BOULDER — For many people, competing in the Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, sounds like the challenge of a lifetime. But in his remarkable lifetime of challenges, Sean Swarner sees the Ironman as an opportunity to spread his message of hope for those who desperately need it.
Swarner, 34, beat cancer twice as a teen and is now an endurance athlete and motivational speaker who runs a nonprofit foundation that helps cancer victims. The longtime Boulder resident climbed Mount Everest in 2002, and since then he’s climbed the highest peak on six continents — completing the “Seven Summits.”
In Hawaii on Saturday, he will compete in his first Ironman triathlon.
“It’s a great vehicle to share the story and let people know what’s humanly possible,” said Swarner, who beat Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 13 and Askin’s sarcoma three years later. “There is hope. I went from the dregs of my life to the top of the world. There’s some hope and inspiration in that.”
He is excited, nervous and intimidated by the challenge facing him in the 30th edition of the Kona classic: a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run. The race begins in Kailua Bay at 7 a.m., and competitors must finish by midnight.
“My goal is to finish with a smile on my face,” Swarner said.
But most Ironman competitors are fairly anonymous, meaning those who fail the test do so more or less privately. Swarner’s quest to use the Ironman to spread his message means a lot of people will hear about it if he fails.
“The pressure on Sean must be incredible,” said his mother, Teri Swarner. “He’s a very driven young man. When he sets a goal for himself, he does his very best to achieve it. I hope he makes it. He doesn’t want to let anybody down.”
Like high-altitude mountaineering, completing the Ironman requires more than determination and the proper preparation. You need a little luck, at least to avoid bad breaks. Temperatures in the Kona race average 82 to 95 degrees, and the humidity frequently hovers around 90 percent.
“Anyone can finish the Ironman if you have the right mind-set, strong willpower and training,” Swarner said. “Same thing with Everest. There is the unknown of how your body is going to react at altitude, but there is also the unknown of injuries (in triathlon), of how your body is going to react to the heat — the nine gallons of water that goes through your body through sweat. I could blow two tires. I’ll have one (spare) tube with me, but if I blow the other one, I’m done.”
Swarner’s training peaked Sept. 20 when he did a 6 1/2-hour bike ride on roads around Boulder, immediately followed by a 2-hour run out by the Boulder Reservoir.
“If you don’t train hard enough for a marathon or a race, you just don’t do as well,” Swarner said. “If you don’t train hard enough for Everest or (other) mountains, you might die.”
But Swarner knew what it was like to face death long before he went to the top of the world. When he was diagnosed with fourth-stage Hodgkins lymphoma in the eighth grade, doctors gave him three months to live. He would put on 60 pounds and lose all of his hair because of chemo.
“My friends were out chasing girls and collecting baseball cards, and I was sitting on the shower floor, crying my eyeballs out, pulling chunks of hair out of the drain,” Swarner said.
After a year of treatment, his cancer went into remission. During a checkup, doctors found a golf ball-sized tumor next to his right lung. They immediately removed a lymph node, cracked open his ribs and removed the tumor. And Swarner began three months of intense chemotherapy.
“To see your child lying in bed, going through this, swelling up and bloating, (with) all the side effects of cancer and chemotherapy, it is heart-wrenching,” his mother said. “It was like, ‘Is he going to be alive the next day?’ ”
But Swarner beat it again. After high school he started pursuing a career in medicine, but in graduate school he decided to help others by sharing his story. After the Ironman, he plans to keep climbing and hopes to trek to both poles.
“It’s a full-circle thing,” Swarner said. “When I’m climbing, I think about people touched by cancer. They give me hope and inspiration I need to keep climbing. My goal is to give them hope and inspiration in turn.”
John Meyer: 303-954-1616 or jmeyer@denverpost.com
