KEEPING IT SIMPLE
Latest Blog Entry
Bloggers
Andy Ording Nathan Schickel Joe Cox Denham Jim Douglas Bri Kovac Iain Ashworth Richard Neff Michael Breedlove Thomas Ratschob Dag Jonas Skjoelsvold Andrew McCarter Alexandra Wendt-Consten Mike C Michael Pajaro Kari Holmes William Lobdell Sara Ziemnik Susanna Loewy Ernie Calderin Matt Purdue John Marshall
Mon, 23 Apr 2007 by William Lobdell
Sometimes, when the Iron Kahuna gets too worried about his training, or missed days, or nagging injuries, or whether to have that cookie, he thinks back to a fellow he met at the Florida Ironman.
The Kahuna was waiting in line (there are lots of lines before an Ironman) to check in his bike, and he glanced behind him. There he saw a fellow triathlete, but the guy didn't look the part. He had to be in his early 50s, wore a ponytail, and sported a nice beer belly. The Kahuna thought maybe the dude had strayed from following the Grateful Dead tour.
The Kahuna and the man got to talking (there are lots of instant friendships at an Ironman event).
"How'd your training go?" the Kahuna asked, though the real question was: how in the hell are you going to finish tomorrow?
"Oh, I didn't train," the man replied.
"Not at all?"
"Well, I did 20 push-ups last week. They help with the swim."
Being a trained journalist, the Kahuna quickly got the story out of him. The Pony-Tail Guy was a four-time Ironman finisher. He lived in Panama City Beach and decided early on in the race's history that he wanted to do an Ironman. But the dude wasn't much for training. So before his first attempt, he broke the race down into its three legs and studied the cut-off times.
He soon realized that if he paced himself and just made the cutoff times for each leg, he could finish. So he finishes the swim in about 2 hours, 20 minutes, makes sure he's under the bike cutoff at 10 hours, 15 minutes, and then knows he's got about six hours to complete the marathon, which he can do mostly by walking fast.
A guy like that sticks in your mind, and the Kahuna thought about him all the next day during the Ironman. After the Kahuna crossed the finish line and did some celebrating with members of the Tri-Blogger Alliance, he and his training partner, Robo-Stu, went up to their hotel room to watch the final finishers (they would have stayed at the finish line but it was effing FREEZING!).
With the Ironman in its final minute (16:59), they looked at the TV screen in amazement as the Pony-Tail Guy crossed the line, looking fresh as a daisy.
"That's him!" the Kahuna and Robo both screamed.
Another amazing Ironman tale.
