Why did I do an Ironman? 13 months ago, after my brother Dru did his first Sprint triathalon said he wanted to do an Ironman.\u00a0 “Ok” I responded.\u00a0 “You don\u2019t have to do this,” he said.\u00a0 He was right. I didn’t have to do it, I wanted to.\u00a0 Maybe there was a little competitiveness with my older brother, but I told him, “I won’t finish before you, but I will finish on the same day.”\u00a0 We are close in age, but were not so close for a number of years.<\/p>\n
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In 2008, I quit smoking and started wogging (just enough jogging to avoid calling it a walk).\u00a0 One year later, my cousins convinced me to sign up for the Kentucky Derby Half Marathon. I had never run a mile.\u00a0 One year of training later, I cried at the finish line of a half marathon.\u00a0 My cousin Dorothy and I decided to try a marathon.\u00a0 Seven months later, we completed the Outer Banks Marathon together.\u00a0 My mom and dad were there at the finish.\u00a0 I cried again.\u00a0 One or two marathons per year satisfied my fitness needs.\u00a0 Not too fast, not too slow.<\/p>\n
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Dru did athletic things when we were younger and had the natural ability.\u00a0 In his teens and twenties he rode.\u00a0 This past year, in training, we saw that he is a damn good cyclist.\u00a0 However, his thirties were no kinder to his middle than mine.\u00a0 I’d like to think my journey inspired him to start running.\u00a0 And just as he was getting up to a couple of miles, I called one morning with a free entry to a 10K the next day.\u00a0 “ok,” he responded.\u00a0 “You don’t have to do this, ” I told him.\u00a0 “I know.\u00a0 Pick me up at 6AM?”\u00a0 The photo of us running that 10K together will still be up in my house when I am very old.\u00a0 That day, we decided to run a marathon together.\u00a0 Disney marathon sounded like a good idea.<\/p>\n
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In November 2012, we ran Rock and Roll Savannah full.\u00a0 Ed, Dru and I went down together in Ed’s 40′ RV.\u00a0 All three brothers together was amazing, we have to do it more.\u00a0 The day before the marathon Dru reminded me that he had done 100 mile bike rides, the marathon would not be so bad.\u00a0 We ran side by side until mile 18.\u00a0 He was hurting, but we were ahead of the 5 hour pacer.\u00a0 When the pacer passed us, I got antsy.\u00a0 “Go.\u00a0 I’ll be right behind you”\u00a0 Dru admonished.\u00a0 I went.\u00a0 Dru finished nearly an hour behind me.\u00a0 I did not like that feeling.\u00a0 Dru did not want to marathon again.\u00a0 I left him behind to serve my own goals.<\/p>\n
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2 months later, Disney was worse and, in every way, better.\u00a0\u00a0 I had run the half marathon the prior day for my “personal” race.\u00a0\u00a0 We were running 26.2 together.\u00a0 For the fun. For the pictures.\u00a0 All of it.\u00a0 Our families, including Mom, Dad and Ed were all down for this trip.\u00a0\u00a0 Dru tweaked his ankle at Mile 10 of Disney.\u00a0\u00a0 In pain, the last thing Dru needed was his little brother bouncing like\u00a0 a chihuahua panting, “How you feeling? Need anything? Wanna run? Wanna walk? Wanna put a foot in your brother’s teeth?” for the next few hours.\u00a0 Instead of staying by his side, I talked to everyone within half a mile of Dru.\u00a0 I asked them why they were running.\u00a0 I was inspired by their stories.\u00a0 I coached spectators.\u00a0 They were happy when I moved on.\u00a0 I serenaded fellow runners. We stopped for every photo together.\u00a0 I ran the bases in Wide World of Sports.\u00a0 I rode Everest with my brother in the middle of a marathon.\u00a0 We hugged our family in the street.\u00a0 We had the time of our lives.\u00a0 Dru swore off marathons.\u00a0 He lied.\u00a0 We did Savannah in 2013 and 20\u00a0 14.<\/p>\n
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So in Summer 2014, Dru’s friend Dave gets Dru out for a Tri.\u00a0 A little sprint Tri in July.\u00a0 Dru decided to do an Ironman.\u00a0 I mean, why not?\u00a0 How hard can it be?\u00a0 Queue the prior conversation\u2026\u00a0 Apparently, if we volunteer for IMChatt in 2014, then we get dibs for entering 2015.\u00a0 At 6 AM after a day of helping runners at mile 13 of the run that looked like they wanted to die, we stood in line for 364 days of anticipation.\u00a0 A couple of questions I asked during tis line included, “So, how far will we race?” and “it costs how much?”.<\/p>\n
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12 months later, I became an Ironman. 144.6 miles sounds like a lot of steps, but for me , it was just one of many<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why did I do an Ironman? 13 months ago, after my brother Dru did his first Sprint triathalon said he wanted to do an Ironman.\u00a0 “Ok” I responded.\u00a0 “You don\u2019t have to do this,” he said.\u00a0 He was right. I didn’t have to do it, I wanted to.\u00a0 Maybe there was a little competitiveness with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":590,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/weareogre.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}