Terry had me take off my shoes and walk around. He then looked at my size 6 Nikes and poohed his pants. He said I needed at least an 8 or 8-1/2. I slipped on several shoes and finally settled on a pair of Brooks Adrenaline, 2-1/2 sizes bigger than I had ever worn. What the hell did I know, I bought them. Next day I won my age group in a small 5k in Franklin. My running days had begun, now painless thanks to Terry. I still kept thinking about the triathlon thing though. It never left my mind. I had an old Trek 1200 road bike my parents had given me in college some 13 years earlier. It even had the first set of aero bars to ever come out on the market (Greg Lemond old school stuff). I used to ride to St. Martinville and back in college and enjoyed the hell out of it. Anyway, the tri bug was biting and it wouldn't let go. I didn't know it, but my destiny was set.

 

About a month later, I called tri-running to ask who could work on my bike. They sent me to Precision Bikes. I don't think Mark's shop had been open a week when I walked in. I told him I was interested in getting my bike back into working order. He looked at it, smiled and told me to come back in a few days. I informed him I was interested in doing triathlons. I am sure he was impressed looking at an old road bike with the tires dry rotted almost completely off. Well, in a few days with a new set of tires and a lubed up old road bike, I was off and riding. I set my goals on a triathlon in August. The Games of Acadiana Triathlon. I was a proud newbie, raring to go.

 

Looking back, my training was hilarious. I swam laps in my parents pool. It was the first pool/ "cement pond" ever installed in New Iberia. So you can only imagine how small the pool is. To swim the required 200 meters, I had to do 20 plus laps. My long rides were still my old route down HWY 31 to St. Martinville and my long runs were getting me out to 10K. I aggravated the crap out of Mark Miller with question after question about triathlons. I also tried to buy a new bike every month. He kept putting me off, telling me to see if I was going to stick with it. He is definitely the most honest businessman I have ever met and why I keep going back to see him. I, personally would have sold my sorry butt several bikes if I were him. The week before my first tri, I finally convinced him to sell me a Quintana Roo Kilo and he gave in. I was finally a triathlete (in my own mind). I had only ridden the bike a few days before my big day. Well, nervous as hell, I completed my first tri and didn't die. It was then that I knew I wouldn't stop until I had done an Ironman. What did I know - 200M/10miles/2miles, that's pretty close to 2.4miles/112miles/26.2 miles, RIGHT???

 

I can still remember when I asked Mark at his shop what I needed to do in order to finish an Ironman. He never got a chance to respond. Karl, one of the mechanics in the shop, looked me square in the face and didn't hesitate when he said, "you need a good set of balls". The scary thing is, I never forgot that profound statement during all of my training and fricking laughed my butt off every time I thought about it. Mark in his wisdom told me to do a marathon over the winter. Genius that I am, I decided to do two marathons over the winter. My first was Memphis. No one ever told me that Memphis was hilly. My quads later informed me that Memphis is VERY hilly. I also snuck in the New Orleans marathon for good measure. I had completely lost my mind. My job went crazy just to add some insanity to my attempts at endurance. I worked every day from Jan 1^st until mid February with no time off, not even weekends. This meant long runs at all hours of the night. I even did one of my 20 milers at 11pm on a Saturday night. I was working 70 hours a week and running the rest of it. My friends and family thought, no, they knew, I had finally lost my mind.

 

In the months that ensued, I ended up selling off all of my big game rods and reels to purchase a new carbon bike (Lucero) and a set of ZIPP wheels. I also only fished two tournaments in the Gulf of Mexico, a couple in Kona, and I even passed up a tournament in Australia in October because it would have interfered with my training. The captain offered to put a bike and treadmill on the mother ship. My Australian buddies also tried to poison and bribe me with Australian rum. There was no swaying my quest for Iron. My sickness even spilled over on my three year old daughter. She walked in one morning with a band aid on each nipple and informed me that she was ready to go running. The madness was spreading and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

 

So, where does all of this long winded Tolstoyesque crap take us. Well, 15 months after my first triathlon (a mini sprint for fun triathlon), and only 17 months after my first official road race, a 5K, I found myself standing on a beach in Florida waiting for a cannon to fire. I was standing there with who else but Mark Miller and Ben Hawn. If you think I aggravated Mark, I am surprised Ben Hawn didn't commit suicide over the past year. We trained together for the past 10 months or so. I can only imagine the boondoggles I would have committed if it hadn't been for Ben. I think the only question I didn't ask him was "why do zebras have stripes", and that is only because I took several semesters of evolutionary ecology and already knew the answer to that one.

 

The night before the race, I left Ben a note to thank him for all that he had done for me and his help in getting me that far. I told him my race and my finish were selfishly for me, but he should/could take credit for it too. It was Karmic that he and I met up just past the last aid station on the run at mile 25 and finished together. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day for me.  To finish with my training partner, mentor, and friend. 

 

Well, this is supposed to be an IM Florida report, but I had to digress. As all the old wise Ironmen say, it isn't about the race, its about the journey and mine was short, insanely interesting, and pretty damn funny. I had to be one of the greenest idiots to ever attempt an Ironman. Oh well, on with the IM Florida Race report.

 

The cannon sounded and I entered the water. I would describe it like this: The only other person who has violated me more than my 2000 swimming buddies in Florida, was my proctologist and the camera he shoved up my @$$!! By the way, there are no black lines on the ocean floor and too bad they don't give extra points for extra distance swum. You could have timed my swim with a calendar. I even managed to swallow some seawater and get pretty damn nauseous. As I was making my way out of T1, one of the race volunteers told me "good job, you're doing fine". I looked at him and told him that he obviously hadn't seen my swim or the clock. He and several of the other volunteers within earshot really laughed at that one. As I mounted my bike, I heard Ashley LaSalle and Sara Voorhies hollering at me. I told them that they needed to teach me how to swim. I also thought about how fast Ashley could swim the IM distance and all I could think was, "what a bad ass she is - WOW".

 

My bike ride was uneventful and that is an understatement. That 112 miles was enough to put a meth addict to sleep. I kept my HR really really low. In fact, I must have been chewing valium and didn't know it. Or one of the unknown ingredients in E-Gels might be Ambien. My HR monitor says I averaged about 130 bpm. That is flatlined for me. Well my bike split proved what my HR monitor said. A little over six hours. I didn't let it get me down. All I could think about was finishing the race and becoming an Ironman, the same thought I had been having for over a year. The same thought that had pushed me through seven, now 8 centuries if you counted this lousy ride.

 

I cleaned up and headed out on the run. Right out of transition I noticed a sign and it said "Smitty" on it. It also had 754. I thought, damn there is another SOB named Smitty out here and then brilliant bastard that I am, I recognized my race number - 754. I looked down below the sign to see Will Boggs, Ashley LaSalle, Sara Voorhies and a pooh-pile of other people going apeshit and screaming at me. They hugged my nasty butt and gave me high fives. If they only knew what was encrusted on me, they wouldn't have come within 50 feet of me. Needless to say they really boosted my spirits. It meant a lot to me to have people there supporting me. Not long after at about the 3/4 mile mark, I began looking for my family. My dad, mom, sister, nephew, niece, wife, and daughter were all there waiting for me. Again I was boosted. I ran to the turnaround in the park and turned back. All I could think about was getting back to see them, that was my motivation. I made it back to them and the turnaround at the race finish. As I passed them one last time, my nephew Philip (who started doing tris this year too), was on the cell phone my wife was holding out into the road. I hollered into the cell as I passed, "one more lap to Ironman". That remained my mantra for the final 13 miles.

 

During those 13 miles I thought about all of those people who had helped me along the way. Many had no idea what they had done to help me along, but I did, and that is all that mattered. Everyone from Terry and his shoe tips a year earlier, to Mark and Ben, to all of the training group from Red's that let me suck their wheel every weekend, to my nephew Phillip whom I knew was following my every step on a computer in New Iberia, to my Wife and daughter who had allowed me to slip out the door everyday and every weekend to torture my body only to come home too drained to do anything with them or for them.

 

The journey to Ironman is not a journey alone. However, the final 140.6 miles IS a journey alone. As Thoreau wisely stated, two eternities meet at one place, the past and the future all meet at this precise moment. That is what Ironman and surviving it is all about. The "moment" and getting from one moment to the next. You are alone with yourself for the entire day, no one to blame, no one to lean on but YOU. You had better be comfortable with yourself. If you are going to make it to the finish, it is solely upon your shoulders to do so. There is nothing else like this in the universe, nothing except that little thing we call "LIFE".

 

Nothing emulates life more closely than Ironman. You experience a lifetime in one day. The cannon sounds and you are born, born of water. You transition from one thing to the next. There are moments of pain and anguish, joy and ecstasy. Many times you want to quit, it would be so easy to quit. You press on and feel like you will die. Only when you break that tape and hear "you are an Ironman", only then are you born again hard. Only then do you appreciate and understand why you did it all and only then do you look back and understand that it was all worth it.

 

I can only hope when I "break the tape" on my life, I can look back on it all and feel that it was worth it too. The long arduous journey will be over and I will be proud and happy to have completed it. There were many times in my life, like in the IM race, that I just wanted to quit. There were also plenty of emotions - pain, joy, fear, helplessness, ad infinitum. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, there have also been more than two transitions. Thankfully though, there have been many aid stations and volunteers along the way to help me to the finish line. I'm not too sure what part of the race I am in right now, nor do I want to know. I am trying to live in the moment and not the eternal past or future. (Remember Thoreau?) Ironman didn't teach me how to endure, it taught me how to LIVE!

 

I do know one thing for sure, and that is the message I have for life's Race Director (God to all you heathen atheists), "I don't want a DNF. Please keep my penalties to a minimum. I definitely don't want to win this race or even be on the podium. In fact, I hope the time on the clock reads 16:59:59 when I cross the line. In the end, all I really want is a finisher's medal. Oh, and by the way, my ditty bag for this race sucked!"

 

Well, sorry so damn long, but there ain't nothing short about Ironman except me. To those of you that can "race" an Ironman, and not just cross the line like I did, you have all my respect and admiration. (Yes, you Jeremy who passed me on my first lap on your way to a strong finish) To those of you who have never done one, quit reading this crap and get started. It will change your life. On second thought, it will reveal your life!

 

Thanks everyone, now please excuse me while I go introduce myself to my daughter and my wife.

Smitty