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Rensselaer Pikes Now Ironmen
This is a story about Jeff Hartnett ’99, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in January 2006, shortly after his second semester at UC-Berkeley got underway. He went through six months of chemotherapy while maintaining a full course load, and was declared to be in remission after all the treatments. Not four months later, the cancer had come back, and a more aggressive treatment was required to save his life.
Jeff moved from Berkeley to Sloan-Kettering Medical Center in Manhattan in early January 2007 where he underwent additional chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and ended with a stem cell transplant in April 2007. After a few months of getting back on his feet at his parents’ house just north of Albany, New York, he finally was cleared to move back to Berkeley and get back to living his life.
At some point, Jeff decided that he wanted to join Ironman Lake Placid (New York) in 2008, and with his brother already planning on doing it, and he ended up recruiting three of his coworkers, Dan Altobello ’99, and me.
When most people think of “Ironman”, they think of some crazy endurance event over in Hawaii. Yes, the Ironman world championship is in Hawaii, but there are other Ironman events all over the world. Ironman Lake Placid just happens to be in Jeff’s back yard.
The distance of an Ironman Triathlon is a 2.4 mile (open water) swim, a 112 mile bike ride, and a 26.2 mile marathon run. These are all done in succession, on the same day, and the athlete is required to finish everything within the 17 hour cut off. Start at 7a.m., be done at midnight. Simple enough, right?
After many months, hours, and miles of swimming, biking and running, all 2500+ athletes toed the line at 7 a.m. EST on July 20, 2008 at Mirror Lake in Lake Placid, New York. For anyone to be able to train for such an event is superhuman, but for Jeff to do this was amazing. Honestly, it didn’t matter to me when or IF he finished – just to be able to start the thing was awe inspiring. On a personal note, it definitely helped me get out the door some days when the last thing I wanted to do was do a 90 mile bike ride and 5 mile workout that took up almost an entire Saturday.
Apparently, Mother Nature thought 140.6 miles of triathlon wasn’t enough of a challenge, so she blessed all of us with downpours that lasted nearly all day. It is safe to say that it rained and poured non-stop from 7:15 a.m.-6:15 p.m., followed by scattered storms for the rest of the night.
Around 11:15 p.m., all of us in the group had finished except Jeff, and we were all a little worried about him. We had heard something about him being four miles out or so, but they are a tough four miles – not just because you have 136 miles behind you, but also because they are mostly up hill. A lot of us starting coming to terms with the thought that Jeff might not even finish.
With about five minutes left to go in the race (11:55 p.m.), I walked out of the transition/athlete area, and started walking in the opposite direction of the run course to see if I could find him. I knew his girlfriend was with him at this point, but having been where he was earlier in the day, it takes an incredible amount of will power just to put one foot in front of the other so late in this “race”. Shortly after I started walking, I saw a group of 4 or 5 people running down the hill towards the finish area, and my eyes grew big. I looked just to their left, and sure enough, Jeff was running down the hill with his ear-to-ear grin visible in the dark from a long way away. His friends who were running with him were screaming at the top of their lungs. Everyone was going absolutely crazy!
Jeff ended up crossing the finish line with a time of 16:56:32. As if this entire story was crazy enough, Jeff was officially the last person to cross the finish line. I don’t think Hollywood could have scripted an ending where Ironman Jeff Hartnett, 15 months removed from his second bout with cancer and a stem cell transplant, closes the books on the 10th anniversary of Ironman Lake Placid, on one of the most insane days in Ironman history. We all deserved the title of being called Ironman, but no one more than Jeff himself. This day belonged to him.
I want to give a shout out to Ben Knight ’98 for coming to cheer, and Matt Moog ’00 for chief of support crew. These guys stood out in the rain for 17 hours cheering for people. Also, want to give a big congrats to Ryan Greenblatt ’01 for dusting the course as well.
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