held a 12:00 mile pace." His breakthrough didn't come until a few years later when he joined the UCD tri team and started running three times a week. Now he can finish a marathon in less than three and a half hours, holding 7:30-7:50 minute miles.

There are many things that these Ironman triathletes are, but easily derailed isn't one of them. Overcoming obstacles is just part of the path to glory.

For Professional triathlete Jamima Iley, it was overcoming a disease she never even had. "One of the happiest moments of my life was when I was un-diagnosed with Chrones disease," she says. For two years she had thought that she was suffering from the incurable disease. She had been on drugs that caused major cramping, nightmares and her hair to fall out. The kind of drugs so serious that if she decided to abruptly stop taking them, she could die. "Gradually I got off them," the UCD MBA student says, "with the help of my dad. Then I went to a different doctor, more of a specialist, and he gave me a blood test. I found out I didn't have it and we think that the symptoms may have been from a parasite that I got from an open water swim. The worst part is I almost quit doing triathlons."

The determination to persevere is inherent in Ironman triathletes. They must be determined enough to overcome injuries, life-threatening accidents and conditions that arise when the body becomes too over-exerted. And when they're on their bikes, cars and trucks are the enemy.

"I got hit by a truck my junior year at Princeton," said 25 year old Julia Svoboda, first time Ironman triathlete training for the IM Wisconsin Collegiate Championships in September. "For such a low speed crash, it was weird how much damage happened. It just doesn't take that much to severely damage your body."

Both her ACL and MCL, two major ligaments in her knee, were completely destroyed. "My MCL ripped off with a chunk of bone," the Population Biology PhD student recalls. "I woke up from surgery with an IV, cathoder, epidural and morphine drip and was like, "oh shit, this is serious."

It took over six months before she could get back on her bike as she would grow weary just walking to class, taking frequent breaks to rest while crossing the campus. The physical therapy was torture; her therapist treated her injury more like a soccer ACL tear than what had actually happened. "It took a long time to feel comfortable riding in groups again because I just don't want to go down," she says. "I certainly don't trust what cars are doing ever. Blinker or no blinker, I wait."

When workouts can last six hours or more at a time and include two or even all of the three disciplines sometimes the body can shut down. And training doesn't stop for the elements. They're out there in the heat, the rain, the cold, and the wind.

At a freezing cold race in March this past year at Cal Poly, dubbed "The Ice-athlon" by some of its participants, the drive to keep pushing was questioned. "I hopped in the water without warming up and I could see it snowing while I was swimming," recalls 25 year old Brandon Zipp who will be competing in his first Ironman on August 12 at Napa Valley's Vineman. "I finished the swim and I was hypothermic, I wasn't thinking. My race was over. [Matt] Roper threw his coat around me and [Adam] Schaal got me back to the truck. It changed me. Seeing these usually strong and dynamic people just shivering and immovable. I shouldn't have done it, with the water temperature conditions being what they were. I guess I was probably willing to take more risks with all the training and the cost of racing. That was the only race I didn't finish."

Eating balanced meals when they're not working out as well as proper nutrition and hydration during workouts is essential in these times of extreme physical and mental struggle. If an athlete fails to notice their nutritional needs, they may feel dizzy, disoriented and extremely tired. To triathletes, this is known as the sensation of "bonking."

"Before you start to bonk, you start to see stars and get kind of loopy, your muscles no worky," says 31 year old Juan Lang who is training for the Ironman Wisconsin Collegiate Championships in September. "When I actually start to bonk I start to lose coordination and judgment and it becomes kind of dangerous. It's totally dependent on whether you've had enough calories. I've actually seen someone just fall over off her bike."

"I know when I'm bonking because I look over and think "Oh, it would really nice if I could just go to sleep in that patch of shade right there," says Iley.

She remembers her worst bonk during the World's Toughest Triathlon in Auburn 2003. "It was during the run and all of a sudden I didn't know where I was and I was so disoriented that I didn't remember the last mile that I'd run. I was so dehydrated. I ended up in the fire station with four firemen around me asking if I was okay and feeding me water. It was one of my two DNFs [Did Not Finish] ever. In the other one my bike was actually breaking."

With all the risks, the bonking, the accidents, the overtiredness, it leaves one burning question unanswered. Why? Knowing all this, why do they still want to do it?

For Computer Science PhD student Lang, it is about pushing himself. As someone whose weaknesses have been described by a good friend to include "wine, women and song;" his laid-back demeanor is an interesting twist on the Ironman dream. "I can't keep up with the young guys," he says. "[They have] Lots of fast twitch muscles so they dominate the sprint division. So I just kept signing myself up for progressively longer races. It's funny because I had actually said to somebody, "I have no interest in doing an Ironman. I'll leave it to the guys who that's their identity."

For UCD Alumnus Zipp, it is because he can. "It's the allure of the Ironman," he says. "It is the ultimate feat. If you can do that then, well, I don't know. It's like when they ask people why they want to climb Everest. It's because it's there. Everyone knows of the risk but shit happens. It's not going to deter me from doing it. Plus all that training keeps me out of trouble."

However, "staying out of trouble" can be seen as a benefit or a disadvantage. With days full of lake swimming and hill climbing, dodging cars and sucking down Gatorade, there just isn't too much energy left for a night life.

"It defines your social life," Svoboda says. "When you spend your entire weekend riding a bike then you have to go to sleep at like 9:00."

"People keep different hours than you and at the end of the day you are just physically exhausted," says Zipp. "You feel bad because you say "I just want sleep, leave me alone." And, "yes" he says, the sex drive does decrease.

After such intense workouts, the body needs to recover. Sleeping, eating and relaxing are the most important aspects of recovery. If the body isn't allowed to recover, it can lead to overexertion, injuries, sickness and feeling burnt-out.

"You have to recover," says Coach Pro. "You can't just go out after a 5 hour bike ride and go to the park and play volleyball with your friends. You can go sit at a park and eat and sleep, but you can't play. When you're leaving at 6 am to ride and getting back at 2 pm, that second half of the day you're useless. You can't go to the park and push the kids on the swings because you're just dead, that's the recovery process."

However, one of the social perks of triathlon is the co-ed aspect of the sport. Dating another triathlete who understands the working out and the recovery process can make things a lot easier.

"A friend of mine says, "Tri-cest makes you stronger," Zipp says. "With the idea that dating another triathlete will make you work out more and strengthen both of you. It didn't work out so well for me because when I ended up dating another triathlete, both of our training just went out the window."

While Zipp admits that the "I'm training for an Ironman" line has worked "a few times" in meeting women, two-time Ironman finisher Sinclair Yeh, 30, disagrees.

"Unless she's a triathlete she's not going to know what Ironman is," the UCD alumnus and Intel software engineer says. "I prefer not mention those things. But being an Ironman has given me confidence in asking a girl out," says Yeh. "I think, "I'm an Ironman, why wouldn't she want to go out with me?"

Yeh attributes this as his motivation for starting up in the sport. "At first I got into triathlon for the women for sure," he admits. "Where else are you going to find all of these fit women with something in common with you? But then afterwards, it [Ironman triathlons] became addictive. Now she either has to come along for the ride or be into Ironman training herself. One of the reasons I prefer women who do Ironman is because they understand what it's all about."

While the single life isn't as affected by the time that training for an Ironman takes, but married life sure can take a hit.

"In my eyes it can be a very selfish sport," says Iley. "It's because it takes so much time. I've seen a lot of other professionals that have had relationships suffer from it. I read somewhere that among sport professionals, triathletes have highest divorce rate." Newly engaged, Iley has decided to quit professional triathlons before she gets married. "I'd definitely have to say that if I was still in school and continued triathlons at the rate that I was going that it would be hard on him. But we still say that triathlons brought us together."

Ultimately, if you want to train and compete in the Ironman triathlon competitions, dating someone with like goals seems to be the best way to have your cake and eat it too.

"[My husband] Steve and I have been lucky because we've been obsessed with the same things at the same time, says American River College Bio Technology Professor Kelly McDonald. "Health and fitness and travel are important to us. Almost everything that we do for vacation involves a bike. When he did his IM I picked up the slack, house work, dogs, cooking, and he did the same thin for me when I trained for mine. We swapped off. I can't imagine both of us doing an IM at the same time because we needed each others help so much before and after."

But you should know that getting a phone number and crossing the finish line are not the best reasons to embark on your own triathlon journey. According to Yeh, "the best part is the confidence that comes with finishing an Ironman. You feel like you can do anything," he says. "And of course the food. The freedom of eating whatever you want, whenever you want and however much you want and not have to worry about gaining weight. I would say that's the best thing because I love to eat."

Surprisingly, Yeh, an admirer of all things French and a member of the third place team at the UC Davis Iron Chef Competition 2006, has a post-Ironman food ritual that sways far from his gourmet tendencies. "When I get back from an Ironman I do a Tour de Fast Food," he says. "Everyday of the week I eat at a Fast-Food restaurant. McDonalds one day, Carls Jr the next?"

Yeh smiled and gave this simple explanation, "French food and fast food do have one thing in common. They're both full of saturated fat."

Jokes aside, the greatest thing about an Ironman is not the food or the women. The greatest thing about an Ironman is if you finish, you won. No matter how long it takes. And that title stays with you always. Because when it comes down to it, an Ironman triathlon will only take 10-17 hours of your life. But all of these athletes would agree that the experience will stay with you forever.

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