Six years ago, Ricky James was given a slot to compete at the Ironman World Championship in Kailua-Kona.
Just 20 years old, James, a paraplegic since a motocross accident when he was 16, had been training only about 11 months when he took on the challenge. He had finished the Ironman 70.3 Hawaii earlier that year, but only because race officials allowed him to continue after missing the bicycle cutoff time.
He completed a half Ironman in Texas within the cutoff limits, and NBC and the Challenged Athletes Foundation brought him to Kona as a featured athlete with disabilities.
“I didn’t appreciate (the experience),” he said. “I was stoked, but I didn’t take it in like I should have.”
A hard-working athlete, pushed by NBC’s high expectations for his performance, James finished in 12 hours and 44 minutes, not a bad time for someone who didn’t even know if he could complete an entire full Ironman distance race.
James, who is from San Diego, left Kona never intending to try Ironman again. But people talked him into one more race, the 70.3 world championship in Florida, which he won. And again, he said he was done.
He picked up truck racing, but within a few years, realized the sport was for people with deeper pockets than his. Soon after, he started thinking about triathlons again.
“When I did it in 2008, it was pretty good,” he said. “I like to have athletic goals. I started training, got healthy.”
His goal, he decided, was to do an Ultraman. Billed as the ultimate endurance test, the three-day, 320-mile race features a 6.2-mile swim, 261.4 miles of biking and a 52.4-mile run.
To do that, though, he needed to apply. When he set the goal, no one using handcycles had ever completed the race. A double amputee recently did, but James noted the differences in available muscles for an amputee, who can still use abdominal muscles, and a paraplegic. Disabled athletes are also labeled by the level of their paralysis, for example, and James noted his begins at a higher point than some other handcycle division competitors.
Completing half and full Ironman races helped bolster his Ultraman application, James said. He was recently accepted for a February 2015 race in Florida. Along the way, while he trained with former Ironman handcycle champion David Bailey, he improved his race times. In June, at a race in Australia, James qualified for the world championship event on Oct. 11.
It took him three years to qualify. During that time, he even picked up a sponsor, Team Chocolate Milk. The drink functions as a post-training recovery food, he said.
This time around, James is trying to soak in everything about the event.
“It’s just amazing athletes,” he said. “It’s so cool to see. … I want three years of work to show. Hopefully that means winning.”