New film documents local man's 914 mile ultra-marathon for his 65th birthday
The curiosity alone should be enough to get you out of your chair this Sunday at 2 p.m.
Record your favorite NFL team if you must. Set down the remote, and beat a path to the Byrd Theater. It’s the final day of the Richmond International Film Festival, and the story of Richmond’s Will Turner simply must be seen to be believed.
Turner, 67, is surely the most indomitable athlete in Richmond. He might be the most indefatigable, most irrepressible endurance freak anywhere in the world. Turner has spent his mid-to-late adulthood producing shocking feats of athletic perseverance. The year he turned 60, he completed 60 Ironman-distance triathlons, then kept going, finishing 105 in 104 weeks. Outside Magazine featured his exploits. So did the New York Times.
"Sierra 914," an RIFF documentary feature “Official Selection,” tells the story of a yet more stunning, more ambitious athletic effort, one that even those steeped in the niche world of ultra-endurance sports find hard to wrap their minds around.
Two years ago, at the age of 65, Turner set the “big, hairy, audacious goal” of completing a 6.5x Ironman-distance race by himself. 913.9 miles of swimming, cycling and running that, for logistical and permitting reasons, was moved to the Sierra Nevadas (in and around Lake Tahoe) at the last minute – thus the title, Sierra 914.
Craig Braun owns Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Mammoth Endurance, which puts on ultra-triathlons around the world. A standard Ironman-distance triathlon is a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and then a marathon – 26.2 miles. An ultra-tri is called an “Anvil,” and they can cover double or triple those distances – or more.
“The world that I live in, people coming to do a 700-mile triathlon or even a 1000-mile tri is normal,” said Braun, a producer on Sierra 914, “Not normal by any means, but normal in my world.”
When we spoke about the movie two weeks ago, he was directing a 5x ultra-triathlon in Wisconsin. There were 12 participants.
“I’ve just watched people push themselves so far that nothing really surprises me anymore,” he said.
So, it wasn’t Turner’s age or the distance he faced that blew Braun away. It was the elevation gained and lost – over 40,000 feet on the bike. “Some of the climbs... It was so gnarly to the point where, I’m not an emotional guy with stuff like this because I’ve kind of become numb to it, but it had me in tears multiple times.”
Turner laughs when he thinks about his first foray into endurance sports. He didn’t finish the 1987 Richmond Half-Marathon. He ended up dehydrated in the medical tent. Future Richmond Marathons ended the same way. For Turner, these weren’t obstacles; they were learning experiences. He completed his first marathon at 44 years old, his first Ironman at 51. At 58, he crossed the finish line on his first Anvil, a 2x-Ironman distance race at Lake Anna, not far from where he grew up in Hanover County.
“The last 15 years, I’ve gotten deeply involved and done crazier and crazier things to push myself,” Turner said.
But the crazier Turner’s feats become the less crazy he sounds describing them. He’s methodical, always training, always planning the next goal, always bigger than the last. He makes it all sound like a natural progression, something anyone could do. Of course, they can’t. We know this because they don’t.
Filmmaker Ryan Dugger heard about Turner through Braun, his friend in Chattanooga. When Turner told them he wanted to do a 6.5x ironman for his 65th birthday, Dugger knew he had a story to tell. Turner previously failed to complete a 5x Ironman-distance race, missing the cutoff by 7 miles. That’s 7 miles over the course of over 700. The failure landed him on the front of the New York Times Sports section.
“This had not been done before. Not like this,” Dugger said. “There are guys that are doing crazy endurance lengths. But when you combine his age… then the distance; then the third part is all this climbing. No one had done this kind of climbing in a race. Some of the top endurance athletes in the world would say, ‘Yeah, maybe on a flat course.’”
You won’t find any spoilers here. But for those involved – Turner in the undertaking; Braun, Dugger and others in the storytelling – the result wasn’t as important as taking on the challenge, showing the will to try something truly audacious, truly scary.
“I think we’re all on this quest to be better versions of ourselves,” said Turner, and “you become a stronger, more confident, more resilient version of yourself when you tackle these big projects.”
Dugger said he hopes when people see the movie, “they feel that tug in their spirit and they connect with it.” The viewer might not set a goal to run a marathon or bike across America, but “it’s just a belief that age doesn’t define your limits. I think everyone faces that at some time. If not, we face other things that we let define our limits. I think everyone can at least see this and be like, ‘Hey I can do more.’ That’s the message.”
"Sierra 914" premieres at the Richmond International Film Festival this Sunday, Sept. 28 at 2 p.m. at the Byrd Theater. Tickets can be found by clicking here or going online to rvafilmfestival.com/get-tickets.
