Is a finishers medal enough for your hard work? (Page 2)

Originally posted by briderdt

Fortunately my company firewall blocks the Google Forms site, so I can't get past that to find out what you're really selling here. Nice first post, though.

Originally posted by Left Brain

Wait - you're supposed to give a gift to your signiificant other that is IM branded because you did an IM branded race?  Can that take the place of remembering an anniversary or valentines day?  Otherwise.......no......hell no.

Originally posted by Left Brain

3mar - that's a great story.  As someone who thinks family is the most important thing in the world, I enjoyed every word of it. 

I work with a man who's father killed his mom, bother, and two sisters when he was 9 years old.....he escaped out a window.  He's a hell of a guy and one hell of a cop.  We deal with these monsters every day on some level.  I know you don't need to hear it......but man, knowing full well what it takes from watching it over the years, your mom was an amazing woman to able to escape that situation as she did.

(I still ain't buying any IM gear crap)

Originally posted by 3mar



I didn't realize it at much as a kid, but looking back now that I have kids of my own, I have no idea how she did it. She was really amazing.

Originally posted by Trilogy

3mar- Great story. I wish we could "like" posts!

Originally posted by 3mar



Interesting story about that…I’ll try to be as brief as possible, and try to hang with me on this one

My brother and I never had much of a relationship with each other. We grew up in an abusive household before my mom, brother and I fled (literally) then spent the requisite time in battered women’s shelters, homeless shelters, sleeping on relatives couches, you name it (still better than getting your arse kicked on the daily, that’s for sure). Life sucked, but sucked less than it did before. Being free and poor is way better than living under constant oppression and on the edge at all times. My mom did what she could to keep us together. As much hell as my dad put us through, my mom’s unrelenting love and devotion to do WHATEVER she had to do to keep us safe, fed and under a roof was an amazing ying to that evil yang.

Anyway, one side effect of all this was that my brother and I just sort of existed next to each other. We never bonded, were never friends. We didn’t hate each other or anything, but I guess we just coexisted through the whole thing. I could point to a million reasons and would probably need a psychiatric degree to really know, but that’s how it turned out. One thing was that he certainly took the brunt of the physical and mental abuse. He was a “husky” kid and always had extra weight and boy did my dad hate that. He would always throw in the “fatty” and “useless” type insults at him during his time as a punching bag. I think he may have resented me deep down for not getting the brunt of it, while I resented him deep down for pushing me away.
Fast forward a lot of years and my brother and I both did pretty well for ourselves, but again, as hard as we tried our relationship was strained and forced at best. We ended up having a blow out about 8 years ago when he didn’t come to my wedding. Again, not for any specific reason, but it just seemed optional to him I guess….we were always that far apart. This was just a culminating event by the way, I had as much, or more responsibility in our “relationship” if you could call it that, than he did. But that was the crowning event.

We ended up making up after that, and tried to have a real relationship but it just never clicked. One thing that my brother did was triathlons. About once a year, he’d do a sprint. He was a total “completer” but it was his thing. With his build and proclivity to endurance sports, it was a pretty impressive feet and there was certainly an abused kid trying to show his dad that he wasn’t worthless somewhere deep in there. Well, after our “make up” I took the family to visit him and his wife the week he did his yearly sprint. Again, the trip was a bit strained and as hard as we tried, we just didn’t click. Two nights before his race, we got drunk….like sloppy, talk-about-everything drunk and he talked me into doing the triathlon with him. So I did it on a bike he rented for me and I was hooked. But something else came out of that. My brother and I had something. We finally had something that we could bond over. It was like a switch went off and the following year we became closer than we ever had before.

Being the type of person I am, I can’t do anything just a little, so I signed up for an Ironman within two weeks. And a week later, so did he. I never road a bike more than 15 miles and hadn’t swam in 20 years and he never did anything but sprints. That, and he simply wasn’t the “type” to do a freakin Ironman!

We trained through the year and talked daily and both of us crossed the finish line in Texas the following May. Ever since we have been thick as thieves. All because of this race, and this sport.

My mom was an amazing person. To talk to her, you’d think her head was 10,000 feet in the clouds. She was an old hippie through and through. And because of that, many people, even myself, tended to think she was out of it a lot. But I’ll tell you that you have never met anyone so in tune with everything around her. Memories still hit me to this day where I’m just amazed at how she seemed to know what things REALLY meant to people, even when they didn’t.

So where am I going with all this? After the race my bother bought my mom an “Ironmom” sweatshirt. It was hands down her favorite single article of clothing. She wore that thing like you wouldn’t believe and had a huge amount of pride about being an “Ironmom”.

It had nothing to do with the race, or WTC or 140.6 miles. The reason she loved that shirt so much is that it represented what brought her two sons together. It mended a deep scar that she carried (among many others) and represented a blue sky after a storm. She finally saw her sons truly become brothers. It also was a final and knock out punch back to the man that relentlessly belittled and beat my brother…he wasn’t a worthless fatty, he was an Ironman.

My mom passed away from liver disease earlier this year. Her demons that tormented her deep down finally caught up to her. She got an infection in her leg and her compromised liver couldn’t hold off the infection. But, she died seeing her family come together, and as silly as it sounds, that race was the reason why. THAT’s why she loved that shirt so much. That’s why it meant so much to her to be and “Ironmom”.

“Ironmom” was the proudest title she ever had. And it’s now etched on her grave marker.