Blinkhorn's Changing Life

Matthew Dale profiles Ford Ironman World Championship lottery winner Jim Blinkhorn

Jim Blinkhorn's father died of a heart attack at 38 and his grandfather underwent triple bypass surgery in his 40s. Blinkhorn's mother was obese. High blood pressure runs throughout the family.

Yet here was Blinkhorn, all of 30, with two young daughters, out of shape, weighing 195 pounds at 5-foot-9, 40 pounds heavier than when he graduated college. A stockbroker, Blinkhorn was working 60-hour weeks. Saturdays and Sundays were seldom days off.

His exercise routine then?

Maybe 20 minutes of squash.

“Then drink beer and eat chips,” says Blinkhorn. “In my head, that was exercise.”

Today, Blinkhorn is 46. He lives in Portland, Ore. He’s a scuba instructor, has run a dozen marathons and 10 days ago dipped his toe into the triathlon world, his first swim-bike-run of any distance coming at Ironman Arizona.

Asked what drove him to debut at the Ironman distance, Blinkhorn says, “Lack of brain power.”

His wife puts it another way. “He’s a very passionate person,” says Linda Blinkhorn.

Two days after finishing Arizona in 16 hours, 32 minutes, Chapter 2 of Blinkhorn’s triathlon career unfolded. He was getting ready to leave Tempe, Ariz., to visit his 20-year-old daughter who’s a student at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., when he checked his e-mail.

Right there at the top was a missive from one of the organizers of a training camp Blinkhorn had attended, congratulating him on winning a lottery spot for the Ford Ironman World Championship come October.

Blinkhorn didn’t even know lottery winners were announced on April 15.

“I stood there,” he says, “stunned.”

The man has come a ways from his overweight days, when Blinkhorn says, “I was a big Jell-O man.”

It was more than just Blinkhorn’s family health history that scared him straight. He peered into the future, thinking of those two beautiful daughters, and didn’t like the vision.

“They were going to be playing soccer, softball and I was just going to be sitting there watching, not being able to play with them,” he says. “I’d finally just had enough. I figured death was coming if I didn’t (change his ways).”

So he started logging 20 minutes on the StairMaster. Twenty minutes morphed into half an hour, then 45 minutes. Before you knew it, Blinkhorn, passing the time reading business material, was leaving puddles on the floor, pumping up and down for two hours.

As the weight began to shed, Blinkhorn took up running.

“I hated running,” he recalls. “I made myself go three days a week and said I’d do it for six months to give it a fair shot. After about eight months, I started not hating it. Somewhere after that I really liked it.”

He knocked off his first marathon in 1994, barely two years after starting to lose the excess baggage. His 26.2-mile personal best: 3 hours, 17 minutes.

As for good times with those girls, when his 18-year-old daughter, Courtney, was six, she ran a 5K with her father. After one of his marathons, Blinkhorn was bent over, taking off his timing chip when he felt a hug from behind. It was Courtney. Jim didn’t know she was working the finish line.

Tennis was his oldest daughter’s sport. Jim took lessons to play with Ashleigh.

Says Linda, “He said from day one that he really wanted to be there for our kids. To see them grow up and fully participate in all aspects of their upbringing.”

By the mid-40s, most of us have been touched by death. Blinkhorn has dealt with it more than most his age. Besides his father and grandfather passing young, he has lost a friend and his mother to cancer.

A business mentor died last year from muscular tissue cancer. Blinkhorn’s mother died last year of colon cancer. A client/friend is currently fighting cancer. Linda was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1996, undergoing chemotherapy and radiation. The best man at his wedding died seven years ago from a neurological disorder.

So while Blinkhorn laughs easily and often in conversation, poking fun at his one-time Charmin-soft physique, he understandably values his health and the opportunity to sweat.

“I’ve just been thankful that I can still run,” he says.

He was hoping for a 13-hour finish at Arizona, but dehydration issues on the bike during the 90-plus-degree day extended his Ironman introduction. Portions of the race were so emotional he said only the birth of his daughters exceeded them.

Recalls Blinkhorn, “I was going through my head, ‘Who am I going to disappoint? I’m not going to finish.’”

He beat the bike-run transition deadline by 40 minutes, took his time in T2, started walking with ice cooling his head and when he got to the mile one marker said to himself, “I don’t have a marathon left anymore. I’m still in this. I didn’t quit.”

Linda calls her husband a Renaissance Man. They’ve enjoyed season tickets to the symphony. They introduced the girls to art museums. They practice conservation, husband and wife driving hybrids. Jim’s well-rounded life now will include swimming Kailua Bay, pedaling the Queen K Highway and running to the Energy Lab during triathlon’s most fabled race.

Incredibly, Blinkhorn didn’t sign up for his first triathlon until nine months ago.

“When I first saw Ironman Hawaii (on TV), I thought, ‘This is insane. This is impossible.’ I couldn’t believe people did that,” he says.

To some extent, Blinkhorn knows what awaits. In January, he participated in a five-day training camp at Kona. On a seven-hour and fifteen minute, 109-mile, ride the wind was blowing so violently at one point that he was pedaling downhill, in his lowest gear, going about seven mph. It was pouring for a spell on the climb up to Hawi. “You could only see a little bit,” he says.

With the wind behind on the return home, Blinkhorn says he was pedaling “soft,” sitting up, clipping along at 32 mph.

The man who once couldn’t chase after a squash ball for more than 20 minutes without calling it quits knows how lucky he is.

Since the lottery news arrived, Blinkhorn admits, “I’ve just been dancing around.”

His sister called and said, “You’re still walking on clouds, aren’t you?”

“Yep,” Blinkhorn replied. “Pretty much.”

You can reach Matthew Dale at mdale@ironman.com