IRONMEN

Twenty-four years after Freeman farmer Joey Graber took part in his first distance triathlon, his son Jeff joined him. And, as you’ll read, the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run (all in a single day) was mighty challenging — and exceedingly rewarding.

Just how young was Jeff Graber the first time Joey Graber competed in a long-distance triathlon?

Young enough that his dad could hold him comfortably in his arms.

That he did for a family photo that appeared on the front page of the Nov. 7, 2001 Freeman Courier documenting Joey’s participation in The Great Floridian — a grueling competition that uses the Ironman format of 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking and a full marathon distance of 26.2 miles, all in a single day.

Yep. There’s Joey’s wife, Patti, holding 1-year-old Meredith; 5-year-old Andrew out front; 11-year-old Erica and 8-year-old Zachary off to the side, and 39-year-old Joey and 3-year-old Jeff smack dab in the middle of the frame.

Twenty-four years later, Jeff and Joey were side-by-side again, but in a much different capacity.

On Sunday, Aug. 10 the two of them competed together in a distance trifecta that starts with a 2.4-mile swim, continues on the bike for 112 miles, and finishes with that 26.2-mile run, all in Grand Rapids, Mich.

It was Joey’s 24th and Jeff’s first time competing at that level.

The Michigan Titanium’s ultra triathlon featured 75 men and women from around the world taking part in the race that started at 7 a.m. and continued over the course of the next 17 hours.

While it wasn’t an official Ironman competition under the organization’s global trademark, like The Great Floridian Joey took part in in 2001, it featured all three elements and distances designed to push the human body to the max.

That’s what appealed to Joey all those years ago and has kept him active, even at the age of 62, and while the challenge of it also appealed to his son Jeff, there was a larger draw for the 27-year-old: To do this with his dad.

“We’ve been talking about doing a race like this for two or three years,” said Jeff, a 2016 Freeman Academy graduate who returned to his home community with his growing family in April of 2024. “Doing an ironman with my dad has been a goal of mine because he’s getting older and you don’t know how many years he’s going to be able to do this. You hope it’s quite a few, but my opportunity to do it was now. So that was — and is — special.”

“The family has been with me throughout this entire journey,” said Joey. “The fact that he’s physically able to do it, and that he wants to, and that I’m still physically able to do it, and want to — that combination doesn’t often happen. So it was a very unique, special shared experience.”

Endurance requirement; mental strength

It goes without saying that an endurance triathlon that follows the Ironman requirements isn’t only difficult — its excruciatingly brutal.

Jeff discovered at what level back in 2020, two years after earning an associate’s degree in  agriculture from Dordt University.

He and his dad had signed up for a half-ironman in Minneapolis that got canceled because of Covid, so they went out and did it on their own, swimming at Swan Lake near Viborg, biking to Beresford and back, and then hitting rural roads for their 13.1-mile finish.

“And I was not ready for that,” Jeff says. “I did not realize the level of dedication that it takes to train for even a half-ironman. And I suffered bad.”

It took Jeff 8 ½ hours to finish — “which is pretty slow for that race” — and taught him a critical lesson: that he had to train his mind in the same way he trained his body.

“I knew I had to be able to handle it better,” said Jeff, who would go on to compete alongside his dad at four shorter triathlons in Minneapolis leading up to the trip to Grand Rapids, Mich. “Mentally, that’s the side of ironmans — and triathlons in general — that you really have to home in on. You have to be able to accept the distance and trust yourself physically to do it. And that’s a challenge.”

Part of that trust grows out of training in adverse conditions, not just when the weather suits.

“Training in wind,” Jeff says. “Train in heat. Train on days when you don’t want to go out, because that’s part of your mental acuity.”

Joey knows a thing or two about nurturing his mental strength. Not only has he participated in 24 long-distance triathlons in 25 years — plantar fasciitis forced him to miss one year — he has also run in various other capacities, including what he calls “Swan Mans” at Swan Lake similar to what he and Jeff did back in 2020.

Because of the extended length of the competition and the toll the miles take on the body, “You just have to say, ‘I can’t give 100 percent all the time,’” he says. “I’ve got to be at 80 percent or whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Joey says mental strength is particularly critical during the most difficult leg of any triathlon — the run.

“When you don’t feel like you’ve got much left, that’s when you start thinking, ‘I’m going to run one mile and not even think about the other 25,’” he says. “And pretty soon you’ve finished the first five or six miles and you’re like, ‘I’m one-quarter done.’ And at mile 15, 16, that’s often when your body starts to shut down. That’s when you walk and just tell yourself, ‘I’m going to put one foot in front of the other,’ and usually you can recover. Sometimes you don’t; you either walk the rest, or people quit.

“There are a lot of did-not finishes.”

Joey says the Swan Mans he has done on his own are particularly difficult and therefore help sharpen strength of mind.

“Those are psychologically the most difficult,” he says. “There’s no one to cheer for me; no impressing the fans who are yelling. Just cows in the pasture and corn fields emitting all kinds of humidity.”

Training, refueling; different but the same

It’s interesting to note that Joey and Jeff use different approaches to both training and day-of races.

For Joey, a career farmer living just east of Freeman, his training pattern is more scattered and random than his sons — an approach that has pretty much been nonstop since even before he ran his first sprint triathlon at Lake Pahoja near Larchwood, Iowa in 1996.

“I’m like, ‘You know, I’ve got a couple hours, so I’m going to go for a bike ride,” says Joey. “Or, I’m driving past Swan Lake; I’m going to stop and swim. It’s more opportunistic training than it is regimented training, and it’s worked for me.”

That, as opposed to operating on a strict schedule, keeps it enjoyable.

“I’ve seen people train, train, train, and it ends up being a burden for them,” he says. “I never want this to be a burden. This is how I deal with the markets going up and down. This is my stress reliever. This is my hobby and something I want to keep fun.”

Joey says he would probably have better finishes under his belt over the years had he trained more than the five or six hours a week that is typical, but he was reminded by his wife of a valuable lesson early on.

“There came a point where Patti said, ‘We want to support you, but you can’t let this become more important than your family,’” he recalls. “So I’m OK with not doing as well with less hours trained. That’s just where I’m at.”

Still, Joey says, “this is just part of my life; it’s who I am. And I thank my mom and dad for good knees.”

Jeff is learning to strike the balance, as well.

As a father to a young daughter, Katherine, who is almost a year-and-a-half, and with his wife, Emily, expecting their second child in November — and with more children likely on the way down the road — Jeff knows he has to be there for his family.

But he also knows that when he commits to a challenging competition like a distance triathlon, a structured training plan is crucial, and that’s what he put together in the five months leading up to the Aug. 10 Michigan Titanium.

Working around his 8-to-5 job at Ralph’s Feed, Jeff started building up his base in February and began increasing his mileage by the end of March before spending four months of six-days-a-week training that peaked at 12-to-14 miles a day.

“It’s a lot of work,” he says.

The way Joey and Jeff train isn’t the only difference between the father and son. Another one is the approach they take to fueling their body during a competition. Like the structure Jeff uses to log miles, he is more particular than his dad about the way in which he refuels during a race.

“You’ve got to keep your body fed — that’s vital,” says Jeff. “You have to drink water, you have to have electrolytes, and you have to have energy, and training your body to accept that is big.”

He knows a body needs 60 to 90 grams of carbs per hour during a race and typically drinks an electrolyte drink containing 1,000 milligrams of sodium every two hours. There are aid stations along the way where water and light snacks are available, and distance competitors typically rely on edible energy gels — or “goos” — for a quick hit.

“You cannot do these distances unless you are replenishing what you’re losing, otherwise you hit a wall,” Jeff says. “And once you hit that wall, it’s game over.”

Joey knows this too, of course, but he is less systematic about what he takes and when.

“I’m much different,” he says. “He’s very much keeping track of everything and I’m like, ‘Hm, I should take something now.’ You look at your watch and are so into the race it’s like, ‘Was it a half hour ago? I’ll just grab a goo at this station and suck it down and see what happens.

“Most of my races I don’t take anything along,” Joey continues. “I just rely on what they have on the table.”

“I would say the way he approaches this is not normal,” Jeff says. “I would say most triathletes doing this iron distance have some sort of a nutrition plan. But it works for him.”

Grand Rapids and the Michigan Titanium

After several years of throwing around the idea of competing in a distance triathlon, in December the Grabers signed up for the 2025 Michigan Titanium, an event that began in 2012 that offers a series of races and distances from half-swims only (1.2 miles) to a half dualthon (56-mile bike and 13-1-mile run) to the ultra, ironman-style triathlon — the one that Joey and Jeff would tackle.

Jeff says his training regimen peaked about a month before the race and really started tapering off about two weeks out — a 20-mile bike ride or a six-mile run “just at an easy pace to keep your body tuned.”

The Grabers — including Patti, Emily and little Katherine — left for Grand Rapids two days before the competition on Sunday, Aug. 10, and Joey and Jeff competed a light workout the day before that included a little swimming and a little biking on the course they would run.

A pre-race meeting for the ultra-distance athletes was held at 6:45 a.m., with the competition beginning at 7 a.m. Those participating had until midnight to finish.

Jeff says there was quite a bit of anxiety going into the race, especially about the marathon at the end.

“I was ready for the swim,” he says. “I was comfortable with the bike distance. But the longest I had run was 14 miles. That is what I was really nervous about; I didn’t know if I could run competitively that far.”

In the end he did, even finishing well ahead of his dad, who had not adequately trained for the marathon portion of the race because of a nagging calf injury.

Of the 60 who completed the full course, Jeff finished 14th in a time of 12 hours, 50 minutes and 23 seconds, crossing the finish line at 7:50 p.m.

Joey came in 24th, posting a clocking of 14:01.50 and finishing around 9 p.m.

“I wanted him to beat me — and he should beat me,” says Joey. “But it wasn’t a competition; we wanted to finish, and we wanted to finish strong.”

While there was no plan to stick together, Joey and Jeff ended up connecting by way of crossing glances, stops in transition between one element and the next, at aid stations, and even on the course itself. At one point during the 112-mile bike ride, with about 15 miles to go, Joey passed Jeff, yelling out, “I’m feeling good!”

Jeff’s response? “I’m not!”

That playful exchange aside, Joey says all interactions throughout the day between the two were “total encouragement.”

Joey and his bicycle ended up about 3 minutes ahead of Jeff, but it didn’t take but a half-mile for Jeff to catch Joey in the run, and he ended up finishing about an hour and 10 minutes in front of his dad.

“He trained for this,” Joey says, “and it paid off.”

None of it was easy, of course. Heat topping out at 92 degrees and the humidity of the day made for adverse conditions even beyond the structure of the race; the water was so warm that Joey and Jeff both ditched their wet suits, which slowed them some.

Jeff got stung by a bee on his hand and Joey got stung near his ribs by a wasp that had gotten inside his suit during the bike ride. He managed to get the wasp out without breaking pace, but Joey says for the next 15 minutes “it felt like a dart had hit my lung.”

For Jeff, one of the low points of the competition came during the bike portion, when he slowed and his dad passed him up.

“That’s when I was starting to feel like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to even be able to do the run.’ I was feeling exhausted.”

But then, he says, his mom, wife and daughter passed by in the van, “and they’re banging their cowbell. They don’t care how good I do; that was huge.”

That’s good perspective, says Joey.

“Who cares!?” he says, his voice elevating. “Other than guys who are really into this, no one even knows if 12 or 14 hours is good or bad. The goal is to finish and show that you have been able to do something that very few people can do — or even have a desire to do.”

Spiritual bond, connectivity

To that end, there is a special element associated with a lifestyle like this, that challenges, motivates and offers immense reward.

“Not everybody has the ability to do what we’re doing,” says Jeff. “There were many times when I was training that it got hard and you try to keep going, and you get frustrated because you can’t do what you want to do. So you change your perspective.

“I’m doing something that God has given me the ability to do — to enjoy,” he continues. “So why not enjoy it? And I’m out here in nature, doing something very few people get to do, with my dad, and even fewer people get to do that.

“You take what you’re given and let it be fun.”

“It’s a very spiritual experience,” says Joey. “The race itself ends up being a 13½-hour prayer. Very rarely do you talk to other people. It’s you and God during the race. Doing the training. You’re all by yourself. You have no distractions other than trying to keep pace, and it becomes a prayer. I find it super relaxing. Super peaceful.”

That Joey and Jeff competed in — and finished — the Michigan Titanium together will always be special. Because of his family obligations, Jeff doesn’t know how long it will be before he tackles another one. And, for Joey, his age will at some point catch up with him. Even during races in these later years, he has vowed that this is it.

“I think to myself, ‘I’m done. I’m never doing another one. Why am I doing this? This is stupid,’” he says. “They you cross the finish line and think about what you can do to get better. It’s a battle in your own mind.”

Regardless of what the future holds for either Joey or Jeff, Aug. 10, 2025 will always be a red-lettered day in their lives.

“This is going to stick with me forever, just because of the special nature of it,” Jeff says. “When you go through anything challenging with somebody, you get closer, because you have to endure it together.

“Doing something like this strengthens your relationship and puts a memory in your mind that you’re never going to forget.”

“There are all kinds of things we do together,” Joey says of his family. “But to travel together, to do the race together, to suffer through a race like that together — this is one of those things that no one in my family has ever shared with me for the past 24 years.

“It’s one of those memories that you’re never going to forget.”