10 minute read
Paul Mlakar
There’s only 3,500 feet. There’s not a lot of time before you’re back on the ground.
There’s nobody else around. You’re all by yourself. You have to climb out by yourself. You have to fix everything by yourself.
But for Paul Mlakar, “that’s the exhilaration of
Hanging off a skydiving plane’s support, Director of Academic Information Systems Paul Mlakar starts his static jump over the Ohio countryside.
After untangling his cord, Mlakar enjoys the rest of his jump. He doesn’t remember being shaken up at the time. His parachuting days are behind him now.
the static jump — the independence.”
It’s all the thrill, all the adrenaline, all the excitement of a 45-second tandem jump from 10,000 feet.
And for a 22-year-old Mlakar, it was even scarier when he looked up at his parachute and saw the one thing that could go wrong. The one thing he’d have to fix immediately in the shortest jump possible. The one thing nobody could help him with — a tangle.
Fresh out of The Ohio State University, Director of Academic Information Systems Paul Mlakar needed a summer job. The young Buckeye had received his bachelor of science degree in mathematics and was looking to put his college education to use. His opportunity? The Grand River Academy, a residential private school in Austinburg, Ohio. The school had an opening for a remedial algebra I teacher that summer. Only a few hours outside Columbus, Ohio, he took the job. Aside from teaching I don’t remember having a lot of the Midwestern boys about inequalities and linear graphs, Mlakar was in charge fear making the of the students 24/7, including active decision to jump. involvement in the students’ many summer When you’re 22, extracurriculars. Mlakar remembers mortality doesn’t saying “Yeah, I’ll go” when some of his enter your mind students wanted to go skydiving, as much. You’re more carefree. You don’t think about all the and at 22 years old, Mlakar radiated the impassioned immortality of youth. The recent college graduate felt invincible, ready to experience other things new opportunity and adventure. that would have That summer, he did two static jumps. affected your He’d done other jumps in his life. But life. Mlakar remembers these jumps — static jumps — as the most frightening. There was a long cord attached to his parachute. The way it’s supposed to go, the cable would pull the chute right when Mlakar jumped off the plane. So when Mlakar shuffled his way to the support diagonal to the wing, everything was ready to go. But just to make sure, Mlakar had to be ready for anything. Eight hours of professional skydivers teaching Mlakar and his students about everything, but specifically, landing.
If there’s anything he’ll remember from those eight hours, it’ll be the jumping from the four-foot-tall step. Landing on feet, rolling, flailing their parachutes just before reaching the ground. No landing went uncovered.
Finally, the instructors taught Mlakar and his students what to do in the event that the chute was damaged or entangled, hammering home one complete motion.
Reach up and pull the chute as hard as possible.
By the time they were about to jump, the motions had become instinctual.
His training completed, Mlakar made his way 3,500 feet up in the air. He stepped out of the interior of the plane and reached the little step.
He moved one foot over and then shifted his other foot.
He grabbed the support.
And then he kicked.
Dangling like Superman, he looked up at the instructor.
Three. Two. One. Let go.
Mlakar doesn’t remember fearing the jump. He was more carefree than he is now. There wasn’t much running through his mind about the worst case — about his wife, his family, his friends.
But he was still afraid, as most people would be, to jump from 3,500 feet in the air, tied to a plane by a long cord with a chute serving as the only thing preventing him from being a grease stain on some rural Ohio field.
Right as Mlakar let go, he looked up and saw the tangle. He remembers “literally trying to grab back,” losing the form he had practiced for those eight hours before getting in the plane.
Mlakar said “they train you to reach back and just pull really hard” whenever there’s a tangle. Pull with your right. Pull with your left. And the reserve chute will just pop open.
“It was just instinct.”
And it just untangled. From then on, pure adrenaline. For Mlakar, the first time is unforgettable. But what makes skydiving amazing to him is that there’s “still some exhilaration, still some thrill every time you do it.”
Story Siddhartha Sinha, Toby Barrett, Keshav Krishna Photos Evan McGowan, Courtesy Paul Mlakar
Garrett Murphree ’98
Idaho, about 13 years ago. Garrett’s that I was into wine-tasting — and cold, nervous and ready as hell to not just drinking wine, but evaluating move past the stereotypical mid-20s it. It’s okay if things are fleeting. You life he’s been leading. don’t have to pick something and be On a June morning, the town of dedicated to it for 40 years for it to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, faces a cold, be fulfilling. It can be fulfilling at a windy lake, the Bitterroot Mountains moment in time.” enshrouding it from the rest of An Ironman ends with a marathon, civilization. In this isolated town, so an athlete lacking confidence in his hundreds of athletes, Garrett Murphree running has no hope of finishing the ’98 among them, gather to subject triathlon. The first six months of his themselves to a day of what would, for year-long training regiment, Murphree all others, be torture –– but he made the focused on running, the next six decision for his own sake. months on biking and swimming. “[My decision] was driven by not “You tend to find a club so that you wanting to stay up to 2 a.m. every night, have pals to train with,” Murphree said. not wanting to drink too much beer on “With my club there’s what you call the the weekends and to have something ‘base camp,’ which is three, four or five that was a greater goal beyond those days where you go somewhere. We went short term things. I was inspired by to the Hill Country, and we rode our the fact that this was going to be all bikes 50 to 100 miles a day, just to get consuming.” the miles on our legs.” It’s okay if things A short-term lifestyle like the But in the two weeks before the event, you taper. Your muscles heal are fleeting. You don’t have to one he lived in his twenties did not require longand relax from eleven months and two weeks of intensifying toil. If you burn out, you’re hopeless. be dedicated to something for 40 term planning and investment, so a triathlon represented Murphree felt content that no matter what happened in June, he achieved the most in simply starting years for it to be the polar opposite of the choices he’d been something for himself because everything else felt outlined for him. fulfilling. making until then. In the scheme of his life, “I went to St. Mark’s and made good grades, but that was going to happen,” though, the decision to run a triathlon Murphree said. “I went to college and becomes another one of his brief stints made good grades, but that was going into some sort of activity. to happen. I got a decent job. Sure, I was “If I look at myself the last 15 years interested in having a good career. This of my life,” Murphree said, “I’ve fallen was the first thing where I knew that into several different hobbies. I got into nobody cares if I’ve done the Ironman jiu-jitsu right before the pandemic, and –– I’m not going to win the thing and before that I was into poker, and before win any money, so it’s 100% just for me.” Murphree took the ‘The Chair’ Just as the Ironman gave Murphree a reprieve from a normal life, his prized reclining chair provides him with needed separation between work and home. weeks before and after the Ironman off work. As athletes poured into the small town, he and his friends enjoyed the time before the race. “We would just walk I’m wound pretty tight and take around this beautiful whatever I’m doing at the time town,” Murphee said. very seriously. But I don’t work “You do some workouts in that recliner. It just embodies to prepare, but it’s a fun, entertainment, fun, whatever the peaceful time. You very word is. much feel you’ve done the work and can enjoy the vacation before this crazy race in a few days.”
Leading up to the Ironman, the weather was great, but when Murphree woke up on race day, it was unexpectedly chilly and windy.
“We woke up freaking out,” Murphree said. “Like, ‘Are they going to cancel it? Are they going to delay it? What’s going on?’ It was just something we hadn’t planned for.”
Although there was an option to take a penalty and skip the swimming section, Murphree braved the icecold water. After completing the biking portion and first half of the marathon, the end was in sight.
“I remember an emotional rush walking thirteen miles,” Murphree said, “knowing that I was going to finish this Ironman that I had trained for for a year.”
Murphree could vividly remember the final moments of the race.
“I saw Blake, my brother-in-law, and he said something like, ‘You’re going to do it, man!’ I think that’s when it hit me,” Murphree said. “I was 100 yards away, and I was going to finish the thing. I ran down the chute, and for a minute, I felt like a celebrity.”
After a year of extreme training and athletic accomplishments, it was over.
“The finish is hard for me to remember,” Murphree said. “I remember just being ecstatic, super excited. You kind of walk into the chute, and you’re like, ‘Now what?’”
His question wasn’t answered until long after the race.
“The biggest long-term factor was that I was proud of myself for doing something,” Murphree said. “I found my
Working a steady job in the financial sector, a 25-year-old Garrett Murphree struggled with the feeling that everything had been prepared for him. So he set out to complete one of the hardest feats a human can achieve: the Ironman.
friendships and my relationships with my family were normal. I still returned to things I was doing in my 20s.”
While Murphree did move on from the triathlon, there was another impact it left on him.
“It also started my love of unique hobbies and knowing that I enjoy immersing myself in something,” Murphree said. “Maybe I move on in a few years, maybe I don’t. Maybe next year I will find the hobby that I carry with me forever, and that’s great.”
Murphree says finding hobbies to try isn’t complicated.
“If you don’t know what hobby you want to pursue, just pick something and go do it,” Murphree said. “Just try it out if it sounds kind of interesting. And if you don’t like it, you can always move on to the next one.”
Murphree learned one other lesson from the triathlon, which he carries to this day.
“The other thing is not to have any doubts,” Murphree said. “I’m just a normal finance nerd who went to St. Mark’s and made some good grades.”
For Murphree, completing the Ironman provided a satisfaction beyond the miles ran and paths biked.
“Every time I would get another notch on my belt, from a training perspective, it was more work I did that nobody made me do,” Murphree said. “When I go out and run in the rain, water is up to my heels and lightning is striking five miles away from me, I choose to do this, and this is crazy and stupid but awesome.”
Story Jamie Mahowald, Ian Dalrymple, Myles Lowenberg Photos Courtesy Garrett Murphree
“I saw Blake,
my brother-inlaw,” Murphree said, “and he said something like, ‘You’re going to do it, man!’ And, I think that’s when it hit me. I was 100 yards away, and I was going to finish the thing.”
Murphree finishes up
his 26.2 mile run, the last of the three legs of the Ironman triathlon.
