Ironman: The Horror Film

There are moments when you wonder why anybody would do an Ironman race, aside from having been kicked in the head too many times at the shorter distances.

This week, somebody told me the story of the guy who had his jaw broken during the swim and was so far from kayak support that he had to swim to shore directly.

This week, somebody told me about the year so many people had diarrhea in the swim that by two hours into the bike the ER's were full of people who were full of bacteria that came from, well, swimming in a sewer.

This week, I heard about the guy whose intestines lost it 90 miles into the bike because his cytomax was stale.

This follows the story of the woman who blew up during the swim because she'd taken too many enduralytes, the story of the woman who was first crashed into and then run over on the bike (actually the same woman!), the story of the woman who was pushed under and held down while some other big male swimmer swam over her, making it possible for a whole school of other swimmers to swim over her and difficult for her to surface, the story of the woman who landed in an ER 10 days after the event with a bacterial overgrowth in her gut traced to, yep, Lake Monona.

Holy cow.

I am a social scientist. I understand that people talk about the stuff that's salient because it's salient---remarkable, mortifying, unusual. Maybe people tell me these stories as object lessons (e.g., don't take electrolytes before the swim if you don't know what they'll do...).

As of Sunday, I don't want to hear it. I only want to hear stories about people who did the damned thing without landing in an ER, without sustaining injuries, without have fist-to-cuffs with other swimmers or accidents with other bikers. I only want to hear stories of people being kind to each other on the course, inspiring each other on the course, helping each other out on the course.

You got a story like that? Send it my way.

Oh, and: I'm working up a concept for an alternative event. What's that, you say? It's IronFran...an event closer to the roots of the original race than IM as we know it, and one that you can do on your mountain bike in cargo shorts...if you so choose. Are you tough enough to be an IronFran?