Saturday, September 9: 11 a.m. (20 hours to go)

I wanted to sit on the beach before returning to my family for Shabbos lunch. Triathletes dream of completing an Ironman & Ironman Triathletes dream of competing at the World Championship. It’s the baseball or football equivalent of a fan competing at the All-Star Game with the pros. I had looked at this exact course after I did Ironman UK the first time in 2022 and decided, “There’s no way; that 13-mile climb is nuts.” But now I was here, staring out at the blue-green waves of the Mediterranean. I was less than a day away from swimming here…

(…without a wetsuit.)

In new goggles that I had tried on once.

(Yeah, no pressure.)

Saturday, September 9-12 a.m. (19 hours to go)

I knocked on the hotel room door. My wife asked me immediately,

“Are you ok?”

“How can you tell?”

“You’ve been gone two hours…and it’s all over your face.”

“That bad?”

“Yeah…talk to me.”

“Let’s have lunch. We will get the kids from next door, I will make kiddush. After lunch we will go for a walk.”

“After lunch you will take a nap.”

I paused.

“Fine…after a nap, we will take a walk and  I will talk.”

Saturday, September 9- 4 p.m. (15 hours to go)

I walked with my wife along the promenade in Nice, France. 4 p.m. is just about the time the temperature started to drop from 85 degrees on its way back to the low 70’s. You don’t realize how oppressive 85 degrees is until you have been walking around in it for a while. At first it feels wonderful, like a warm blanket on a cold winter night. After a while it starts to feel like getting into your car, after it has been sitting all day on a hot summer day.

The French Riviera was coastline in southern France, near Italy. This was one of the first modern resort areas. Nice started out as a winter health resort at the end of the 18th century for the British upper class, a.k.a. the super-rich. When the railway was added in the mid-1800s, this seaside town expanded to include British, Russian and other aristocrats, such as Tsar Alexander II, Queen Victoria and King Edward VII when he was Prince of Wales. Mind you, these were the future leaders of Europe during World War One.

(These monarchs were dead by 1914.)

Ok, they were the parents and grandparents of the European leaders of World War One. Since they intermarried, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, King George V of Great Britain and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were all first cousins.

(Yes, they were all Queen Victoria’s grandchildren.)

…as Ira Berkowitz pointed out to me in my youth. So, all they had to do was pick up the phone and work out the conflict.

(But they didn’t.)

Which is for another time. After World War One, artists like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso stayed in Nice.

(Why are you telling me this?)

My mother used to take me to museums as a kid, so naturally, my brain went there. And if you are old enough to remember MTV as a music television channel, Elton John shot his “I’m Still Standing” video here.

(Naturally, my brain went there.)

As my friend Martin Bodek pointed out, I was just down the road from one of the smallest countries in the world, Monaco.

(You were seven miles away.)

Ok, maybe not a Shabbos walk away.

(Enough history, what did you see on your walk?)

I saw that the finish line was now all set up.

I showed my wife where she could wait to meet me with the kids.

(Was she going to be standing at the finish line, waiting for you?)

No, that was a $1,200 luxury I decided that I did not need to purchase.

(What do you get for $1,200???)

The non-athlete gets to place the medal on their athlete.

(Is it worth it?)

I’ve done it before, for considerably less money. It is cool to be able to hold my wife after an emotional 16 hours, but I wanted her to stay with the kids. I was not going to ask my children to stand behind a 10-foot high chain-link fence in a foreign land, while their mother waited for my return. At the end of the day, this is just a race, but my kids and their safety are what matters.

(You could have purchased a VIP finish line for all three of them.)

If I spent $2,000 for that, then I would be certifiably crazy.

(So, you never did talk about what was bothering you?)

I…

David Roher is a USAT certified triathlon and marathon coach. He is a multi-Ironman finisher and veteran special education teacher. He is on Instagram @David Roher140.6. He can be reached at [email protected].