Ironman athlete gets a taste of Murphy’s Law

Stephen Taylor had been waiting, and training, for this day for six months. He and his girlfriend, Rachel Biber, rose at 5 a.m. on April 9 in the city of Tempe, Az. The two were going to compete in one of the toughest Ironman competitions in the country, the Ford Ironman Arizona.

As Taylor woke, he planned to go on with his morning like any other morning on the day of a triathlon. Then, as Taylor went to put on his shoes, something odd happened — he could barely bend over to tie them.

Taylor’s lower back had started to bother him a week before the race. Then, after being confined to the driver and passenger seats for the duration of the two-day trip to Tempe, Taylor said that his back seemed to haven gotten worse.

The two arrived in Tempe five days before the race, to get a feel for the course and the temperature. Taylor thought that the pain would go away before the sound of the cannon blast rang through the air at 7 a.m.

The two continued their training up to the event. Taylor said that his back was beginning to feel fine during those workouts and was pretty sure that he would be all right for the race.

“I was just kind of sweating it,” Taylor said. “It was a weird thing. I don’t know how it happened. I just kept saying it would be OK.”

Taylor decided to wear sandals, instead of agonizing in pain while trying to tie his shoes. He tried to keep his thoughts positive.

“I was nervous,” Taylor said. “I thought it was possible that I might not be able to race, but I didn’t even want to think about it.”

Before Taylor and Biber left the hotel, he took some Ibuprofen and tried to keep his back as straight as possible to reduce the pain.

The two checked in and waited for the race to begin. Taylor said he then decided he would give himself a massage that would hopefully ease the pain.

After that point, Taylor said he knew was going to be all right for the race. However, Taylor said that if the pain didn’t subside, then he would have raced anyway.

“I probably would have ended up trying to do everything I could have done,” Taylor said. “I just would have adjusted my pace and my attitude. You have to program yourself to keep going. A triathlete would have to be pretty low not to finish a race.”

Taylor also said that he believes adrenaline also helped get rid of the pain.

“Man, I had a major rush of adrenaline right before the race,” Taylor said. “I was totally juiced. To me, this is just like bungee jumping, but a 12-hour race is a longer fall.”

As Taylor and Biber treaded water just beyond the dock, full of 1500 people, before the start of the race, his adrenaline helped take his mind off his back.

“After I got out of the water, which was the first event, the first thing I had to do was I had to pull off my wet suit, and my back didn’t hurt at all,” Taylor said. “I knew then that I would be fine.”

With the back injury behind him, Taylor thought that his troubles were behind him for the day. However, he couldn’t see what lay ahead of him.

Two hours into the bike ride, his tire blew out. For Taylor, along with most cyclists, this is something that he’s used to and is accustomed to dealing with in the middle of a race. However, this time was different for Taylor.

“I have changed over 50 flats during races before,” Taylor said. “I tried to use my pump, which has a CO2 cartridge on it, but the CO2 malfunctioned. So I had to wait 15 minutes for the service vehicle to come by. I had to fight back the tears. At this point, I wouldn’t say that I was thinking ‘Man this isn’t my day,’ but more like, ‘What else can go wrong?’”

Taylor went on to finish the race in 11 hours 43 minutes and 30 seconds and placed 368th out of 1943 participants. Taylor finished well behind his goal of 9 hours 30 minutes.

He said he is mystified by the pain that he experienced in his back before the race, because since the race, his back has felt “100 percent.”