No Iron Deficiency in This Old Soldier
Like many athletes in the latter stages of their careers, Jim Ward figures he will compete maybe one or two more years. Then he will have to cut back.
It’s just that Ward is coming to this conclusion about 35 years later than most athletes. He is 79 and he competes in possibly the most demanding of sports: the triathlon.
Amazing, if not eccentric, Ward hopes to break his own record today as the oldest person to complete the Ironman triathlon in Hawaii.
The Ironman is not simply a bunch of people hooked on their own adrenaline. It is an aptly named triathlon.
It started in a seemingly sadistic move, when Navy Cmdr. John Collins suggested a race that would combine the Waikiki Roughwater Swim (2.4 miles), the Around Oahu Bike Race (112 miles) and the Honolulu Marathon (26.2 miles).
The number of the commander’s men who “voluntarily” took part in that race in 1978 is shipyard lore, but the event quickly expanded from the original 15 participants and was moved to the Big Island in 1981.
Ward spent 13 months behind Japanese lines in World War II as part of the U.S. Special Forces. He would have eagerly volunteered had he known about it.
“I started as a runner; I got into that way back in World War II as a parachute officer in the O.S.S.,” Ward said.
The Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner to the CIA, trained Ward as a guerrilla fighter and put him behind the lines in Burma.
“To do that, you had to be in super shape,” said Ward, who stayed in shape after the war and spent 19 1/2 years overseas as part of the foreign service. “Otherwise, you just wouldn’t make it.”
He ran all over the world, with embassy stops that included Burma, Malaya, Japan, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Trinidad and Tobago, Laos and Vietnam, where his son was killed in action in 1969. In 1976 he left the service and went into real estate in Maryland before retiring in 1980.
At the time, he read about runners in senior age-group competitions. “I figured I had to run against younger guys,” he said. “Against the older guys I figured I could do well, maybe even win. So I entered the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot in Clearwater, Florida. That was 1980.
“I finished last.”
But he sought out four “older” competitors who beat him and asked how they trained.
Oh, the usual, run 25 miles a week. So Ward increased his regimen.
An obsession was born.
In his pursuit of conquering running, Ward found that increasingly, his training buddies were swimming and cycling and entering events combining two of the three disciplines.
Feeling like a kid again, Ward decided he could swim and bicycle too.
After his first year in triathlons in 1986, Ward became the best triathlete in Florida in the 65-70 age group.
He has competed in 146 triathlons and won a combined 22 national and international events.
He says he doesn’t wear out because he gives his body time to recover from the strenuous training through rest, stretching and massages. He also is very conscious of his diet.
So what drives him?
“The way to create energy is to expend it. A lot of people get to a certain age and and think they have to slow down. But I say, ‘If you think you can do it, you can.’ At least until I prove to myself that I can’t. Then I’ll try to figure out a way to fix it.”
By now, that’s old hat.
Ironman Triathlon Notes
Mark Allen, 37, of Cardiff, Calif., and Karen Smyers, 34, of Lincoln, Mass., are the returning champions. Allen has won the Ironman six times, Smyers once. . . . There will be about 1,500 competitors, ages 18-79.