Iron War

by Matt Fitzgerald

  By the time he reaches the Queen K, Dave has already passed a couple of the ten athletes who finished the swim ahead of him, among them Dirk Aschmoneit, who came down with an ill-timed flu earlier in the week and now puts up no fight, and defending European champion Yves Cordier, who counters by leaping out of his seat and stomping on his pedals. Yves has come here to win.

  Turning left onto the highway, Dave drops his butt onto the seat at last and rests his forearms on the aerobars, hunkering down for the long haul. Yves continues his standing sprint until he’s established contact with Dave. Ken Glah makes the turn next and continues to shovel coal into the fire until he’s locked on to Dave and Yves, towing Mark behind him. Mike Pigg now sweeps around the corner and puts all his chips into joining the group, latching on as it crests Palani Hill and prepares to drop into the lava fields below.

  The vista that greets them there is deathly, Dantean—perfectly constituted to terrify the triathlete who faces it one or two hours into a nine-, eleven-, or fourteen-hour day. Coal-like rock sprawls for miles ahead on the vast expanse below. In the far distance mountains tower, offering a dubious reprieve from the magma pits the athletes must traverse to reach them.

  Dave sees the colorful dots of other competitors spaced out on the vanishing ribbon of road ahead. Automatically he sets his sights on the nearest. Chasing fast swimmers who can’t ride for shit is always a good game, and in this case it’s a game that dovetails nicely with Dave’s strategy of making Mark hurt. So torrid is Dave’s tempo that Ken Glah and Mike Pigg, both of whom know they need a lead off the bike to have any chance of winning the race, follow him without even a thought of attempting a pass. They’re like boxers pressed against the ropes with their forearms raised as shields, warding off a furious barrage of blows from an opponent intent on a first-round knockout, hoping for nothing more than to survive to the bell, saving all plans for a counterattack for some wished-for future round. Yves Cordier, who, with a stab of panic, has discovered a problem with his gear shifters, checks his speedometer, which reads 44 kph. C’est de la folie, he thinks. This is insanity.

  It is said that each athlete starts Ironman with a book of matches. If at any time he puts out an effort that exceeds the maximum effort he could sustain evenly from start to finish, he burns a match. There are only so many matches to burn, and when they’re gone the athlete himself flames out. Dave burned a match right away climbing Pay-’n’-Save Hill, and he’s already burning another as he mows down the dwindling number of riders ahead of him, one by one, and forces Mark to burn a few of his own matches, hoping his nemesis started with one fewer.

  The chugging five-man, ten-wheel train catches and drops Joachim Zemke, sixth man out of the water. Patrick Bateman, fourth, is chewed up and excreted minutes later. The next victim is Chris Hinshaw, fifth in the swim. But Chris gamely increases his effort and hitches a ride on the back of the train, becoming its sixth car—the caboose.

  Civilization drops away behind the convoy along with its few discarded quasi rivals. Frowning with exertion, the six lowered heads roll through an unsightly warehouse district on the town’s outskirts. Massive metal electrical poles lining the inland side of the road complete the industrial wasteland aesthetic. A passenger jet rises ahead, silent from this distance, as the group churns toward the airport eight miles outside town. The riders pass the city dump on the right, its great heaps of garbage plainly visible, and all too plainly smelled, from the road.

  Then nothing. Nothing but oily black lava rock spreading in all directions. A natural disaster frozen—if that’s the word—in time. Some lava patches still look fresh, soft, and hot.

  There is life, though. Tufts of golden fountain grass sprout through gaps in the sooty ground. Here and there stands a tall hibiscus bush festooned with magenta flowers, their prettiness augmented by their deathly backdrop. Luminous white pumice rocks, which seem almost living in context, dot the landscape. Most of those close to the road have been gathered to form messages. Some are for those who made them: “David Jessica.” Others are for today only: “Go Rick!”

  The sun chases Dave Scott, Mark Allen, Ken Glah, Mike Pigg, Yves Cordier, and Chris Hinshaw from behind while they pursue the only men left ahead of them, Wolfgang Dittrich and Rob Mackle. As Apollo drives his burning chariot ever higher above them, the air warms steadily, whisking any remaining salt water from their skin and leaching sweat from their bodies. The athletes suck greedily on the two or even three squeeze bottles they carry in cages on their bike frames: one on the downtube, a second on the seat tube, and perhaps a third behind the seat. These will be emptied and replaced multiple times in the next four hours.

  Each man has his own special formula. This is still the Wild West era of ultraendurance nutrition. Everyone’s experimenting. Mike Pigg drinks a sort of fruit smoothie from his bottle. Mark Allen sucks on a meal replacement shake diluted with extra water and spiked with added salt, as indicated by his recent testing at Duke University. Dave Scott carries a couple of bananas in his jersey pocket.

  A mile up the road Wolfgang is drinking baby food and pulling away from Rob. The two men are well-matched cyclists, but whereas Rob is cautious, fearful of overextending himself in only his second Ironman, Wolfgang just wants to be left alone in the lead. He hates having other athletes around him on the bike. They are annoying. Their presence exerts an insidious pull that threatens to yank him out of his ideal rhythm.

  Rob reads the interior signals of his body and concludes that although he could stay with Wolfgang, he’d better not. He lets the German drift ahead. After shaking off his tagalong companion of the past seventy-five minutes, Wolfgang pulls a Twix candy bar out of his jersey pocket and shoves it down his gullet.

  With Rob now behind him, Wolfgang is left solitary. Here he is, the leader of the most important triathlon in the world, yet there is not a single race official present to guide him (not that he could possibly get lost on this simple out-and-back route) or a journalist to document his exploits. Meanwhile, a pod of media and official race vehicles—ABC cameras in vans, course marshals on mopeds, still photographers on motorcycles, print journalists in cars—has formed around Dave’s group. There is a total consensus among them that Wolfgang Dittrich is a plucky but ultimately defenseless sheep straying helplessly toward the looming shadow of the slaughterhouse. He’ll be dragged in soon enough. No need to go looking.

  Cathy Plant, wife of race announcer Mike Plant, is working as a spotter and riding in the backseat of a convertible with three other Ironman officials. Her job is to repeatedly leapfrog ahead of the leader, whoever it may be, order the driver to pull over, start a watch when the leader passes, stop it when the chasers follow by, and then report the time gap back to her husband at the finish line and to the chasing cyclists themselves after her car catches them again. She stops at the twenty-mile point of the bike leg and notes a gap of 2:20, down from 3:00 at the start.

  The slaughterhouse looms.

  It doesn’t take long for the gang of six to catch Rob Mackle and become seven. Rob does not lament his envelopment. Like everyone else, he knows that wherever Dave Scott is, that’s where the race is. Although Dave’s group is riding at least as fast as Wolfgang, whose pace Rob judged unsafe for himself, he doesn’t want to fall any farther back than he has already, so he lifts his tempo and latches on. Unlike Wolfgang, Rob would much rather ride with a group, especially the group with all the cameras around it, than alone.

  All six riders behind Dave are careful to stay at least seven meters off the back wheel of the next bike ahead, as the race’s antidrafting rules require. Some believe there is nevertheless an advantage to being at the back of such a paceline. Not Dave. He steadfastly refuses to allow any of the other riders to get ahead of him, for he experiences an intolerable psychosomatic enervation whenever another athlete creeps in front of him. Nor does he covet the much-whined-about advantage of riding directly behind media vehicles, whose noxious exhaust he’d rather not inhale.

  Mark show
s no interest in leading the pack as the group burrows into the heart of the bike leg. He stays near the back as resolutely as Dave holds the front. While Dave snarls and gestures trucks out of his path, Mark keeps his eyes downcast. He seems almost tuned out, like a teenager at church or—almost the opposite—as one witness observes, as though he is praying. But it’s really just a continuation of the silent withdrawal Mark retreated into in the days before the race. His efforts, or antiefforts, to conserve energy seem nearly superstitious in their absoluteness. One could imagine Mark catching himself holding too much tension in his fingers and consciously relaxing their hold on the bar ends, reminding himself that such waste could cost him the race. If he could ride with his eyes closed, he would. He appears very nearly unconscious as he is.

  At twenty-four miles, the bike train and its hovering pod pass Waikoloa Beach Resort, a verdant oasis in the charred surrounding landscape. They are cheered by a smattering of spectators who have managed to cannonball there from Kailua-Kona on the High Road, the Queen K being closed to normal vehicle traffic. With Dave setting a nearly vehicular tempo of 27 mph, and with the route to this point via the High Road being a few miles longer than the direct way on the Queen K, it takes good planning and vigorous driving to arrive ahead of the lead cyclists after watching the swim, and few fans bother trying, save the most interested. Among those who took the chance and succeeded are half of Dave’s circle of confidence: Verne and Anna Scott and Pat Feeney. Also present is Mark’s entourage—Charlie Graves, Mike Rubano, Brian Hughes, and John Martin. These men are fortunate to possess a VIP course pass and have been following directly behind Mark and the others in their Jeep. A few minutes ago they decided to shoot ahead and stop at Waikoloa to cheer, not realizing Dave’s people had already staked it out. The rival camps stand awkwardly apart, shouting at their respective champions as they pass. The riders are within earshot for all of fifteen seconds. Then they’re gone. Forty minutes of dangerous driving for that.

  Having no chance of beating the bikes via the High Road to Kawaihae, where Dave and his followers will turn onto a part of the course that is inaccessible to nonofficial vehicles, Verne’s group settles in to await the athletes’ return in a couple of hours. Mark’s people, with their VIP placard, could continue to follow the cyclists on the Queen K as far as Kawaihae, but they decide to kill time with a swim at nearby Waikoloa Beach instead. It’s a long day.

  BACK AT KAILUA PIER, a barrel-chested 49-year-old man is lifting his rigid, emaciated 27-year-old son out of an inflated rubber raft. Dick Hoyt swim-towed the raft, with 125-pound Rick Hoyt inside it, behind him in the water for 2.4 miles. With an ABC camera aimed at him, Dick carries Rick up the swim exit ramp and through the labyrinthine transition area, then carefully sets him down in a forward-facing, hammock-like passenger seat at the front of a specially made three-wheel bicycle.

  Rick Hoyt was born with cerebral palsy. When he was an infant, a specialist told Dick and his wife, Judy, “Forget about the boy. Put him in an institution. He’s going to be nothing but a vegetable the rest of his life.”

  They couldn’t bear to do it. But they could scarcely bear the alternative of raising him.

  “At first I wanted him to die,” Judy admitted in an ABC interview, “so I wouldn’t have to deal with it.”

  By the time Rick was a toddler his parents had figured out that although he could not move or speak, the boy was no vegetable—there was absolutely nothing wrong with his mind. They had him outfitted with a computer that he could use to communicate, and with it he communicated perfectly well. The young Bostonian’s first words were “Go, Bruins!”

  The family struggled along until, at age 16, Rick asked his father to push him though a local 5K charity running race. Dick was not a runner, but he did it. Something magical happened over those three miles. Rick spoke to his father through the computer as soon as they got home. “When we were running, it felt like my disability disappeared,” he said.

  Dick felt it too. As strange a thing as it was to push his nearly grown boy through a running race, it seemed right—almost predestined. So he did it again, but went farther this time. And again, farther still. The father-son team quickly worked up to running full marathons. They not only went the distance but finished well toward the front of each race. Though he had the build of a plumber, Dick turned out to be a fine endurance athlete. Yet he had no interest in seeing what he could do alone and unburdened and swore he was faster with Rick than without him, anyway.

  The Hoyts’ exploits at the Boston Marathon and elsewhere garnered them heaps of press attention, which they never shied away from, and eventually they made the predictable move of establishing their own charitable foundation. But there was no end game. All they really wanted was to be able to keep running, because it gave Rick a life and Dick a stronger relationship with his child.

  The mood of the two men is serious yet quietly celebratory as they prepare to hit the bike course. They have a long way to go. But they survived the swim, completing it with twenty minutes to spare before the cutoff time after having failed to make it in their first Ironman last year and having been forced to withdraw from the race. Valerie Silk has made a special rules exception to allow the pair to participate, but all other rules apply. Rick may receive no assistance (except medical help) from anyone other than his father, and, like everyone else in the race, the duo must reach the finish line by midnight or they will be pulled off the course once again. Dick shifts anxiously back and forth on his feet as he waits for a nurse to remove a catheter from his son’s penis.

  “Come on, come on!” he mutters, wearing an expression much like Dave Scott’s twenty-eight miles up the road.

  APPROACHING THIRTY MILES into the bike leg, Wolfgang still has not been caught. A course marshal decides he’d better scoot ahead to check on him. Minutes later the lone but not lonely German sees a motor scooter pull alongside him. The course marshal shouts something that he doesn’t catch.

  “What?” he shouts back.

  “Don’t draft!” the marshal repeats.

  Wolfgang stares at him a moment, processing the words. He turns his head to look at the empty road in front of him. Then he looks at the marshal again.

  Are you fucking kidding me?

  He thinks these words but knows better than to say them. The retort would go over about as well as the same words spoken to a highway patrolman during a traffic stop.

  At thirty-one miles Dave’s group comes upon a Shimano Technical Support station set up at the roadside. Yves pulls himself out of the paceline and stops. He needs to get his shifters fixed before he starts the climb toward Hawi. He wouldn’t have survived Dave’s tempo much longer anyway. The lead chase group is thus reduced to six.

  The landscape changes. As Dave’s group draws near the hills crowding the northwest point of the Big Island, black and gold give way to brown and green; hardened lava spills are replaced by fields of low, dry grass. Already the terrain has become more undulant. The Queen K section of the Ironman bike course is considered the flat part, but it’s only flat relative to the climb to Hawi. The thirty-two-mile stretch of pavement between Kailua-Kona and Kawaihae is in fact consistently rolling, thwarting racers’ wish to hold a steady rhythm.

  Dave now leads the pack up a bitch of a hill approaching the Route 270 intersection at Kawaihae, where, he knows, the other half of his circle of confidence awaits. He stands out of the saddle, forcing everyone else to do the same—everyone except Mark, who almost never stands to climb.

  As Dave thrashes his way up the incline, Mark glides. The two men’s riding styles contrast in more or less the same way their personalities do. While Mark rides with a quiet posture, in harmony with his machine, Dave wrestles his bike, lashes it along as though continuously punishing it for not going fast enough.

  Chris Hinshaw cracks. He’s been redlining ever since he latched on to this train, and now he’s over the line and exploding. Each year at Ironman Chris affixes a printout of the split times he h
opes to hit at various points of the bike course to the top tube of his bike. When the group passed the twenty-five-mile point, they were seven minutes ahead of his schedule. He tore the printout off his bike and tossed it into the wind, knowing he was doomed. Lungs heaving, he now falls behind the other five like a sinking stone. With the climb toward Hawi approaching, it’s only going to get worse. Chris will finish the bike leg sixteen minutes behind Dave and Mark. Next year the 1985 Ironman runner-up will quit the sport, having decided it’s left him behind.

  As he climbs Dave is struck by the thought that he has not actually seen Mark since the transition area. But he knows he’s there. He can feel him. Mark has been as good as his promise to shadow his nemesis. Clearly he wants Dave to sense but not see him, as in the swim. He wants to be outside Dave’s vision and inside his head.

  If Dave were to suddenly lose his mind and launch into a full sprint less than halfway through the bike leg, and sustain it until he keeled over in exhaustion, taking himself out of the race, Mark would too.

  If Dave were to stop dead in the middle of the road and refuse to continue unless Mark went before him, the two men would remain at that spot forever.

  At least that’s what Mark wants Dave to believe, and Dave almost believes it.

  The group tops the hill and hits the Route 270 intersection, at thirty-three miles. Mike Norton and John Reganold are there. John cheers. Mike shouts out a time gap.

  “One forty!” he calls.

  Dave winces. They’ve pulled only forty seconds closer to Wolfgang in the past nine miles. Dave is galled by how little progress he’s made despite almost dangerous efforts.