The father-and-son duo of Max and Malachi Henry made big waves in the triathlon community last year when Malachi competed in the World Ironman Championships, and Max did the World Half Ironman.
This year, the roles are reversed. Malachi will do the World Half Ironman, and Max will compete in his first World Ironman Championships Oct. 13 in Kona, Hawaii.
“The half is good, and going to the Worlds is good, but Kona is the ultimate,” Max said. “Less than 1 percent of all triathletes actually make it to Kona, so when you say you’ve gone to Kona, it’s the elite of the elites.”
Both Max and Malachi went to Lake Placid, New York, two weekends ago with the intent to qualify for Kona. However, Malachi fell short of making it.
Malachi, 28, finished seventh in the 25-29 age group in 10 hours, 04 minutes. Only the top two in each age division qualified.
“I just didn’t have it this year,” Malachi said. “I had a good swim, had a pretty good bike and then I just fell apart on the run. I just hadn’t put the time in to have a good run. I felt good with nutrition and everything, but my legs kind of fell off.”
Although Max, who will be 65 this year, was more than three hours slower, he finished second in 65-69 age group in 13:28.
The Henrys don’t normally do an Ironman in the middle of summer since they usually are training for one in October or November. But Malachi wanted to try Lake Placid, which features an elevation change of around 8,000 feet on the two-loop bike course.
“It’s a very popular course, but a very hard course, one of the hardest courses of Ironman,” Max said. “Unfortunately, it was raining, we had about a 30 MPH headwind we had to deal with and our feet and bodies were wet the entire time. Then, you get off the bike and you have 26.2 miles to run in wet shoes, wet clothing, but you tackle it and you keep going.”
Malachi plans to do Olympic Distance event in today’s Columbus Challenge Triathlon. Max will help out with the race as a volunteer.
The World Half Ironman in which Malachi will compete is Sept. 1 in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa. Malachi, who operates Henry Chiropractic, and his mother and girlfriend will get there a week before and go on a safari.
“This year, a half is much easier for me with work and the timing,” Malachi said. “The time that I put here into the business, the half is just a little more doable. Then, the training for the half is a little bit easier.”
Max, an opthamologist, also has to make time during the day, often during his lunch break, to train.
“He wakes up at 5 and is in surgery at 6, and it’s just hard to work out, recover and then try to have a personal life, as well,” Malachi said. “The biggest thing now, especially with his age and then just working, is the recovery process. Pros are pros because they can recover. We’re pretty lucky that we have some toys here that we can recover with.”
Those toys include machines that help relax and vibrate their legs and activate the muscles to keep the lactic acid out. They also have compression pants and pants with built-in ice packs. They drink protein shakes with bone broth and collagen to rebuild muscles they destroyed.
Next weekend, Max and Malachi will travel to Benton Harbor, Michigan, for the Steelhead Half Ironman to try to qualify for next year’s Half Irnoman World Championships in Nice, France.
Then, it will be on to South Africa for Malachi and to Hawaii for Max.
“It’s a really cool thing that he made it,” Malachi said. “It’s a lifelong dream, so it will be cool to watch him do it. It’s a terrible race as in difficulty, and it’s hard to really tell people about that, so when you can talk to somebody whose done it, it will be cool to share memories about the course and what it really entails.”
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”The Henrys” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
Name: Max Henry
Age: 64
High school: Columbus
Colleges: Indiana University (undergrad and medical school), Ohio State (residency)
Residence: Columbus
Occupation: Opthamologist at Max Henry, M.D.
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Name: Malachi Henry
Age: 28
High school: Columbus North
Colleges: Xavier (undergrad), Palmer College of Chiropractic
Residence: Columbus
Occupation: Owns Henry Chiropractic Center
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