My First Ironman

I signed up for my first Ironman nine days after my youngest daughter Mercy was stillborn on August 29, 2005. I was desperate to find something that would give me a reason to move toward the real future before me instead of the future I’d imagined with a sixth child. All summer, I’d told the kids “after the baby,” and then there was no baby and we all felt cheated. But I was the only one who felt like it was my fault. Somehow, I should have known. I shouldn’t have gone running three or four times those last two weeks. I shouldn’t have taken that cold medicine when I was four months along. I shouldn’t have listened when people told me everything was fine that last fateful weekend.

I needed redemption. Or maybe I needed punishment. A first Ironman race is excellent punishment. Not just the race itself, but the training every day (except Sundays, when I was “recovering” and in so much pain from the six hour bike ride the day before that it was a different kind of punishment). Sometimes I did an extra workout in the evening, just so that I could get some endorphins running to keep my brain from spiraling through the guilt and the religious crisis that was striking. Why had God told me to get pregnant with a sixth child, only to take her away from me after 42 awful weeks of pregnancy when I was nearly 35?

One of the things I’ve learned about people who sign up for Ironman races: most of us are messed up in one way or another. There are a lot of people doing the race for someone they loved, who wanted to do the race and couldn’t. There are people doing the race because they had a brush with death. There are people who are punishing themselves for years of enjoying life to the fullest. And yes, there are natural athletes who are genuinely doing it for fun. And people who want to kick it off their bucket list.

But a lot of people who intend to do only one race end up getting hooked. In my opinion, they get hooked on the pleasure of pain. There is something you learn about living when you push yourself so hard that you could actually die. (There’s a reason there are so many medical volunteers at Ironman races, and why people are sometimes stopped and told they’re not allowed to continue. Plenty of people have to go to the hospital afterward because they pushed so hard they almost died. Literally.)

I’ve watched people stop to puke by the side of the road, then keep going. One guy crashed badly on the last downhill of the bike, got picked up by an ambulance and bandaged up his broken shoulder, then begged for permission to keep going—and they let him. As long as he promised to walk every step of the run, which he did. I saw a guy wandering around in a daze, trying to get back into the swim ten hours after it was over, because he was so confused with heat exhaustion he didn’t know where he was in the race anymore. It’s a crazy experience.

The last half mile of the race is amazing, with people lining the gates on both sides as you do your best to start running again and you hear your name called with “You are an Ironman” pronounced, as you get your medal. I don’t regret doing a single one of my Ironman races, and every time I tell myself I’m retiring because it’s too much. It hurts too much. And everyone who knows me nods and laughs because I just sign up for another one a couple of months later.

The first race, I was an hour later than I thought I would be and when I crossed the finish line, my family was nowhere in sight, having given up on me. I was disappointed in myself because it turned out that finishing the Ironman didn’t actually give me the sense of peace and forgiveness that I thought it would. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t end the year of grief for my daughter with me feeling like now I understood why it had happened and I could move forward with the rest of my life.

As we drove home, I took off my shoes and stared at my bruised, swollen feet, with six of my toenails gone black and ready to fall off. I swore I would never do that crazy thing again. Why had I thought that it would fix anything? And yet, I just keep signing up for these races. They fill some weird need to prove myself—worthy somehow, of being alive still. And they prove that I can withstand whatever pain I need to give myself to atone for whatever mistake it is that I made in letting my daughter die.

I don’t recommend Ironman races to many people. Or really, to anyone. But if you ever have the chance to see the last hour or two of a race, it’s an experience you will never forget. The end of the race isn’t the amazingly fast, talented athletes. It’s the bruised, broken people. It’s the average Joes who imagined they could do something amazing. It’s the wounded warriors who decided they weren’t giving up. It’s people who are aging out of the ability to finish the race in the time limit. And cheering for them will literally make them able to cross that finish line at a speed they didn’t know was possible a hundred feet back. You will be their hero and they will become yours, if only for a few minutes, just before midnight

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