Brotherly Grit
After Member Bryan Kipping’s father passed away, he decided to honor his memory with a grueling Ironman race.
My father was a competitive amateur cyclist. He rode for Great Britain in top amateur events during the 1960s, including the Milk Race, where cyclists from around the world would traverse the UK.
When I was 7 and my brother, Bernie, was 9, our dad would take us out on our bikes on Sunday morning. It was grueling. Dad was 182 centimeters tall and we were tiny, so we would go through five or six cycles for every one of his. I remember coming home in tears, thinking, “I never want to do that again!”
He went on to run marathons and triathlons, winning his age group in his 50s and 60s. But when his health began to deteriorate around 70, he had to pull back. My brother picked up the baton and began doing marathons and triathlons himself.
I had started to ride again and, two summers ago, enthused by my brother, I got this notion to sign up for a triathlon. “I can run and I can ride a bicycle,” I thought, “but I probably need to learn to swim again.”
With that in mind, I signed up for Lisa Miyasugi’s class, which was every Friday morning at the Sky Pool. Lisa is an amazing, patient, lovely individual who took me under her wing.
In May 2022, I entered the Yokohama triathlon. But that was just the start of my journey. Through the swim class, I was introduced to the legendary Ernesto A’ de Lima. He’s competed in multiple Ironman events and hosts a triathlon camp up in Niseko each year.
He encouraged me to do the Hokkaido triathlon. It was a big step up from Yokohama, which is an Olympic-standard triathlon of a 1.5-kilometer swim, 40-kilometer bike ride and 10-kilometer run. Here, I would need to swim 2 kilometers, ride 130 kilometers and run 23 kilometers. I’d have to build endurance.
This brings me back to my dad. I competed in Hokkaido in August 2022, and a month later my dad’s health started to really worsen, and he passed away. Thinking back to those grueling bike rides of our youth and the time we spent with our dad, my brother and I decided to do something together to honor him. So we signed up for August’s Copenhagen Ironman.
I had to train more to prepare for this challenge of a 3.8-kilometer swim, 180-kilometer bike ride and 42-kilometer run. Club instructors and former Olympian swimmers Miguel and Bruno Ortiz-Cañavate helped me greatly. The process taught me a lot about myself, and I wasn’t sure that I had the mettle to actually go and complete it. But I did. In 11 hours and 57 minutes.
But the journey hasn’t ended. Rather than thinking, “That was tough, that’s going to be my lot,” we’re already talking about doing it again. It was amazing bonding as brothers—now 54 and 56—and going through the Ironman experience together. My only wish is that we had done it sooner.
As told to INTOUCH’s C Bryan Jones.
Top image: Bryan Kipping at this year’s Copenhagen Ironman event
