Ron looked up from his sandwich, sighed, and went back to his book. The IRONMAN was over. But Julie Ann Gerhard’s Spectaculaavi had only just begun.
“Kevin!” Julie Ann shrieked, reading the name written on his arm in permanent marker. “You are a magnificent sea creature! That water is not your enemy; it is your liquid courage! Up, up, up, stroke!”
The first swimmer approached the dock, a pale, shivering man named Kevin whose shoulders had already seized up. He looked like a drowning otter.
Helen looked up at Julie Ann, shivering. “Was I last?” Julie Ann Gerhard IRONMAN SWIMSUIT SPECTACULAavi
Julie Ann knelt down, her spectacular suit squeaking against the wet wood. “Honey,” she whispered, “in this race, the last person to leave the water is the one who stayed in the longest. That’s not last. That’s the champion of perseverance.”
Next came a pair of sisters from Minnesota, both wearing matching pink caps. They were laughing, which in the grim world of the IRONMAN swim start was akin to a miracle.
Kevin, startled, inhaled a pint of lake water, coughed, and then, inexplicably, grinned. He flipped onto his back and started a surprisingly smooth backstroke. Julie Ann had that effect on people. Ron looked up from his sandwich, sighed, and
When a man named “Chad” tried to quit at the turnaround buoy, she simply removed her rhinestone visor, held it to her heart, and said into the bullhorn, “Chad. Your mother didn’t raise a quitter. She raised a man who paid nine hundred dollars to be here. Now finish the swim so you can suffer on the bike like everyone else.”
For three hours, Julie Ann Gerhard ruled her ten-foot section of the dock. She had a playlist on a waterproof Bluetooth speaker (survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” on repeat). She had a stack of dry towels she threw like victory bouquets. She had a bullhorn with a voice distortion setting that made her sound like a kind, slightly deranged robot.
The starting cannon’s boom was less a sound and more a physical blow to the chest. For the 2,400 athletes treading the churning waters of Lake Clearwater, it was the starting pistol for 140.6 miles of agony. For the spectators, it was the beginning of a long, loud, sun-drenched party. “Kevin
And for forty-seven-year-old Julie Ann Gerhard, it was her cue.
By the time the last swimmer—a tearful, exhausted grandmother named Helen—dragged herself onto the boat ramp, Julie Ann was out of air-horn fuel, her voice was a hoarse whisper, and her rhinestones were starting to come loose, leaving a trail of glitter on the dock like breadcrumbs.
She would. In the trunk of her car was a sequined tracksuit and a sign that read: “YOU DID IT, YOU ABSOLUTE MANIAC.”
Her target was not the pros. They were too fast, too focused, too… wet. Her target was the back of the pack. The ones who had trained for a year but were already swallowing water. The ones whose goggles had fogged. The one who had forgotten to apply anti-chafe balm in a very specific and regrettable location.
She wrapped her own dry towel around Helen’s shoulders. Then she stood up, struck a final, dramatic pose that made a nearby volunteer drop his stopwatch, and pointed to the bike transition.