Iron Mike: Avalon Beach Patrol Alum Mike Smith Still Competing in Triathlons at 73
Mike Smith at Ironman 2007.
Nearly a half-century has passed since he last patrolled the Avalon beach. But Mike Smith still has a soft spot in his heart for the place and the people he left behind – even though that heart is surrounded by no fewer than five stents to help keep it beating. That’s part of the toll from a life that has seen him compete 18 times in 140.6-mile Ironman triathlons throughout the world as well as a number of other endurance competitions.
Back when he started out as a lifeguard for the Avalon Beach Patrol in the late-1960s, he never could have imagined such a life. He was just a kid from Emmaus, Pa., outside of Reading, escaping to the Shore for the summer and having a ball.
“I had graduated high school and four of us got an apartment in Avalon,” recalls Smith, 73, who has maintained some of those relationships over the years. That includes one with Murray Wolf, the man who hired him and who recently retired as Beach Patrol captain.
“I just loved the ocean right away,” he continued. “I ended up guarding there for seven summers from ’68 to ’74. We partied on the beach. We were tanned. It was my favorite place in the world at that age.”
At least until his other passions, teaching and coaching, took him 3,000 miles to the Left Coast. After graduating from East Stroudsburg State, where he played linebacker before a freakish knee injury ended his career, Smith began to settle in teaching physical education and coaching the swim team in 1974 at an elementary school in nearby Bethlehem.
That’s when one of his buddies convinced him to make the move that would change his life. “My best buddy was in San Diego,” he explained about the decision that would shape the next 39 years. “I wanted to get my teacher’s certificate, so I quit my teaching job and went to get my Master’s at San Diego State.”
It didn’t take long before Smith got a teaching job at Bancroft Elementary school in Spring Valley, Calif. At the same time, being a champion swimmer back home – which had made him a natural lifeguard – he formed his own swimming team out there and resumed his coaching career. Among the places he coached was Helix High, where Basketball Hall of Famer Bill Walton and former NFL stars Reggie Bush and Alex Smith went to school.
While those athletic luminaries never ventured into the water, Mike Smith’s swim teams at Helix won 31 straight meets over his first three years and lost only three times during his six-year stint. He followed that up with successful runs at two other schools, amassing 270 dual-meet wins over his 40-year career. In the process, he developed such a reputation that other coaches began sending their top swimmers to work with him.
That’s in addition to the time he spent being a lifeguard on the Pacific beaches, which was completely different from his experience in Avalon. “I ended up guarding both East Coast and West Coast, which is kind of unique,” says Smith, who made it back here to his old stomping grounds a few years ago to see Wolf.
“In California, I saved a bunch of people. In New Jersey, there was a different system for guarding. We would keep them more in front of our stand. Murray stressed that. It’s dangerous out there if you don’t know how to swim.”
You might think coaching, teaching, lifeguarding and racing, eventually followed by marriage and then fatherhood, would be enough to suit Mike Smith. But the man who always yearned for the next challenge found it in the early-’80s when he discovered the triathlon.
For the uninitiated, the triathlon is broken down into swimming, biking and running segments. Depending on the event, the distances can range from the 16.06-mile sprint triathlon, the 32.1-mile Standard—or Olympic—triathlon, the 70.3-mile half-Ironman triathlon, to the best-known 140.6-mile Ironman World Championship Triathlon, held annually in Kona, Hawaii.
Beginning with Hawaii in 1981, Smith competed in 18 Ironman triathlons – seven of them in Hawaii – along with a dozen half-triathlons. He’s also done a number of shorter races, both in the water and on land.
Yet most of that wasn’t until he’d reached his 50s, since all that teaching and coaching while raising his daughter, Micha, after splitting up with his wife, simply took up too much time. By that point, the Ironman triathlon, which in Hawaii consists of a 2.4-mile swim in the ocean, a 122-mile bike race around the island, followed by the traditional 26.2-mile marathon run, had evolved into big business. Athletes would come from around the world to compete in their respective five-year age groups.
But that never deterred Smith, who competed five years in a row at Kona, in addition to doing triathlons in Ecuador, Cancun, Nice, France and Cozumel, Mexico. Not even after suffering a heart attack in 2003, where he concedes his stubbornness recognizing the gravity of his condition could have killed him.
“I had a heart attack when I was at school and ignored it,” says Smith, who somehow overcame that to make it back to the water and run marathons six months later. “I did an ocean swim after that and got second place.
“I was lying in a ball afterwards and didn’t tell anyone I was feeling bad. Then I drove myself to the hospital. There was a kind of stubbornness. The problem with being stubborn is part of my heart muscle died that day because it wasn’t getting blood.
“I could have died.”
Fast-forward 18 years and, despite having four more stents in his body and two knee replacements – they were never the same after that old football injury – Smith is still competing. Just last month he did a triathlon in Acapulco. And he’s planning more, assuming his knees and aching quads hold out.
Besides that, the kid from Emmaus – where his two sisters still live (he also has a brother in North Carolina) – would love to get back to Avalon one of these days.
“I went to the reunion [for the Beach Patrol’s 100th anniversary in 2006] and saw all I guys I guarded with,” says Smith, who has lived in Houston since 2013 when he retired from teaching and finally left San Diego to be closer to Micha, who is now engaged. “There’s a lot of history for me in Avalon.
“My Uncle Lou was a guard there. My frat brother at East Stroudsburg, Jim Smith, and I, we got second in the Dutch Hoffman Memorial. Dave Kerr, who passed away, guarded with me. People are finding me now on Facebook after 40 years. They look up to me being an Ironman.”
He’s just not sure how much longer that will be the case.
“I’ve had to change to stay competitive with my age and the injuries,” admits Smith, who besides the stents and bum knees had atrial flutter ablation surgery in 2017, then was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation the following year. “In reality, I can still do the triathlon, but my time is so poor. My quads and legs have affected my bike speed.
“But I’ll try to hang on till I’m 75.”
That would be just about a half century from the days Smith and his cohorts roamed the Shore, occasionally making the trek into Philly and grabbing a Pat’s cheesesteak. While those were memorable times, looking back he has no regrets.
“Here’s a guy who was a lifeguard and had a great time,” said Smith, who had the distinction of winning at least one athletic award of some sort from 1962 until he retired in 2013, including Ironman trophies in Cancun, Ecuador and Cozumel. “He won some races and moved to the West Coast, teaching there and getting into the sporting life as an Ironman.
“But there’s a lot of gratitude being a teacher and a father.”
Because if there’s one thing Mike Smith learned from the time he started patrolling the beach in Avalon until now, it’s this: The lessons never end.