by Julie Moss
My support for Khalil took a comic turn when we traveled to Racine, Wisconsin, for an Ironman 70.3 in mid-summer 2017. Gwilym’s darling mother, Elizabeth, was visiting them, and Gwilym was recovering from surgery to reattach a torn quadriceps, suffered when a tourist hit him during a bike ride. In his absence, I volunteered to be Khalil’s sherpa.
From our first meal together, Khalil has regaled me with stories of exotic locales, first-class travel, swanky hotels, and multistarred restaurants. Let’s just say our hit-and-run trip to Racine was not in the same vein as our monthlong journey six months later to Marrakesh, Gran Canaria, and Dubai—but an epic adventure nonetheless. It was more like The Beverly Hillbillies, one of my favorite shows as a kid, in reverse. (To summarize, the Clampett family discovers oil on their rustic property, moves to Beverly Hills, and as nouveau riche hillbillies shake up privileged society with their hayseed ways.)
Our race experiene: Envision a billionaire triathlete flying on Southwest Airlines and staying in a Comfort Inn located next to the Interstate 94 truck stop. He must plead with a local steakhouse manager to stay open past the 8:00 P.M. closing time so he can eat. He shops for the first time in a Walmart, and keeps requesting fresh squeezed orange juice, only to be told repeatedly they don’t have it. Said visitor finds the restaurant bills so low, he assumes it’s a mistake. Then he thinks the bill only covers food tax. Finally, he’s moved to gleefully declare that, while in Racine, he will become a thirty percent tipper.
We laughed so hard that we cried in our pasteurized orange juice. With all due respect to the very nice residents of Racine, this premise would make a funny sitcom.
Then Mother Nature decided to offer her own comic relief. The temperature of Lake Michigan dropped overnight to a dangerously low 51°F. Upon arrival on race morning, we were informed the swim was canceled. The Ironman 70.3 Wisconsin triathlon became a duathlon. Rather than throwing a wrench into his plans, the decision brought a huge smile to Khalil’s face and elevated his mood.
He still had to complete a 56-mile bike and 13.1-mile run in humid conditions. The race switched to a time trial start for the bike, like they do in the Tour de France prologue and Olympic road time trial. Riders started every two seconds. Khalil enjoyed an awesome ride and started the run in great form. It was so fun to run around the course, snapping pics and yelling encouragement. With about ten minutes left, I yelled, “Take the reins off and let it rip to the finish line!”
He responded like he was shot out of a cannon. I’d never seen him run that fast! However, I knew he wouldn’t make it to the finish at that pace. I literally jumped in behind him, sprinting and yelling, “NOT THAT FAST!”
The next day, Khalil mentioned his leg was a bit sore from his long sprint. Turns out he sprinted so hard that he ripped a hole in his quad. Now that’s someone passionate about his sport and determined to excel! The same approach has made him successful, along with his limitless mental strength.
Khalil’s passion for Ironman knows no bounds, and his athletic ability is catching up to his mental strength. He is getting the hang of endurance racing and adapting beautifully to the training required to hone yourself as an Ironman. “Every day, I’m discovering things I didn’t know I had. It’s an incredible journey,” he said. “And you find, when you are aware like this, there are many things to discover, no matter how old you are. You become really, really aware of everything. Your senses . . . I’ve never used drugs, and I’ve never drank alcohol, but now, I understand what a ‘high’ is. When you’re training, the endorphins kick in, you have a sense of well-being, and you’re really on a high. It’s your own constant high. But it’s a happy feeling, a very healthy feeling.
“I will give you an example. I had to fly seventeen hours back to California for six days of meetings while training for Ironman 70.3 Dubai, and woke up at 2:30 A.M. I had to wait almost four hours for daylight, so I could go on my four-hour bike ride. I did the ride, then my yoga teacher put me through a session. The next day, I woke up at 4:30, waited a couple of hours, did my 21K [half marathon] run to Fiesta Island and back, and went for a swim. The next morning, I woke up at 6:00 A.M., really tired. But I had to swim two miles. Somehow, I made myself go to that pool. The rest of the day, I was smiling, and happy, the skin looks good. You radiate. That’s what happens with training.”
Our friendship jumped to yet another level in January 2018, when I flew to Morocco, and then the Canary Islands, to train for a month with Khalil and to race the Ironman 70.3 Dubai. It was my first lead-in race to the fortieth anniversary Ironman World Championship. As with all good friendships, you share from your lives, and advise and learn from each other while also having a helluva lot of fun.
Khalil opened up this idea by visiting what I thought was an unrelated subject—my 2017 Kona race. After I returned, I headed to Khalil’s to give him the blow-by-blow. In his eyes, I noticed a certain, unadulterated look of disappointment. Mats had also given me that look. I didn’t feel judged by either, but confusion reflected back at me in both cases. Neither could understand my final choice to not finish. Their shared look said they would find a way to get to the finish line in Kona, no matter what. No excuses.
After dinner, Khalil surprised me. “Dahhhling, I think you need a change of scenery in the New Year.” He suggested I join him and Gwilym in Marrakesh and Gran Canaria to prepare for Dubai. Talk about a change of scenery: Oui, si, ja, I was all in.
After arriving late in Gran Canaria, I learned a valuable lesson from Khalil: every second counts. In his world, that means squeezing in his planned workouts. He had a 1½-hour training run ahead. Not five minutes after we arrived, we were out the door. A couple days before, in Morocco, he ran as many intervals as possible before cutting it a bit short to meet with his banker.
I ask you, what are the odds of billionaires hammering out intervals before their first appointment of the day?
The shoe then shifted to the other foot, although I’d forgotten until Khalil raised it. “When we were on our bikes in the Canary Islands, she saw that my hips were moving ever so slightly. When you do that, you lose energy. But she didn’t tell me! She moved in front of me and asked, ‘Can you see if my hips are moving?’
“I said, ‘No, yours aren’t moving.’ Then I thought, Wait a second, she’s trying to tell me something. ‘Maybe mine are moving.’
“She smiled at me. ‘Yep, they’re moving.’ She showed me the example before she said anything.
“That’s the subtlety of training with an icon. It was quite an extraordinary gesture. And it was so modest, which I appreciate seeing in all successful people. There’s a saying, ‘No matter how high up you go, you still sit on your butt.’ The more you achieve, the more you strive for modesty and simplicity. At the end of the day, we are all the same—people trying to do the best we can with our lives that God has given us. I certainly see that in Julie.
“When you’re training with an icon, your whole demeanor changes drastically,” Khalil continued. “You naturally want to do well, and she’s such an incredible example who’s bloody fast, so you want to keep up with her. Everything that comes out of her mouth comes from positive energy and positive thinking. She shows you things we don’t realize we’re being shown, which is an incredible achievement. Not many can do that. She was naturally teaching and transmitting this incredible God-given gift without it feeling like she was coaching me.
“I look at training with Julie this way: If you’re working with a regular coach, and you are a tennis player, you obviously improve. But if your coach is Roger Federer, you improve a lot more! She’s done it so many times, despite so many ups and downs in her life; she always came back to training and gave triathlon even more. Again and again. You can’t substitute for that life experience. You are bound to improve just by watching. I’m so privileged to be her friend and a training partner, and it’s only the beginning.”
I understand fully, and humbly, what Khalil is saying. I still draw from elite athletes too. The ul
timate value of an elite athlete, in my view, is to inspire, to make us want to recreate that feeling. It’s that simple. We take their journey with them, and they inspire us to take our own journey. It pushes you toward your best self. While on a layover in Frankfurt, Germany, I was running on the treadmill during the second set of Roger Federer’s 2018 Australian Open finals victory over Marin Čilić. I’ve never had a faster hour on the treadmill. Then later, I watched Roger weep openly over winning his twentieth Grand Slam title. He’s been at the pinnacle of his sport for so long, and letting us in to how this makes him feel inspires me. I want to feel that deeply.
I learned another valuable lesson from Khalil about why he’s so successful—he’s always available. He will answer the phone while running an interval. We were in middle of a long interval set that included a twenty-minute warm-up, and reps of a six-minute run at 10K pace with a one-minute recovery jog in between. Halfway through our third interval, the phone rang. Surely, he’s not going to answer, I thought . . . but there he was, running swiftly at 10K speed while conversing in French.
The night before Khalil raced Dubai 70.3, he slept a total of ninety minutes. This wasn’t due to prerace nerves, but because he was conducting business. He never complained. He’s positively tireless on behalf of his investment partners and his family and friends.
In the short time I have known Khalil, he has become a brilliant diamond light in my life. He has unlimited potential as an Ironman triathlete, and it has been one of my greatest joys to be his friend and training partner. I’m thrilled that I can offer my experience and support to one of the most accomplished men on the planet as he continues his Ironman journey. Besides, he is my prince in shining armor!
CHAPTER 24
Be Amazing at Any Age
“Gratitude opens the door to . . . the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe.”
—Dr. Deepak Chopra
On New Year’s Day, 2018, I received an email from a yoga instructor friend, Xuyen, who spelled out her New Year’s resolutions a bit differently:
The word resolution means to resolve. Consider something from within that needs to be resolved. Could be a pattern, behavior, or relationship. When we resolve from the inside first, things will start to fall in place on the outside.
I will resolve to be less negative and more positive so I can live my life with the glass half full.
I will not be quick to judge so that I can truly appreciate the goodness of mankind that still exists.
I will be kind and love myself so that I can offer and receive love from others.
Namaste!
I thought about viewing my path forward through the prism of 2018, a year different from any other. First, I would share my story through this book, achievements, warts, and all. Also, I would race for others as well as myself; that’s what my fortieth anniversary Ironman World Championship race is all about.
When I received Xuyen’s message, I was two days away from jumping on a plane to spend a month in Marrakesh, Gran Canaria, and Dubai with Khalil. That began a very busy spring. In March, I joined Mats in New Zealand for his Ironman tune-up, the Ironman New Zealand 70.3, as well as my full Ironman qualifier. It was a great day for both of us. I won the 60–64 division by almost two hours in 11:10—the same time I ran at Kona in 1982—while Mats finished second in his division and fourth overall in the Ironman 70.3, running 4:20. He looked great! In April, Lisette and I ran the Paris Marathon together to celebrate “turning sixty,” and to mark her first marathon since we ran Boston in 2004. If that wasn’t enough, an idea popped into Khalil’s head: “Dahhhling, you need this intercontinental event on your resume,” he said, signing me up for the Bosphorus Cross Continental Swim, an open-ocean swim that starts in Europe and ends in Asia near Istanbul, Turkey.
This sequence of events is much different than my 2017 schedule; it’s more like a yearlong celebration of everything triathlon has done for me. It is also indicative of my desire to share my experience with others through mentoring, conversation, group runs, and some coaching. It culminates in my primary reason for going to Kona once more, to finish the race for you and me alike. Xuyen’s email was so timely and poignant.
In 2001, Santa Cruz surfer Jay Moriarity died in a diving accident in the Maldives. He was only twenty-three. Jay was already a local big-wave legend, and later the posthumous subject of Chasing Mavericks, starring 300 and Olympus Has Fallen hero Gerard Butler. Even though Jay died so young, he gave so much back. When he passed, I lived a block away from Pleasure Point, where they held his paddle-out—a beautiful ritual, in which surfers paddle beyond the waves, form a circle, share stories or moments, and pay their respects. The essence of ohana. I didn’t go in the water, but I did stand on the bluff, watching and wondering, “What was it about this young man that would get so many people to come out like this?”
Later, I got a chance to meet Jay’s widow, Kim, while I served as an announcer for Surftech’s Jay Moriarity paddle event. She was the race starter. That made such an impression on me, how Jay achieved an incredible reputation and brought out so much love because of the way he gave of himself. I wanted Mats to “Be Like Jay.”
I wanted to be like Jay too. I started looking more at what I could do. In the past five years, it has taken on a new dimension, from a curiosity to part of my daily life.
It began with a question: What do I really offer and share in my work, talks, races, and appearances? I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating this. If my original career brand was “Never Give Up,” my brand today is “Ageless Adventures: Be Amazing At Any Age.”
Part of my approach crystallized during a roundtable discussion about life at fifty I shared with Kris Riley (wife of Jim Riley, my bike training partner and the man who started the first triathlon apparel line), Trisha Hegg (wife of 1984 Olympian Steve Hegg, formerly a retail employee of Scott Tinley’s, now a global branding expert), and fellow branding expert Juju Hook, the author of Hot Flashes, Carpools, and Dirty Martinis. The title alone is catchy.
No matter how old or young we are, if we get off the couch, put one foot forward, and keep moving, we can literally change ourselves and our lives. From there, we can positively impact those around us. “Forget about age and find a role model,” big-wave surfing legend Laird Hamilton told Roy Wallack, who wrote a wonderful article on me for Triathlete after my 2017 Ironman North American Championship.
For my part, I fell from being a world-class triathlete to struggling to walk or run more than 200 meters at age fifty-one due to depression and my clove cigarette addiction—to being where I’m at today at sixty. Age does not deter what I feel I can accomplish, and I don’t listen to those who try to limit me, or themselves, with comments like, “Aren’t you getting too old to keep doing that?” No, I’m not! Neither are you! I want to touch everyone with that and other messages that open the doors to empowering ourselves. Isn’t that the essence of mentoring? Paying your life experience forward?
My Ageless Adventure Brand comes with a central focus, a resolution in the spirit of Xuyen’s New Year’s Day email: I resolve to live every day with a can-do attitude. When people approach me and say, “I can never do an Ironman, but maybe I can do an Olympic distance, or a sprint, or a Half Ironman,” I don’t downplay my abilities, but instead say, “With my inexperience in 1982, if I could get to the finish line of Ironman, anyone can.”
What is this “can-do” attitude? Runners talk about being “in the zone,” when the sheer joy of running merges with a copious endorphin flow to create a euphoric feeling, which we all crave. What about setting a goal that flies out of your comfort zone, way over your head, so far out there you think it’s impossible? But it’s something you really want? What if you chip away at it? I thought for years, “If I don’t write a book . . .” I trusted I would know when the time was right, part of learning to trust that intuitive part of myself: “If I go with it, lock myself in because it’s under my skin, pay attention to it, and then act, good things will co
me.” That’s being in the zone. If you think you can do it, and align your mind, heart, and body with your passion and priorities, and you’re patient, you can change yourself—and the world. I’m living proof of it.
How do passion, priority, and patience work together? I had the patience to keep moving in 1982, no matter what speed. I would want to race, then have the patience to pick myself off the ground. I had passion for the young woman I was becoming in my breakthrough, the woman I wanted to be, and the kind of life I wanted to lead. In the last couple months before the race, Ironman became my priority. If you can bring passion, priority, and patience to your effort, whether it’s an Ironman or another spectacular achievement for yourself, YOU CAN DO IT. That’s the can-do attitude.
I also focus on our inner Wonder Woman or Superman, Übermensch, the inner super being. Prior to the 2018 Ironman 70.3 New Zealand, I told an interviewer, “My definition of a strong woman is any woman who chases her dream and is willing to risk going outside her comfort zone to make that dream come true. The bigger the dream, the riskier it can feel and the bigger the rewards. A strong woman takes all that into consideration and trusts in her choice and just begins.” Later, I added, “Don’t be afraid to push outside your comfort zone. It was only outside my comfort zone, on my hands and knees that I discovered what a warrior I could be. Underneath all the layer of self-doubt and settling for less, I found a well of untapped courage. At my physical limit, I discovered my self-worth was unlimited and my self-worth was worth fighting for.”
