Christ Kona?

Photo: Linda Child
GET READY: Alicia Trott prepares for the Lake Placid Ironman event as her race number
and age is written on her skin.
promptly starting tracking with exercise
and science for the rest of her
schooling and professional career.
Alicia continued to participate in
sprints for several years before making
the switch to half-Ironman distance. She
immersed herself in training and teaching—health
and fitness, 5Ks, and triathlon—and
completed two half-Ironman
events (1.2-mile swim, 56-mile bike,
13.1-mile run).
Spending more time training, with a
group of about 100, Trott admits, “Ironman
is a different beast. It’s time-consuming,
expensive. It becomes your life. It’s all
you think about. Our daily schedules, our
weekend schedules, our yearly schedule is
organized preparing for this event.”
That’s where Jamie got involved. “He
could focus on his health, but there
were so many things he couldn’t do,”
says Trott. “We both went into it
together. He wanted to, he was ready to
support me, but it’s a selfish sport. You
start focusing on so much of what you
have to do . . . it’s very tricky.”
As she trained, usually with a core of
12 from her group, she pushed herself
in more ways than one. Alicia, admittedly
a competitive person, would readily
participate in an Ironman every year.
But she understands that the toll it
would take on her family and her relationship
with God would be too great. “I
don’t like how my year of intense training
made me struggle with my relationship
with God, taking away from my
personal time with God. I really tried
hard to make sure that I had my worships
every day. But they were shortened;
there were days when they were
missed. . . . I tried hard to protect the
Sabbath, and I made that a point in my
blog. I went into it really wanting to do
something for God, but I didn’t know
what that would be or how it would be.”
“A lot of people have coaches, but we
couldn’t afford it,” says Trott. “I had the
background, so I was able to do it, but I had
to put my whole program together. I wasn’t
sure how I was going to do this because I’d
never done it before. Coaching myself made
it hard for me not to overtrain.”
Alicia averaged 12 hours per week
training, while many in her group did
18 to 30 hours per week, including Saturdays.
Alicia says, “We agreed that I
was to do everything possible not to
interrupt the family. I would wake up at
3:00 in the morning and train until
about 8:00 so Jamie, a teacher at Pine
Tree Academy, could dash to work. I’d
get most of my training done before he
and my [toddler son] Tucker were up
for the day. Then Sundays I would again
wake up really early so I could get my
bike ride in, and be home by noon.”
As Alicia would pedal for six or seven
hours straight in preparation for Lake
Placid, spending much of the day away
from her family, she’d wonder, What good
am I doing for anybody? And yet she still
felt impressed to press on. The triathlon
group noticed her training schedule. “A
lot of them asked about Adventism as we
were training,” says Trott. “But I still
didn’t quite understand why I pressed
on. I didn’t know why until the day after
I had finished the race.”
Thoughts
The moments of joy at being third—
and qualifying for Kona—were eclipsed
by feelings of anguish, sadness, and
struggle. Alicia knew she couldn’t run
on Sabbath, and yet she says, “I was surprised
that it was a struggle. I went an
entire year making such a point to protect
the Sabbath, so why was I struggling
now? Why was I debating?” Still
recovering from the race, and from
learning 10 minutes after signing up for
Kona that the event was on Sabbath, Alicia
had made her decision.
She and her family stayed in Lake
Placid for two days after the Ironman.
Then they went home, with Alicia waiting—and
hoping. She didn’t take her
name off the official list, and eventually
20 (436) | www.AdventistReview.org | May 16, 2013