Iron War

by Matt Fitzgerald

  “Nice to meet you,” Dave said, shaking the man’s hand while trying to remember the name or face.

  Boyer read the lack of recognition in Dave’s eyes.

  “The Mad Triathlete?” he prompted.

  Dave continued to smile uncertainly.

  “Did you get the tape?” Boyer tried.

  “Tape?”

  “Yeah, there was supposed to be a tape in your race packet,” Boyer said, straining to maintain his original tone of enthusiasm through rising disappointment. “ ‘When Dave Came to Town’? By John Boyer, a.k.a. the Mad Triathlete?”

  “Oh, right!” Dave said.

  “Did you like it?’

  “Yeah, that was great,” said Dave, who still had not heard the song but faintly recalled seeing the tape in his race bag. Valerie Silk, a friend of Boyer, had placed it there personally as a favor to the fervent fan of the Man. Truth was, Dave had little interest in music outside his own piano playing. “Thanks.”

  Boyer let Dave go, thrilled by the apparent success of the encounter.

  Dave’s workouts that day served to groove his race tempo in each of the three disciplines and nothing more. On the bike, between a short warm-up and a cooldown, he rode three times three minutes at 25 mph. He ran three miles, going easy except for three half-mile surges at six-minutesper-mile pace. He dived into the ocean and swam one mile, accelerating to race speed several times. He felt fitter and faster than ever before.

  While Dave swam, Mark relaxed at the Kanaloa, having decided not to train at all that day. His body throbbed with that familiar two-days-before-Ironman feeling. A massive reservoir of hoarded energy churned inside him. He felt almost able to open the door to the balcony, step outside, and take flight, swooping back and forth over the pool-blue ocean like Peter Pan. Mark always relished the sensation of supreme latent power he experienced in that brief window of time when a state of peak fitness overlapped with a condition of optimum rest.

  Mark’s mother had left a magazine on the coffee table during a visit to the condo the previous day. It was the current issue of Yoga Journal. The cover story was titled “If Buddha Had Been a Shrink: The Link Between Psychotherapy and Spirituality.” An illustration showed Buddha scribbling on a notepad while a man reclined on a sofa and talked. Needing something to take his mind off the race, Mark grabbed the periodical and began flipping through it idly. He was too nervous to actually read. He just scanned and turned pages, scanned and turned. An advertisement near the front of the magazine caught his attention. Not the advertisement itself but a small black-and-white photograph it contained, depicting a very old man, Native American in appearance. His leathery face, framed by a floppy sombrero, wore a broad, toothless smile. Something about that smile arrested Mark. It somehow communicated lasting happiness instead of the momentary joy expressed by most smiles. The old man seemed to embody pure peace. He was a shaman, apparently, who, along with another man pictured next to him, was hosting an upcoming spiritual retreat in Mexico. Mark let his eyes linger on the face, the smile, a few moments longer and turned the page.

  AT THREE O’CLOCK in the afternoon Dave and Mark were forced to see each other yet again, and in even closer quarters than at the morning pro meeting. The Ironman press conference was held in a meeting room at the Kona Surf Hotel. Dave and Mark were seated inches apart in chairs set behind a long table with only a handful of the other big stars, including Scott Tinley and the defending women’s champion, Paula Newby-Fraser, before a gaggle of reporters. All eyes were on Dave and Mark. The room held the tension of a title fight weigh-in between boxers harboring genuine mutual loathing. Every athlete besides Dave and Mark might as well have been invisible. What reporter in his right mind was going to waste his questions on anyone else? Mark was evasive and tight-lipped in his answers. Dave spoke concisely but with characteristic pugnacity.

  “What’s it going to take to win this year?” one reporter asked everyone at the table.

  Tinley, Mike Pigg, Ken Glah, and Grip passed the question like a hot potato. Dave grabbed it and took a big bite.

  “Eight-ten,” he said. “If the conditions are good, I think that’s certainly possible.”

  Tinley rolled his eyes at Dave’s right-in-character bravado but did not doubt the prediction, which, if borne out, he knew, would make him a loser by no less than twenty minutes. Mike Pigg made an effort to doubt the prediction and then, having failed in that effort, made an effort to imagine himself capable of the same feat. Everyone else present, athletes and reporters, understood Dave’s prediction as a direct challenge to Mark Allen. Dave might as well have stood up from his chair, put his snarling mug right in Mark’s face, and shouted, “I’m going to make you cry tears of blood this year, you little jellyfish!”

  Among those in attendance, whistling under his breath, was Mike Reilly, a publisher of race event listings who was present at Ironman for the first time as an announcer. A total geek for the sport and a speechless admirer of Dave and Mark, he studied the two men throughout the conference. Everyone else seemed to stop paying attention when it was adjourned amid a cacophony of scuffing chairs, but Mike kept his eyes glued on the rivals. Naively, he was waiting to see if they would shake hands. Instead, they scrambled out of their seats as though they were practicing a fire drill and left the room in opposite directions. Mike was now twice as excited for the race as he had been already.

  At six thirty that evening the Exceed Carbo Loading Party and Mandatory Pre-Race Meeting took place in the parking lot of the King Kam. A stage had been set up at one end of the lot, and round tables with eight place settings each filled the middle. Hundreds of athletes and scores of their friends and family who had purchased tickets feasted on pasta, rolls, and salad while Mike Plant hosted a program of entertainment that included a three-song set from John Boyer, the Mad Triathlete, who sang while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar. His last number was the world premiere of “When Dave Came to Town,” sung to the tune of the B. B. King and U2 collaboration “When Love Comes to Town” that had been a hit earlier that year.

  I heard that he was injured, yeah I wouldn’t see his face.

  With David Scott at home, I would surely win this race.

  I’m a humble kind of guy and I really hate to brag,

  But you know I got the Ironman right here in the bag.

  But when Dave came to town, I just sat there and cried.

  When Dave came to town I should’ve stayed inside.

  Maybe I was wrong to put the word around,

  But I said what I said before Dave came to town.

  As he left the stage, the Mad Triathlete was heckled by a bunch of drunk Australian athletes. Dave wasn’t even there.

  ON FRIDAY MORNING Dave and Mark had time for one last spin on their bikes before they were required to check them in at the pier, where the machines would remain under guard overnight in their numberdesignated transition spaces, along with 1,284 other bikes. Ironman’s pro racers were given their own bike check-in window that was separate from that for the unwashed masses. Since the procedure involved all of the sport’s biggest stars trickling onto a single public stage within a small span of time, a crowd formed at the approach to the pier to make true theater of what was already an inherently theatrical affair. It was triathlon’s version of a Hollywood red-carpet walk. The marquee athletes promenaded one by one into the transition area, their multithousand-dollar two-wheelers drawing the sorts of oohs and ahs that starlets’ dresses attract on Oscar night.

  There was Kenny Souza, rocking his Guns N’ Roses hair, with his Nishiki Altron. Kenny liked to race duathlons in nothing but a bodybuilder’s posing suit (basically, naked). Close behind him came Mike Pigg, a sticker reading “Pigg Power” affixed to his bike. Pigg was ogled with the respect due the last man to have defeated Mark Allen in any race besides Ironman.

  Dave cruised in with his bike ahead of Mark. As far as the triathlon public knew, it was a Centurion Ironman Dave Scott signature model, but in fact the frame was
designed by a boutique northern California bike maker named Albert Eisentraut and painted to look like the model Dave endorsed but never actually rode himself because he didn’t like it. Mark, always the less punctual of the two, came in later with his “Schwinn,” which was really a Kestrel. The bicycle had not been overlooked in Mark’s efforts to find every little advantage for the race. Unlike Dave’s frame, which comprised several steel pieces welded together, Mark’s was an advanced prototype made from a single piece of carbon fiber—lighter, stiffer, and more aerodynamic than the Eisentraut. Mark’s Scott-brand aerobar was also superior to Dave’s Profile aerobar. It was among the first that positioned the gear shifters right at the fingertips instead of leaving them on the downtube of the frame, where Dave’s remained, requiring the rider to break his aerodynamic tuck for every gear change.

  Luddite that he was, Dave probably knew nothing about Mark’s technological advantage, and if he did, it cost him no sleep. Let Mark scurry around for small benefits. The Man would rely on the same single big advantage that he brought to Kona every year.

  “I had this idea that if I trained more than anyone else, I was bound to succeed,” Dave said in 1987. “If I found out that Scott Tinley or Mark Allen was working out fifty hours a week, I’d work out fifty-one.”

  Dave Scott did not stretch, as Mark did. He did not get massages or monitor his heart rate or submit to physiological testing or mentally rehearse his races or fuss over his bike, as Mark did. He just made sure he outworked Mark—and everyone else.

  SHORTLY AFTER LUNCHTIME USTS cofounder Jim Curl, who would compete in his first Ironman the next day, stopped by the Sea Village Resort to visit a friend. Jim’s host mentioned that Dave Scott was staying in the unit directly underneath his. Dave had been Jim’s first swim coach in 1980, and he also knew Verne, Dot, and Dave’s sisters from his time in Davis. So he decided to drop by on his way out.

  Jim was just raising a fist to knock on the door to Dave’s unit when he heard a burst of uproarious laughter from within. When he was admitted, Jim encountered Dave’s entire family (minus sister Patti), and a few other people whom he didn’t know. Every face was glowing with good humor. Apparently Dave had just spilled a smoothie all over himself and was being roundly ragged on for his klutziness. Dave himself joined in the mockery, pretending to spill and knock over everything in sight.

  In eighteen hours Dave would compete in a race that meant everything to him, and more than ever before. He bore a burden of crushing pressure, initiated both internally and externally. Yet here he was, cutting up as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Until this moment Jim had never seen the slightest hint that Dave had a goofy side, and he was letting it out now, of all times.

  Jim hung out for fifteen light and relaxed minutes, then left. He heard another wave of laughter behind him as he walked away. There’s no way he can lose, Jim thought.

  AT ABOUT FOUR O’CLOCK Mark left the Kanaloa with Julie. They climbed into their van and drove a couple of miles toward town on Ali’i Drive. They parked on the inland side of the road just past Pahoehoe Beach Park and crossed to the ocean side on foot. The crazy weather of a few days ago had all but vanished. The late-afternoon air was not quite hot but warmer than it had been all week and disturbed by only the gentlest of breezes. Thick clouds hung over the high inland hilltops, but overhead the sky was blue. The sinking sun hung 15 degrees above the horizon straight off the west-facing shore.

  Mark and Julie descended three concrete steps accessible through a gap in the guardrail and entered a grassy, leafy bower. Passing a tall palm tree to the left and a squat banyan to the right, they followed a short path through an opening in a low stone wall and paused briefly, facing one of the most curious bits of architecture on the entire island. The structure looked like a clapboard colonial church that had been magically miniaturized to one-third of its original magnitude—not a very small church but a shrunken one. A simple rectangle, it had room for twelve pews and not one more. Its steeple came to a point scarcely twenty-five feet above the neatly trimmed lawn below. The immaculate white paint job, with bright blue trim and matching tin roof, heightened its dollhouse appearance. Quaint lettering above the blue double door in front identified the edifice as St. Peter’s by-the-Sea Catholic Church, but everyone called it the Little Blue Church.

  The wall that one crossed to enter the church grounds wrapped all the way around it in an irregular shape. Beyond it lay a jumbled field of rough stones that had obviously provided the material for the man-made boundary. And beyond that, the sea.

  This was one of Mark’s favorite spots in Hawaii—one of very few places where he felt as comfortable as he did in San Elijo Lagoon at home.

  A small sign next to the church’s entrance read, “Mass Sat Only 7:30,” but when Mark tried the door, it opened. The couple peered inside and saw a lone woman sitting in a middle pew, her head bowed in prayer. They shut the door and left her in peace. This wasn’t their true destination anyway.

  Immediately north of the church, just beyond a thin line of trees, and made from the same stones as the church’s surrounding wall, lay the foundation of an ancient temple, or heiau, known as Kuemanu. A thatched-wood shrine and carved wooden images of gods once stood upon it. These were destroyed or allowed to decay after King Kamehameha II renounced the traditional Hawaiian religion in 1819. St. Peter’s was built next door a few decades later as an unsubtle symbol of Christianity’s usurpation, but native Hawaiians still came to what was left of Kuemanu Heiau to make offerings. And so did Mark Allen, on the eve of the greatest race ever run.

  Mark and Julie made the short walk to the heiau and gingerly stepped onto the lumpy foundation of large stones, spanning 100 feet in length and 50 in width. Leaving Julie’s side, Mark stepped forward and laid the grasses pulled from San Elijo Lagoon on an altar made from four long sticks stuck into the ground at the corners of a small square, with a crude shelf of twigs and grasses connecting them at shoulder height. As the soft light of late afternoon fell upon his face, Mark spoke.

  “Hey, just let me be here with my strength,” he said. “Let me just feel good as who I am and somehow find power and strength on the racecourse—find those things I’ve been missing.”

  The prayer seemed to have some immediate effect, as Mark felt a sense of peace wash over him. He closed his eyes and held a meditative silence. Images began to form inside his mind. Humanoid figures coalesced. He recognized them as the island’s great healers, or kahunas. In a single voice they spoke to him as in a dream.

  “Yes, you can race as you hope to,” he heard. “But first you must show courage. You have to be brave.”

  Mark knew he could be brave. He left the heiau with Julie feeling more confident and relaxed than he had ever felt in Kona.

  Later, as the golden sun melted into the sea, Mark ate his last solid meal before the race on his balcony with Mike Rubano and Julie. Glorious sunsets are commonplace on the Kona Coast, but this one was better than glorious. It was perfect. Not the slightest change in the air temperature or wind direction or anything else could have made it better. Then it did get better. In the ocean below them a pod of dolphins began to jump in formation. It was like a private show, compliments of the island.

  “Mark, this is a really good sign,” Mike said, believing it.

  Mark smiled his Mona Lisa smile and said nothing.

  CHAPTER 7

  IRON WILL

  To win Ironman, you have to have physical and mental strength. And everyone has physical strength.

  —WOLFGANG DITTRICH

  It is one minute before three o’clock on the afternoon of October 14, 1989, and Dave Scott and Mark Allen are sprinting shoulder to shoulder through a lava field on the Kona Coast of Hawaii. Meanwhile, Samuele Marcora is studying for the classes he’s taking as a physical education student at the University of Milan, Italy, and feeling a little sore from the hits he took in a game of American football that he played earlier in the day as a linebacker for the semiprofess
ional Frogs of Busto Arsizio.

  Years later, his football days behind him, Sam will develop a novel, brain-centered scientific model of endurance performance. Using this model, Sam will be able to explain that Dave and Mark are three miles ahead of their closest competitor on the Queen K Highway not for the heart-lung-and-muscle reasons Sam’s fellow exercise physiologists would give but instead for the very reason that Dave and Mark themselves would give: because they are mentally stronger. In fact, Sam will be able to look at an image of the human brain and point out exactly where the superior strength sits in the minds of Dave and Mark.

  IT WAS AMERICA that drew Samuele Marcora away from his originally planned career path of owning a gym and onto the laboratory-centered path he walks today. Sam loved not only the most American sport but American culture generally, and spending time in the United States was high on his bucket list. His twin brother, Eduardo, had gone to Boulder, Colorado, to pursue doctoral studies in biology. Sam wished to further his study of exercise science for the sake of his future work as a fitness industry entrepreneur but discovered that graduate programs in that discipline did not exist in his native country, whereas America had the best programs in the world. Altogether, he really had no choice but to leave his cara madre and go west.

  Sam selected the University of Wisconsin–Lacrosse for his master’s studies in exercise science because it was the cheapest among the bestrespected programs. During his two years there Sam fell in love with research and decided he wanted to go all the way. Still unable to earn a terminal degree in his field of passion in Italy, he accepted an offer from Bangor University in Wales.

  Exercise science is studied not only for the sake of learning more about the benefits of exercise and discovering ways to help athletes perform better; it also teaches us about how the human body works. Physical exercise accelerates or intensifies the normal operations of many of the body’s systems—metabolic, endocrinal, neuromuscular, and cardiorespiratory, in particular—and stresses those systems in ways that stimulate adaptive responses. Studying a system in a state of stress is often the most fruitful way to figure out how it functions normally. Sociologists obsess over deviance and revolution, for example, because these exceptions elucidate the rule of order in society. Similarly, looking at the body as it responds and adapts to the stress of physical exercise sheds light on how it works generally, yielding knowledge with both athletic and clinical (that is, life-enhancing) applications.