There were times when he looked up at the Golden Gate Bridge or the San Francisco skyline and was simply amazed at what he was doing. Of course, with each gulp of bay water he unintentionally swallowed, another reality set in, and David Wagner found himself thinking, “What the hell am I doing?”
Indeed, the Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon proved every bit as grueling as the name implies. But the 33-year-old Parker man can say he survived and finished Sunday, even if his back locked up and his bad feet had him walking — not running — most of the road portion.
“There were times when I said this is almost too much pain,” said Wagner, who finished a couple of hours behind the top pros, including Mary Beth Ellis of Thornton (women’s elite division winner in 2 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds) and former Olympian Andy Potts of Colorado Springs (men’s elite champ in 2:07:25).
“But I kept moving forward. I’m a little disappointed my back tightened up. But I finished and got to hang out with my brother. That’s something nobody can ever take away from us. We did it, and did it together.”
It’s something Wagner couldn’t have imagined four years ago, when he was sitting at a friend’s wedding and taking stock of his life while wearing pants with a 46-inch waist.
“I felt like I had nothing going for me. So I took (control) of my life and asked, ‘What can I change?’ The weight was the one thing I had control over,” he said.
In a span of nine months, he lost more than 100 pounds, getting down to 220 in time for his 30th birthday. Since then, he has skydived, hiked a fourteener, biked up Mount Evans Road and completed an Ironman.
“I’ve taken the ‘can’t’ out of my life,” he said.
That’s not to say doubt didn’t creep back in Sunday after he took the plunge from the deck of a ferry into choppy, chilly San Francisco Bay, competing with nearly 2,000 other wetsuit-clad participants who had paid the $400 entry fee.
“I just never felt comfortable,” said Wagner, unaccustomed to ocean swimming. “I was never in rhythm. I was fighting it the whole time. I looked ahead (toward the beach) and thought, ‘Have I moved at all?’ ”
Then he looked behind him and still seemed so close to the island best known for its maximum-security prison — a place from which no one in 29 years successfully managed to escape, according to the penitentiary.
“I was in survival mode,” he said.
After he completed the 1.5-mile swim, there was a 1-mile warm-up run, then onto an 18-mile bike ride that took entrants through Golden Gate Park, with multiple changes in elevation over the hills of San Francisco. But his legs were dead and his lower back tightened up. And he still had to do the 8-mile run, including the dreaded 400-step sand ladder to Baker Beach Battery. It was along that route, about 3 miles from the finish, where he finally saw half-brother Todd Thompson of San Jose, Calif. One was headed toward the beach, the other out.
“I was going up a hill with my head down and all of a sudden I hear, ‘My brother!’ ”
They stopped briefly, exchanged handshakes, a hug and a few words of encouragement, then kept moving in opposite directions.
“He was doing good and was going to finish. I was happy for him,” Wagner said. It also gave him some incentive as he thought, “I’m not going to be the one who doesn’t finish.”
Said Wagner of the experience: “It was painful, yes, but I took in a lot of great memories. I knew I wasn’t going to have the fastest time. But my goal was to do this with my brother, finish and have fun.”
Thompson would finish in 3:37, Wagner in 4:48. Considering neither knew the other existed until 16 years ago, growing up in different worlds until Thompson sought out his birth mom at age 27, the 71-minute gap mattered little.
“It was fun to do it with him,” said Thompson, who grew up in the jungles of western Africa with missionary parents until they fled a military-led coup in 1980 and moved to San Jose.
“I think we’ll definitely do some stuff together again. It gives us new things to do together.”
Wagner hopes to do another Ironman down the road, but first needs to tackle an even a bigger challenge — finding a new job in today’s economy after being let go from his procurement position earlier this year.
“The bucket list is now obtainable,” a sore but optimistic Wagner said Monday of life in general. “If I put my mind to something, I can pretty much do it. It may not be the prettiest thing in the world, but the Ironman and (Alcatraz) taught me I can push my limits pretty far.
“Especially now, without those size-46 pants.”
