I sent this out as a mass email a couple of days ago and I thought I’d share it with you guys as well.
I have returned from Ironman Wisconsin sore and tired, but in one piece, walking.
Race day was different from the start. As the sun rose it turned blood red, tainted by pollution blown northward from Chicago. From an astrological point of view, it probably wasn’t a good day for a race.
At 7am, in front of Monona Terrace, on Lake Monona in Madison Wisconsin, over 2000 athletes began the 2.4 mile swim. It was a cage match from the start, legs, arms, and elbows everywhere. I took two elbows to the right eye socket, and one firmly to my left calf, causing some cramping and salmon-at-spawning antics. Exiting the water in 1:10.26, I ran toward transition carrying my wetsuit like the corpse of a man who took an extra-hard elbow to the head, flopping lifelessly with every step.
Once outside of Madison I settled into a steady rhythm, hydrating and pedaling efficiently. During the first half of the 112 mile course southerly winds steadily increased and temperatures pushed into the 90’s. By mile 56 the winds gusted to 30 miles per hour, and athletes bent and broke like the cornstalks lining the roads. People were in the ditches, prone, prostrate, vomiting. I rode on, sucking in 80 ounces of fluid per hour. After 6:01.09 I handed my bike off to race officials and donned running shoes for the marathon.
The marathon is mainly dark. I remember in snapshots, but not narrative. Faces, movements, and a football stadium remain.
The run course went through Camp Randall, the Wisconsin Badgers’ 80,321 seat football stadium. On Sunday none of the seats were filled. Instead, one spectator stood at the corner of the field, watching. Defying throngs of fans lining the roads and pervasive corporate sponsorship, the race ultimately became a contest of one man with himself, observed by a silent spectator.
The stadium was my first good look at this spectator, but I had seen him before. At the base of Old Sauk Pass is a diary farm. The road by the farm is covered with cow manure, and the spectator had a piece in his hand, contemplating it as if all truth were contained in a lump of fecal matter. He didn’t look up as I rode by.
I continued on. Every tree seemed to have an exhausted athlete underneath it, presumably seeking shelter from the heat. After several miles I encountered a man who was off his bike, but had not sought the shade. He squatted alongside the road, helmet in his hands, face in his helmet: crying. He cried as if intending to fill his helmet with tears, like the bucket Jesus filled for the woman at the well. The crying man’s helmet was full of holes, designed for ventilation rather that tear-gathering. Immobilized, he wept into his holey bucket, determined to fill it while its contents watered the gravel.
The crying man was not exhausted; he could have physically continued. On the side of a chip-seal road he mentally broke. Somewhere out there he looked into the abyss. The abyss is the place of evil, the moment of despair, the dwelling of the devil. Most western cultures place it in a diametrically opposed relationship to the good. The abyss is not here, it is forever there. The devil is in hell, in the hurricanes, in the Middle East, in the poor. The devil is other. The crying man broke because he found the abyss where he least expected: Within.
Focused only on my race and unsure of what to do for the crying man, I left him there. All day I had been ingesting electrolyte tablets to counter the salts being perspired. Riding through an aid station I realized my supply was gone, and that I would soon be a goner without them. I began to cry out that I wanted salt tablets, but there were none to be had.
A fellow competitor came alongside me and held out his hand.
“Here, take these.”
He dropped three salt tablets into my hand. He reached into his own vitally needed supply to help me. And I realized it was the first significant thing to happen all day.
Athletics, triathlon included, are not intrinsically valuable or meaningful. Swimming strokes, pedal revolutions, and running strides are amazingly simple and basic acts; increasing their frequency or quantity does not increase their value. Riding past the many dairy farms on Sunday I realized that the cows in pastures regurgitating grass to be chewed again means just as much in the big picture as swimming, biking, and running 140.6 miles. In a hundred years both the cows and I will be dead, forgotten, and gone. None of it means anything intrinsically.
But those three salt tablets meant something. A stranger laid his own race on the line for me. The silent spectator applauded, and a hole in the crying man’s helmet was plugged.
I finished the race in 12:13.32, avoided the medical tent, and enjoyed a post-race massage. Although I have no plans to return to Madison, I will certainly continue to run this race. I can do no other.
My thanks go out to my family for supporting me every step of the way. Also, to good friends who have tolerated my eccentricities, especially those frequently involving spandex. Finally, to my professors who have helped me to turn inward, supported me in the low points, and acted as guides and role models in the examined life. Thank you all.
Caleb
