Image by Robert Murphy. Thoughts on digging deep in the Hawaii Ironman, and the mental perseverance required in endurance sports. This story was originally published in the January/February, 2010, issue of Inside Triathlon magazine. It was part of the magazine’s 2009 Ironman World Championship Coverage. Two decades ago Mark Allen reversed the course of his life. When he stepped on the starting line of the 1989 Hawaii Ironman, he had yet to win the coveted championship even though he had been in the mix since 1982, usually failing in spectacular ways (epic physical meltdowns, internal bleeding, bike machinery freak-outs). Dave Scott’s six masterful Hawaii wins must have loomed like a mountain. In his 2008 book, “Fit Soul, Fit Body,” co-authored with his teacher, Brant Secunda, a Huichol Shaman and healer, Allen describes how fear used to be the crux of his problem. “Every time I competed in the Ironman, fear would well up inside of me. I felt completely vulnerable to the thought that I had not done enough of the right kind of training to get my body ready. Everyone else seemed more prepared than I was. I trembled at the idea of not knowing where I would possibly find the strength of soul to make it through the thousands of moments when my body would scream out for me to stop. This fear could have been paralyzing, except for this simple teaching from Brant: ‘Be fearless in the face of your fears.’” Allen would win in 1989 and go on to win a total of six before his retirement. His presence continued to be felt in the race, as he became a critical adviser to others who struggled to secure success in Kona. In finally winning the Hawaii Ironman in 2007 after seven years of failing, Chris McCormack, in an interview conducted the day after the race, said it was Allen’s counsel that made the difference. Peter Reid made similar statements. It almost frustrates Allen that more Ironman athletes don’t pursue a metaphysical side of training. In an interview last year about the current pro field, Allen lamented, “There is still not one athlete who is incorporating anything other than numbers in the logbook to go fast. Anyone out there that you can think of that focuses on developing strength of inner character as a viable tool to go fast in Kona?” Two days before the race this past October, Allen introduced me to one of the age-group athletes he coaches, Diane Calderon. “She gets it,” Allen told me. Calderon is 50 years old and lives in Scarsdale, N.Y. Within triathlon she hails from the 1980s era. “It was a different scene back then,” she says. “I used my brother’s 10-speed to jump into the Westchester triathlon.” Calderon recalls the sport being more about the adventure than the competition. She qualified for the Ironman World Championship at St. Croix in 2005, ultimately finishing seventh in her age group at Kona. She then crossed into a different triathlon culture, where a competitive aura had supplanted the spirit she recalled from the 1980s, and she could feel it draw her in. Calderon, married with three children, was impassioned with the vision of returning to Kona, but in 2006 her plans were upended by a Lyme disease infection and an ensuing case of meningitis. She recovered and tried again in 2007, where she qualified for Kona at the Buffalo Springs Lake 70.3, but she was struck by a car while riding, two times, on a thin strip of road near her house. “It’s Route 22, with two lanes and a tiny shoulder. Second time I was going northbound. It was a hit and run. I could barely walk for two weeks.” Calderon didn’t give up, making her Hawaii comeback in 2009. She says the setbacks had a calming effect and freed her from competition anxieties. “It’s about perspective,” she says. “I felt sheer joy the first time I came to the Ironman because I had never been to Hawaii. I remember being in the race and just screaming because it was so great, because it’s so wonderful to be able to do such a thing.” Rather than get caught up in the hamster wheel of obsessing over an annual Kona slot, Calderon pledged to stay in the moment and simply enjoy it all. *** “Here the real melancholy began, when the runner might ask himself just what the hell he was doing to himself. It was a time for the most intense concentration, the iciest resolve.” These words were written by John L. Parker in the cult-classic running novel, “Once a Runner.” For those who have tasted the shock of racing one mile all-out, he nails it. The stunning amount of discomfort that is part and parcel of distance athletics leaves many wondering why any sane person would volunteer for it all. In his lectures, running coach Jack Daniels talks about how few American kids ever start off wanting to be runners—usually they run or go out for track to train for another sport, so my path into the long-distance world might sound familiar to you. Track was secondary to football for me, and I was one of those kids in track who started off in seventh grade seeming like I was destined to be a sprinter. I ran the 100, the 200 and the sprint relays. I wasn’t the fastest but I was close. Time tumbled forward and by ninth grade a few others caught up. That was all it took to bump me out of the short sprints and the sprint relays. Coach Denny Kohl (I remember it all well) then put a hand on my shoulder and enthusiastically told me how it “was time to move up to the ‘master sprinter’s race.’” He implied it was a great day, a graduation, and it was time to move up to the 400 meters. As any kid who ever raced the 400 meters can tell you, being moved up from the 100 or 200 to the 400 does not feel like a promotion. The first time I raced it I ran 56 seconds. It was a blood lactate horror show, more uncomfortable than anything I’d ever imagined, as I tried to fight through the leg-melting fatigue by clenching my fists and teeth (told later “Boy, the bear really jumped on your back!”), a state that Parker described as the hero of his novel survived a one-mile race: His body rigged up in true fashion, getting the jaw-shoulder lock and the sideways final straight fade and he began to lose all semblance of control. He peered out at all this as the orb was about to burst, letting all the poison flood out, peered at it and quite calmly wondered, When will it all end? So as time began to bare my fast-twitch limits (and, coincidentally, no one offered me a football scholarship), coaches moved me to the 400, then the 800, and later on in life the mile, the 5K, the 10K, the marathon, to triathlon, to the Ironman. I’m sure that those from competitive swimming and cycling backgrounds can describe similar journeys through sport and into triathlon, and all of us at one time or another, when a blast of cold, grim reality hits in the bad part of a race, have had to square off with the existential question: Just what the hell am I doing to myself?
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