On and on I rode, heading north, the extinct volcano Mauna Kea looming closer with each passing mile. Whenever I emerged from a cutout in the highway, the wind howled, trying to throw me from my bike. I held on tight and kept pedaling, forever pedaling. I crossed Wailua Bay off my to-do list at roughly the two-hour mark. Mile 32, done and dusted. Then Hapuna Bay, twenty minutes later, Mile 38.
The sun was now blasting down on me at 11 A.M. The chunks of ice I poured into my shorts and shirt at each aid station melted quickly. The runoff, mixed with my sweat, flooded down my legs and soaked into my shoes. Despite constant sips at my water bottle, I couldn’t quench my thirst, and my hips and quads were beginning to burn.
Near Kawaihae Road, where I would turn off the Queen K, Kevin Robson passed me. I muttered some kind of hello. He turned back in his seat and offered encouragement. I knew I must now be the one who looked as though he was in deep trouble. It did not help that many of the elite athletes were now roaring past on their return from Hawi. I tried to look up to see who was in the lead, but they were blurs. The lucky bastards were on their way home, and I still had 80 miles more to go. So be it. Keep moving.
After turning onto Kawaihae, I started to get hungry—very hungry. Nibbling on a Bonk Breaker every quarter hour was just not doing the trick, and I stared ravenously at the GUs taped to my bike frame. Welchy had warned me not to have them until Mile 80, on the way back from Hawi. That seemed like an eternity away.
On the last downhill stretch before the long, brutally steep hill up to Hawi, I felt as if I were riding straight into an industrial-sized blow-dryer. The air was hot, humid, and gusting straight into my face. I hunkered down low on my Aero bars, but that did little but make my lower back tighten up. I was dreading the 17-mile straight uphill climb soon to come, and my thoughts started to turn black.
I pulled over at the aid station outside Kawaihae Village and got off my bike to stretch and go to the bathroom.
As I stood up straight for the first time in almost three hours, it seemed as though all my blood rushed down to my feet. I was suddenly lightheaded and wobbly. It took a few minutes before I recovered enough to do my stretches. These eased the spasms in my back and legs. All too soon I was straddling my bike again, ready to return to my tortured hunched position. Before clipping in, I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and spoke quietly to myself. Okay, Bonner. You’re hurting. So what. Stop whining. This is going to suck. Fine.
Not a mile into the ascent to Hawi, I was struggling. My stomach had tightened into a hard ball. The heat was messing with my body, and though desperate for food and water, I couldn’t face either. I forced myself to eat and drink, which made me even more nauseous. It was a vicious cycle worsened by the inescapable heat. I continued to take my ice baths at the aid stations, but they no longer seemed to make a difference.
I crawled up the long hill, my speed half of what it had been earlier on the course. Frustrated at seeing the single miles-per-hour digits on my bike computer, I stopped looking. Instead, I focused on my bike frame and envisioned reaching the turnaround.
Pain started to creep around my toes and instep with each rotation of the pedals, soon enveloping both feet. I tried to figure out what the problem was. I had never experienced any blistering in my training or in my other races, but that was what it felt like—kind of. Water from the melting ice and sweat continued to run down my legs into my shoes, and I suspected that the problem might be something to do with my wet socks. There was nothing I could do about it now. I needed the ice to cool down my core, and I certainly didn’t have a spare set of shoes or socks. Pedal over pedal. Best as you can.
Every single mile was harder than the one before. Halfway up to Hawi, I felt as though I was fighting my way up sheer rock face. The harder I drove on the pedals, the worse my feet hurt. I didn’t know how much longer I could continue. For a moment, I thought maybe I should walk my bike up for a while, but then I pushed the idea away. If I got off now, that would be it for me. I churned onward, and then, like a gift from heaven, the scorching hot sun disappeared behind some clouds. The relief carried me for another quarter of a mile.
Then the winds picked up. The sky darkened, and all of sudden it started to rain. At first the shower felt cool on my hot skin, but then it started to pour. In the gusting winds, the rain pelted my face. I tried to turn my head away to avoid the onslaught, but the wind was blowing straight at me, and there was no escaping the deluge. Looking up at the sky, I laughed and shouted, “Really?! Are you kidding me? What are you going to throw at me next!?”
It didn’t take long for me to find out.
14
Man of Iron
On the hillside leading up to Hawi, a scattering of skeleton trees, their trunks bleached white, had been permanently bent by the trade winds. My back and legs ached to be straight, but any time I tried to stand up on my pedals, those same winds tried to knock me off my bike, hurling little spikes of rain into my face while they were at it. Hawi was 4.1 miles away. Four miles. A little farther my bike computer indicated 3.9 miles.
All that training, all that distance, week after week, had now boiled down to counting down one-tenth of a mile, then another. To be assaulted by the elements on this, the steepest and windiest leg of the bike course was pure misery and frustration. I was going at a crawling pace too, and one racer after another passed me by coming down from Hawi. As much as I tried not to let them bother me, my spirits sank with each one who passed. Time to fire up the furnace.
Desperate to push onward but failing to find the strength, I reached for anger again, turning to thoughts of my youth, all the jabs and jibes, feeling different, outside the norm. I thought of my family, the years of separation and distance. All those memories had spurred me forward on Kilimanjaro, but now, as I called upon them once more, they didn’t burn nearly as brightly or for as long. By accepting my cerebral palsy, by healing myself, I had also exhausted the power of these memories over me.
Searching for fuel, I thought then of my friend John Winn, who had passed away after a long battle with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma the year before. I thought about one day when I visited him at his house after yet another round of treatments. Sitting in his recliner, an IV drip by his side, he had no color in his face, and his shoulders shivered slightly. It was all right, he said. He promised to beat the cancer. He would have a full life with his wife and young son. I thought of the sunset on that October evening, walking into a charity concert headlined by Donavon Frankenreiter, whom John loved, and getting the call that he had died. Now 2.8 miles, 2.7. Give me some strength, John. I need it, big man.
I threw all the grief at John’s death into the furnace, but what really stoked the flames was the thought of how he had promised never to give up his fight, the thought of the love and support he and his wife had shown each other. John had been sure he would see me race in Hawaii. Spurred on by his memory, I hunkered down over my bike frame and pushed my way up the final couple of miles to Hawi.
Mile 60. Only 52 to go. At the turnaround point by a small general store, there was an aid station and bag depot, where the day before I had left some fresh C5-mix bottles and a supply of Bonk Breaker bars and GUs. I unclipped and stopped my bike, but when I tried to dismount, my right leg wouldn’t cooperate—it was too stiff. I was forced to lay my bike down to the ground to get clear of it. The soles of my feet felt like someone had been rubbing sandpaper on them for the past four hours.
As I moved toward the bag depot, I started with my calculations. It was 12:40 P.M., close to when I had hoped to reach Hawi. I wanted to be finished with the bike course by 5 P.M., which would give me a full seven hours to finish the marathon before midnight. That left me with a little over four hours to complete the bike course to be on target—and less than five hours to avoid the course cutoff time that would end my Kona Ironman ambition before I even got to the run. There was little room for error.
A father-and-son volunteer team handed me my bag, and as I put the new bott
les into the rack on my bike, they were really encouraging. “You’re doing great!”
“Do you want to drive me home?” I asked.
They laughed and waved me on, then turned to the next racer. A quick stretch, then I was back on my bike, mule-kicking my way on the pavement to get up some momentum. The rain stopped, and though the road was still wet, I hauled like a maniac down the hill for the next 6 miles. It was a great relief to cover those miles with no effort other than making sure I didn’t go splat on any of the turns.
I passed a number of racers who were still on their way up to Hawi. Many were crawling. Others were pulled up on the side of the road and appeared to be in trouble. Farther down the hill, I came across the first pair of Grim Reapers and their van with its flashing lights. They were stopped beside a competitor who was bent over his bike. From the looks of concern on their faces, they were asking him if he wanted to continue, if he could even hope to finish the course before the cutoff.
Over the next 10 miles, I guzzled through my water faster than I had planned, and every couple of minutes a wave of nausea swept over me. I had long since exhausted the relief from going downhill, and now a terrible weariness sank into my bones. I struggled to reach the top of the hill before the turn back onto the Queen K. It hadn’t seemed so steep on the way down, but now I realized that it was an absolute bear. The wind cut at me from right to left, and I gripped my handlebars tight. The road seemed empty of other racers, and I felt alone in the world. Halfway up, I couldn’t continue and pulled over to the side.
I got off my bike and, leaning against the metal road barricade, I splashed some water on my face and took a few deep breaths. I could barely handle the weight of my body on my feet without wincing. “All right, Johnny boy, I need some more of that fighting spirit,” I said. Just voicing the words seemed to help. I stretched again, trying to loosen my spasming hamstrings, and then I mounted my bike again. If I kept stopping like this, I wouldn’t even make the cutoff, let alone my target time. I needed to keep going, whatever the suffering, whatever the price. “Jakey, I need you to give me your strength. Juliana. Paige. Ashley. I need you too. Come on guys. I can’t do it alone.”
I forced my way back up the hill, each and every rotation of the pedals a triumph. At last I made it to the Queen K; 35 miles left on the course. As long as I maintained an average speed of 12 miles per hour, I’d reach the finish of the bike course with a half-hour cushion before the 5:30 P.M. cutoff.
For the next three hours, I continued to check my bike computer constantly, calculating how much time I had left before the cutoff versus how many miles I had left and what speed I needed to maintain to make it on time. I broke the ride down into increments of a minute, maybe two. Just reach that hill, that tree, that cutout, that straightaway. I occupied my mind with calculations and little victories. At the least it distracted me from my lifeless legs and the spikes of pain in my feet.
I passed Mauna Lani, which is where the transition to the run had been in May for Honu, the half Ironman. I wished I were doing the half again, that I could just turn in there, run a half marathon, and be done. It made no sense, but I was wishing for a lot at that moment. More downhills. Less wind. Less heat. That my hands would ache less from gripping the handlebars. That my back didn’t feel like a steel beam. There was nothing to be done about any of these wishes, so I kept my head down, kept drinking my mix and sucking down my GUs on schedule, and kept turning those pedals, one after the other.
I reached the top of another hill and spotted a new target: the airport. Getting there now, I thought. Given my latest fuzzy math, I had a cushion of thirty to forty minutes before the cutoff if I maintained my speed. An NBC camera crew rolled by my side for a spell, asking how I was doing, how I was feeling. I gave them a smile and a thumbs-up.
“Looking good,” one of the crew said.
I knew I probably looked like death on wheels, but they were a welcome distraction. Then they sped off, and I was alone again, me, my bike, and the narrow white line at the center of the Queen K. Just pedal those damn pedals.
At the next aid station, by the airport, I took my final ice bath and sucked down some C5 mix, water, and GUs, in order, as Welchy had advised. It was 3:45 P.M. I had 17 miles to go. Continuing to average 12 miles per hour, I was sure I was going to make it now. I began passing people on the side of the highway who were holding up signs and cheering as we passed. This gave me a welcome lift. I came to the Energy Lab, where a stream of runners was filing in and a stream was filing out. I forced away the thought of that obstacle to come as well as the envy of those leaving the lab who were less than 10 miles from finishing the race, and I was still on my bike. They had their race. I had mine.
At Mile 110, approaching Kona, I allowed myself a smile. I would make my target time at least, and if not, then definitely the cutoff. Even if I got a flat, I’d ride into town on the rims. I’d carry the bike across the line if needed. Nothing was stopping me. Nothing.
When I turned into town, I saw a crowd of blue cowboy hats. They roared when they saw me, and I sat up on my saddle and roared back. The relief of approaching the finish of the bike course overwhelmed me. Several times I pumped my fist, not even thinking that I was risking a crash with only one hand on the bars. Mike called out, “Yeah, bro!” and was practically in tears as I passed him. He looked almost as relieved to see me as I was to see him. A woman blew a whistle and called out to each racer crossing her path, “You are fantastic! You are a winner!”
At 4:46 P.M., eight hours and two seconds after clipping into my pedals, I finished the bike course.
I unclipped from my pedals and dismounted. A blast of pain shot from my feet, exploding into my head. It completely took my breath away. To shake it off, I tried a few steps, but each was more crippling than the last. Race volunteers took my bike and passed me my running bag. I stumbled toward the transition tent, eager to take off my shoes to see what the problem was.
Inside the nearly empty tent, two volunteers led me to a chair. The buzz I had felt at completing the bike leg was already gone. I leaned over and slowly took off each shoe. This alone delivered jolts of pain from my throbbing feet. Now I needed to take off my socks, which were soaked with melted ice, sweat, and, judging by their pink color, blood as well.
“Anything we can do?” asked one volunteer.
“What do you have for pain?”
“Advil.”
“As many as you can give me.”
As he went off to get the ibuprofen, the other volunteer looked down at my feet. “Can I help you with those?” he asked.
It was difficult to lean over because of my stiff back, and whenever I did the blood rushed to my head. The muscles in my legs were also too locked up to bend one over the other. I took a deep breath and nodded. The volunteer kneeled down to peel off my left sock. There are no words for the level of agony I felt at the first movement of the sock. I grunted and groaned as he almost got the sock halfway off, but then it became too much to bear.
“Stop,” I begged. “Stop.”
The other volunteer returned with the Advil. I downed several and closed my eyes, worried about how I was going to get these socks off, but also, and more so, by what state my feet were in underneath the cotton. Added to this was a sense of urgency: I needed to hurry and get on that run course.
I waved to the volunteer to continue. Holding my breath, hands balled into fists, nails pressed into flesh, I stared up at the roof of the tent as he peeled off one sock, then the other.
When the two volunteers saw the state of my feet, they gasped. I looked down to see that the skin on the soles and sides of my feet and toes was bubbled, raw, and peeling off in several layers. Over the past eight hours, the combination of the wet socks and the awkward way I pushed down on the pedals had made a mess.
An ice towel was placed on the back of my neck, and I felt some momentary relief.
“Sweet baby Jesus, that is so good,” I said before the horror of my feet returned.
>
Both volunteers looked at me in the way that said, “You’ve done great, buddy, but maybe your race, this race, is done.”
“I need to get my shoes on,” I said.
They gave me brave smiles and bent down to help me. Every time they touched my feet, no matter how gently, an eruption of pain followed. I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes, and focused on pushing the pain so deep inside me that it had no impact. It’s just a feeling, and it’s of no use to you. It’s in your head. You can control it. Push it down and away, and don’t ever let it up.
“You’re all set,” said one of the volunteers. I opened my eyes to find that my shoes were on my feet. Now I needed to stand. I tried to push myself up in my chair, but my legs were locked. “Can you help me up?”
One volunteer lifted me up with a hand underneath my arm. The other pushed me from behind. The second I stood, a dozen razor blades were slicing away at my feet. I almost dropped back down to the chair, but I knew that if I did that, my Ironman would be over.
“Just give me a second,” I said, a hundred expletives rushing into my head, and probably a few out my mouth as well. It’s just a feeling. It’s of no use to you. You can control it.
“Are you really going to do this?” asked one volunteer.
I nodded and took a step forward, barely lifting my foot off the ground. Slice, slash went the razor blades. Then another step. Slice, slash. After the third step, I stopped and put a hand on the table beside me, trying to muster up the courage to continue.
The idea of pain was so familiar, it was more than just a friend—it was a live-in roommate without a girlfriend or a job. It was always there, always unmistakable. This, however, was something else altogether. At once different from anything that I’d known, and yet somehow familiar. It was too great to simply bury it within myself, so I opened my arms and accepted it. As uncomfortable as it was, it was the only way I could make my body move.
One More Step Page 22
