“No
Athlete is an Island.”
With apologies to John
Donne
Hold it right there. This is not a story of an athlete who over
comes unbelievable odds to become an Ironman.
Rather, it’s a story about sport, love, sharing and support. It may even serve as a model for other
endurance athletic families. You cannot
do this sport alone.
“If they can’t find the turn-around boat, they shouldn’t be doing the race,” Mo Matthews, Swim Director, early years in Kona.
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Even the most skilled
triathlon Houdini cannot make training invisible, much as he or she might try. Or as much as they tell others it is. Take Julie Billingsley, prototype tri spouse
1.0. “It’s easy,” she says referring to
tri hubby Dan. “I have a certain number
of things I need to get done and Dan is very considerate giving me his training
schedule a week or more in advance. Then
it’s just filling in the holes.”
Some spouses look at the
sport and then expect some sort of pay back, a quid pro quo. You got yours and
I want mine sort of thing. “We’ve never
worked that way in this family. Everybody’s
schedule, mine, Dan’s, the kid’s, they’re all intertwined. Everybody gets to feel important, special, at
some point.” As I listen to her say
this, I realize that the whole blueprint for this relationship starts with the
athlete. Dan is self-coached, has run
the 140.6 miles under 10 hours which isn’t bad for pushing 50, right? Although he trains 20 plus hours some weeks,
he knows that his training plan, his annual training plan isn’t a stack of
cards. “I think I realized a long time
ago that if I miss a work out here or there, it’s really not going to diminish
my total fitness. I take the sport a day
at a time.” Say, is this guy too logical
to be in this sport?
He was attracted to
triathlon in part by the way it all originated, particularly the stories of
John and Judy Collins. I told him that
Collins raced in the original 3 sport race
organized by triathlon co-founder Jack Johnstone* in Mission Bay, CA 1974. It was originally run, bike, swim. In that order. The Navy transferred then Lieutenant
Commander Collins and family to Honolulu with the tiny multisport seed embedded
somewhere down deep, like the calamity that was high school prom night. Later, as Collins recalls the birth of
Ironman, “It was at the awards ceremony for the Oahu Perimeter (running)
Relay,” tough guy talk about whether runners, bikers or swimmers were the best
athletes. So Collins suggested putting 3
existing Oahu events together including the 2.4 mile Waikiki Rough Water Swim,
Round the Island Bike Race of 115 miles (less 3 miles so they’d be at the start
of the Honolulu Marathon. Collins didn’t
know the bike was a two day event.) “Let the clock keep running, and whomever
finished first, well, we’d call him the Iron Man.” But there was just one small detail. Unimportant really. They didn’t know if anybody could it.
Springfield, Illinois’s Billingsley
caught the fever, the triathlon fever that is, in 2010. Perhaps against better judgement, Dan’s wife
Julie’s better judgement that is, Dan entered and finished Ironman Wisconsin. “But he was kind of grey, really grey,
especially below the elbows,” laughed Julie.
“Then he threw up and was taken to the med tent!”
“Well, I wasn’t that bad,”
Billingsley sheepishly admits trying to slide into the conversation. A quick look at Julie, however, and you know
Dan was. But like others with the fever,
perhaps even the reader, there was the Las Vegas 70.3 championships, IMAZ,
Boulder and Chattanooga. And then one
magical day, just like something from Willie Wonka, came the golden
ticket. The Kona Lottery slot!

You see when Commander
Collins was transferred back to the mainland following his Hawaiian tour, he
gave control of “his” race to Hank Gruenman whose Nautilus Club had helped with
the first two races. In turn, Gruenman passed
the “race box,” little more than a shoe box of notes really, to co-worker
Valerie Silk saying, “take care of this.”
Collins final request was that there always be a way for the common
athlete to be part of the field. From
the original field of 15 in 1978, race popularity sky rocketed as nearly 1000
athletes toed the line in October 1982.
By then, Silk had moved the race to the Big Island having wildly out
grown the Oahu site. Following the wishes of John Collins, the Ironman Lottery
was created and used for the first time the following year. Of the 1000’s entered into the 2015 World
Championship lottery for Kona, “Somehow they got my name” Billingsley admits
almost incredulously.”
The author’s index Ironman
was the last year before the lottery, 1982, the only year there were two
runnings of the event to make it more friendly to the training cycle of
non-Hawaiian entrants. The ones who
understood the meaning of the word winter.
Early on, all one did was fill out the entry form and cut a check for
$75. Anyone who wanted in was accepted. Fast forward to 2015 where nearly 100,000
competitors finished Ironman event in 2015.
To say that entry fees have also increased might be a bit of an
understatement. It appears that
Billingsley may have raced the last year of the old lottery, the IRS finding
fault with it recently, and its future is in question.
That 6th
Ironman held 34 years ago in Kona was quite different from the event of
today. Sure, the distances were the same
but there were two transition areas 6 miles apart and no swim buoys. “If they can’t find the turn-around boat,
they shouldn’t be doing the race,” crusty Mo Matthews, swim director of the
time was very fond of pointing out. The
2015 Lottery of 200 also had half its slots cleverly dedicated to Legacy
athletes “as Collins intended,” noted WTC President Andrew Messick.
Billingsley tells me his official
work title is webmaster to the Illinois Education Association, although he
serves in a much greater capacity. His
supportive wife Julie is the accounts manager for a Behavioral Health
Association. They have two daughters,
Chloe and Sophie, neither of whom plans to follow in Dad’s triathlon
footsteps. And while some kids are
actually embarrassed by their tri parents, this pair say they may not totally
understand the sport but they’re very proud of Dad for the Ironman choices that
he’s made. As noted above, some athletes
feel their training is “invisible” to the family, which you and I understand as
delusional thinking. Julie immediately
adds, “but that’s who he is! Dan chose
to…or maybe needs to… work out and race.”
She’s almost bursting with pride here.
Perfect tri spouse, very nice woman.

When asked if now having
been to the Mecca of triathlon in Kona, he plans to back off, maybe learn to
play an instrument or spruce up the yard, he pauses briefly, looks at Julie,
then back at me admitting “I’m signed up for Ironman Louisville. I’m so close I’d really like to qualify for
Kona.” Then, with a far away look in his eye he asks,” say, you don’t have John
Collins address do you? I got a new
stack of these Ironman thank you notes while in Hawaii and I know where the
first one’s going.”
*Died 1/28/2016, Obituary http://bit.ly/1QppLkl