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“You’re an Ironman, Michael!” cried Mike Reilly, whose voice you want to hear at the end of all major Ironman events. This particular callout seemed to ring throughout the Olympic Oval Skating Rink in Lake Placid, New York, on Sunday, July 23.

That’s because if you told Eureka, Missouri, natives Michael Bigogno and his father, Gregg, in the summer of 2012 that Michael would hear those words one day, they probably would have wept in disbelief or joy. Around this time five years ago, Michael was lying in a hospital bed with a helmet on protecting his skull, a fourth of it missing.

Or maybe Michael would have laughed at you in mockery, since the 28-year-old was born to compete, race, and put his body through whatever torture seemed possible. Maybe he, in that hospital bed, would have chuckled and said, “You bet I will.”

Growing up, Michael played every sport you could think of, including ice hockey and soccer. In middle school, he was obsessively competitive, determined his life calling was to beat everyone in any form of physical testing. The infamous mile run in phys ed? He won every single time.

But most important to him was baseball. The fresh grass on the diamond, the distinct smell from his glove, the cheering from the crowd were all like oxygen to him, pulsing through his veins. He excelled through high school and accepted a baseball scholarship to Drury University in Missouri.

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He says he played full tilt all the time. People were shocked when after dislocating both shoulders, broken wrists, and other injuries, he kept swinging himself back to baseball like a boomerang.

“What’s that movie called?” Michael wondered aloud, as he sat on the grassy area right next to Mirror Lake, the location of Placid’s swim start the day before the race. “For the Love of the Game! That’s me. [Baseball] is the love of my life. I didn’t care if I poked out an eye—I would be playing.”

Michael Bigogno posing by Mirror Lake the day before the big race. McGee Nall

But on May 19, 2012, after just finishing his junior year of college, Michael was hanging out with some friends in their subdivision. He had gotten his then-girlfriend, Andi, a skateboard and decided to test it around the block. He told his buddies he’d be back in about 20 minutes.

Pushing off the skateboard is the last memory Michael has from that day.

When he didn’t come back, Andi and a friend hopped on bikes to go look for him. They turned a corner and found an ambulance waiting and streams of blood along the asphalt. Neighbors witnessed the whole thing: Michael turning a corner, flying off the board, and the left side of his head landing on a curb.

After being rushed to the hospital, he was diagnosed with acute subdural hematoma, a blood clot that develops between the surface of the brain and its tougher outer covering. Out of all brain injuries, this kind is among the most lethal. Because of severe swelling, the surgeons removed a fourth of the left side of Michael’s skull and he was medically induced in a coma for two and a half weeks.

“There were quite a few nights that we were told they didn’t expect [Michael] to last through the night,” Gregg said.

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Michael’s doctor said he had a 10 percent chance of survival. In the slim likelihood he lived, he could expect a hard road of speech impediments, crutches, and other physical problems.

After those two and a half weeks, the pressure stabilized and the doctors released Michael from the coma. They moved him to St. Louis, where he did inpatient rehab for a couple months before finally going home. (During that time, Michael still had to do outpatient rehab.) On the fourth month, he got the rest of his skull back.

Even when recovery seemed out of reach, Michael never stopped looking for ways to push himself. The young boy in him, who beat all of his classmates in every PE race, who never ran at less than 100 percent, started to resurface.

One day, during outpatient rehab, Gregg, Michael, and some friends were at the Bigogno home watching TV. Michael got up from the couch to leave the room.

“I’m going to go for a jog,” Michael said.

After hesitating at first, Gregg made a choice to not live in fear, and to not limit his son’s abilities.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

They put Michael’s helmet on and walked him outside. With friends standing on either side of him and Gregg in front, they slowly shuffled Mike down past two mailboxes on the street. They continued to do this for the next few weeks, reaching for the next mailbox beyond their previous finish (fartleking at its finest). In Michael’s mind, he was jogging.

“I think it did more for [Michael] mentally than it really did physically, because it was just him realizing he was coming back,” Gregg said.

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Nine months after the accident, in January 2013, Michael went back to school. The full recovery, however, would take about a year. He suffered from side effects like minor seizures, temper tantrums, and memory loss. Along with physical therapy five times a week, Michael also had to try sharpening his memory. Soon after the accident, he would forget conversations five minutes prior. As his mental therapy sessions progressed, he could remember 10 minutes, then 30 minutes, then a whole day. Sleep was like command-alt-delete, swiftly erasing everything Mike had experienced that day.

But, after slowly inching forward for months, Michael made a full recovery—minus some changes. Gregg said his son used to be extremely quiet, but now Michael freely shares his story of overcoming obstacles.

Today he is a full-time PE teacher in St. Louis, helping kids stay active. Not only was Michael coaching kids on how to push their physical boundaries, but also he was pushing in his own right. He and his older brother, Chris Beuer, 34, dabbled in small triathlons at their local YMCA while Michael was still in college. Chris did his first Ironman in Florida in 2010 and has completed 14 since (Lake Placid being No. 14). Once Michael graduated in 2014, his baseball days behind him, he decided to push his limits with triathlons.

Michael and his brother, Chris, at the finish line. FinisherPix.com

After years of going on bike rides and runs and doing an Olympic distance triathlon, Michael stepped into the big leagues. Michael, Chris, and their friend Brian Catlett did a team relay Half Ironman in July 2016 in Muncie, Indiana. Brian swam, Chris biked, and Michael ran. He started training for Ironman Lake Placid in January of this year, enjoying every step along the way.

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“I never ask God ‘why.’ I just thank Him and I never take any day for granted,” Michael said. “If you sit there and ask ‘why,’ you’re going to drive yourself nuts.”

When asked what it has been like for him, to watch his son overcome all of these obstacles and prepare for one of the world’s greatest endurance races, tears immediately swelled in Gregg’s eyes.

“I tell him every day he’s my hero,” Gregg said. “Two weeks into this [after the accident], I was beating myself up pretty badly asking ‘why.’ I don’t know where I was, but I was praying. Basically I told God, ‘[Michael] is yours. Do what You want with him.’ And I had never felt such a peace come over me because I just knew at that time he was going to be okay.”

It probably wouldn’t be a far-off guess to say that same peace overwhelmed Gregg as he watched his son, uninjured, cross the finish line of Ironman Lake Placid at 14:38:17.

He and Michael heard those coveted, miraculous words that tell you that you’ve succeeded. They heard the words that reflected who Michael had become after all those months and years of recovery, for fighting against the impossible: “Michael Bigogno, you are an Ironman!”

McGee Nall Contributing Writer After a summer internship with Runner’s World in 2017, McGee has somehow convinced the team to let her keep writing for them as a freelancer.

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