The Ironman

"Uh sis, you might want to wake up, we're definitely out of gas".  "Huh, what do you mean we're out of gas, Braaaaannnnnddt?  How could you be so irresponsible?  That's the LAST time I let you drive!!"  I screamed this from the passenger seat at my middle brother Brandt whilst my youngest brother Trevor giggled in the back seat.  I hadn't even fallen asleep for 30 minutes.  He was an aerospace engineer major who could build a computer from scratch, clear a golf ball with just as much style as Phil Mickelson, and couldn't gauge gas mileage.  Well, let's be honest, I'd been conked out a little longer than 30 minutes, more like 3 hours, exhausted from having completed the Ironman 140.6 mile Triathlon the day before.  My 2 younger brothers decided they wanted to support me in the Ironman race, accompany me up to Idaho, cheer along the sidelines, and make a fun road-trip out of it in the meantime.  Aka, my chauffeurs, little did they know that.  I HATE driving long distances.  I have scoliosis and my back really starts to hurt when sitting longer than anything over 2 hours.  And if not asleep, I was busy scrap-booking our entire trip getting the outline ready for the pictures which would be glued in place just as soon as we arrived safely back home in Texas.  But we were all at our wit's end.  My poor brothers had been force-fed one too many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Why PB & J sandwiches?  Because I was THE budget traveler.  We weren't spending money on any hotel room over $39.99, actually squatted for free in the Grand Canyon one night, and meals at a restaurant were completely out of the question.  Call me the travel fun-buggy.  You definitely want to be on this bus.  But to be fair, my parents gave me no money to house, feed, and clothe my brothers for 2 weeks.  I had depleted my savings to do this Ironman.  And it feels like gas has been expensive for decades.  We were somewhere in Wyoming, half-way between BFE and the boondocks, not a gas station in sight, red-light blinking for miles, and running on fumes.  Great.  "Well, what do you propose we do now aerospace engineer?"  "I don't know....but if you hadn't been a zombie the last 3 hours we might not be in this situation."  Trevor, the Tattle-Tale and Spy, is texting my parents in Texas from the back seat at this point letting them know that... "They're fighting again".  "Hey, there's a farm over there.  They've got to have a tractor and maybe some spare gas.  Exit now Brandt. “Knock-knock, excuse me sir, I know this is probably a little weird, but my brother was driving, I was asleep, he's irresponsible, and we're out of gas.  You wouldn't please happen to have a spare can of gas that we can pay you for to get us to the next gas station which is hopefully somewhere nearby, would you? “.Chuckle-chuckle, actually little lady, I have a pumping station around the barn.  Bring your truck over."  "Oh thank you sooooo much sir!"  We drove around the backside of his barn, he filled up the tank entirely to the top, and when asked how much I could pay him for it, he just smiled and said "Nothing.  Just pay it forward, and be nice to your brothers."  Back on the road, the three of us just sat there in silence.  We all had just received our first lesson on "giving back".  This was the 3rd angel of the trip to Idaho I'd come across.

Angels on our hips.  I had signed up for the Ironman 2 years prior to that competing in a spot that supported local community charities.  The summer I was scheduled to originally compete in it, I fractured my hip 2 months before the race during my days as a waitress.  Luckily I was able to defer my entry for 1 year.  June 24th, 7am, temperatures at freezing, every other intelligent competitor in a wet-suit except me, all nervously awaiting the start of the 2.4 mile open water swim.  The water temperature was 55 degrees Fahrenheit.  And that's when it sunk in.  What in the world was I thinking signing up for a race that consisted of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike ride, and a 26.2 mile marathon run, nonstop, without an I-POD???  Oh, yeah I found that out the night before the race that you'd be disqualified on the spot if you used one.  Big wake-up call.  There'd be nothing to block out the pain.  And the farthest I'd biked prior to that day was 20 miles.  I was extremely underprepared for this race.  This was ludicrous.  I had just thought I was going to have tons of time to train for an Ironman during my 1st year of veterinary school in Grenada.  Let's just say I do a lot of things naively.

Michelangelo once said "It's not that we aim too high and miss it, but that we aim too low and reach it".

Yeah, I was definitely reaching high.  So the first 2 angels of the trip I saw on mile 76 of the bike section.  I think at that point I had said "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" about 15,000 times.  A good friend had given me the advice before the race to replay each of the years of your life in your head when you're in so much pain you can’t think straight.  I was replaying the year when my Ole Granddad named Howard, my dad's father, had passed away in my head.  He was the marine pilot from WWII, who performed magic tricks for all of his grandchildren, who also loved to hear me play my violin, and who died from congestive heart failure the semester I was studying abroad in Italy.  My Grammy named Ruth is the only grandparent we have left, and as I was thinking of Grammy and Ole Granddad, Ruth and Howard King, in serious bodily pain, two bikers passed by me (because pretty much everyone on a bike was passing me at this point) with race numbers and the names "Ruth" and "Howard" pinned to their backs.  And I knew I was going to finish the race at that point.  Yes, I still had a few more humiliating obstacles to overcome such as peeing on myself on the bike because that's what everyone was doing during the race to save time and a full marathon to go, but I had angels on my hips to carry me through.  I completed the Ironman, incoherent from exhaustion, salt-crusted to my body 3 inches thick, placing 10th in my age-group and a marathon time close to 5 hours flat after already having swum 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles.  But not on my own.  My brothers cheered me on the entire way as angels on my hips carried me through the toughest parts.  Doing an Ironman is like nothing else in the world.  There are so many inspirational stories and athletes from all levels of training and backgrounds at the race.  One man who was a paraplegic was attempting to complete the race.  And he almost finished.  I am sure he has completed one by now.  Very inspiring.  “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” ~Sir Edmund Hillary