JUNE 2015
28
IRONMAN AUSTRIA RACE REPORT K. A. Keener SWIM:1:35:16 BIKE:7:58:16 RUN: 5:15:38 TOTAL: 15:09:58
On Finishing A #inish line, unlike the ragged peaks of a mountain range or the alluvial meandering of rivers, is not a natural phenomenon. The idea of #inishing itself a fallacy of human construction even before it is marked with a very straight line that you cross at the end of a race. When I saw the Ironman #inish line being built in Klagenfurt, Austria, I observed it with a sort of anthropological remove. Sizing up the scaffolding for the bleachers on each side, I was an outsider viewing the activities of the villagers against the backdrop of a turquoise lake. The organizers rolled out a red carpet, twice the width of Oscars’ fame, they wired the timing clock, its numbers three feet high, plugged in a jumbotron, broadcasting the race logo. Then the line. A timing mat, a mere wrinkle underneath the low red shag, would precision-mark my #inish. Even the exact distances: 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run mark the folly of a particular group of men, athletes in Hawaii. They outbragged each other about who could out-endure the others: the swimmers, the bikers, the runners. Each had his own annual event to fuel his braggadocio. So they fused the events together, called it Ironman, and then trained for a year for bragging rights after that #irst #inish line. Of course, not everyone #inished. Essentially this line, the rest of the year, in this sleepy Austrian college town, is a parking lot for the beach. After they built it, I cried a little. I had imagined the #inish line in my training, out in the hills of the Hudson Valley, past dairy cows and deer, past the mailman who would drop envelopes in a dozen different shaped mailboxes on a single turn-off—too much trouble to go down the road to deliver to each door. A pastoral place asleep without
pomp and glitz, but it was here that I would tear up thinking about my $inish line, mentally crossing this made-up thing. I oscillated between feeling dream-distant now that I was there to feeling Technicolor-saturated by it. It was too much to take in, it was too much to hold at arm’s length. My expectations were so impossibly lofty: like trying to place a crown on the stars. And then there’s what actually happened as I raced towards it the next day. It had grown dark, faster athletes were walking on the side of the course with their medals already swinging by their necks, their children in tow, already bickering and cranky from being in the sun all day holding their signs--- “Go Dad!” or “Faster Mom!” The signs dragged behind or forgottendiscarded at the course’s edge. Because I had chosen an international race, I had only one person I knew waiting for me at the end of this, my best friend Sam. I could hear over the speakers other people crossing the line, over and again… You are an Ironman… You are an Ironman. But I wasn’t, not yet. I still had #ive miles to go… and then… three. I was passing people. In the beginning I passed people holding their sides, a few vomiting, many walking. I meted out my day, all #ifteen hours of the race, in careful increments. Gingerly, I held myself back, the way you might reach out for someone you love not to go, not yet. I slowed my cadence as I biked up mountains, caging my ego if I was passed by another athlete. I counted my strokes and glides and buoy sightings throughout the swim. I stopped and changed shoes when I noticed friction forming a blister, a surface injury incurred by someone who simply repeats. I made many, many, centered, delicate decisions to
simply outlast the course, the distance, 140.6 miles..to reach the line. The last sign marking the #inal 5K startled me. Scanning my legs, my lungs, the valves of my heart and pistons of its spirit, I found, I had more in me, more to give. So I picked it up. A group of spectators in a sidewalk café, drunk and rowdy, saw me and yelled out, “Supa! Hop! Hop! Hop!” I threw them a quick #ist-pump and they roared. I could hear the #inish line again, its music breaking apart at the bass, the announcer… you are an… but not me, not yet… I picked it up. It was then in the dark, in my mind, in my exhaustion that the IronK village joined me. They were back home and they were with me. Just as they had been at their desks and in their homes during my training and yet still with me. There was Mo who I’d watched cross the #inish line of the one and only Ironman in New York City. Mo who cried when I told her I was no longer anxious on my bike in the congested streets of New York City. There was my friend Ella who crossed the #inish line of the New York City marathon with me, #ive years before, my #irst big #inish line. There were the employees at JackRabbit, the largest running store in New York, asking “What percentage Iron are you now?”
In Retrospect Most people don’t have my Ironman story. When I encounter an Ironman athlete, they tell me about how fast or slow they transversed the course. Sometimes I tell them it was a good race, a beautiful course, they should consider it next year. What I really would like to say is: You are doing it wrong. I usually try to avoid this kind of judgment. I’ve learned the hard way that judgments are almost never about whomever I’m judging, are always about
My mother who saw me struggle in my half Ironman race and said, “we need to get you a new bike.” I entered the #inisher shoot…. the red carpet…You are… not yet, not me, someone else… I began a long cascade of high #ives #irst on the left and then on the right of the barricades built to hold back spectators. Fifteen hours. Underneath the sunscreen, the sweat, the lake water, a kinetic-blue energy pulsed beneath my skin. I turned the corner. It is unusual in Ironman, but I had this #inish line all to myself. There were no other athletes crossing as the chronometer ticked past 15:09. The bleachers were full, the speakers started to play… the theme song to Ghostbusters—who you gonna call?--- and some hybrid of #istpumping-dancing released from me like an electric wire storm-sprung from the poles of its grid. I wasn’t in a hurry: my dance became more of a side shuf#le than a arrow-shot. I ran to the announcer, expectant, bossy, tell me, I thought, tell me… He said, we have something to say to you. You are an… he lifted the mike to the crowd, the bleachers’ one voice lifted back…Ironman!
me, about some knot I’m trying to smooth over in myself, some scratch on my own vinyl I cannot quite skip over. Perhaps this judgment is like all judgment and really more about me than those I’m judging. But even so, you are doing it wrong, I say. Oh judgment, you little red #lag, waving your alert that there is something unsettled in me. I remember my fellow athletes that day their faces crusted in salt and struggle and pain. Their bike computers absorbed their thoughts,
their numbers like a leash: power zones, cadence, time elapsed, miles per hour heart rate averages. I suppose those are necessary things. I was under instructions to hit certain power zones by Coach Brian, Mayor of IronK village, so that I didn’t burn myself out, so that I had some energy for the run. These numbers are practical, necessary. How practical to miss overwhelming view of the Carinthian alps, which circulated a thick awe slowing me as if I was biking underwater. Numbers are practical and also wrong and beside the point. I’ve always liked the phrase beside the point. But whom am I to tell someone else the point of it all? Who am I to tell people where the point is and what side of it they should or should not fall to? Who am I to sit in judgment against the people who focus on their bike splits, frustrated that the hill slowed them down as much as it had---while I am taking in the view? Mayor Brian says that athletes race their races the way they live their lives… Now my judgment becomes bigger. The red #lag fast-#lurrying. What I remember: Turquoise lakes as if split from a glint of jewelry at a woman’s neck. Drunk spectators generating a little stadium wave out of six wobbly people. My friends sending Sam photos
of them virtually cheering on the other side of the azure Earth. Looping a medieval town square centered around a stone dragon lit from beneath in velvet chiaroscuro. To my fellow athletes I say, did you see it? did you dance? I thought to myself I’m just going to run until I can’t anymore, and that time never came. I thought to myself someday I will not be able to do this and today is NOT that day. My little red #lag of judgment snaps in the wind. This is a way to live. We have been given in excess an unearned amount of privilege, born into wealth and stability, born into health and we made this up. This whole Ironman we made up so we could learn how far that wealth, privilege and health can take us, trying to #ind the limits, celebrating that which we have been given and must try to earn each day. May our limits recede as we continue to approach them until one day we rub up against the end of our abilities and we pass the relay baton with as much style and grace as possible. We made up the #inish line, but a #inishing not of our choosing will inevitably #ind us anyway. I hope I can #ind it within me to dance across even the #inish lines we cannot control. And if I cannot, let it be said I danced along the way.
Special Gratitude to the IronK Village: Brian Hammond, the Mayor Tailwind Endurance (Cat and Earl) JackRabbit Crew (Carrie, Lenora, Sarah, Mary Beth, Illana, Patrick) Open Sky Training (Ed, Stephanie and Rudy) Team in Training Sarah Stafford (for use of Big Red) My family for my tune-up race My mom for the new bike Sam Safdieh-Nelson (The Pit Crew Captain) Iron-Mo: Inspiration, Guidance and Unwavering Faith Ella Tyler Maughan (the first running buddy)