The effort was showing a return. My swims, bikes, and runs were all faster and longer, and my body was recovering from the workouts much better as well. Now weighing 200 pounds (down 20 pounds from when I started), I was almost showing a bit of a six-pack, in the right lighting.
Every Sunday, Mike and I headed out to Crystal Cove, which, compared to Bompa’s beach, was much easier to access and had better navigation points to sight. My orientation and balance in the water were better than they had ever been, and although Mike was still and always would be a stronger swimmer, I was starting to push him. When we came back up on the beach, he would be breathing heavily, which was very satisfying. I was not exactly performing a Karate Kid one-legged balancing act on the BOSU ball, but I wasn’t too far off. More important, I was using LeFever’s orange stretchy band during workouts, the one that was as tough as a tire.
In the midst of this training mania, when I was constantly questioning whether I was pushing myself hard enough, for long enough, came a big reminder of why I was doing the Ironman in the first place. In August, Juliana arrived at LAX. Almost fifteen months had passed since I met her in Tanzania. She would have come sooner for her surgery, but arranging a passport for a sixteen-year-old without a birth certificate (not to mention all the rest of the red tape) delayed her arrival.
On the drive to the Ronald McDonald House in Orange County, where we had arranged for her to stay, Juliana was quiet, her eyes wide as saucers at all the lights and cars. Over the coming days, she bravely sat through a number of tests and examinations by Afshin at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County.
Time and again, she asked to see the photographs of people with prosthetics dancing ballet, playing soccer, and running. She never said it, but I knew she was imagining herself doing the same. On the day of her surgery, I worried that she would be nervous, maybe even fighting the doctors as they put in the intravenous lines. Instead, she had a huge smile on her face. The double amputation went fine, and although there were some minor complications in the healing process, Juliana was out of the hospital a week later. In the coming weeks, she started her rehabilitation and was on her way to wearing prosthetic legs and walking for the first time.
Before Juliana left for Africa, I showed her a YouTube video of an athlete racing down a track on bladelike prosthetics.
“That can be you one day,” I told her. “That can be you.”
She soaked it in and seemed mesmerized by the idea.
Juliana continued her treatment back home in Tanzania, in our new center at the orphanage that Dr. Aminian and I visited. Called Tumaini (“Hope” in Swahili), it was funded by my foundation. With the hundreds of thousands raised for Kilimanjaro and my goal of a million dollars for Ironman, it was my hope that the OM Foundation would help many more children like Juliana.
Spending time with Juliana left me inspired. She showed so much courage, both in her daily struggle to make the best of it despite her disability and in her willingness to put her trust in others to better her life.
It was the same during the moments I had with Ashley, the girl who suffered from both CP and epilepsy, at UCP-OC’s Life Without Limits center. She continued to thrive with her therapy, was now able to steer her wheelchair by the movements of her head, and could even navigate on her own two feet with the assistance of a special walker. At the Orange County Marathon earlier that year, I pushed her for the 5K, and we were so slow that there was nobody left near us at the finish line. “First Place!” she cheered. A spark plug, always with a one-liner, she attended my foundation’s last board meeting and, like Donald Trump, she gave us all a look and said, “You’re fired.”
These moments were the few breaks from training that I allowed myself. I felt guilty if I shirked any part of the schedule that arrived every Sunday night from Welchy. The schedule ruled everything. Master’s swim. Plyometrics. Up the ante on the bike. Master’s again—hard. Walk, brisk. Jog, downhill. Weights, every muscle. Five ten-minute intervals on the bike. Master’s swim. Five hours on the bike. All with Welchy’s inimitable notes: “You must really love me by now.” “You will thank me later!” The more punishment Welchy heaped on me, the greater my ability to take it. I knew there was an end in sight, but I no longer watched out for it. I was in the zone, in the moment.
At the end of August, Welchy sent me a note that was almost a page long. This was a lot of words for my coach. He praised me for being an “incredible guy” (questionable) and apologized for “not being the world’s greatest coach” (plain wrong). He told me that he was writing the same workouts for me that had brought him success in his career. Besides the daily routine, he promised, there would be only three more key push-it-to-the-hilt workouts. “You have answered your call to the start line,” Welchy concluded. “Almost there, mate. Almost there.”
I kept reading and rereading the note. To think that this great champion was devoting so much time to my mission gave me a tremendous boost of confidence. What was more, he seemed to feel I was on the right track. I tried to parse his every word to see if there was any worry, any concern on his part, but I found nothing. Keep working. You’re on the home stretch. You got this.
The next weekend, I flew down to Austin, Texas, for the TriRock Triathlon. Steve Robert had moved there with his family a year after Jake’s death, and I was going to be racing with a Team Jake logo on my jersey. Before the race, we held a concert headlined by country-music star Josh Turner to raise money for my foundation. We were in the opening stages of planning a center in Austin for children with disabilities similar to the one in Orange County. It was a wonderful reunion, and since my whole journey had started with the Roberts, it was the perfect send-off for Hawaii. An added bonus was that Dilly lived near Austin.
On the day of the race, Steve and Dilly walked me down to the swim start. They ribbed me that there were some pretty fit dudes in the same grouping I was in. It was 100 degrees, without a breath of wind, and the TriRock sprint triathlon was a hot sweaty bear that taxed me much more than it should have. Steve and Alison cheered along the sidelines, and their sons Tyler and Zach ran with me for a stretch of the 5K. Their presence meant so much and helped keep away any worries that I would face the same temperatures—or worse—in Hawaii, over a much more grueling course and many, many, many more miles.
Mike and I were standing in our swim trunks, ankle-deep in the Pacific. We were there for my last ocean-training swim. Fifteen-foot waves curled and pounded Crystal Cove Beach, and a fierce undertow muddied the water in their retreat. Unlike at West Beach, we didn’t know every rock and drop-off on this stretch of coast.
“Bompa wouldn’t want us going in,” I said. “‘If you don’t know the topography of the area,’ he always said, ‘don’t be stupid and go in.’”
We laughed, still staring out at the surf.
“Easier getting out there than getting back in,” Mike said. “Especially when we’re tired.”
The same could have been said of my whole Ironman adventure. Easier to say you’re going to do the Kona Ironman than cross the finish line at the end.
“Should we do it?” I asked.
Only a couple of days before, on my way back from a long bike ride along Newport Coast Drive, I came upon a female cyclist who, seconds before, had been hit by a truck, which then took off. She lay on the roadside, her helmet cracked open, her bike mangled. As her husband cradled her in his arms, I directed traffic away while somebody else called 911.
I later learned that she had died from her injuries. I sat on the edge of my sofa, reminded of how anything can happen, at any time. I didn’t want to tempt fate by swimming in these waters.
“Let’s not go,” Mike finally said. “You put in the work. You’ve come on in leaps and bounds as a swimmer. Why risk it?”
“You don’t need to convince me,” I smiled. If this had occurred a year earlier, I would have gone into the water over my best judgment just to prove that I could. Now, I only had one thing left to prove to myself or to anyone.
“Next time we see each other, we’ll be on our way to Kona. We’re going to do that big bad boy.”
“You’re ready, bro.”
12
Me Against the Island
On October 3, 2012, I watched the Big Island growing closer again through the window of my puddle jumper from Honolulu. The rounded cone of the Mauna Kea volcano, long extinct, rose majestically over the clouds. The plane headed down the island’s northwestern coast to Kailua-Kona airport, following much the same course I would take on my bike. From the sky, I got a good view of the mix of white-sand beaches, pockets of tropical green, and long fields of rugged black and red lava rock that I would pass on my way to and from the turnaround town of Hawi. On the day of the race I was unlikely to see any of this. My vision would be too distorted by sweat, and I would be suffering from fatigue and in mortal fear of crosswinds hurling me from my bike.
“What’s your goal? Have you thought of what it would be like to come down the finishing chute? What’s the hardest part of the race? What do you hope to accomplish? What’s your target time? What’s next?” I had fielded these questions, and many more, during press events in Hawaii’s capital and fund-raisers over the two previous days.
“The goal is to finish. I want to high-five everybody coming down the chute. The bike, for sure, the bike will be hardest. I’m here to raise funds for my foundation, to remind children with cerebral palsy or other disabilities not to put limitations on themselves. Sixteen hours, thirty minutes would be a great time for me. The next adventure? Nothing. I think this will do it.” Indeed. Now I actually had to go ahead and do it.
Upon landing, I had ten days before the race. The next morning, Mike and I went over to the pier to do a ninety-minute Welchy “splasharound” on the swim course. The small beach, shoehorned between the pier and the stone wall that curved around Kona Bay, was crowded with athletes. Mike went into the water first, but then let me lead the way ahead.
“This is your race,” he said, “so show me what you can do compared to last year at this time.”
I started slow, warming up and getting into my rhythm on the way to the first buoy. There were some nagging aches and pains, but nothing out of the ordinary. Overall, I felt incredible. After almost two years of fine-tuning my stroke, I was a much stronger swimmer than I had ever been. Working on the angle of my arms, the position of my legs, my bilateral breathing, a smooth kick, the roll of my body, and my equilibrium in the water, I was motoring through the swells.
About halfway to the second buoy, I felt a little twinge in my right shoulder, but I kept swimming. I probably still needed to warm up some, maybe relax my stroke a bit. A few minutes later, though, the twinge had turned into discomfort, then it turned into pain, and with each stroke it got worse. As I neared the second buoy, I was having trouble maintaining a straight line. Finally, I stopped completely, and Mike came alongside me.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“No. It’s my shoulder. Something’s not right.”
“Let’s tread water a bit. See if it loosens up.”
I nodded.
After a couple of minutes, the dull pain was still present, but wasn’t getting worse. I decided to give it another go. With each stroke, I felt the tendons yanking in my shoulder. I could barely pull my arm through the water. I stopped again. I was worried, very worried.
Mike asked me a bunch of questions, trying to pinpoint what was wrong. The only thing that was clear was that we needed to head back to the pier.
“Do you want a tow?”
I shook my head.
If I needed a tow, how was I going to race 2.4 miles nine days from now? Mike started back, and I followed. I felt like a bird trying to fly with a wounded wing. I could flutter and make a little progress, but ultimately I would never take flight. I grew more and more frustrated with every second that passed. This part of the course was supposed to be my strong suit, where I could win a little cushion of time for the bike and the run. If I had to swim the course with only one arm—and I would, if I had to—then I was in big trouble.
After stopping several more times, we finally made it back to the beach. Back on the pier, I tried to lift my right arm above my shoulder, but I couldn’t. The pain was screw-up-your-face intense. I was straight on the phone to Welchy, who was at the Oakley house. From the sound of my voice, he knew immediately that something was very wrong. I explained what had happened on the swim.
“We’ll get you in shape for the race, mate,” Welchy said calmly. “No worries, all right?”
By the time I had showered and changed, he had set up an appointment with David Darbyshire, an Australian sports massage therapist who worked on a lot of the elite triathletes. Operating from a beach apartment a mile south of downtown Kona, “Darbs,” as I quickly learned to call him, gave me a thorough working over, bending my arm at every angle and digging through my armpit into my shoulder. After the treatment, shoulder throbbing, my right arm held close to my chest, I headed back to our rented SUV, where Mike was waiting for me. We didn’t speak much on the way back to the small condo where we were staying the first few days, neither of us wanting to give voice to the fear that my Ironman ambitions might well be over.
On October 8, five days away from the race, I drove over to the Oakley house. My shoulder continued to feel as though someone had driven a metal stake through it. Earlier that morning I had another session with Darbs, at which I almost passed out from his workover. The consensus was that the pain was essentially caused by overuse and that I needed to rest the limb. In the meantime I had been able to get out on my bike and to do some light jogging. Welchy greeted me with a hug and asked briefly about my shoulder, but that was all he had to say about it. I figured he didn’t want to dwell on the subject or make it loom even larger in my mind than it already did.
It was blisteringly hot and humid, but he found a pair of lawn chairs in the shade by the water. A breeze blew off the water. Welchy leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and started. “Okay, let’s go over everything.”
Then followed what I can only describe as a master class in taking part in the Ironman World Championship. Everything Welchy had learned in his years as a triathlete, particularly from his races in Kona, he shared with me.
“Prerace, you’re going to need to start taking in your calories an hour and a half before the start, because your body’s already gearing up. . . . One of the big mistakes people make is to warm up too much, all kinds of stretches and stuff, exhausting their energy. This is made worse by not eating anything. . . . Don’t get into the water until you have to. Start the swim in the back, find a sweet spot, and go smooth. . . . Use BodyGlide—everywhere. . . . When you get out of the ocean, drink some of your water mix right away. . . .
“When on your bike, stay as low as possible in the wind. Watch those cutouts: you come out from behind a hill, and the wind hits you in the side of the head, there you go, crash. . . . Two hands on the bike. Cadence eighty to ninety rotations. . . . If your heart rate’s running wild, you don’t have to stop. Mate, most people think they have to! But it’s not true. Back down a gear. If you’re in fifth, go to fourth. If that doesn’t work, drop a couple more gears. . . . In your transition, don’t rush, take your time. . . . If you need to pee, just piss yourself—everybody does it. . . . On the run, walk the uphills and jog the flats and downhills. . . . At every aid station I want you to pour ice down your crotch and into your bike helmet: cool yourself down.”
Every once in a while, I nodded and said, “Okay, got it,” but mostly I just sat there and soaked up the information. When Welchy had finished, he gave me my next scheduled workout (a two-hour bike ride north out of town) and told me to report in on how it went. Again, no mention of my shoulder.
“You can do this, mate,” he said in farewell.
Over the next week, I continued to train on every part of the bike and run courses. There was a clear method to Welchy’s madness, because I was now acquainted with every turn, hill, and s
traightaway on the course. There would be no surprises on race day, which gave me no small measure of comfort. I stayed out of the ocean and continued with massage therapy every day. The pain eased, and I could raise my arm level with my shoulder without pulling a face. Still, after spending years worrying about how my legs would hold up in an endurance event this intense, there was something unsettling about suddenly having to worry about my upper body. It made me realize just how unpredictable this whole thing was.
On one of my training days, Mike got sidetracked and missed picking me up at our prearranged spot. I stood on the edge of the highway, baking in the midday sun, my feet almost melting onto the asphalt. What was worse, I was out of my water mix. Fifteen minutes later Mike finally arrived, sporting a new baseball cap, with some empty food wrappers in the backseat.
I yelled at him for his selfishness; he tried to explain. I yelled some more.
I was still fuming as we drove off. I suppose it was a case of venting the stress before the race. We were soon back on speaking terms. Apart from that one fight, Mike and I were a smoothly functioning team.
My father and his wife, LaDonna, flew in four days before the race. Sadly, I hadn’t yet reconciled with my mom, and she would not be coming. An absolute herd of friends, foundation supporters, and coworkers—including Dilly, Greg LeFever, and the whole Robert family—came to cheer me on, though. Michelle, who had remained a friend despite our breakup, joined me on the Big Island as well. Paul, whose wife was about to have a baby, was one of my few friends who couldn’t make it. The outpouring of support was tremendous—and such a different experience from Kilimanjaro, when I felt at such a distance from everybody in my life.
On Thursday, October 11, forty-eight hours before the race, I found myself on Alii Drive in Kona’s town center wearing nothing but running shoes, underwear, chaps that a friend had bedazzled to the nines, and a huge blue foam “Go Bonner” cowboy hat. I was just one of thousands, everyone in boxers, briefs, tighty-whities, panties, sports bras, and a host of revealing outfits for the annual charity Underpants Run. The emcee, some guy in an Arnold Schwarzenegger costume, boomed over the PA that we were all to take an oath to never wear Speedos, banana hammocks, or any other inappropriate swimwear in public, and then we were off. As I ran the mile or so through downtown Kona, all thoughts and worry about the race disappeared. It was pure fun—exactly what I needed.
One More Step: My Story of Living with Cerebral Palsy, Climbing Kilimanjaro, and Surviving the Hardest Race on Earth Page 19
