Rich Donnelly, of Tuxedo Park, New York, heads to the start of the Ironman Lake Placid triathlon on Sunday July 21 on the Mirror Lake beach. He was the last one to enter the water. An injury to his left foot prevented him from starting the 112-mile bike portion after he finished the 2.4-mile swim. (News photo — Andy Flynn)

LAKE PLACID — Rich Donnelly, a 61-year-old copy editor at People magazine who lives in New York’s Hudson Valley, chose to be the last one in the water on Sunday, July 21 for the 25th Ironman Lake Placid triathlon.

He’d competed at every Ironman race in Lake Placid since the first one in 1999, and he was determined not to miss the silver anniversary — even after breast cancer treatments less than two years ago and after back and foot surgery.

Donnelly made a conscious decision to be the last one to start the 2.4-mile swim in Sunday’s race because he didn’t want anyone to hit his ailing foot in the water. Unfortunately, that strategy didn’t work.

“Of course, waiting, someone stepped on my foot,” he said Tuesday, July 23. “Then coming out, I hit a rock at one point.”

Last October, Donnelly had surgery on his left foot.

Rich Donnelly competes in the 2023 Ironman Lake Placid triathlon. 9Provided photo — Finisher Pix)

“And I guess it turned out worse than before,” he said.

Donnelly suffers from Morton’s neuroma, which an inflammation or thickening of the nerve between the metatarsal bones, and he has it between the second and third toe.

“The big toe had arthritis and bone spurs, and the knuckle, and the doc got rid of some of that, and he put a screw in,” he said. “But now I think with all three toes, he might have to fuse them.”

For last year’s Ironman Lake Placid, he was recovering from breast cancer, which was diagnosed the previous fall.

“On Sept. 27, still recovering from back surgery for a herniated disc two months earlier, I was icing my back on a yoga mat on the living room floor when I noticed a bump near my left nipple,” he wrote in an Oct. 22, 2022, essay for People magazine.

Rich Donnelly competes in the 2023 Ironman Lake Placid triathlon. 9Provided photo — Finisher Pix)

“I asked my wife Jean to see what she thought. She knows breast cancer — Jean’s been clean for 28 years. She didn’t like what she felt.”

A biopsy confirmed his suspicion. He had a malignant mass — 2.5 centimeters — an invasive ductal carcinoma that was stage one/two. What followed was a lumpectomy, the removal of his left nipple and closest lymph node and radiation.

Donnelly had joined what he calls the “1% club no one wants to join: men with breast cancer.”

The year before that, he had back surgery, an L3 discectomy.

“My back is feeling good,” he said. “My breast and the whole chest situation seems (in control). But this (toe) was going on the longest time and I didn’t think it would take this much to come back from. I think last year I did the same (going in last) because my arm was hurting from the radiation, so I had the situation last year when I wasn’t swimming as well.”

It still hurts to swim.

“The right side’s OK, but the left side, where the breast cancer was, just kind of hurts every stroke,” he said.

Endurance athletes — especially those with longevity — are used to injuries, large and small, and the time, effort and mental game it takes to recover and come back to the competition they love. Especially when they have the opportunity to celebrate 25 years of racing the Ironman Lake Placid triathlon.

“I didn’t want to sit home and say, ‘Hmm.’ I’d at least give it a go and show up,” he said. “I would have liked to do more, especially in the 25th. … Yeah, it’s disappointing.”

Donnelly finished the swim in 1 hour, 37 minutes and 8 seconds, but the damage had been done. He wasn’t able to start the 112-mile bike ride, never mind run a full marathon of 26.2 miles to finish the race at the Olympic Speedskating Oval, where his wife was volunteering. She’d already known he had trouble at the first transition; she volunteers as the captain of bike personal needs and sees him during the transitions at the Oval.

Donnelly’s left foot was in so much pain, he couldn’t get his bike shoes on to start the ride. His 25th race was over.

A DNF. When contacted two days later, he was still pretty bummed about not finishing.

“I could be better, you know. I could be better,” he said on the phone from his home in Tuxedo Park, New York. “I just had a tough time. I wasn’t all that happy with my effort on Sunday.”

The depressed feeling in his voice, however, perked up when mentioning Lake Placid. He’s determined to be back. Maybe not as a competitor; maybe as a volunteer, side by side with his wife. But he definitely wants to return.

The 1999 race in Lake Placid was Donnelly’s first Ironman. During a race in the fall of 1998, somebody told him about Lake Placid, so he signed up.

“It was a little cheaper (back then),” he said. “It was a paper application and you wrote a check. It wasn’t an internet kind of thing.”

That first year, he finished in 14:01:29.

“The first time I finished, I was like, ‘Never again,'” he said. “That’s what I told my wife. Of course, the next morning, we go over to get the photos, because they had the photos back then. … And I just wrote another check for the next year. … And it was almost like the annual event we just kind of kept doing. She would volunteer, and I would race.

The last time Donnelly finished the Ironman Lake Placid race was in 2019 with a time of 16:15:40. He recorded a DNF from 2021 to 2024.

Even when the race was canceled in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Donnellys visited Lake Placid that summer and stayed at the Crowne Plaza resort on the weekend the Ironman race was supposed to be held.

“We came down that morning at 7 o’clock when things would have started, and it was like a funeral,” he said. “There wasn’t much going on that day. Some people, I think, did the race during COVID. They just did it on their own, a self-supported kind of thing.”

For the most part, the Lake Placid Ironman has been good to Donnelly over the years. In 2013, he even qualified for the World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, here.

“I did it a few minutes quicker than Lake Placid,” he said. “So Lake Placid was a tougher course for me.”

This year, Donnelly’s wife was honored along with eight other volnteers, for volunteering at Ironman Lake Placid for 25 years. She has been the captain of bike personal needs so she can see her husband during both transitions, and then she volunteers at the finish line to see him there.

Now, Rich may be joining her in those volunteer duties for their 26th Ironman in Lake Placid.

“Twenty-five years of racing, my feet, my back, the breast is a whole other (thing). Maybe it’s time to just kind of give back,” he said.

Will a full 140.6-mile Ironman be too much for Rich’s 62-year-old body in 2024? Maybe. But he hasn’t completely ruled out another Lake Placid race.

“We’ll see. One step at a time, as they say, no joking in terms of my foot,” he said.