Jason Lester: Carrying the Load of the Epic5 Challenge...and Still Having Room for More

As the blips and beeps of our Web conferencing system began punctuating the quiet of my subterranean office, I was preparing to ease our Epic5 documentary production crew into the good, the bad, and the ugly of our pending show across the Hawaiian islands. The Epic5 Challenge was not only going to be a monumental struggle for our nine athletes, who are preparing to traverse five islands, while completing five triathlons in five days, but for our production crew, as well. Even with the incredibly talented team of Jeffrey Smith, Stan Rosario, Leah Garcia, Ian Adamson and team coordinator extraordinaire Kirk Montgomery, there is just no way of knowing where the drama would unfold.

With this in mind, I asked event founder and 2009 ESPY Award winner, Jason Lester, to describe some of his experiences from last year’s test-bed trial with his friend and uber-athlete Rich Roll. Both Lester and Roll informally (as if attempting 5 triathlons in 5 days can ever be considered informal) tried the same Epic5 Challenge format, just to make sure that this was something that could actually be done. For the next twenty minutes, Lester, in his sharp, clear, but humble voice, described a few of the things that welled up organically, as they swam, biked, and ran their way across the 703 mile course.

Even though our production crew was virtually connected through our video conferencing platform, it was like everyone was gathered around a campfire listening to the stories that Lester shared. There were the burning sugar cane fields they ran headlong into on the fourth day, where their only recourse was wrapping their shirts around their heads to filter out the dense smoke. There were the random people who pulled up next to them on their bikes and told Lester and Roll how their efforts were inspiring them to go on. That was the good!

And then there was Lester, with his paralyzed right arm, literally carrying Roll out from the foyer of the Bed & Breakfast where they has just plopped themselves at 4 am. The home owner came storming from her room to scold the two exhausted men for making so much noise at such an ungodly hour. She did not care who they were and what they had just achieved. She just wanted these two out of her hallway so she could go back to sleep. Roll could not move, so Lester, somehow, lifted him, got him up the stairs, and settled down the very disgruntled Roll, who was spewing epithets at Lester for dragging him into this painful, crushing endeavor. But Lester kept his cool, got he and Roll out of the way, and continued to find strength from somewhere deep down inside. That was the bad!

Our crew was now imagining the powerful cinema of these incredible events and how they would translate into a documentary movie. At the same time, I was left to wonder, “What was it that kept Jason going?” He may have been struggling physically, but his mental and spiritual constitution seemed beyond compare, even enough to carry everyone around him.

“Jason,” I asked. “You literally were carrying Rich. You were inspiring all the people throughout the course. What was carrying you?”

“The biggest reason I do this is for the Foundation [Lester’s Never Stop Foundation],” Lester explained. “There are so many people rooting for us. There are so many people who are relying on us. And there are so many people who do not believe we could do this. It’s all those people who carry me. I just think of all those people, and its enough to get me to the next stage. I guess its all those people who are carrying me,” Lester said, in a wondering sort of way.

Then it was quiet. The conference call just got real quiet. For almost half a minute, no one said anything, as we all tried to make sense of it. For myself, I knew at that exact moment, whatever challenges were for us, as a production team, we could overcome them. Time, energy, and money...no problem. Whatever I was going to insert into “the ugly” part of this nice little outline I had drawn up had just become irrelevant. There was nothing ugly about any of this. Will it be incredibly difficult? Yes! Would it be incredibly time-consuming? Yes! Will it be expensive? Yes! But after listening to Lester tell us about what we might encounter during this Epic5 Challenge shoot, I could only think of how beautiful this story was going to be.

So now, as we approach the May 5-9 start of the Epic5 Challenge, Lester has seven more of us to carry around the islands. But, somehow, someway...I think he’s more than capable.