There was the Ironman in Arizona wrecked by 35 mile-an-hour winds, the one in St. George, Utah, and who can forget Canada or the time Corey McKenna met a blind man chugging along during the marathon portion of the race in Coeur d’Alene in 2008.

McKenna met the man at mile marker 8 or 10 during the marathon leg of the grueling 140.6-mile triathlon race. They chatted, about this, that, families, the race and the inspiration McKenna drew from the man, Charlie Plaskon, who went on to finish.

It helped get his mind off things, like the pain, and miles clicked by.

“It was way cool,” McKenna said of the experience. “It goes right to the Ironman mantra: Anything is possible.”

In fact, that’s his one piece of advice for those taking on the race: Have fun. Meet people.

“Chit-chat,” as he called it. “I chit-chat with everybody.”

Like the time he met a 40-time Ironman finisher during the same 2008 Coeur d’Alene race. McKenna, an eight-time Ironman finisher himself, can’t imagine adding 32 more to the total.

“Forty Ironman!” he said. “My God!”

Or how about last year, when he worked as a volunteer for Ironman Coeur d’Alene as a finish line catcher and caught the last finisher as she fell across the line moments before midnight, the lines of people along Sherman Avenue cheering. Funny, one of his best Ironman experiences was when he was a volunteer, but isn’t that the way it goes?

“’Don’t you remember me catching you?’” McKenna asked the woman when he saw her the next day.

She didn’t, but she thanked him anyway.

“Exhausted,” he said. “She was out of it.”

But of all the races, this year’s event has a special feel to it. Once it’s in the books, McKenna’s ready to put 2013’s finish at the top of his memory charts. After years of trying and months of job searching, the 43-year-old professor at Whitworth University in Spokane is finally a local.

He and his wife of eight years, Jennifer, moved to Coeur d’Alene from Bakersfield, Calif., last June, just in time for McKenna to volunteer for the 2012 race, and register for today’s race.

“It starts feeling like we can call this place home,” he said. “It felt like for probably six months, six or eight months, we were on an extended vacation, wondering when we were going to go back to Bakersfield.”

They moved here partly because Jennifer suffers from cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that affects the lungs. Bakersfield sits north of the Grapevine Pass on Interstate 5, at the cusp of the state’s Central Valley. It’s air quality is poor, and leaving the desert area was always a high priority for the couple. It was after the 2008 race the Lake City entered their radar, which only amplified after McKenna completed the race again in 2011.

“Almost obsessive,” McKenna said of his daily job search targeting the Inland Northwest after the 2011 race. “When we got married, one of my promises to her was to move her out of the Central Valley and move her to a place that has better air quality.”

So when Whitworth came calling, McKenna jumped at the opportunity. He’s now a professor in the School of Education — educating future educators — a position he held at his last post at Point Loma University in San Diego.

His students, he said, are fascinated when they find out their teacher moonlights as an Ironman. Training for cycling, swimming and running takes time, but he works insight from racing into his college and life lessons.

Such as what he’s learned from chatting up other runners, meeting people like Plaskon, during his own racing.

“Never give up,” the mantra goes. “You can do anything if you put your mind to it.”

As far as living closer to his new campus in Spokane after the move? The McKennas didn’t even consider it.

“No question,” he said of choosing Coeur d’Alene, hour commute and all. “A no-brainer.”

“I have home-course advantage,” he added about one of the perks of the move.

As an added wrinkle, McKenna is raising money for cystic fibrosis for this year’s race, accepting pledges from friends and family through word of mouth and social media.

Any pledge is great, he said, but one of his wishes this year is that Ironman race announcer Mike Reilly calls out McKenna’s hometown when the famous voice booms about McKenna’s finish over the microphone.

Even registering this year felt different, McKenna said. The volunteers commented on McKenna’s new hometown as he was filling out the paperwork, which was “a different vibe,” he called it.

So imagine coming down the final block, sprinting to the end of the main drag in his new hometown.

“It’s going to be really neat coming down Sherman,” he said. “Mike Reilly, I hope, notices I’m from Coeur d’Alene.”