All Walt Thompson had to do to finish his first Ironman triathlon was to talk himself into it. That was easier said than done, but it was done.
He may never have heard the phrase, “Walt Thompson, you are an Ironman!’ after crossing the finish line if he listened to his first instincts and gave up — several times — nearly 15 hours into the grueling race. But if there’s one thing Thompson knows better than most, it’s how to win mentally.
Finishing an Ironman in his first try? Racking up dozens of medals in just over a year and a half of racing? Shedding around 165 pounds with frequent exercise and a hard dietary shift? It’s all mental.
“It is all mental,” Thompson said. “Your mind will tell your body what to do, even when it’s screaming to stop. You’ve still got more… in the tank.”
Thompson calls 20 of the last 21 months his “465 to Ironman” journey, referencing his body weight from February 2017. Though he was always a bigger guy, standing at 6-foot-6, Thompson was at his heaviest weight ever at that time and realized what a toll it took on his life.
“I was on three different blood pressure medications,” Thompson said. “It sucked to go outside and play with the kids, just to do anything. There was something in me that switched in February 2017, a moment of ‘you’ve got to do something.’ I didn’t want to be that dad that my kids were embarrassed of for being so obese and fat. I wanted to be able to go and do things with them.”
That month, the Plant City man made a pledge to himself to get his health back on track. He disposed of all the junk food in the house and switched over to healthier options. He started working out at Planet Fitness six to seven days a week before eventually switching to the Plant City Family YMCA. He started seeing the pounds come off on the scale, noticed his clothes fitting differently and feeling better day by day, even the ones when motivating himself to go to the gym was a major struggle.
He didn’t start training to lose weight with an Ironman performance in mind but, once he completed his first race at the urging of training partner Roger Barnes, Thompson couldn’t help himself. Training for runs progressed into training for long bike rides and marathons, and once he participated in those he moved up to half Ironman races. When he completed the 2018 Sunshine State Challenge, a half Ironman in Haines City in April and another half Ironman in Panama City in May, he felt good enough about his progress to try the real deal.
As far as triathlons go, the Ironman is widely considered the cream of the crop, the most popular event in the sport short of competing in the Olympics. A full Ironman is a 140.6-mile race broken up into three parts: a 2.4-mile swim to start, a 112-mile bike ride in the middle and a 26.2-mile run to finish. The event has a 16 to 17-hour time limit and, other than to change clothes and quickly fuel up, racers get no breaks.
Thompson went to Louisville, Kentucky to compete in the Oct. 15 Ironman, which he called one of the toughest things he’s ever done in life. It was a cold, rainy day — virtually the opposite of how he trained in Florida’s summer — which affected all racers negatively but, as Thompson put it, “the harder the circumstances, the bigger the glory” for him with his 15:50.34 finish.
“The wet and cold, it ate my feet up pretty good,” Thompson said. Around mile 20 on the run, I had heard that some of the cutoff times had been adjusted on the race and I knew I had to go faster than what I originally thought. I started feeling two big blisters, one on each foot. Around mile 22, the one on my left foot popped and it was excruciating.”
Running the last leg of the race, exhausted and blistered and bleeding, Thompson’s mind started going to the one place he hoped it wouldn’t: quitting. It would have been so easy to stop and call it a day, accept a DNF and go home to nurse his body back to full health.
“Between mile 22 and 25, I quit three times. I got to the point where I’m done,” he said. “I quit. I can’t keep going. But something in me said, ‘No, keep going.’ That three-mile stretch was the absolute hardest.”
What, Thompson had to ask himself, would quitting have proven?
How could he go home and tell his kids he traveled 887 miles from home to quit more than two-thirds of the way through a race he spent five months training so hard for? How could he quit after more than a year of showing himself what he can do when he keeps pushing forward, especially while wearing his “It’s All Mental” hat?
Unsatisfied with the answers to these questions, he kept running until he crossed the finish line and heard the announcer say the six words he’d dreamed of hearing.
“It was very rewarding,” Thompson said. “It’s hard to put into words how you feel in that moment… it was well worth the pain and the sweat and the tears, all the months of training just for that moment.”
Thompson has already signed up for his next one. He’ll be back at it again on June 23, 2019, when he’ll be in Ireland for the country’s first-ever full Ironman in Cork. Until then he’ll be training hard for it and looking for sponsors to help him compete there, while also keeping on with his initial health goal.
Thompson is at a stage where fat is burning while muscle is building, which doesn’t lower the scale numbers quite as quickly as before but does mean he’s a big step closer to having a healthy body for a taller man.
He’s hoping his success can inspire others in Plant City to meet their own fitness goals, even if they don’t involve testing the limits of the body in a major triathlon, with at least three words.
“It’s all mental.”