For Ben Lane, the pain is no obstacle.

Regardless of the strain on his joints or the aches in his muscles during a triathlon, 10K or marathon, the 39-year-old father of two and Captain with Eastside Fire and Rescue in Issaquah never has to look beyond his left wrist for the inspiration he needs to fight through the physical hardships.

“Team Challenge,” reads the rubber wristband Lane sports wherever he goes, a nod to the endurance training and fundraising arm of the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation of America.

But when Lane looks down he sees far more than a piece of blue and orange rubber stretching around his arm. He sees his youngest son Cooper, and he is fighting too.

Building an IronMan

Long before becoming a veteran of the endurance racing circuit, Lane was an onlooker, watching in awe as his wife completed triathlons around the West Coast. A swimmer during her youth in California, Tiffani eventually persuaded her husband to join her in a relay event, which spawned the desire for Lane to complete a triathlon on his own.

He accomplished that goal when he finished the 2001 Beaver Lake Triathlon, and was hooked from there. Lane and his wife continued to take part in events around the state and country and he ran his first Boston Marathon in 2009.

“My goal was never to be an IronMan or run marathons,” Lane said. “I just wanted to complete a triathlon by myself.”

Dozens of events later he has done that and more, combining his love of training with natural leadership skills to become a triathlon coach through Colorado-based IMJ Coaching a few years ago. Rather than redefining his image, distance and endurance events have merely been an extension of a passion for fitness, the outdoors and a balanced lifestyle.

Even more importantly, they have become a way to spread the message of IBD patients and work towards a cure.

Kids like Cooper

Sometime shortly after Lane became a solo triathlete and began taking on challenges around the West Coast, he and Tiffani had their second child, Cooper. From the beginning, the boy struggled with gastrointestinal issues, which caused fatigue and forced the family to undergo the gambit of tests and evaluations to try and isolate the problem.

No firm diagnosis was ever rendered until recently, when the Lanes went to Children’s Hospital and found out Cooper suffers from a type of Inflammatory Bowel Disease that is similar to Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis. There is no cure for Crohn’s and only a Colectomy (removal of the colon) can cure Colitis, which combined affect 1.4 million Americans each year, 10 percent of which are kids just like Cooper.

The impact on Cooper’s life has been mitigated by his determination and aided by the work of those at Children’s. While he cannot indulge in ice cream binges like others his age and still struggles with the discomfort of the disease, it hasn’t been able to keep him off the baseball diamond, basketball court or gridiron.

“He never makes an excuse,” Lane said. “He’s sometimes not on a level playing field, but he wont tell you that.”

Team Challenge and the CCFA attempt to curb the impact of IBD for Cooper and others through fundraising events focused on endurance training and races, so when Lane reached out before running the Boston Marathon, it was a natural fit.

“The topic of a triathlon came up and the Northwest Chapter was just adding the TriRock to it’s fundraising events,” Lane said. “One led thing to another and I believe things happen for a reason.”

Training for a cure

After agreeing to represent Team Challenge in Boston and raising $1,200 running the marathon, Lane matched his passion for leadership and endurance training by becoming a coach for the Northwest team that will compete in the TriRock San Diego.

For 16 weeks, Lane and fellow coach Stacy Wingard will work with beginning triathletes, some of which may not even own a bike, on running fundamentals and safety, basic bike maintenance and developing the confidence in the water to safely complete an open-water swim.

“Along the way, the goal is to have a team-building process and use other team members as inspiration,” Lane said. “They can show up in San Diego having done all the work and just have fun.”

Wingard, also a Woodinville resident and mother of two, met Lane in 2008 when both were working with a local triathlon team. She hired him as her coach through IMJ Coaching in 2010 and said his positive approach to endurance training immediately left an impression.

“The thing I appreciate is he understands the goals of the event, but he wants to get people there in a healthy and safe way,” Wingard said. “A lot of coaches just want to go hard all the time and scream at you. Ben is always concerned about his athletes and has a high value on family and balance in life.”

Lane said CCFA will have 150 total participants from around the West Coast, each of whom is matched with a fundraising mentor to help ease the process for first-timers and raise as much money as possible for CCFA and the cure for IBD. The goal for Lane and Wingard’s Northwest Team alone is $94,000.

That money will go to fund research and promote awareness of IBD and its treatments, the most reliable if which is Remacaid, an intravenous treatment that is administered every 6-8 weeks. Cooper Lane received his second dosage of Remecaid at Children’s recently and his father said physicians hope that will soon be the only treatment he needs to keep his symptoms at bay and allow him a more normal diet, at least until CCFA can help find a cure.

Until they do, Lane will continue taking part in events like the Boston Marathon and TriRock as a way to be closer to his son’s disease. Every so often, he gets a reminder of what all those miles of pavement and water add up to.

On his walk back to the hotel after the Boston Marathon, a girl approached him after notching his Team Challenge t-shirt. The young lady told him she was diagnosed with IBD over a year ago.

After thanking him for putting his efforts into finding a cure, she told him she too was taking Remacaid and has begun to see her symptoms subside and become more manageable. The meting gave Lane more motivation to continue to train himself and others and served as another reminder of why he is so involved in the cause of Crohn’s and Colitis.

“I don’t have it, but I see the effects and I’m in a position to hopefully make a difference,” he said. “This is the reason I’m the coach and landed in Boston. When I think maybe I have a struggle, I just put it in perspective and it’s nothing compared to what some of these people have to endure.”

For more information about donating to the Crohn’s Colitis Foundation of America, visit their website.

Top: Ben Lane at Eastside Fire and Rescue with his Team Challenge wristband. Middle: Lane and his son Cooper after the 2012 Boston Marathon. Below: A Team Challenge jacket for the Northwest TriRock team that will head to San Diego in September.