Crawl of Fame

by Julie Moss

  “Okay, we’re done. Let’s call it a day, but there will be no tears, no regrets. We are winning by you being at the starting line, and the journey we’ve had to get here. We’re going to be so proud of what we’ve done.”

  Their race over, they sat for ninety minutes to wait for the sweeper vehicle, which picked up athletes who dropped early. Kathleen suggested to Mike that they borrow a cell phone and call his wife, Jan. She was monitoring him via the Ironman Tracker app, one of many nice developments since 1982.

  “I’m sure she was thinking, ‘Oh my God, why have they not moved for an hour and a half?’ We called, and (my daughter) didn’t answer,” Kathleen said. “Finally, my son, Patrick, answered, then handed the phone to my daughter, Madelene. ‘Be sure to ask Mike if he wants you to finish for him, in his honor,’ she told me.

  “I never had any intention of leaving his side—no way—but I asked. ‘Kath, why don’t you go on, go get your T-shirt and medal,’ he told me.

  “‘Mike, let me make this very clear: that’s not why I came here. I’m not leaving your side.’”

  Kathleen isn’t leaving the cause either. From her 1982 Ironman medal, she created a perpetual trophy to award each February 6 to someone living with pancreatic cancer. Mike Levine was the first recipient, and she made the award perpetual, so he would live long enough to pass it on.

  Kathleen would love to ramp up her game to the level I’ve been fortunate to experience recently, but she can’t. Injuries have taken a toll, specifically spinal problems and their resulting surgeries. However, through that difficult experience, she holds a wonderful perspective. “What amazes me is how fit our generation is; have you ever seen so many fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five-year-old people in this shape? It’s never happened,” she said. “I feel really proud that Julie, and I, and the other early triathletes and endurance sports athletes, had something to do with that.

  “I’m not Kathleen from 1982. I can’t do the type of training to be competitive. I can swim freely, and cycle pretty freely, but I have to avoid steep hills now. Running holds me back. I just had another serious injury in June 2017. But I had to go do Ironman. If it were my own race, I would’ve said, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ but because it was for Mike, my surgeons worked with me to give me three injections so I could be there.

  “This is what I like to share with people in my age range: focus on what you can do. It’s such an important message. Don’t have excuses. You never know what can happen. Part of going back was to return as someone who’d given up on running for life. A light came on: ‘I can swim, I can bike . . . and I can walk a marathon.’ I developed my core, worked out with weights, and my surgeon put me on an amazing protocol to get strong enough to walk the marathon. As it turns out, I ran every step of the way.”

  Just like she did in 1982.

  CHAPTER 22

  Kona 2017: What Contingency Plan?

  “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret and disappointment.”

  —Jim Rohn

  I stood on stage at Nytro Multi Sport, talking with the packed crowd and my fellow Tri Legends, soaking up a great August evening as I shared emcee duties with Scott Tinley and Bob Babbitt. As I spoke, something kept tugging at me: Are you going to say it? Are you going to really say it?

  Well, I’m known for being direct. If I wanted to own my next goal, and inject life and legitimacy into it, what better way than to make it public—with the winners of a combined thirty-five Ironman World Championships sitting on stage or beaming in via video feeds?

  “I like big goals,” I said, a smile stretching across my face. “So I have a new goal: I’d like to go as fast in 2017 at Kona as I did in 1982.”

  More than a few members of the very athletic crowd looked at each other, their faces wearing the same expression: What? Even ST gave me a wily sideways glance, like, there goes Julie again . . . “I want to see if the body can produce a time that would’ve won the Ironman in 1982, and to produce that time thirty-five years later.”

  As the crowd digested my latest leap into the unknown, I settled into the goal. I wanted to chase something so big that it held me accountable each and every day to get up with focus, drive, and connection. That makes me feel ageless, my métier now: wake up, chase your dream, and you will not feel your age. And enjoy many ageless adventures. You may feel a few physical limitations, and your recovery time will be longer. However, by feeling worthy of chasing that big dream in your core self, of contributing to the world with something audacious and expanding, you create an energy that causes others to take notice. In some cases, you inspire them to pursue their dreams too.

  As audacious as my goal sounds, I do admit that greater bike and running shoe technology and nutrition make hitting a tough endurance time goal at an older age more feasible. I’m also a much better swimmer than in 1982, which I attribute to the flexibility and upper body strength gained from yoga. However, it’s still the same engine putting one foot in front of the other in the run, and turning those pedals over. “There are many technological, technical, and nutritional advantages over the way we had it,” Scott Tinley said, “and now we have refined training programs for every part of training, every part of a race. You have to account for that. However, while the rest of us are just trying to stay fit and not ache every day, Julie’s turning back the clock. Her goal is far beyond me to try—but if anyone can somehow make it happen, it would be Julie.”

  After the Tri Legends gathering, and my excellent result a month later at the Ironman 70.3 Gurye in Korea, I looked again at my goal. It felt possible, but times are arbitrary. Was it really possible? Or a wild idea I allowed to fly far too deeply into my mind and imagination?

  I was going to find out.

  By fall 2016, I’d laid down the goal: Finish the 2017 Ironman World Championship under 11 hours, 10 minutes, my 1982 time. Impossible? Perhaps. But it reminds me of Twentieth Century Fox brass telling George Lucas that Star Wars would be a colossal waste of the $11 million budget they gave him, a big-time money loser. Okay . . . Did he listen? No. He worked day and night to prove them wrong—and did he ever! I can be just as short and dismissive when dealing with doubters and naysayers. They take our energy, question our dreams, and waste our time.

  Once I put my goal into active motion, the stars began to align. I developed an excellent training program, I was injury free again, and my life was in good order. After spending the past couple of years training into this position, I would now summon my inner Wonder Woman, and subscribe to the very messages I’d been sharing—find your authentic self, live from there, never quit, be ageless and fearless with every step.

  Then it almost ended, due to the biggest unforeseen circumstance: a freak injury.

  During the holiday season, Mats and I took a ski trip with Lisette and her son, Mark. We stood atop the Winter Park slope in Colorado, preparing to ski down. As Mark and I were messing around, he snuck up to hug me, and I kind of twisted around. My brand-new leopard skin snowboard pants weren’t stretchy, so at some point, my legs sprawled—and stopped. One thing kept moving: my knee. It popped and buckled. That forced me to cancel a planned January trail marathon, which I wanted to run to get into hill running shape. I also wanted to attack a 50K trail run in February, but I switched to a 25K to protect my tender knee. I did well, finishing sixth in the women’s 50–59 age group in just over 2½ hours. I felt really strong, so I knew my knee was healed.

  I’d started training in December for the initial measuring test, the Ironman North American Championships at Woodland Lake, outside Houston. I held an invitation for Kona, which took the pressure off while dealing with the knee injury. However, as I noted to Ironman World Championship director Diana Bertsch, “I will do everything in my power to earn the invite by getting out there and racing for a qualifying spot.”

  Time to hold up my end of the bargain.

  The Ironman 70.3 California in Oceanside was next. I planned a fast training day, b
ut wanted to drop a strong time. I ran 5:24, shaving 18 minutes off my 2016 time in the same race, and finished second in my age group. I ended with a 1:49 half marathon, after finishing with a 1:53 the year before. Four minutes doesn’t sound like a lot, but it felt much different. A friend gave me two photos from the same spot, one shot in 2016, the other in 2017. In 2016, I’m digging, grinding it out, shoulders hunched, head slightly down. In the other shot, I’m smiling, head and shoulders upright, my gait strong and flowing. It was a fabulous way to enter another bit of training before Houston.

  Three weeks later, I toed the line at Woodland Lake—and had a dream race. The swim went fast and smooth. So did the bike, until the last bit. After fighting a headwind for thirty miles, my frustration hit a brief trigger point at mile 110 when I yelled out, “I can’t believe anybody wants to do this sporrrrrt!” Time to get off the bike! I also sat in the penalty box for a five-minute time drafting infraction. When they penalize you, it’s not worth it to argue.

  I started the first of three running loops, each about eight and a half miles. I set up my last brick training specifically to run eight miles off the bike, to have that feeling under my belt. The first loop went great. I stopped at every aid station to take care of nutrition, hit the port-a-potty, and fiddle with my socks. On the second loop, I noticed one woman in my age group sticking with me, and several others still together. After that, I headed into the unknown, having not run longer than eighteen miles in training. The landmarks along Woodland Lake seemed to pop up and pass by faster, a nice psychological visual. By Mile 23, I noticed the chase pack was gone. I felt even better. Time to push. When I tried, I felt twinges, cramps trying to grab hold of my calves and hamstrings. Not yet.

  When I’d passed Mile 4—also the Mile 23 mark on the looped course—I said to myself, “When you get back here and it’s the real Mile 23, you get to do a happy dance.” That positive image went into the fiber of my legs and made a difference in my marathon. I was too tired to actually do the happy dance, but in my mind, I was doing it. I was also smiling a lot at runners, spectators, and volunteers, thanking them every time I passed by. There’s a science around smiling, how it elevates everyone around us—and ourselves as well.

  At Mile 25, we ran out, turned around, and finished. A woman came toward me, running really well; I thought she was sizing me up. I reached Mile 26, and started imploring myself to push, much like a jockey yelling into his horse’s ear before the final turn: “Okay Julie, you’ve spent 140 miles getting to this point. Now you have to start racing. If that woman is coming, you are not getting passed in the last half mile of an Ironman marathon, not after 10 hours and 40-something minutes.”

  I picked it up, and started rallying people as I raced for home: “Come join me! Come on, let’s go!” It was really fun to feel that good at the finish, to feel I’d used just the right amount of effort, concentration, and focus.

  I crossed the line in 10 hours, 46 minutes, 51 seconds, beating my 1982 Kona time by 23 minutes and 28 seconds. “One of the most inspiring, and one of the best, examples of turning back the clock we’ve seen,” Scott Tinley said. Carlsbad High School athletic director Amanda Waters, a former all-American basketball player in college and someone I got to know while helping the Lancers’ cross-country program, added, “I can’t even imagine doing something like that. Nor can almost everyone else. She makes us think we can get up and do something special again athletically too.”

  “When I saw what she did in Houston, I was blown away,” Lisette said. “She’d been talking about breaking her Kona time for a while, and of course I believed her—this is Julie, and once she sets her mind . . . Her mental attitude and strength is so much greater than in 1982, it’s like two different people are out there. But to see her actually break the time, by that much . . . she’s making all of us rethink what is possible when we get to fifty or sixty. I ran my first marathon in fourteen years in Paris with Julie. I never thought I’d do that again either.”

  Reaction was strong and positive. Triathlete magazine spread the word in a nice online and print article, with the fetching subhead, “Ironman’s ageless It Girl returns to Kona to literally write her final chapter.” The It Girl? I loved that connotation, since the original It Girls, actress Clara Bow and socialite Zelda Fitzgerald, were the ultra-stylish, scene-setting flappers of the Roaring Twenties. Their energy, enthusiasm, reputation for behaving brashly in word and deed just as women were attaining the right to vote, and willingness to speak loudly in a male-dominated world made them iconic. They stood tall—and uplifted those around them, even as they faced down their own inner demons—Zelda in particular with her alcohol issues and tortured relationship with her husband, The Great Gatsby author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The It Girl of Triathlon? I loved it. The article started off:

  In February 1982, the year of her famous collapse and the 10-yard finish-line crawl seen around the triathlon world, 23-year-old Julie Moss finished the Hawaii Ironman in a time of 11:10:19.

  In April 2017, 35 years later, 58-year-old Julie Moss won her age group at the Memorial Hermann Ironman North American Championship Texas in a time of 10:46:51.

  Whoa. “Right now, I’m the best athlete I’ve been in my life!” excitedly says Moss. “I’m back to where I was at 38 years old, when I was a pro and went sub-11 at Kona.”

  That a former pro athlete could even think she is her best at nearly 60 years of age seems remarkable, but to hear the ageless, irrepressible Moss tell it, it simply took her this long to get her act together, get properly motivated, and for the first time, truly fall in love with the sport that has defined her life.

  I’d come a long way from 1982 . . . and from 2009. I was invited to blog about the race, and developed a David Letterman–like list of ten things that made a difference. Here are several items from the list, with side notes. The first contains within it the faux pas that almost ended my journey before I left San Diego:

  Dropping my Cervélo P3 off at Nytro Multisport after my final long ride, so TriBike Transport could deliver it to Texas. With all the hours of training, the last thing I wanted was to worry about packing and traveling with my P3. (Note to self: when your last long ride requires a driver’s license to enter Camp Pendleton, do not leave said license in your stealth pocket, or it will arrive in Texas before you do and definitely complicate boarding your flight when you discover your mistake at 5:00 A.M. while standing at the ticket counter.)

  Walking through the Ironman Expo, where they handed out samples of Texas BBQ. (Y’all, I’m talkin’ the full smoky combo of beef brisket, chicken, and sausage wrapped in a foil packet with your choice of mild or spicy BBQ sauce on the side for dipping. Seriously, don’t mess with Texas.)

  Staying with a host family that turned out to be Ironman royalty. I reached out to the Houston Racing Triathlon Club to see if any members would be interested in hosting me. I love the added experience of staying with a local family whenever possible, and the club provided a once-in-a-lifetime experience. My host, Bonnie Wilson, was the daughter of Henry Forrest Jr., one of the original twelve Ironman finishers in 1978. Sadly, Henry passed away in 2009 from pancreatic cancer. His spirit and Ironman legacy remained a powerful presence in the family home. She shared with me that when Henry was in remission, the only thing he wanted was to gather together his family and friends for a celebration triathlon. Henry took his infant granddaughter and dragged her toes through the pool so she could swim, and then went on to push his sister in her wheelchair for her run. Bonnie reminded me of the gift of being an Ironman.

  Women Who Fly is a Hoka One One slogan. My Hoka Claytons made me feel like I was truly flying in both Oceanside and Houston. Finding a shoe that gives you maximum support and wings to soar to the finish line.

  Attending the awards while wearing the North American Champion’s jacket. It wasn’t pink, but it was still a look that worked. Oh, and watching the roll down in my age group and seeing another Julie—Julie Kaczor, third in my age group—go bananas when
she heard her name called and punched her ticket to Kona. I gave my Champions’ jacket to Bonnie’s youngest daughter to help inspire her to create her own legacy.

  Earning the number one spot in my age group, then toasting the win with a cold IPA.

  Triathlete asked me an interesting question: Now that I’d beaten my Kona time elsewhere, would I literally resort to crawling to beat it in Kona? The article stated, “For the sake of perfect symmetry, a Hollywood script writer might suggest that Moss could push hard enough to collapse and crawl to the finish one final time.”

  My response may not have been what they were looking for: “That will definitely not happen again,” I said. “Once you go that far, you guard against having to do it again—so you either back off or train your ass off. And I’m having tons of fun right now training my ass off.”

  Texas was challenging, but I never pushed too far outside myself. I stayed inside the grace of my comfort zone, and never encountered lasting pain. I felt so positive the whole day—and it was nice to hit the time goal just three weeks after my race in Oceanside. Certainly an April for the personal record books!

  When you achieve a landmark goal, the expectations ramp up. I’d served notice with my age-group win in the Ironman 70.3 Korea, finished second in Oceanside, and captured the Ironman North American Championship. Bring it on, Kona! Well, wait a second. Once the word got out (wind-aided by me on Facebook, admittedly), my family, friends, and well-wishers began commenting with statements like “How is that even possible?” to “I know you can do it; you’ve got it; look what you just did in Houston!”

  Yes, it was fantastic, but Houston is not Kona. The setting, intensity, weather, course, and competition level are far more intense on the Big Island. While it’s human nature to assign a comparative time from one course to another, everyone who’s ever tackled Kona knows better than to fall into that trap. More than anything, I realized two things: If my training and racing continued to go strongly, I had a chance; and my training would need to become even more refined, focused, and engineered to the specific demands of Kona. I needed total consistency, no distractions, and nothing emotional to knock me off a goal that had become a consuming focal point.