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

by Bonner Paddock

  The two volunteers stayed at my side, hands out, as if they expected me to fall at any moment. I wanted to, but I had a race to finish.

  “All right,” I said. “Time to go set a new world record in the marathon.”

  They didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Go get ’em!” said one.

  “Thanks.”

  I shuffled my way over to the exit. Slice, slash. Slice, slash. Each step was a horror, but I just pushed onward, accepting it.

  Outside, I was stirred alive by the booming voice of Mike Reilly. The Ironman announcer stalked the finish line from the time the first elite athletes came through right up to the cutoff, heralding the arrival of each and every competitor with the words, delivered in his inimitable style, “You are an Ironman!” The finish was only a stone’s throw from the transition area, and competitors were already coming in, one after the other.

  It didn’t matter to me that the elite triathletes had long since finished their race or that many more runners were completing their marathon when I hadn’t even started mine. It didn’t matter to me that the bike racks were full, that the transition area was nearly empty. I was probably in eighteen-hundredth place or something. As I made my way to the start of the marathon course, the only thing I could think of was how sweet it would sound for Mike Reilly to announce my name: “Bonner Paddock. You are an Ironman!”

  When I emerged from the transition area, an army of blue hats chanted my name and cheered me on. I high-fived them down the line, the pain in my feet forgotten for a moment. My good friend Jesse accompanied me for a time, from behind the barrier fence, calling on me to keep going. Another friend, Carl, acting like a high-school football coach gone mad, shook his fist at me and screamed at the top of his lungs. “You are a badass, Bonner! A! Bad! Ass!” Mike trailed beside me as well, his voice far more calm and assured. “You have this, bro. You have this.”

  All too soon, though, I had left them behind, and I set off through Kona at a brisk walk. Other competitors ran past me on their last mile of the race.

  My watch read 4:55 P.M., which gave me a little over seven hours to complete the marathon. With my calculations—always more calculations—I had to average sixteen-and-a-half-minute miles to cross the finish before the cutoff. That was not much more than a light jog, but with my feet, with the hours’ exertion in the heat still to come, the continued strain on my muscles, and the possibility of losing my ability to continue no matter how strong my will to do so, nothing was certain. Run your race. You’ve done the training. You have to finish.

  For the first half hour, heading south out of town for the 10-mile loop down Alii Drive along the coast, I barely endured the excruciation of my feet. Any time I tried to pick up my pace to a jog, the punishment became too much and I would slow back down to a walk. I would have wept from the pain, but as on Kilimanjaro, I knew that if I gave in to that emotion, I was done. My suffering was made even more pitiful because of the huge celebration erupting in Kona Village. The bars and restaurants were packed, and people, some of whom had competed earlier that day, were drinking and jamming to music on the balconies and outdoor patios.

  All that fun—and the first taste of beer in six months—will be yours soon enough. Just cross the line before the stroke of midnight.

  More and more I was talking to myself—any distraction to get me another hundred yards along the course. I focused on swinging my arms in a nice rhythm, back and forth, back and forth, to propel my body forward, just as Welchy had taught me. Slowly, my muscles loosened up after the long hours hunched over my bike, but the pain in my feet never dulled.

  I thought about Juliana, how before her surgery she walked on her knees to get around and how much determination she must have had to endure such pain. I promised myself that I’d fight through any pain to finish.

  At Mile 2, some friends, including a young woman named Karen, whose soccer team I used to coach with her father, joined me and kept me company from the opposite side of the road.

  “You’re doing great,” Karen called out. “Looking good.”

  The distraction helped me settle into a rhythm. The ruby-red sunset over the water helped as well. My stride lengthened, and on the slight downhill I even picked up into a jog. This feel-good moment lasted for a couple of miles, but then my energy level sagged again, and all the agony returned.

  Near the turnaround on Alii Drive, Mile 5, I stepped into a porta-potty, the first time I had needed to use the bathroom in a long while. My body, beginning to have a mind of its own, did not know what to make of the sudden stop, and as I tried to turn around, all my muscles locked up again. Scarcely managing to take care of business and free myself from the stinking green box, I knew I couldn’t stop again—to use the bathroom, to take a drink, for anything. Everything would have to be done in motion.

  On the return into town, Karen continued slightly behind me, but as a distraction it was losing its effect. I kept up a good pace, but my feet were being pummeled into bloody pulp. The sky darkened into night, and a race official on a scooter pulled up and handed me some glow necklaces to wear. I tried not to imagine that they could also be used to find me if I collapsed and stumbled off the road.

  “Doing good,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. Even the effort of speaking was too much.

  I had hoped that the temperatures would ease with nightfall, but by Mile 6 I was scorching hot. My temples almost burned to the touch. I took off my hat to cool down, but this provided little relief. What was more, my stomach was grumbling badly. Twelve hours of eating nothing but GUs and Bonk Breakers was twisting my system into some horrific knots.

  Turning to Karen, I said, “I’m not feeling so great.”

  “You are doing great. Just try and keep it up,” she said.

  I grimaced, eased down to a light jog, and prayed that this sudden fever was temporary. At the Mile-7 aid station, I downed some water, then some Coke, then some Perform drink, and then some more water. Not surprisingly, I was only a couple of hundred yards away when the urge to urinate came over me. There was no stopping, and on a dark patch on Alii Drive I pissed in my shorts for the first time. It was humiliating, disgusting, and satisfying all at once. Everybody does it. That’s what Welchy says.

  At Mile 9, just before entering town, I drank some more water, and another couple of hundred yards away I had to let it flow again. It was clear that my body was rushing through any liquids I gave it, and if this continued, I would dehydrate, overheat, and, even worse, bonk. Then I would be sure bait for the Grim Reapers, who were now following a couple runners heading south on Alii who had little chance of finishing before midnight.

  Slowing to a walk, I headed back into town. I heard the distant boom of Mike Reilly announcing the most recent finishers. I tried to think again what it would be like to hear my name called, but at that moment in time I felt a very long way from being an Ironman. After turning off Alii, I lost Karen in the crowds gathering in Kona. Everything around me started to blur, and I forged onward, numbly, constantly looking at my watch as if it had answers to some question I was too delirious to ask. My walk became little more than a shuffle as I reached the steep climb up Palani Road.

  Just like when I was heading out on the bike course, the Robert family was waiting for me on the traffic island that split the road. Zach and Tyler called out my name and gave me encouraging thumbs-up. Hurting bad, preoccupied by my slow pace and feverish heat, I barely uttered a word back to them. It was as if they were speaking to somebody else. I trudged up the hill, trying to reckon how long it would take me to finish the race at this sluggish seventeen-minute-mile pace. At the Queen K, I turned left and headed out toward the Energy Lab. Ten miles down. You’re in double digits.

  Running north on the highway, I sank into the pitch-black of night, my way lit only by the headlamp I carried in my hand. There were lava fields to either side of me, no cars, and only an occasional runner passing in the other direction. The only thing to listen to was my slow,
erratic stride and my heaving breaths. I had never felt so alone and so isolated, and given my deteriorating physical state, I felt something I hadn’t experienced all day: fear.

  Any hope that my feet would somehow resolve themselves was now lost. Even at a slow jog, they were being hammered into a mash of bone and flesh. At times, it took every single ounce of focus I had left to shove down the agony. If I pulled back any more on my pace, I’d never make the midnight cutoff.

  The aid stations were oases in the desert of the dark. Every time I passed one, I started yearning for the next. Not 50 yards after the Mile 15 aid station, I lost the fluids I had taken in only moments before. I still had so far to go, and I was yo-yoing between chills and fever.

  “Hurry up, you lazy ass!” came a voice from behind. Welchy puttered up beside me on a scooter, his wife, Sian, holding him tight from behind. I was so glad to see them—to see anyone—that I could have bear-hugged them straight off their ride. But I kept moving. They parked the scooter on the side of the highway and then caught up with me. Both wore flip-flops and shorts, all healthy and flushed with energy. There was no doubt in my mind that I looked far from the same.

  “We came out to find you,” Welchy said. “To see how things are going.”

  “I’m hurting,” I replied and told him that I wasn’t able to hold onto any fluids.

  “Your body’s shutting down. Slow it down for a bit, and drink some chicken broth at the stations.”

  I nodded and loped along another few excruciating steps.

  “And there’s a murder scene going on in my shoes.”

  Welchy gave a halfhearted laugh, but he could see the pain in my eyes. “There’s a ton of blue hats waiting for you to come back to town.”

  “Okay,” I said, forcing my way forward.

  For a while, Welchy and Sian chatted to me about the race: who won, in what time, how crazy the Bonner army was. I offered only a few words in reply, but it was so good to have them there. They were so positive, so sure that I had this race under control as long as I stayed smart, drank what I needed, and kept placing one foot in front of the other.

  “Got to get back,” Welchy said at last. After all, he was commentating on the race for the Ironman live webcast.

  “I’ll never quit on you,” I said. “I’ll never quit.”

  “Maintain pace. Run your race. Okay?”

  I gave him a thumbs-up.

  He and Sian turned back toward their scooter, and I was on my own once again. Almost instantly, I felt cold, and I zipped up my jersey.

  Soon after, at Mile 16, I reached the entrance to the Energy Lab. Here it was at last. The breaker of champions, a 3-mile loop of roughly paved road, nothing to see in the inky darkness but some strange buildings silhouetted in faint yellow light and the rumble of some even stranger unseen machines. At the aid station, I drank some chicken broth as Welchy commanded and then made my way down toward the coast.

  Fifty yards into the lab area, I pissed myself yet again. With each mile, nature was running its course more and more quickly. On the downslope, I had trouble swinging my legs out; my hip flexors felt shredded. This awkwardness, added to my already awkward gait, only made the punishment on my feet worse. They felt as if they were swelling inside my shoes, and I was afraid they might burst like balloons. There was also a rising burn in my ankles that I knew would only get worse with each minute that passed.

  And those minutes were seeping away. By Mile 17, it was 9:05 P.M., leaving me less than three hours to finish the rest of the marathon before they turned off the lights and called it a day.

  Bonner Paddock, you are an Ironman.

  As I tried to pick up my pace, I kept repeating these words, imagining Mike Reilly intoning them. This carried me along a short way, but then pain and weariness swept back with a vengeance. I slowed to a crawl, unable to keep a straight line. My eyes blurred, and I felt as though I were slipping into some kind of half-consciousness, lulled by the pain, the inescapable pain, that constant drone in my head.

  I shook myself awake and tried to ramp up the gears into a jog. I was in such a fog that I didn’t know whether my body got the message.

  Come on. You need to give more to this race. Everything. Dig deeper.

  At last I felt my pace quicken as I headed north up the coast toward the Energy Lab turnaround. Just as soon as I felt I had command of myself again, I felt my energy levels sag.

  “Keep the strides long, mate,” Welchy said. He wasn’t there. He had turned back to Kona. I was imagining him. But I needed him so badly. I needed everything, everyone.

  “I’m running my race,” I said.

  “Yes you are, mate,” Welchy said. “Me, Mike, we know you got this. We’re here for you. And the blue hats, they’re at the finish waiting for you.”

  I smiled at the thought and turned to Welchy. But as quickly as he had come, he was gone again.

  I trembled at the thought of continuing out there alone. My body was useless to continue. I felt the light dying inside me. It was time to feed the furnace.

  You are not alone. You never were. Welchy was just here, by your side. Mike. Steve. Alison. Tyler. Zach. John. Juliana. Ashley. Paige. Jake. They are all with you.

  The thought of them, there, running by my side, cheering me on, fueled the furnace much brighter than any painful memories of the past. The renewed fire carried me through the darkness. At last I spotted the halo of light from the lab’s turnaround point, and I was soon heading back toward the Queen K. Every few minutes, I rasped through my parched throat: “Bonner Paddock. You are an Ironman.”

  In the opposite direction came a Grim Reaper trailing after a runner who was staggering from one side of the road to the other. They will never get me, I promised myself, not with everybody at my side. These thoughts carried me back up the slope and onto the highway.

  Getting out of the Energy Lab, that canyon of doom, took any reserve I had left. Spots began to form in front of my eyes. I slowed to a walk, but everything grew hazy again. In my mind, I imagined the hands of a clock closing in on midnight. My time to finish the race was dwindling now. I lost my balance trying to look at my watch and almost fell. It was just too dangerous to take my eyes off the pavement in this darkness. I might stumble into the lava field and never get up.

  The volunteer at the Mile-20 aid station was cranking out some JayZ on a boom box. As I passed, he called out my number, “Hey, 1421. You got this big man. Home stretch now. Almost there.”

  I kept trudging, now favoring my right leg because of some mounting pressure in my left foot. My pace was all over the map, my body moving by some instinct of its own. A thirty-second jog here, a one-minute walk there, a forty-second jog here—too much—a two-minute walk there—too slow—a fifteen-second run, then back to a walk.

  Somewhere past Mile 23, I took a step in the darkness, and my left foot simply exploded. It felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it and broken every bone. I hobbled and came to a stop. I tried to suck it up, to ignore it, to force it away and take another step, to keep fighting, but my whole world had disintegrated into bright, red-hot flashes of pain. I howled into the night. After this release, I tried another step, this time with my left foot angled outward to relieve any pressure on it, but it didn’t help. Panic followed. I would have to crawl to the finish line. The only part of this idea that did not work for me was that it would take too long. I was too far out. Three miles at a crawl? I would miss the cutoff.

  Okay, so there is nothing left inside you. That furnace has gone cold. You’re done.

  My foot singing with pain and every muscle and fiber of my being aching and sagging with weakness, I accepted that there was no hope for me. Gasping for breath, I only wanted to sit down on the roadside, to let the Ironman go. Let the Grim Reapers come. Stick out your thumb and hitch a ride.

  That second passed.

  In the next second, I resolved to finish the race and hobbled forward. You must keep moving. You are running out of time.
/>   One foot. Then the next.

  And again. One foot. Then the next.

  And again . . . and again . . . and again.

  My watch battery was dying. Everything was dying. From my legs to my hip flexors to my head. Disconnected images passed through my mind. I think they might have been my subconscious trying to help me by throwing anything and everything, every last chunk of fuel, into the furnace to get me over the line.

  I saw Jake, spinning back and forth on the chair by the poolside. I saw Ashley, weaving back and forth toward me on her own two feet. I saw Steve and Alison Robert running in the 2007 Orange County Marathon with Tyler and Zach, keeping them company for a stretch. I saw my brother Mike, charting a course for me in the ocean, waiting in a Jeep for me to come by on my bike, walking beside me through the Energy Lab at sunset. I saw Welchy, leaning forward in his lawn chair, hashing over my game plan.

  I will finish this race for everyone who supported me. I will finish this race to give every kid with a disability a fighting chance at life. I will finish this race, me, Bonner Paddock. I was born with cerebral palsy. It is a defining part of who I am. I represent everyone struggling every day to push past the limits the world has set on them. I am going to show them that there are no limits if you accept yourself for who you are. I am going to show myself. I am made of iron and more, and I will finish.

  The next 2 miles passed in a blur. Then the lights of Kona grew brighter and brighter.

  Approaching the end of the Queen K, I came upon Fireman Rob, one of the Inspired Athletes. Rob was running the marathon in full fireman’s gear, raising money for firefighters with cancer. I wanted to stop, to help him along, but I knew if I lost my momentum I would be finished.