'I can'

COEUR d’ALENE - When Mark Turnipseed takes the starting line of Ironman Coeur d’Alene on Sunday, he’ll be a well-toned 165 pounds.

He’ll be confident, happy and looking forward to 140.6 miles of swimming, biking and running.

“I’m firing on all my cylinders," the 36-year-old said Thursday.

It wasn’t that long ago he was a different man.

Go back about five years, Turnipseed was 230 pounds, hooked on heroin, was an alcoholic and had been arrested several times for driving under the influence.

He even tried to commit suicide.

But he said training for Ironman was the first of many steps that brought him back from the brink and put him on a new path that has led to a connection of mind, body and spirit, along with books, launching health products and a modeling career.

All because he said, "I can," instead of "I can't."

"The triathlon to me is the thing that breaks away the view of myself that I can’t," he said. "Every single day I do what I think I can’t, I become an 'I can man.' That's what Ironman does for me. I can."

Turnipseed grew up in Whitefish, Mont., and in his teen years, visited Coeur d'Alene.

But as the birthdays passed, his use of drugs and alcohol increased, which led to a host of mental and physical problems.

The more he tried to figure out life, the more he hated it.

"At that point, I recognized what I wanted was just not to live," he said. "That was all I knew to figure it out, the only option was suicide."

He recalled drinking a "gallon of vodka" in 2018 on his way to jump off a bridge, falling out of the car, hitting his head and knocking himself cold.

When he awoke, nearly frozen, he headed to the health club to warm up in the sauna and on a whim, decided to swim in the pool. He thought maybe he could reach the other side.

"I barely got there," he said.

Then, he said, "something magic happened."

He decided to swim back and surprised himself when he made it.

"I thought I was going to drown," Turnipseed said, laughing.

Still, there was a sense of joy and accomplishment that he had done something on his own.

"I just believed I couldn’t do anything without the help of drugs," he said.

Later, he talked to a man who said he had recently completed an Ironman in Coeur d'Alene.

"You should do one," he told Turnipseed.

Turnipseed told the man he was insane.

"No way I could do an Ironman," he said.

"If I did, you can too," the man said.

For some reason, Turnipseed believed him and signed up for his first half Ironman in Boulder, Colo., which he completed in 2019.

Training for the endurance race gave him confidence. The more miles he biked, swam and ran, the better he felt.

"It was like I was almost invincible," he said.

He began working with a coach, which helped him to "start peeling way the trauma" of those years of drugs and alcohol.

"Triathlon turned me from a person of inaction, negative action, thinking, 'I can’t, the world is against me,' to a man of action who hops into what I call this beautiful stream called life," he said.

Turnipseed has since completed a full Ironman and wrote a memoir about his life, "My Suicide Race: Winning Over the Trauma of Addiction, Recovery and Coming Out."

He also is part of a new wellness brand, Halo 42.

It is is described as "Naturally sourced ingredients in each product that are proven to help ground and restore mentally as well as physically."

Turnipseed said Halo 42 can help people to "recognize beauty in the world and to fall back in love with the experience of life you have to recognize your own beauty."

"We posit that if we can help introduce people to mindfulness and words of affirmations then we can help them recognize their true beauty and in turn they will be able to recognize others beauty, ultimately making the world more inclusive and mentally healthy," he wrote.

He also found the strength to publicly share that he was gay.

"You gotta just take that step," said Turnipseed, who works as a swim suit model in Miami.

He said he longer lives a life of fear, but one of freedom.

"This place is miracle," Turnipseed said. "When you recognize that, you want to show up for life. Unless you see yourself as beautiful and awesome, you won't see it in others."