
(Credit: Shlomo Rosenzweig)
3:50 p.m. (+7 hour, 40 minutes) Mile 80
I was now climbing again, at 6 miles an hour.
Instead of the rocky Italian mountain side of the 13 mile climb I had to battle through hours before, this afternoon’s climb through the French countryside looked like the Italian countryside from World War Two movies. Thin trees line both sides of the road. Southern France is home to Olive trees, Fig trees, Almond trees, among many other varieties, but I couldn’t tell you what they were…but I appreciated their shade. Southern France is famous for its trees; its beaches & its artists like Matisse & Monet.
(I bet you were missing those beaches)
I was, it was 85 degrees & when you slow down to 6 miles per hour you feel it. As bad as this second climb was, I was still on my bike. I passed more riders at the side of the road, just lying there in the afternoon heat.
“You, ok?” I called out.
“Yeah…just resting” was the answer from two separate riders.
(Did they make it?)
I don’t know. I never saw them again. I still had 27 miles to go & I had 10 minutes to make it to the top of this climb…but this time I could see the top ahead of me.
(Back at the hotel my wife Janet fired off another worried text to my friend Shlomo Rosenzweig back in Brooklyn)
JANET: “Did u c his last time? It took him 17 minutes…which delays him even more!”
SHLOMO: “It’s that big orange climb (on the map). But look at the right side. That’s a long downhill”
3:55 p.m. (+7 hour, 45 minutes) Mile 85

I had until 4:50 p.m. to make it to this point on the course, but there was no way by my estimations that I could make it through the final 22 miles in 40 minutes.
(Why? How fast would you need to be going?)
Are you reading this on shabbos again?
(Yup, no calculator app on my phone to use to compute the speed)
Time
Speed =————- = 33 mph
Distance

(You can’t ride at that speed on a descent?)
I can & I have so far, but I knew that I couldn’t hold that pace on the last 5 miles of the bike course, along the Riviera. So, if I held 20 miles per hour for the last 5 miles, it means that I would have to hold 40 mph downhill just to roll in one second before the cutoff…& who wants that on their mind as they are trying to focus on the descent?
(Just how fast were you going?)
I was descending at 35 mph on a road that snaked down the mountain.
(You took those turns at 35 mph?)
No, I slowed down to 25 mph for the turns, banking left & right..
(You were banking into hairpin turns at 45-degree angles…at 25 mph???)
If you are too scared to race at these speeds, then you shouldn’t come to the World Championships. I passed a rider & once again I heard,
“Hey…what’s the name of your chicken?”
This three-inch rubber chicken that I have named “Wilson” was zip tied to the back of my bicycle seat. I’m told that when I ride, he wobbles.
(Sounds nice, but why do we care?)
The road ahead straightened out & now I was pushing 40 mph. In the Tom Hanks movie Castaway, he spoke to the volleyball he named Wilson and when he was escaping the island, he called out to it, to hang on, so I called out, “Hang on Wilson!!!”
I’ve descended faster on my bike at other triathlons, but there was something so powerful coming screaming down the mountain at the Ironman World Championships. When you are traveling at speeds that automobiles travel, you feel the wind on your face, your loose clothing flutters in the wind. When you are standing still & bicycles pass at those speeds they make a distinctive sound, but when you are on one of those bikes all you hear is the wind in your ears. There were two rides ahead of me & I zoomed past them. There would be no braking on this final section of the Ironman World Championship Nice bike course, Everyone I passed stayed behind me. No one could touch me.
“Hang on Wilson!!!”

4:10 p.m. (+8 hour, 10 minutes) Mile 100
I was at the bottom of the mountain & riding towards town. It was time to drop the hammer & fly. I heard a “clank” as I shifted into my heaviest gear, the small silver dollar sized cog that my chain was now spinning around. I was going 20 mph & I was determined to keep everyone behind me back there. My quads were screaming at me, to take it easy, but I didn’t care, I pushed on…
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 TriCoachDavid@gmail.com.