Ironman Levity

With all the seriousness going on in the world, I figured it was time for some Ironman levity.  It's been nearly 10 years since I completed my first Ironman, but that race and many of the others after didn't come with varying degrees of adversity, as well as meteorologic and other challenges.  As I write this, I have to wonder whether I'm a little snake bit when it comes to signing up for an Ironman.  My first race was in St. George in 2010.  I signed up the year before, and now that I think of it, what happened nearly six months prior might have been a sign of things to come.  At the Long Course World Championships in Perth Australia in October of 2009, I crashed about a half mile into the bike. Despite fracturing my clavicle and hip socket, I completed the bike and walked 3.5 miles before going to the hospital.  Six months later, I completed Ironman St. George, despite 52 degree water temperatures that caused many participants to become hypothermic.  Hmmm. A trend was starting.  A year later I completed another Ironman St. George, this one with temperatures soaring into the mid 90's.  A challenge, but relatively tame compared to what transpired at Ironman St. George in 2012, where 50 mph winds created 5 foot swells for the swim and challenges on the bike.  WTC chose to cancel future races in St. George, so I signed up for Ironman Lake Tahoe in 2013.  It literally snowed on the course the day before!  I scraped ice off my bike in transition.  My gloves and socks were soaking wet, so I went without them on the bike.

By this time, I was wondering if I was jinxed, and I got a reprieve in 2014 at Ironman New Zealand, which was uneventful from a weather perspective.  Boulder, on the other hand, in addition to the challenge of altitude, was pretty hot.  Fewer than 100 athletes ran under 4 hours that day.  Enough said.  Then came Lake Tahoe 2014, which was cancelled due to fires as I put my toes into the water at the start.  Hmmm, was it just me?  Did signing up for an Ironman portend something?  I was wondering.  I skirted the jinx the following week by immediately transferring my entry to the first Ironman Chattanooga.  That race turned out to be my PR to this day.  Maybe signing up a week in advance keeps the Ironman Gods from wreaking havoc on my race?

That brought on 2015.  I signed up for three races, Couer d'alane, Boulder and Maryland.  I injured my back prior to Couer d'alate and didn't start it, missing temperatures up to 108 degrees.  I was officially signed up, so that one goes on the list of races I paid to enter that encountered severe circumstances!  I managed to complete Ironman Boulder in 2015, again with high temperatures, but on the scale of everything I'd done, not too bad.  I'd had a relative reprieve.  Then came Ironman Maryland.  As my plane landed in Baltimore, I found out that the race had been postponed due to a hurricane!  I got back on the plane and flew home.  Two of the Ironman's I'd signed up for had now been either cancelled or postponed.  Most of the others had extreme weather or fires.  Was I jinxed?

I did two more races in 2016, bringing me closer to my Legacy requirement of 12.  Boulder was hot once again, though I was well prepared and managed to persevere.  Similarly, Ironman Chattanooga in 2016 had temperatures reaching 104 degrees.  Again, my experience and preparation got me through it.  In fact, many of the races that I've done (or signed up for and didn't start in the car of Couer d'Alene) have had the highest DNF (Did Not Finish) rates.  Enough said.

I managed to get through Ironman Boulder in 2017 before completing my Legacy qualifying 12th race in Santa Rosa.  No weather issues, but this time I came down with a cold three days before the start of the race.  Having a cold feels miserable, so I got to feel miserable during that race.  Fortunately, I also got to feel great knowing that I'd reached my Legacy qualifying status. My thirteenth Ironman, validating my Legacy spot, was in Santa Rosa again, and yet again, I got a cold about 10 days before the race.  Needless to say, that one was a slog, but I finished.  I did Boulder again in 2019, because I wanted to, not because I had to, and had a good race.  Boulder is always hard, but I'll always love that race (which has also been cancelled).  That's another thing, I raced the inaugural St. George, Lake Tahoe and Boulder, all of which were subsequently cancelled.  I've already written about Kona, so I won't delve into that here.

Which brings me back to the beginning.  When they announced last year that they were bringing back Ironman St. George in 2020, the glutton for punishment in me immediately signed up.  I wonder if I had managed to trigger the Ironman Gods again?  I didn't think about this until recently.  After Kona, I decided that I was done with Ironman.  Two weeks ago, I changed my mind and began considering competing at St. George this year.  And now we have a pandemic sweeping the world and the United States. Coincidence? Probably. But, I've got to wonder.  Maybe this is the universe telling me that my Ironman days are over.  Maybe not? Time will tell.