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If all had gone according to plan, Courtney Tate, 35, would be competing in the IronMan Maryland triathlon this weekend.
But, of course, nothing in 2020 has gone to plan. The Cambridge, Maryland-based triathlon was cancelled in July due to Covid. And the 14-month-long training the Capitol Hill resident and engineer had put in looked like it would go down the drain.
Tate decided to take matters into his own hands. Over Labor Day weekend, he ran his own version of an IronMan across Washington. He swam 2.4 miles across the National Harbor, biked 112 miles through the DMV, and ran 26.2 miles throughout the District. The whole thing took him 14 hours and 19 minutes.
Tate, who grew up swimming and has been a runner for years, started doing shorter triathlons with his wife Johanna a few years back. But finishing an IronMan had always been the dream. “IronMan, to me, represents the pinnacle of endurance,” he says. “It’s also just a really cool concept—hundreds, if not thousands, getting out there all for the love of endurance sports.”
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To prepare, Tate had joined the District Multisport Team and put in 15-to-20 hours a week biking, running, lifting weights, and swimming. Once Covid closed the pool Tate was using, he used weights to simulate swimming in his workouts until he could find a safe natural body of water.
When Tate initially got the news about the IronMan’s cancellation, he was disappointed on a personal level, but also on a larger scale: “It’s not just me, there’s a reason the entire community can’t put on this event,” he says. “It’s the elephant in the room—it’s Covid-19.”
Which is part of the reason why he decided to create his own race. Tate wanted to use the opportunity to give back to frontline workers, and he asked supporters to donate to the CDC Foundation. Plus, he figured people would like to come out and witness something happy in the midst of so much grief. He called the race “IronTate.”
Tate and his wife used social media to enlist the help of friends, who set up aid stations along Tate’s route for fuel and morale and donated their time as EMTs or bike mechanics. The couple handed out branded “IronTate” face masks. (Tate ran with a neck gaiter on, pulling it up when he approached an aid station or encountered pedestrians.) There was a GoPro strapped to Tate’s chest, and he livestreamed the entire race.
When Tate crossed the makeshift finish line in Navy Yard just before 10 PM, a group of his friends stood waving checkered flags. “While I don’t think there’s anything that can replace IronMan as a public event, I do think that IronTate was better than that,” he says. “It wasn’t just me against the elements. [There were] friendly faces, recognizable faces, at every aid station. The finish line could not have been more magical.” The group ultimately raised close to $2,000 for the CDC Foundation.
While Tate has contacted the IronMan group to see if his makeshift race can count as an official result, he says that wasn’t really the point: “I went into the race with a sense of this is not a race, but instead this is a chance for everybody to come together and root for something for a change.”
That said, his registration for this year’s cancelled IronMan Maryland has rolled over to next year’s. Tate gave himself one week off from training (he struggled to walk the day after IronTate), then picked back up again. He’s already prepping for 2021.
Mimi Montgomery joined Washingtonian in 2018. She’s written for The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, Outside Magazine, Washington City Paper, DCist, and PoPVille. Originally from North Carolina, she now lives in Del Ray.
