One More Step: My Story of Living with Cerebral Palsy, Climbing Kilimanjaro, and Surviving the Hardest Race on Earth

by Bonner Paddock

  “Avoid the scrum,” Welchy had told me. “You’re not going to win the race, mate, so just make sure you get to a place where you can settle in and be efficient.”

  I found a spot where there was nobody within an arm’s length of me. From the seawall, spectators yelled and clapped. The drum line was booming with increasing intensity. Overhead, the helicopters whoop-whoop-whooped. My heart was pounding so heavily I could feel it in my temples. A minute, less, until the start.

  “It’s go time!” I chanted several times, the tension almost overwhelming.

  I dipped down below the surface of the water and asked for strength from Bompa. The ocean was his home, and if there was any place he would hear me, it was here.

  Let’s do this, Bompa. You and me together.

  When I emerged, an unusual calm fell over me. A peace. Four years ago, driven by fear, pain, anger, and a need to prove myself to others, I had faced down Mt. Kilimanjaro. Now, in Kona, at the Ironman World Championship, I felt none of that negative emotion. The fun-house mirror showed a very different picture of me than before. I was there to prove to myself that there were no limits to what I could do. I was there to show the world that they should never put limits on children with disabilities. I was there to represent all those people who supported me, to represent the OM Foundation and all the kids it would help. And most of all, I was there to race my race, fight my fight.

  The announcer was now counting down in seconds. Two thousand heads bobbed up and down in the water.

  You have done all you can do to prepare for this. You belong here. It will be a brutal long day, but you can do this. You are going to do this. Nothing will stop you.

  The cannon boomed, and I leaned forward to take my first stroke. It looked as if someone had dipped a giant hand blender into the bay. The clear water churned and quickly grew murky. I concentrated on staying away from other swimmers and maintaining my stroke—not too fast, not too slow. I reminded myself I had already swum this course. The key was to take it little by little, nothing more. Five buoys out, a total of roughly 1.1 miles. The turnaround by the catamaran, maybe another 0.2 miles. Then five buoys back to the pier for the complete 2.4 miles. My goal was to emerge from the water in an hour and a half.

  A couple of hundred yards into the course, my body relaxed. I stroked easily; there was no pain in my shoulder, not even the slightest twinge. The ocean was calm, the swells at most 5 feet high, so I didn’t have to worry too much about how far I angled my head out of the water to take a breath. I glided smoothly through the bay.

  One, two, three strokes. Breathe on the left. One, two, three strokes. Breathe on the right.

  I kept reminding myself to maintain form. Legs up. Don’t let them be a rudder. Little kicks spaced out more than my strokes. Arms extended straight out from my shoulders. Pull back strong, hands relaxed. Roll easy, left and right, not too much. By the first buoy, I was feeling very strong. My goggles were beginning to fog up, but I told myself not to let it bother me. That always happened at the start, maybe because I was breathing more heavily. They usually cleared themselves. Keep the strokes going. One, two, three. Breathe.

  Through the haze of my goggles, I identified some swimmers who were moving at the same pace I was and angled my way toward them. If I wedged myself in between them, they would guide my direction, and I could focus on maintaining my stroke. I zipped past the second buoy. It was a good 15 feet away, which meant that my two “guides” were not exactly leading me on the straightest path, but that was okay. I might be swimming a little farther than necessary, but since I didn’t have to raise my head above water to take my line of sight, I was conserving energy. A fair trade-off.

  One, two, three. Breathe. One, two, three. Breathe.

  Between that point and the next couple of buoys, I found myself surging past one swimmer after another. It was obvious I was making good time, but this meant that I was catching up with the main body of competitors. Soon I was being crowded in by the scrum. A few times I had to slow up to avoid a kick in the head or surge ahead when someone hit my feet with their own strokes.

  A part of me wanted to stay with the pack. But the constant back-and-forth was messing with my concentration and throwing off my rhythm. Fight your fight, Bonner. I needed to stick to my pace. After veering off, I reached the line of paddleboarders who followed the swimmers along the course in case anybody got into trouble. They maintained a fairly straight line, and I decided to switch to using them as my visual guide along the course.

  Now completely clear of the other swimmers, I hit the groove with my stroke, moving effortlessly across the surface. For a spell, I almost forgot that I was only at the beginning of a very, very long race. Everything was peaceful. I observed the sun slanting through the crystal-clear water and the pools of colorful fish gliding through the deep below me. I thought again of Bompa, of how he used to look when he was moving in slow motion through the ocean. He was such a relaxed, efficient, and steady swimmer, and in that moment I became one too.

  I soon reached the fifth buoy and readied to make the turn to the right around the catamaran sailboat. But when I lifted my head out of the water to spot the floating turnaround point, it was far ahead in the distance. I didn’t understand. The catamaran should be right after the fifth buoy. I wondered if I had miscounted the number of buoys—or maybe the catamaran had drifted off course. Something was wrong. If I had been wearing a swim watch, I could have checked my time, but I had decided against one, my pace so ingrained after almost two years of training. But now my uncertainty threw me out of my rhythm. There was nothing to do but follow the others. Don’t let this bother you. Don’t dwell on it. Keep swimming.

  Another stretch, and I closed in on the catamaran. Somewhere along the way I worked out that the race organizers must have added more buoys to mark the course better. The herd of swimmers tightened at the clockwise turn around the catamaran. I remained on the outside. It was a short swim to the next buoy, which was the final turn before the long straight return.

  Halfway there now, and the swim back to the pier favored me. I was right-side dominant, and the strokes from my right arm always carried a little more force. On the return, this advantage would nudge me slightly away from shore, while the swells would push me in. The two would balance each other out, leaving me on a straight line without extra effort. I continued to track the position of the paddleboarders out of the corner of my eye.

  Moving powerfully through the water, I imagined the booming music I would hear once we came back within earshot of the pier. The crowds would greet our return. The announcer would yell out the race numbers of the competitors emerging from the water. “Bonner Paddock, Number 1421.” It would be a sweet sound, one-third of the Ironman done.

  As I swam toward the next buoy, I took a few extra breaths now and again, but still I felt little strain. All the hours in the pool, fine-tuning my stroke and putting in the laps, were paying off. Thanks to Mike, I was perfectly at ease in the ocean, rolling naturally with the swells, not fighting against myself.

  Fog began to creep along the edges of my goggles and then completely blurred my vision. Stopping to rinse them, I gazed around me. Competitors surged ahead all around me, chopping the water with their rhythmic strokes. The finish was three-quarters of a mile away and far out of sight. Still a long way to go. Goggles clear, I took a couple of long breaths and then got back to it. Not 20 yards later, I felt a little twinge in my right shoulder. Put it out of your mind. It is nothing. You are on your way to the pier.

  With every minute, the pain in my shoulder grew worse. I tried to lengthen my strokes to minimize the number I would need to finish. I lightened up how much I pulled through the water as well. Both helped slightly, but I knew I would have to fight through to the end. It wouldn’t be an issue for the bike and run, but I needed to make sure that the pain did not slow me down too much now, forcing me to speed up on the rest of the course. Everything was a balancing act, and any one thing could throw off the res
t of the race. Little victories. Just get to the next buoy, then the next. Don’t let your mind wander beyond that.

  I needed to focus on the present moment, to make sure that my stroke, shoulder problem or no shoulder problem, was as efficient as it could be. I bore down, keeping my head in the water, not looking up to see if I was nearing the next buoy or the one after that. They could look after themselves.

  One, two, three. Breathe. One, two, three. Breathe.

  Eventually, I regained some rhythm with my stroke, forcing the pain into that good old place, deep inside me. Pain would do me no good. It was only a distraction. I swam on, losing myself in the steady stroke of my arms into the water. Left, right, left, right—the roll of my body between each. My shoulder was nothing. Insignificant. I could continue forever.

  Then I turned my head to take a breath and heard music. The swells lessened, and I knew I was approaching the pier. Once inside the harbor, the surface flattened, and the music blaring by the transition area vibrated through the water. Only a tenth of a mile now. Eager to finish the swim, to get out of the water and hop onto my bike, I surged ahead, adrenaline carrying me. My goggles fogged up completely, and my right shoulder felt as if someone had plunged a knife into it, but none of that mattered now. The swim was at its end.

  Before I reached the beach, I pulled up and stood for a moment in chest-level water. I had learned in training that it took me a few moments to regain my body balance after a long swim. The deep water kept me from pitching over. I cautiously walked to the beach and took off my goggles. As I climbed the steps, I heard my name being chanted somewhere in the sea of spectators. By a huge banyan tree stood a band of my supporters. I couldn’t miss them, they were all wearing their big blue cowboy hats. They jumped up and down and shook their fists, going crazy at my arrival. My spirits soared at the sight of them, and I pumped my fist up and down. The swim was over, and my shoulder had held out to the finish.

  At the top of the steps, I saw a big digital timer. It read one hour, twenty-four minutes. I didn’t believe it. How could I have beaten my goal time by six minutes, particularly with my stroke thrown out so badly?

  “Is that the race clock?” I asked the nearest race official. “Or some other timer?”

  “That’s the race clock,” she said, with a happy smile.

  “Yes!” I pumped my fist again and headed for the transition area.

  I rinsed the saltwater off my body under a garden-hose shower. Then I headed toward the line of volunteers waiting with buckets of sunscreen. After the half Ironman, when I had almost baked the outline of my jersey permanently into my skin, I took my sweet time at this station.

  “Don’t be shy,” I said. “Really lather me up. I’ll be out there a long time.”

  “You’ll do great,” a female volunteer said encouragingly.

  When I emerged from the sunscreen station, I looked as if I had taken a bath in the slick white paste. Everybody seemed to be running past me down the lanes to their bikes, grabbing them from the racks, and chugging out of there at top speed. My instinct was to follow them, but then I reminded myself again of what Welchy had told me: “This is you against the course. Do your best. Nothing else.” Anyway, I had killed the swim course. On closer inspection, I realized that my bike, in all its Cannondale glory, was one of the few remaining. Killed it, huh? I chuckled to myself. Okay, big boy.

  I sat down beside my bike and drank a small bottle of my C5 mixed drink, knowing I needed the nutrition after the long swim. Slowly, methodically, I put on my socks and clip shoes, turned on my bike computer, and then checked and double-checked that I had all my GUs, water bottles, and Bonk Breaker bars. Nothing could be left to chance. Then I donned my bike helmet and the red-and-white-framed sunglasses with the OM Foundation symbol etched on the left lens, which Oakley had made especially for me for this race.

  Eleven minutes after leaving the ocean, I mounted my bike and clipped in my left shoe. In the distance, I could hear people chanting my name. I said a little prayer to Jake to give me the strength I needed for the brutal test ahead. Then, pushing off and clipping in my other shoe, I rode around the curving corridor lined with spectators. On either side of me was a small army of blue-hatted supporters, who went wild as I passed. The sight of them boosted my spirits, and I returned a big smile. I wanted to give them a thumbs-up—“Hey! I’m feeling good!”—but I kept both hands on the bars. As usual I was feeling a little wobbly on the bike.

  Almost immediately I came to a hill, and I muttered, “Welcome to hell on earth.” The next 112 miles would be hot, humid, and a real ass-buster. My target time was eight hours. Longer than that, and I would have to push too hard on the marathon to make it to the finish by midnight. A lot longer than eight hours, and I would miss the cutoff time to finish the bike course (5:30 P.M.) and be removed from the race altogether.

  Fighting the instinct to charge up this first hill, I told myself to take it slowly, stick to an easy gear, and get settled in. Even now, after months on the RevMaster, then more than a year training on the open road, there was nothing comfortable for me about being on the bike. My feet locked into the clips, my legs never straightening out, my upper body hunched continuously over the handlebars—all of it was like kryptonite working against my cerebral palsy. Hour after hour, it would slowly break me down.

  Added to this, I needed to focus completely on what I was doing to maintain my balance. “It’s like riding a bike” meant something very different for me than for most people. The action—or scores of small actions that made up riding a bike—had never become second-nature to me.

  After I crested the first hill, too pumped up on adrenaline to feel any burn, I began the loop through Kona that made up the first 8 miles of the bike course. My legs warmed up quickly in the already stifling heat at 9 A.M. On the sharp downhill curve leading from Palani Highway onto Kuakini Highway, I passed by another crowd of Bonner blue hats who whooped and hollered for me.

  I rode a long, straight flat, then up another hill, and back along Kuakini. I kept reminding myself, Cadence, cadence, cadence. No matter the terrain, Welchy wanted me to maintain the eighty to ninety rotations per minute. Feeling good, not straining too much, I passed the first-aid station without stopping and returned past the string of blue cowboy hats bouncing up and down at the intersection of Palani and Kuakini. When I banked right, back up steep Palani, I shifted down into “granny gear.”

  As I labored up the hill, Zach and Tyler Robert jogged beside me on the grassy traffic island. “Go Bonner!” they yelled.

  Soon I left them behind. Nearing the top of the climb, I was breathing heavily and was finally feeling the effort in my legs. When I turned onto Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway, I knew what was ahead: 100 miles of closed-down road, most of it away from the spectators. No more of the Bonner army. My energy level took a hit, and I already felt lonely. Fortunately, there was a tailwind and a downhill slope at the beginning of the highway. Crouched and resting my forearms on my Aero handlebars, I settled into a rhythm.

  I broke the course down into small segments, setting one goal after the next. This made the ride much less intimidating. My first goal was the Kailua-Kona International Airport, Mile 15. The highway gradually turned uphill, but it was a smooth, gentle slope, helped by the wind on my back. I knew this same wind would be in my face on the return to Kona, but at this point it did me no good to think about that. I passed the Energy Lab and tried to push away the thought of that point in the marathon, still so many, many hours away. Small bites. You can only chew a little at a time.

  By the airport, I stopped at an aid station and unclipped from my pedals. Still straddling my bike, I asked for some ice. Welchy had advised me to take an ice bath at every station to numb my hip flexors and weary muscles and, more important, to lower my core temperature in the blistering Big Island heat. “Keep the core cool, or it’s game over.”

  A volunteer offered me a small cup of ice chips, but I shook my head.

  “I need big chunk
s,” I said.

  Someone else pointed to a plastic bag–lined trashcan filled to the brim with ice. With my balance and rigid muscles, getting off my bike would not be easy. Instead, I lifted it up between my legs and awkwardly hobbled over to the trashcan. Dipping my hand deep into it, I found an oblong block, lifted it out with one hand, and with the other pulled out the waistband of my bike shorts. “Mate,” Welchy had said, “your dick is going to hate you for the next eight hours, but if it works, then you won’t feel it.” I took a deep breath and lowered the ice into my shorts.

  “Who-ah!” I exclaimed as the cold hit me. “Hello!”

  I dumped more ice down the back of my shorts as well as down the front and back of my shirt and inside my helmet. One volunteer gave me a strange look, like “This guy is bat-shit crazy,” but the more experienced ones staffing the station didn’t give me a glance. I was sure they had seen stranger rituals than this one over the years. The ice bit into my skin, particularly in my more delicate regions, but it definitely cooled me down.

  Over the next several miles, I kept up a good cadence. Passing the turnoff to the palatial grounds of the Four Seasons, I was surprised by a small cluster of Bonner blue hats who held up a sign that read, “Go, Bonner! Go!” This stoked me up for long enough to reach the next aid station.

  After that, the temperature and trade winds off the coast picked up big-time. The Queen K now cut across an almost completely barren landscape. The two-lane highway crossed the fields of cooled lava that had flowed from Mauna Loa. Some stretches, the oldest flows, were brown in color, as the fields had broken down over time into clumps of rock and mud, where pockets of straw-colored grass grew. Other stretches, from more recent flows, were as black as coal and had the sheen of glass. The sun reflected sharply off this lava rock, which pulsed with the heat.