Nottingham High alumnus Marc Eves competes in the 2015 Hawaii World Championship Ironman Triathalon Oct. 10, 2015.
When Marc Eves’ parents invited him to run a sprint triathlon at Mercer County Park the summer before his junior year in college, it didn’t appear things would go much further than that.
“I tried it, I didn’t really like it, I had no idea why I was doing it,” Eves’ recalled with a laugh from his home in Lake Placid, New York. “But I ended up doing the longer distance the next year just for fun.”
The obvious question—why?
“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “More so, I guess, just being with the family and having a good time. It’s one of those things where every race you question yourself, like ‘Why the heck do I ever do these things?’ And as soon as you’re done you’re ready to sign up for the next one.”
He has been signing up ever since and, on Oct. 10, the 2009 Nottingham High graduate competed and finished in the Hawaii World Championship Ironman Triathlon on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Although missing his goal time by slightly over an hour, the 24-year-old finished 36th in his 18-24 age group division with 3,084 points. He was 1,006th among all men and 1,201st among all finishers.
Eves clocked a time of 1 hour, 12 minutes and 30 seconds in the 2.4-mile swim competition; a 5:26:52 in the 112-mile bike trek and a 4:44.28 in the 26.2-mile run. His overall time was 11:32.07.
“I was expecting to be under 10 hours and 30 minutes, so I didn’t reach my goal,” Eves said. “But I look back, and I’ve learned a lot of lessons about it. I’m more excited about the experience I gained there. It’s such a big race, you need to gain the experience at that race before you can do well. There are a handful of people who are incredible athletes who can figure it out on their first go with good coaching or a mentor. But gaining experience, knowing what the course looks like is invaluable.”
It’s certainly a long way from the streets of Mercerville, where getting across Edinburgh Road to attend Morgan School was Eves’ biggest obstacle as a youth. He went on to Reynolds and then played four years of soccer for Nottingham.
From there he attended Roger Williams University, a small architecture school in Rhode Island, where he also competed on the crew team. After graduating, he worked for an architect in Connecticut, got laid off, and moved to Lake Placid to begin training for a half Ironman with college friend Devin Romeo. The two made a pact to compete in a full Ironman one day.
“I invested in my own bike and started to take it seriously,” Eves said. “That’s not a small investment, especially for a kid out of college. I had stopped rowing my senior year and needed something to take up my time, other than school work, so I really started to put a big effort into it.”
The goal at the half Ironman was just to finish.
“I wasn’t trying to be competitive,” Eves said. “I never did anything endurance wise. It takes a while to feel comfortable just to go for a run.”
His time was over six hours, which didn’t faze Marc at all. He was more focused on the entire experience.
“I felt severely dehydrated with lots of cramping,” Eves said. “I had no idea how to react. It was more so to gain satisfaction of the experience of going that distance rather than being ecstatic about a time. It was a good feeling to finish and understand what the body goes through.”
Eves said he had to learn a lot about endurance races, like what caused his calves to seize up or how to combat cramps.
He took that experience and ran with it. By then, he had a full Ironman on his bucket list and went into hardcore training mode. He had to do it early in the morning or late at night, as his busy schedule includes architecture work, coaching Alpine skiing in the winter, running his own paddle board rental business in the summer and working at a bike repair shop once a week.
In an effort to assimilate himself with the conditions he would be facing in Hawaii, Eves would try and pick the hottest, windiest days to go for a bike ride. Not surprisingly, he had trouble getting partners to join him.
“I get so excited when I find conditions like that,” he said. “People are like ‘Are you nuts?’”
His dedication paid off last July, though, when he competed in his first 140.6-mile Ironman Triathlon in Lake Placid and took third place. Only the top two in his age group qualified for the World Championship, but because the second-place finisher was concentrating on a cross country event, he declined the offer and handed it over to Eves.
Thus, Eves began even more intense training over the next two months. He went out to Hawaii early to acclimate himself to the conditions. With visions of white, sandy beaches and lush green forests dancing in his head, he got slight surprise upon arriving on the Big Island.
“It looked like a desert of lava fields,” he said. “You were in the middle of solid black rock. You could feel heat radiate off it. As soon as I got there, I said, “It’s going to be so hot.”
Eves toughed it out, opting to sleep with the air conditioning off in order to adapt to the heat and humidity.
The event started in the town of Kailu-Kona with the swimming event, which begins out of a pier in which all the tourism is based. The pier juts out and creates a small cove, which is the starting line. Despite a staggered start, it was vicious getting separation.
“They basically put 1,500 men into this cove at once and say ‘Go,’” Eves said. “Everyone takes off at once, and there’s an insane amount of fighting in the water, bashing shoulders, getting kicked in the face and in the chest by people in front of you. It’s really, really rough.”
The swim is one loop around an anchored boat, and the times were three minutes slower than average due to how rough the ocean was. Waves would push a swimmer forward, only to pull them back.
And yet, Eves felt that was the least difficult of the three legs, because he was able to get behind a strong crop of swimmers and swam in their wake—a land version of drafting—to get pulled along easier.
Once out of the water, the bike leg begins with a few loops through the town until the riders get on a major highway known as the Queen K. At this point, athletes have a view of the ocean on one side, and black lava rock along the Kona Coast on the other. Not to mention there are crosswinds up to 45 miles per hour with temperatures in the upper 90s.
“Cycling is my strongest event,” Eves said. “But it was one of those days when I showed up, my legs weren’t fully there. It took a while for my bike legs to show up, but they showed up 80, 90 miles into the race. As soon as I felt good I started pushing harder and harder. When I got to 10 miles from finish, my legs died, it was a big change in energy. I went from tons and tons of energy to absolutely nothing.”
The conditions did not help. As Eves said “there’s absolutely nothing to protect you. No shade, nothing to block the wind, and it’s infamous for 55 mile per hour gusts.”
By the time he reached the run portion, he was going on pure guts. The sun was at its highest and so was the temperature. Eight miles into the run Eves said, “I knew was going to finish, but I knew there was nothing left in my legs. I was forced down to a walk-run, walk-run every half mile.”
And although he did not reach his goal time, he finished, which was the ultimate goal.
This was the final year for him to compete in the 18-24 age group. He will next try to compete in the 25-30 division.
“The next group gets definitely faster,” he said. “It might be possible to qualify next year, but we’ll see. It would be more realistic to expect a two-year training kind of thing, and I’ll try to go back in 2017.”
Things sure have changed from five years ago, when he was just wondering why he was doing it.
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