Ironman Take 1

Holding on with both hands and bobbing up and down with the choppy water, I clung to the side of the kayak. I watched the number on my watch flash with every beat of my heart: 181, 181, 182 . . . and listened to my own panicked breathing, shallow and labored.

I clipped in with my left shoe and heard someone behind me say with formidable encouragement, "Have a good ride Kelly." I shoved away and clipped in with my right. Here we go, just a nice 112 mile ride.

He was waiting there when I exited the T2 tent. All he said was all I needed to hear, "Twenty-six one mile jogs."

I stopped to tread water and raised one fist above my head -- come to find out this is the NOT SO universal sign of distress. I tried to call to someone for help, but a little like a bad dream, nothing came out when I opened my mouth.

I reached the top of the hill, the unrelenting headwind hitting me square in the face. My current speed read 8.5 mph. "BRING IT!" I snarled. It couldn't get worse, it might get better, and a bigger challenge would make for a better story at the end of the day.

"You'll keep this on for the next 4 days." he said. I looked down at my wrist as he snapped the closure on the silver hologrammed wrist band that read FORD IRONMAN 2008. "Holy shit," I thought to myself, "you're really doing this."

"How many times have you been here before?" the sign along the side of the run path begged. Presumably a simple question. Or perhaps intended to be a little more profound. How many times have you been here before . . . exhausted, running on empty, alone, scared, wanting nothing more than to stop? And then you don't. And the next moment you don't stop, again. And the moment after that you don't stop. And you put all those moments together and you get something amazing. How many times have I been here before? COUNTLESS.

I was a dot in a sea of bobbing pink and green caps. I watched the line of black wetsuits flopping into the water one by one. Looking out onto the first 2.4 miles of the next 140.6 miles of my life. "Welcome to the BEST DAY OF YOUR LIFE!" the announcer boomed into his microphone.

"Six miles until Ironman!" my dad yelled as I ran by in my last loop. By this time 10 of the high school girls I coach had also gathered in the same area to emphatically cheer me on into the finish. Signs, yelling, screaming. I realized then that you can feel love -- that love is the negation of all pain and fatigue. Love is the greatest renewer. "Right now three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13

I had only been on the course for about 15 seconds when I heard the announcer inform the crowd that the pros were coming through for their second lap. For a moment I thought it would be exciting to see them pass -- their perfect bodies and top of the line gear, their sponsors' names zooming by at 25+ mph. My next thought was: Mother F*ckers! The race is only 2 hours old and they are already 38 miles ahead of me?

When the sun goes down and the course gets dark, everything gets quiet, very quiet. You can hear the shuffling of footsteps, but even those get lighter and softer. You go inward, you have no energy, no emotion left for the outside world. All you have goes to turning your legs over, one after another, after another . . .

After the most self-doubting sixty minutes I've ever experienced, I was at the turn around buoy. I had only one hour and twenty minutes for the return trip plus an additional 500 meters. Would I even get the chance to bike the 112 and run the marathon? Or would it end here in the water? Would those 1000s of hours of training be for nothing? Was the Ironman just too hard for me?

At some point I crossed the finish line back into the real world. I had asked more of myself than ever before, I had allowed myself to go places I never knew existed, I had been to the opposite end of the world and back, I felt like I had lived a lifetime in a day. I don't remember the cheering or the signs. I don't remember Mike Reilly saying "Kelly Vanek! You are an Ironman!" By that time I already knew. All day long I had known. I had had the guts to train for it, surely I had the guts to finish it. Race day is not a test of skill, it is a test of patience.

This is how that day, "the best day of my life" exists in my head -- as bits and pieces. As memories that stand out for a moment, then fade back into their surroundings, as if they are all part a long, meandering, cluttered, dream. The timeline is disordered, the story line seems unreal, the characters include all my friends and family, an inflatable dinosaur and blow up Mexican Man named Pedro. Yes, this MUST have been a dream.


All you learn from such an experience is unfathomable. Since April, I have tried to sum it up in a few pages. I've tried to define it with some overall theme. It isn't possible. It is too many things, too many moments, too many lessons. What I do know is that April 13, 2008, was, as predicted, the best day of my life.

I had felt my highest high, which made me vulnerable to my lowest low, which I think I also reached in these 6 months post race. When one day has the capacity to change your life, every other seems wasted, sad, uninspired. "That event ruins people," I once heard someone say. Perhaps, but if it didn't ruin me that day, it sure won't ruin me today.

Ironman is not the Holy Grail of athletics, it is not Kilimanjaro, it is also not a thing to do just to say you've done it. It won't make you a better person and it won't take anything away from you. But I think amid the haze of the event and the dreamlike recollection of all the moments connected to that day, I think it does offer you a few seconds of the most pristine clarity.

You realize that everything you do, become, accept, renounce, love, endure is a choice. And so I choose to add this caveat:

April 13, 2008: the best day of my life . . . so far.