Published May 20, 2011 09:01AM
A familiar–and inspiring–voice at the finish line, Mike Reilly comes to The Woodlands Saturday to call his 103rd Ironman.
She looked back toward the finish line with tears streaming down her face.
“I never thought I’d hear them call my name again,” said Kim Hager, of the Woodlands, Texas, after September’s Ironman Wisconsin, where she earned her third trip to Kona, Hawaii, to compete in October’s Ford Ironman World Championship.
But “them” also meant “him.”
“My finish at Ironman was certainly about Mike as well as the finish,” Hager said, “because in my eyes, the two are inseparable. I cannot imagine Ironman without him. Seriously.”
And neither can thousands of other athletes who have crossed an Ironman finish line to hear Mike Reilly’s voice emit four words more magical than Disney as a child, “You are an Ironman!”
“I hear his voice, his enthusiasm for what he does, and it is inspiring,” Hager said. “He believes in each of those athletes he is cheering for.”
While Saturday’s Memorial Hermann Ironman Texas will be everything about the sweat, tears and heart that athletes leave on the course, many believe that Ironman’s soul closely follows the passion that Reilly lives as “The Voice of Ironman.”
“I get it, but I don’t get it,” he laughed. “But I know that through the years people will say to me what it did to them.”
A father of two from California and vice president with active.com, Reilly comes to The Woodlands Saturday to call his 103rd Ironman.
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