From small town to Kona Town

Big dreams don’t have to start in big cities. Sometimes they begin on quiet roads in small towns.

This October, a kid from Peshtigo with a Marinette address will stand on the starting line of the IRONMAN World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.

Over the next several months, I would like to share the journey, from early morning miles at home to the “Super Bowl” of triathlon.

The road to Kona doesn’t happen overnight. For me it’s been built one day at a time including over fifteen years of running every single day and thirteen IRONMAN finishes along the way.

Ironically, as a kid I didn’t even like running.

That changed in 2003 when family friend Glenn Sartorelli encouraged me to try the Waterfront 5K Run/Walk in Menominee, Mich. I figured I’d give it a shot.

Somewhere between the starting line and the finish line, something clicked. What started as a simple challenge turned into a habit, and eventually into a passion.

Over the next few years, I worked my way up to one of the big milestones many runners dream about — finishing a marathon. Between 2006 and 2008, I completed several 26.2-mile races and thought that was about as far as I would ever push myself.

Then in 2009, curiosity got the best of me and I signed up for a sprint triathlon in Green Bay. Compared to what I do now, it was pretty short: a quarter-mile swim, a 15-mile bike ride and a 3.1-mile run. Just 18.3 miles total.

At the time it felt enormous.

After finishing three sprint triathlons that summer, I just happened to catch the reruns of the IRONMAN World Championship on NBC from 2007 and 2008. If you have ever seen those broadcasts, you know they are filled with incredible stories.

There was a nun in her 70s competing. There was another “Brian” who had survived a terrible car crash where he had actually been pronounced dead, yet fought all the way back to finish in Kona. There were professionals winning their first world titles. Watching those stories planted a seed in my mind.

If they could do it… why not me?

So, in August of 2009 I did something that, looking back, was probably a little crazy. I signed up for IRONMAN Coeur d’Alene in Idaho.

At the time I didn’t even know where Coeur d’Alene was on a map. I just knew IRONMAN Wisconsin in Madison was sold out, with the long distance races apparently being very popular. If you wanted to race one, you had to grab whatever spot you could find.

Training for my first Ironman was… let’s just say a learning experience.

For some reason my longest bike ride leading up to the race was 63 miles. The bike portion of an IRONMAN is 112 miles. Looking back now as an award-winning clinical exercise physiologist, I laugh a little at my younger self.

But on race day in June of 2010, somehow it all came together. Having my girlfriend (now wife) Amy and my parents there for support certainly helped. After swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles and running a full marathon, I crossed the finish line in 13 hours, 17 minutes and 40 seconds.

I was hooked.

A few things happened after that first finish that made the experience even more meaningful.

Amy sent my finish photo and an article about the race to the Peshtigo Times. My supervising physician, Dr. Tom Leow, who was training for his first IRONMAN in Cozumel, congratulated me with enthusiasm, which meant a lot coming from someone I respected and who had surgically fixed my right shoulder in 2001 following a football injury.

Not long after, I received an uplifting phone call from a local dentist, Dr. Tom Schroepfer, telling me how proud he was.

It was a reminder that even individual accomplishments can feel like a community victory.

Brian Cleven (MS, ACSM-CEP, CCRP) is a 2024 ACSM Certified Professional of the Year, Bellin Marinette 5K Heart Run race director and founder of the Tri City Event Series as well as a 13-time IRONMAN athlete.

This two-part introduction to his monthly column documenting the IRONMAN World Championship will continue next week.