Written by Noah Keur

With the wound not fully healed from the surgery that put two screws in his ankle four months prior, Drew Fisher pulls himself off a bike and prepares for the final stretch of the Chattanooga IRONMAN triathlon. 

Only a 26.2-mile footrace to go… as if the 120 miles already covered wasn’t enough.

For some, the commitment to this grueling race stems from an unwavering drive to be in tip-top physical condition. Or maybe, they sign up for this race to give themselves something to work towards every day—a reason to get out of bed in the morning. There is a percentage of racers, though, who have another, seemingly more trivial reason to travel the distance it would take to get to Birmingham, Alabama in one day. 

“I was reading Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins before a football game in high school, and a coach asked me why I was reading that,” Fisher said. “I told him I wanted to run an IRONMAN. With no hesitation, he responded you’ll never do that. From then on, I just had to run one.” 

Those four words stuck in Fisher’s head for what seemed to him like an eternity. He was just 17 years old at the time—which meant it would be at least another year until he could prove his coach wrong, as you must be an adult to participate. Nevertheless, Fisher got to work. 

“As soon as I graduated, I started training,” Fisher said. “It was around January of this year that I completely committed myself to this race, and it was September when I ran it.” 

It was only a nine-month period between when he signed up for the race to when he was standing in water up to his ankles preparing to set off on a 2.4-mile swim. As if this timeframe wasn’t accelerated enough, there was a rather impactful hiccup that happened along this journey that made things a little more difficult. 

“I was rock climbing, and when I was half-way up this rock—like 22 feet in the air—I didn’t unclip something that I was supposed to, and I slipped,” Fisher said. “There was too much slack in the rope because of my mistake, so I fell the whole way down. Luckily, the rope stopped me right before I hit the bottom, or there’s a chance I could have died.” 

Thankful to be alive but still dangling a few feet off the ground, Fisher looked down to see his ankle was swollen to the size of a softball. Two days later, he was pushing himself around on a scooter with a black cast stretching from his toes to his kneecap. 

Despite several doctors advising him against participating in the race, Fisher never considered the idea of giving up. It would be almost three months before he could even see his foot again, but as soon as he could, it was right back to it. 

“I was in that hard cast for 12 weeks and then a boot for 5 weeks,” Fisher said. “After I got out of the boot, it was a struggle to walk, honestly. But what I could do is ride my bike, and I could still swim. So, that was really all I focused on.” 

During the six-week stretch between his foot once again touching the Earth and race day, Fisher wasn’t able to run more than one mile at a time. As contrary as it may sound, this wasn’t something that crushed his spirits. 

“Breaking my foot was the best thing that’s happened to me in years,” Fisher said. “It humbled me, in a sense. It gave me a chance to slow down. Also, it honestly took a lot of pressure off me. At that point, all it was to me was a chance to prove myself right.” 

As people of all ages and sizes passed him while he was trotting towards the finish line in downtown Chattanooga at 10:00 p.m., Fisher held a smile that stretched from ear-to-ear. His time didn’t matter to him anymore—or maybe it never did. 

“I think I realized the whole point of the IRONMAN is not to try to beat everyone out there,” Fisher said. “It’s to compete with yourself, really. You’re just trying to find things out about yourself. It’s this constant state of personal improvement.” 

Outside of the 144.6-mile trek the IRONMAN possesses, it’s more of an inner conscious battle than it is a war with the body. For some, like Fisher, it takes a slight change of plans to realize that. 

“I would say it’s an 85% mental and 15% physical feat,” Fisher said. “And I’m the perfect witness to that. I had a non-functioning right foot, and I still made my way across the finish line.”

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