Iron Sherpa: My sister’s Ironman Texas recap

The Sherpa people of Nepal are known for their sick mountaineering skills. They carry loads of gear up Everest like it’s no big deal. Like really, who needs oxygen anyway?

In the Ironman Triathlon world, we have Sherpas too. They’re the people who lug our gear and put up with our race-day neuroses. They’re up early, spend most of the day running around sick with anxiety (IronmanLive is down AGAIN?!), and don’t even get a medal at the finish line. It’s a tough and thankless job, but without Sherpas there’d be a lot fewer Ironmen.

This past weekend I raced Ironman Texas. My younger sister, Hannah, lives in Houston so she naively volunteered to be my Sherpa for the weekend. Hannah swam in college (go Rice Owls!) but until last weekend had never made it to one of my triathlons. Her take on the whole spectacle is pretty awesome, so I wanted to post it here as a sort of prelude to my own report.

Hannah, I can never thank you enough for everything you did for me last weekend! Love you little sis! And maybe you try to take down that swim record next year?

Iron-Sherpa
By @hkchura

“Just don’t let me walk the marathon.”

When I asked my sister what I needed to do as her Ironman Texas Sherpa, it sounded pretty easy.

But I was also responsible for tweeting updates to all of her Dynamo Multisport teammates, which kind of freaked me out. I had no idea what I was going to talk about for 9+ hours with people who were obviously more educated on the topic than me. Imagine having to describe a surgery to a room of accomplished surgeons, when all you’ve done is watch Grey’s Anatomy.

My sister’s been doing Ironman Triathlons for around four years now, and believe it or not, I had never seen her race. Of course, I’ve bragged about her accomplishments like I knew what the race was all about:

“Well she dominates the swim (once she got DQ’d because they didn’t think a girl could swim that fast) and her bike is worth more than her car, and honestly, I just hope she doesn’t throw up during the run like she did in Kona three years ago.”

However, as I gloriously painted the picture of her amazing accomplishments to strangers, I never really understood the event myself because I had never seen it.

But then I witnessed it.

It’s probably been said somewhere that an athlete never forgets his first Ironman. The thrill of the words “YOU ARE AN IRONMAN” causes even the most rugged guys to break down into tears at that finish line. It doesn’t matter if it’s the winner or someone who just made the midnight deadline, it’s incredible. In his winner’s speech Jordan Rapp compared it to seeing someone fly. Saturday, I saw thousands of people fly, and I’ll admit, I was a bit jealous to be on the sideline when competitors raced past me.

I think a spectator never forgets watching her first Ironman, mostly because nothing makes you feel lazier than watching people spend an entire day exercising. But I shared the happiness of everyone whose name was announced before those 4 words. And I started imagining what it would be like to be one of them.

Now this blog post is getting a bit too sappy for haleychura.com, but I learned a lot during my day as a Sherpa. So in David Letterman style, here are my top 10 most important Ironman realizations:

10. You will get sunburnt even if you apply sunscreen – but DON’T take it from the volunteers. If you do, you’ll come out of transition looking like a ghost.

9. The bike is long enough for the Sherpa to take a two hour nap back at the hotel…and watch a full movie.

8. Little E-Beth (my mom) needs to do this race.

7. Haley has an Ah-Mazing support crew back home, most of whom will probably unfollow me on twitter within the next week (no hard feelings).

6. It is absolutely incredible that people can go to the bathroom WHILE biking AND running, without stopping at a port-a-potty!

5. I tried really hard to get a good picture of Mike Reilly, the voice of the Ironman, but only managed a lot of shots of his backpack.

4. Chrissie Wellington gets hungry and has to take a break around the 10-hour mark of Ironman commentating – coincidentally right after getting a finish line hug from Haley Chura.

3. Sherpas should get post-race IVs too!

2. The swag you get for doing one of these things almost justifies the price…until the IronmanLive online Athlete Tracker goes down, again.

1. As much as I know that Haley will hold me too this…maybe one day I’ll fly too.

Finally signing off,
@hkchura