An Ironman consists of considerably more; a 2.4-mile swim and 112-mile cycle followed by a full marathon.
Bellin built slowly and trained smartly. He gently cranked up distance and carefully adapted his kit. He had a special shoe made to help prevent the blisters that would open up unnoticed on his numb left foot.
He suffered setbacks too. Covid-19 delayed one shot at Kona. Then when lockdowns eased and the event returned, he was still learning to trust his legs again after surgery to remove metal supports pinned to the bones.
But in October 2022, six and a half years on from the bombing, Bellin proved his own mettle was stronger than ever, crossing the line in Hawaii in 14 hours, 39 minutes and 38 seconds.
“It was never about how fast I went; the goal was to show myself my body and mind are capable despite this handicap,” says Bellin.
“I don’t want my mindset to accept the state of being a victim.
“I am a survivor and I owe it to the people who died that day – and to my country as a proud Belgian – to constantly overcome. I won’t succumb to this. I have atrophy, I can’t move my toes any more, but if you allow your handicap to be stronger than you are, your condition will slowly decline.”
The one thing that nearly kept him from the finish line was the same that ensured he was on the start line – nutrition.
Bellin, ahead of schedule on his swim and bike legs, failed to adjust his refuelling strategy. He downed an electrolyte drink faster than planned. By the time he got into the meat of the marathon, he was suffering stomach pain and cramps as his body attempted to process an overload of carbohydrates and sodium.
By contrast, on 22 March 2016, Bellin’s appetite had saved him.
Without those three plates of carbonara the night before, his blood sugar would probably have been too low for him to stay conscious. He would have stayed behind a police cordon. He would have lost more blood and possibly, everything.
Luck? Fate? A happy coincidence of sugars and salt in his system?
Bellin disagrees.
“That pasta carbonara story? The whole story? It is not luck one bit,” he says.
That evening, he hadn’t planned to go out for a meal. He had only just returned to Brussels from a day of business meetings in Paris. He was drained. He was booked on the first flight to New York the next day. He wanted only to sleep.
And then his phone rang.
“It was a good friend of mine, Greg. His wife is a teacher along with my wife at the International School in Brussels,” Bellin remembers.
“He said: ‘Hey, we are going to grab something to eat at this Italian restaurant, come with us.’
“I was like, ‘I’m tired, I’ve been in Paris all day’ and I hung up on him.
“Greg calls me back a second time. He says: ‘C’mon, I haven’t seen you in a while, let’s hang out.’
“I told him I was on that first flight to New York and hung up on him a second time.”
Greg was tenacious. He phoned Bellin again. Bellin hung up again.
It wasn’t until Greg’s fourth call that Bellin finally relented.
“Greg finally said, ‘Seb, you have to eat. I love you man, I just want to see you.’
“So I went to meet him and his wife Cara at the restaurant and I ate that first plate of pasta so fast that the waiter brought another two.
“If Greg hadn’t called me back, I would have gone straight to bed, got up, had a glass of water and a banana maybe and run out the door to catch that flight.
“Everyone thinks it is the pasta carbonara, but I would not even have been there to eat it without the love of a friend who I hung up on three times.
“The key was the quality in my life. The love and the passion in it.”
It was the secret ingredient to Bellin’s carbonara. One he adds to everything he can.
“It was the same in sports. I was never focused on stats,” he says.
“I didn’t have jumping ability, I didn’t have good numbers or anything like that, but I had passion and discipline, those attributes that couldn’t be measured.
“It is the same in life. Can you measure love, passion, empathy, tolerance, open-mindedness? You can’t measure these things. They are qualities, not quantities.
“A mindset focused on quantity is always limited and finite. But when you focus on the things you love, because you are passionate about them, because you want to learn, then the possibilities are limitless.”
