Published: August 22, 2007 12:07 am      

TUCKER: Challenge of a lifetime

This weekend I’m going to do something that most people would consider insane. Worse yet, I’ve been planning on doing it for the last six months.

Sunday morning at 7 a.m., along with more than 2,000 people, I’m going to jump in the Ohio River and swim 2.4 miles. Then, after I pull myself out of the water, I’m climbing on my bike and cycling 112 miles around rural Kentucky. Finally, I’ll park my bike and attempt to run a marathon (26.2 miles). If all goes well, I’ll finish around the time the sun sets.

To put it another way — Louisville is hosting the inaugural Ford Ironman Louisville triathlon this Sunday and I am one of the 2,000 foolhardy folks that are going to attempt to complete it.

In total, we’ll be doing 140.6 miles – a staggering amount of time and distance.

It’s funny — in discussing my competing in Ironman Louisville, it’s really not the distance that people are astonished about. No, they’re more horrified that I’m going to swim in the Ohio River. Most folks tell me I better get a vaccination first.

I’ve been training for the event for the past half year — and it’s been the most physically demanding six months of my life.

To add to the difficulty, before I began training, I’d never really swam or biked much — running was my hobby and pretty much the only thing I did for exercise.

I’d watched the Ironman annual championship on television each year and marveled at the athletes who participated in the event. With the well edited scenes and uplifting music, it actually made 140.6 miles look like fun. I was inspired and I knew that one day I wanted to do an Ironman. Through the years I toyed with the idea of entering, but always stopped short when I considered the amount of time that I’d have to put in preparing for it.

A person training for an Ironman can spend anywhere from 10 hours to 20 hours a week biking, swimming and running. Often, a triathlete will do two workouts a day. I have a wife who owns her own photography studio, two children who never met an extracurricular activity they didn’t want to try and a fairly busy job. I never could see how I’d be able to squeeze in the training that was required.

But impulsively, when it was announced that Louisville would be hosting an Ironman, I couldn’t help myself. I signed up and began to train.

Actually that’s not true – before I started to train I had to first improve my swimming by taking some lessons. And cycling — well, I didn’t even own a bike.

Surprisingly, after some instruction, swimming came pretty naturally to me. After a couple months of swimming every other day, the thought of swimming down a major river wasn’t that intimidating to me. In fact it became the least of my worries.

But cycling was a different matter. As a kid, I loved to cruise around the neighborhood on my banana seat bike.

However, a real road bike is a completely different animal. For starters, your shoes are clipped into the pedals and you have to be skilled enough to unclip them when you come to a stop. Inevitably the “newbie” to cycling will come to an abrupt stop on the bike, not be able to unclip their shoes in time and slowly and helplessly topple over. It’s more embarrassing then painful — not that it ever happened to me more than 10 times.

After months of training, I’m still not the best cyclist. To be at ease on the bike takes experience and six months will only get you a little of that. The 112-mile bike ride will probably be the toughest on me. The good news is that I can now comfortably come to a complete stop without falling over.

By far the most difficult thing preparing for the Ironman was coordinating my schedule to get in all my workouts. Sometimes I’d squeeze a workout in the morning and then another one at lunch time. On occasion I’d have a meeting in the morning and I’d have to exercise at night instead. Most days I was able to accomplish my goals, but there were certainly some days in which I just didn’t have enough time. I’m probably most proud of the fact that, despite my hectic schedule, I rarely missed a practice, game or event that my kids were participating in. It turned out that the thing that really suffered was my television viewing time — I didn’t have time to miss it.

As I said, preparing for this thing was a huge challenge. Frankly, there were more than a few days when I came real close to quitting.

So why did I keep going? Probably because I’m stubborn and when I determine that I’m going to accomplish a goal, I generally try to see it through. The better question is why did I want to do it in the first place? Sadly, when you spend about 12 hours every week training by yourself, there’s plenty of time to contemplate the answer.

What I came up with was not one definitive reason but a series of them. The primary answer is that I want to keep in shape. I like being fit. I like being able to go up stairs without being out of breath. I like that I don’t have to go up a size in pants. Doing a nutty thing like an Ironman triathlon is just an elaborate excuse for me to get out the door and exercise.

I also like the fact that there are not that many people that can say they’ve done such an event (and I realize that there aren’t many that would want to either). There is some pride in that for me.

Finally, I hope that my training sets an example for my kids. I want them to understand the importance of setting goals, keeping fit and enjoying life.

And yes have enjoyed this odyssey. I’m over forty years old and in the last six months I’ve learned how to ride a bike and swim. I’m in great shape and I’ve practiced to the point where I have a chance to complete this thing.

Sunday night I plan on finishing the Ironman and enjoying the wonderful feeling of achieving a very difficult goal. I imagine by Monday morning I’ll be trying to figure out what athletic event I want to take on next. However, I’ll guarantee you that it won’t be as demanding of my time as Ironman.

And if I for some reason I can’t complete it — well, I guess I’ll just have to try again next year.

John Tucker is publisher of The Evening News and The Tribune. He can be reached via e-mail at john.tucker@newsandtribune.com.