STATE COLLEGE — Sunday, June 30, 2024, marked the second installment of the Ironman 70.3 Happy Valley triathlon. Last year, in a field of roughly 1,600 competitors, it was Kiel Bur who crossed the finish line inside Beaver Stadium first.
Clocking in at 4:25:02, the 39-year-old Savannah, Georgia, native ultimately pulled ahead and finished a little over two minutes ahead of second place.
A member of the Every Man Jack triathlon team, Bur said hearing about the success of 2023’s debut installment convinced him and his teammates to come to Pennsylvania and participate.
“My buddy and teammate, Paul Felder — he actually organized a group of a bunch of guys on the team and said, ‘Let’s get a house and go up and race,’” Bur said. “I had a lot of friends who came up last year for the inaugural one and they highly recommended it.”
That recommendation paid off, as Bur’s performance proved. After journeying across the full 70.3 miles Centre County had to offer, he said the race proved “a ton of fun.”
“The swim, and getting out of the water into transition was really, really smooth. Once you hit the [bike] course, the first part was so fast,” Bur said. “I had my wife and teammate’s wife shouting out splits, letting us know where we were. That was so helpful on the course.”
The encouragement from these familiar faces helped, but Bur said it was also the outside encouragement from volunteers and locals that helped him get through the task at hand.
“The volunteers were awesome. They had ice [at the] beginning, middle and end and I was just grabbing as much as I could,” Bur said. “I’d never really interacted with the Amish community; they were very supportive out there. Lots of people cheering us on and waving from their horse and buggies. That was almost surreal for me.”
While the spectators surely helped motivate Bur, he still had to put in a lot of work to ready himself for the grueling competition.
To do so, he said he traveled to Boulder, Colorado, to connect with friends and get adjusted to the conditions an Ironman competition brings.
“Savannah is pancake flat and swamp hot, so it’s really poor for training. You train indoors most of the year,” Bur said. “So getting to actually ride up and down mountains and work with people who’ve been there, done that, was really helpful.”
Though many things went right for Bur during the race, it wasn’t always easy. The 70.3-mile trek brought adversity, and he said the last few miles were particularly difficult.
The increasingly humid conditions, along with the “undulating nature and the turns on the course,” caused reaching the finish line to feel like a bit of a chore.
“During the run, the first lap felt really good. Then the sun started to come out,” Bur said. “The second lap of the run was the most challenging. The last 2 miles really hurt.”
Though running around Penn State’s campus tested him, the eventual winner was able to persevere and revel in the moment of crossing the finish line inside Beaver Stadium. That, he said, was something he’ll remember for a long time.
“You get into the tunnel down here, and it’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like a football player in my whole life,” Bur said. “Rounding the corner coming into the stadium that was awesome.”
