June 2019 thru September 2021 (Augusta 70.3!)

I met Joey through Michelle Tierney at Mere Mortals on June 30, 2019, when she asked if I would be willing to swim with her blind friend, Joey.  Little did she know, I was pretty burnt out on triathlons at that time – my mojo for road tri’s had gone by the wayside, and I was considering switching to 100% off-road.  So – a new challenge sounded damn good! 

That day, we swam just over 350 yards at a whopping 4:15/100 yd pace.

Then July 7th we ran 2 miles at a 9:54 pace.

Then July 28th we rode a tandem bike together for the first time - 10 miles at 11mph.

September 22nd was our first tri at TriGulfCoast Members Only Tri (MOT).  Success!  Admittedly, it didn’t hurt that Joey shares my off-color humor and insane ability to laugh at himself, me, and others – we had so much fun together!  And yes, I maaaayy have enjoyed this new challenge just as much (if not more…) than he did!

Then…2020 happened.  We all know what 2020 did to training and racing – we had to basically take a year off, just when we were learning how to navigate the ‘training as a team’ that we needed to keep moving forward.  Joey had some setbacks with a couple of surgeries as well, though, so we were determined to come back strong when the way cleared, and we could get back at it.

2021 arrived, and we started back with a swim and a bike on April 27 – with a new bike, that later we realized just wasn’t the right fit (Thank you! to the guys at Truly Spokin for ALL their patience and persistence with getting us happy on the bike!) and training schedules in place.  Joey signed us up for Augusta Ironman 70.3, and we re-started our new journey.  We added several events to our schedule to prep us for the big one and ended up with 6 tri’s for the year:  3 sprints, 2 Olympics, and 1 Half-Ironman.

Things we learned during training:  the proper bike REALLY matters – thanks to Bob Walker, we had a great bike to use!  Joey really hates to run in the summer rain – for some reason, it overheats him.  Rednecks ANYwhere believe that spandex + tandem bike = gay (maybe the purple and pink accents help that belief too), and they don’t like it and want us to know how Much they don’t like it!  Joey learned that if he eats on the bike, he can run after he bikes! 😊  Oh yeah, and motorists don’t like to move over and believe we should not be running side-by-side; I guess they can’t see the leash between us, and the bright yellow vest that says Blind Runner doesn’t give it away either…   

Joey placed 1st in every race other than Augusta, where he placed 2nd.  He came in as high as 4th in the 30-34 AG (general population) and 615th Overall at Augusta, which is in the top 26%!  Every race he was in the top 30% and at Santa Rosa Island Triathlon he was in the top 14%!

So, a little backstory…

Joey has always been a “big” guy, as have I.

I started my journey of weight loss in 2011, when I started racing triathlons, and I ended up losing over 100 lbs. in the process.  Joey got up to 365 lbs. after suddenly losing his vision in May of 2012, due to AVM, a condition he was born with but didn’t even know he had – he was 25 years old!  Imagine waking up one morning and never seeing anything ever again!  He was devastated, and became incredibly depressed, even to the point of considering suicide.  Ironically, he realized that with his ‘bad luck’, he might even screw that up…so he decided on a different path.  He pulled himself through and started running.  In 2018 he moved to Pensacola and began running with Lynne Virant and the Phat Girlz at Running Wild; he ran the Dopey Challenge at a weight of 360, and finally decided that gastric sleeve surgery was the way to go, since the running just wasn’t taking the weight off.  Surgery at the end of 2018, and things started to look up for him.

Fast forward to 2019 when we met.  He became a triathlete, and a BADASS one at that.  I am honored to be his guide and friend.

Augusta Ironman 70.3 RACE REPORT

As paratriathlete/guide, our start time was 7:08 am, right after the pro men and pro women.  It was still a little dark, but it was amazing to slip into the river that had a 6,000+ cubic foot flow with a temperature of 70.6*.  With this water temp, all age groupers were able to wear wetsuits, but the pros could not.  There were 6 of us (including me) paratriathletes:  Joey and me, 2 amputees, a person with drop foot, and someone with an autoimmune disease.  We started our swim well and got into a rhythm, staying ahead of the PC/HC division, and chasing down Sika Henry who was making her pro debut.  She had a 3-minute head start but hates cold water.  At one point for whatever reason a kayaker basically stopped us to tell us to move over even though we weren’t anywhere near the buoys.  As we approached the final red turn buoy the sun was blasting me in the eye, so it was quite hard to see anything – so I guess you could call it the blind leading the blind!  Apparently, the ever-present inflatable Roka swim exit arch collapsed, so there was no clear marking of the exit. We were following Sika, who also couldn’t find the exit.  We started swimming upstream quite a way to go around some orange barriers that we had spotted, but luckily a kayaker stopped us and got us going in the correct direction.  This error allowed some super-fast age groupers to catch us as we headed up the steep boat ramp.  All things considered, we did well navigating this part – see the pic of me stripping Joey’s wetsuit off as we headed up the ramp to T-1 right next to Sika. 27:53 (1:21/100 yds)

T-1 went smooth but is quite long (over a .25 mile), with our bike being all the way at the end near the pros and the bike out exit.

5:39

The bike leg was fun!  I just wish the city would pave their roads.  We did pass Sika around mile 15, but she returned the favor around mile 45.  There was some blatant drafting and pelotons, which is always so annoying for the average age grouper.  But one of the large groups blocked us…!  A ref passed us a few minutes afterwards and I told her what had happened; she went and watched them, but I don’t know if she gave them a penalty or not - I sure hope she did.  With us having Camelbaks on, we didn’t need to stop at any of the bike aid stations – big plus, and worth the extra weight for us.  Some of the hills were quite long, and of course none of the downhills were long enough.  As soon as we started to really gain momentum going down, the course would turn and begin another ascent.  We did have one uh-oh moment when we were flying down at 40mph and had a hard ‘s’ left turn that had a bit of an edge…we almost flew off the road at 30 mph!

2:46:40 (20.1 mph)

T-2 also went smoothly – we had some great transition practices, so we were prepared! 4:10

Run started out quite well with us clicking sub 9:30’s for the first few miles, while sticking to our plan of walking every aid station.  The roads were rough though, so I had to maneuver Joey around quite a bit and it took a toll.  There was a sunken manhole around mile 2 that I moved him out of the way of, but unfortunately didn’t see the hole next to it - I stepped into it unawares and rolled my right ankle pretty darn bad.  I cursed internally but didn’t say anything to him but hoped I could keep the pace up for the rest of the run.  Around mile 8, I started to slow down and then the wheels came off at 11.  At this point, Joey was singing songs, chanting cadence, and dragging me!  I was so excited – Joey, with proper nutrition, a little cooler temperature, and a race – he comes out swinging!  We (I) held on and at least was able to run through the red carpet onto the finish!  I was SO PROUD of Joey and felt horrible that I had held him back some on the run.

2:10:33 (9:58/mile)

Joey’s first 70.3 ~ Done~!

He crushed it, and we are on our way to chasing Paralympian Kyle Coon (Joey’s measuring stick) down.  We killed Kyle’s first 70.3 time (6:10:24) with our own 5:33:03!  We’re coming, Kyle…we’re coming…!