Crawl of Fame

by Julie Moss

  Every woman deserves to know her self-worth and to access her inner champion. Often, we only discover that when we’re kicked to the curb, so to speak. The hidden opportunity or nugget of possibilities lies in the falling down, then in getting back up and never giving in. These pieces define us. They constitute the champion side of our beings. We’re not going to get it any other way. Not everyone can be a specific event champion, but anyone can find the spirit of the life champion within.

  Let me give you a heartwarming example. In 2013, Shirin Gerami was the first Iranian woman allowed into triathlon competitions. In 2016, at age twenty-six, she made history by being the first to cross the finish line at the Ironman World Championship. Not only did Shirin train intensely like every other Ironman, but she did so in full Islamic dress. She wanted to create an opportunity for every woman to access triathlons and reap the psychological, physical, and social benefits of the sport. That’s a champion. That’s a Wonder Woman.

  In 2013, my desire to share these positive, affirming messages found a fresh forum with the Iron Icons speaking series. It continued with various opportunities to talk with women and men about achievements, endurance sports, life lessons, and, of course, running the Ironman. In 2017, I took it a step further, attending the I Am More Than What You Sea all-women’s workshop in San Diego, which helps support the Mini Mermaid Running Club. The Mini Mermaids operate throughout California. They were started in Santa Cruz by Heidi Boynton, a triathlete, mother, and cancer survivor. A Wonder Woman. What a strong message for an impressionable girl! So is this mission statement: “MMRC stands for self-worth, value, and equity. We are changing the lives of girls and young women by shifting their internal experience and the way they interact with the world around them . . .”

  Empowering, isn’t it? The curriculum empowers with strong engagement: girls identify with a fictional character to see ways to change their behavior, to become more empowered. They shift the typical constructs a girl confronts in society by focusing on heart, mind, and body strength. They work with girls to find the happy, powerful place inside themselves, and within their environment, as a foundation for lifelong fitness.

  The workshop provided a safe, nurturing environment that overwhelmed me. It was so much different than a triathlon, which is a battle with yourself, your opponents, and the elements. Some day, I see myself implementing a Mini Mermaid program at Carlsbad High School, my alma mater, by working with the track and cross-country girls as student mentors.

  As I rolled further into a mentor’s mindset, I thought more about the women in our sport who are making that shift. Kathleen’s work with Mike Levine has grown into a larger cause. Cherie Gruenfeld still competes as a seventy-something triathlete while bringing the triathlon experience to inner city kids through her foundation, Exceeding Expectations. Her mission: to encourage atrisk kids to move their lives in a positive direction. Multiple age-group Ironman World Champion Ellen Hart Peña tackles women’s eating disorders, which she overcame. Her example and mentorship have touched countless lives, and turned around many troubled women to find their greater strengths.

  I’m heartened by how my generation is pointing the way through their enduring passion and commitment. Take eight-time Ironman champ Paula Newby-Fraser and 1994 Ironman winner Heather Fuhr. Paula is the pro athlete liaison for Ironman and an Ironman U coach, while Heather is the pro athlete/VIP liaison. Paul Huddle and Roch Frey, their husbands, are also former triathlon stars—and involved with supporting stars of today and tomorrow. Paul is the manager of Global Operations for Ironman, and Roch is Ironman event director. Four-time Ironman World Champ Chrissie Wellington is mentoring and bringing 5K races to parks across England through Parkrun UK, a non-profit where she serves as global lead for health and wellbeing. What a great job title!

  My Ageless Adventures lifestyle led to the wonderful partnership I enjoy with Hoka One One. As recently as 2012, few people in North America had heard of Hoka. Now, the brand is renowned for its highly popular, state-of-the-art running shoe line, and was the number one shoe in Kona 2017. Not to mention Hoka One One’s very direct commitment to the Ironman World Championship and Postal Nationals.

  My journey with Hoka One One began in late 2014, when newly appointed global triathlon consultant Eric Gilsenan called. Eric and I have known each other for twenty years and have worked together on occasion. He wanted to bring me aboard as a partner and brand ambassador, something I very much welcomed. “When I had the opportunity with Hoka One One, she was one of the first people I called,” Eric said. “Many athletes send me sponsorship proposals looking for a ‘mutually beneficial relationship.’ It’s rare that any athlete can produce anything halfway ‘mutually beneficial,’ but with Julie, she is the ultimate spokesperson for triathlon.”

  From the beginning, I liked Hoka One One’s support for events, clinics, and other activities, as well as working with people like Eric and Sunny Margerum, the national team liaison. In 2016, Eric and I launched #runwithjulie, a group run in Kona, in which I take twenty to thirty women on the final two miles of the Ironman course. I also show them where I fell and crawled. “Most runners returned to the [Ironman] expo [where they started the run] with tears in their eyes,” Eric said. “They were all beaming about their experience. What an opportunity to share an iconic piece of endurance sport! Who can do that? Who can deliver that?

  “That’s the power of trust and building a relationship like I have with Julie. I knew it was going to be a hit—and it was.”

  The #runwithjulie idea might be taking on even further life. A half-dozen empowered women competed as an unofficial #runwithjulie team at the 2018 Encinitas Half Marathon. As I’ve mentioned, when we do something powerful in our lives, we have the ability to positively impact others with our experience and passion. Sometimes the impact grows on its own.

  I’ve since participated in a number of activities with Hoka One One, or within events they sponsor. One of my new favorites is the Hoka One One Postal Nationals, in which high school kids race two miles on the track, at night, during the heart of cross-country season. They are fast. I’ve had the privilege of attending as both an endorsed athlete and a coach. Because of the enthusiasm generated by events like this, Hoka One One is now making inroads with high school racers, as well as its strong over-thirty market.

  Before my February Ironman 70.3 race in Dubai, I sat on a Women For Tri panel with Minda Dentler, the only handcyclist to complete four Ironman triathlons, including the Ironman World Championship. A wife, mother, polio survivor, and paraplegic athlete from India, Minda had a profound effect on me in Kona in 2012, when it was getting tough. As I struggled at the ninety-mile mark of the bike, cramping and struggling to push on the pedals, Minda rolled by on her handcycle, pushing and not looking back, the perfect person to yank me out of a bad stretch. Minda didn’t quite make that finish line, but she returned in 2013 and became an Ironman World Champion. Her efforts were well-noticed; she was nominated for a 2014 ESPY Award for best female athlete with disability. Two years later, at Ironman Florida, Minda set the world record Ironman time by a female wheelchair athlete. In 2017, she became a gold medal–winning Ironman All World Athlete in the physically challenged division. Her public speaking appearances are just as inspirational. I was honored to join her on the panel, my first Women For Tri appearance of the year. I also participated at Ironman New Zealand.

  I’ve spent more time with the Challenged Athletes Foundation, which has helped countless physically impaired athletes find new life through fitness and racing, raising about $65 million in the process—and counting. If you’ve stood on the sidelines of a triathlon or running race, you’ve likely seen CAF athletes run through, usually attached by a stretch cord to their guide runners. They warm up any course and inspire fans and athletes alike.

  CAF started in 1997 when Jeffrey Essakow, Scott Tinley, Virginia Tinley, Bob Babbitt, Rick Kozlowski, and others organized a benefit run for future USA Triathlon Hall of Famer Jim MacLaren, who comp
eted with one leg and a prosthetic limb—then suffered a car accident that left him paralyzed. They raised $49,000, providing MacLaren with a wheelchair van for his final competitions until he passed.

  However, the phone kept ringing off the hook. More people wanted to donate. Essakow formally incorporated CAF with a goal of raising $1 million over the next ten years. Within five years, they were raising $1 million annually. By 2011, CAF was helping more than 1,000 challenged athletes per year, with donations from more than twenty-five countries, totaling over $6 million.

  I was reminded of the profound impact of serving others when I attended the 2017 Gala for Hope in San Diego. It was held to combat Huntington’s disease, a fatal genetic disorder that breaks down nerve cells in the brain. Many Los Angeles Chargers players attended, along with their longtime PR director, Bill Johnston, a beloved figure in the San Diego sports scene, whose wife of over thirty-five years suffers from the disease. Bill recently became the San Diego Padres’ PR man to keep him close to home; the Padres underwrote the Gala for Hope. For years, Bill was a fixture in road races, pushing his wife in her carriage in everything from 5Ks to marathons. The event honored ESPN announcer par excellence Chris Berman, whose wife had recently died in a fatal automobile accident.

  The night before the event, I received a call from Chris’s friend and mine, longtime TV producer Jay Kutlow. Jay and his wife, Diana, live near me. “Hey, Julie, I have an extra seat to the Gala for Hope,” Jay said.

  I was tired. “Ahhh, I don’t want to go.”

  “Diana’s going down by herself. You could ride down with her.”

  It turned out to be a pretty big deal. Berman came to be honored, but instead, he pivoted and honored Bill Johnston—an incredibly classy move. Chris knows what it’s like to lose a spouse, and he related to Bill’s challenge. A few months later, on Thanksgiving Day, NBC featured Bill’s story on its broadcast of the Chargers and Dallas Cowboys game. I would imagine a lot of women, and men, shed tears and gave many thanks for being healthy. Sports pieces don’t get more moving. I find myself investing more time and attention into events like this.

  In the past couple of years, I’ve also enjoyed working with some great cross-country kids at my alma mater, Carlsbad High School. One in particular, the lovely and tenacious Kendall Drisko, rose from an average prep runner to a state-level elite in one season. That’s rare. “Julie helped me see that, if I wanted to get to State, I had to give everything in every workout, even two months before,” said Kendall, who, in her 2016 State year, set nine personal bests in a thirteen-race season. Think about that: cross-country courses are hilly, held on differing terrain, and everyone has off-races and nagging injuries. But nine Personal Bests? How impressive is that? “She told me how hard it is to finish an Ironman, and I thought about it while we rode the bus to the [San Diego] CIF [Championships],” Kendall said. “That was inside me in the last mile, where I had to pass and hold off four girls who’d beaten me all year just to get into State.”

  “Bringing in elite athletes, if you are a lucky enough to do that, is a fantastic opportunity for the student/athletes to train under the best,” Carlsbad High Athletic Director Amanda Waters said. “They get the skills necessary to get the most out of their high school sports experience, and also get insight from athletes who know what it takes. Julie is an amazing inspiration for our athletes. The kids really respond to her. There are not many people who can share those experiences.”

  Mentoring works best when we dial into the athlete’s or person’s reality, rather than our own. One of Kendall’s teammates, Drew Kesslin, was a gold medalist in lacrosse in 2017 at the Maccabiah Games, sometimes called the Jewish Olympics. Drew is an amazing young lady; Google her “Insides Out” spoken-word performance at a 2016 Motivating Masses event. You’ll see what I mean. Drew is not the strongest runner—she’s quick to admit that—but she is a great captain. Before a junior varsity race in 2017, she threw down a prerace talk so empowering, the young freshmen and sophomores promptly improved their 5K best times by an average of three minutes. That’s one minute per mile, per person. She was their accelerant!

  The empowerment young women and men get from pushing themselves physically will translate to everything they do in life. It is the honey that draws mentors like me to work with them. I’m especially fond of working with young people in longer races, which I see as scale models of the ups, downs, fast periods, speed bumps, triumphs, and challenges of life. You want a metaphor for a long, involved work project or long-term goal? Try training for and running a marathon.

  I’ve seen this in my own son, who qualified to experience Kona in 2018. I’m balancing mothering and mentoring, not always easy, while, for the most part, offering advice only when asked (hey, I’m only human). Mark and I both wanted to let him embrace his decision and implications on its own. “Initially, they were both a little reserved,” Mats said. “They have a lot of respect about the magnitude of really doing this sport. They weren’t diminishing my decision at all, but sitting back and saying, ‘Let’s see how it goes.’”

  “From Julie, I’ve always gotten this feel that she’s emphasized the practical aspects of the professional athlete in triathlete, and tried to highlight how important it is to do other things,” Mats’s girlfriend, Megan, continued. “She’s given practical, grounded advice. She’s saying to him, ‘pursue this, do pursue it, but you’re going to have to get really crafty, really smart.’”

  The fortieth anniversary Ironman presents an interesting dynamic, one that I’ve been afraid might disrupt Mats’s preparation. I was concerned enough about this to ask if he was okay with me racing. I originally wanted him to have his own Kona experience in 2018, but then I DNFed in 2017. His reply? “Honestly, Mom, I won’t even know you’re there.” Ordinarily, mothers might not want to hear that, but to me, it was the perfect answer. He knew Kona would require his fullest concentration and focus, and I now knew I would not be a distraction to him.

  Another thing that gives me great comfort? Mats understands and embodies the “Spirit of Ironman.” He also knows something of its history. “I totally wish I could’ve done my first race back then, like my parents did,” he said. “It was new and organic in 1982, and everyone was trying to figure it out. That’s more my style. I think of my dad when he was on the JDavid [racing] team, him and a bunch of guys in their mid-twenties, riding around with their long blond hair, looking like a bunch of surf bums. And my mom was a surfer girl and college student who took a chance, jumped into the race, and changed everything. Why? She wanted to see if she could do it. That reminds me of my climbing buddies and me in the Sierras, not doing it for the money or sport, but just for the view.”

  Just for the view . . . my view is that I am racing in 2018 to celebrate our innate agelessness, the value of fitness and positivity in our lives, and to showcase the inner and outer power of finishing big. When we finish big, we open the door to something bigger. I don’t feel the need to race for my own ego, though one can safely argue that my ego framed my 2017 goal of beating the 1982 time. Not in 2018.

  I am using my platform to create more awareness of health and wellness, and the larger benefits of finding a fitness program and sticking to it. One day, I was running with Jim Riley and he said, “You know, people are sitting too much. They’re so sedentary.” I flashed back on a section of Chris McDougall’s book, Born to Run, in which he stripped our running instincts back to their mother root: Our most distant ancestors had to slowly run down their prey over the course of many miles and hours, sometimes even a day or two; it was life or death. They had to move their bodies, constantly, in order to survive. In a sense, so do we.

  Our robust endurance sports participation reflects a loss of connection with our instinctive humanity. What can be more fully human than using our skills, abilities, and physical fitness to fight for our lives, or to take on and conquer a mighty challenge like an Iditarod? An Ironman? A Western States 100-mile race? A tall mountain or the face of El Capita
n? If you’re a firefighter, law enforcement officer, or soldier, you know already. Outside of battling severe health issues, or a life-threatening accident or injury, though, the rest of us don’t. What is it like to really have to dig down and get to the finish line? We crave that.

  From Kona, I learned how quickly life can change. I also learned what people were really seeing, a seed that now is part of my mission. When people saw the Wide World of Sports footage, I thought it would repel them, but it did the opposite—it drew them in. They saw my vulnerability, limitations, and willingness to get up, no matter how many times I fell. Instead of wanting to know more about the sport, they were curious about what drove me to try so hard. I could feel them thinking, “What is out there that would make me want to try that hard?”

  Endurance sports ask us what we can give of ourselves, in performance and potential, rather than listlessly punching a time clock and waiting for 5:00 P.M. to arrive. Endurance sports strip away how we perceive ourselves, and how others perceive us. When we’re twenty-two miles into the marathon portion of an Ironman, believe me, we’re not too concerned with how we look out there or the chatter running along the fans’ rope line. It comes down to being in the moment: how do I feel right now? It’s not an intellectual thing. To paraphrase something Lisette says about our forty-year friendship, say YES to challenges more than you say no.

  In time, we circle back to the things that fully tested and connected us to our larger potential. Why do people dust off old surfboards or tennis rackets when their kids are older? Why do we start jogging again? Why does someone who never walked up a hill in their local park suddenly talk about summiting Mount Everest? What I seek is the outcome of these experiences, a “day after day after day” awareness and presence of moving forward, continually improving, expanding my potential as a woman.