Iron War

by Matt Fitzgerald

  Immediately after the turn onto Route 270, the road drops steeply toward the Port of Kawaihae. The five men stop pedaling and crouch into their most aerodynamic positions, letting gravity drag them to speeds nearing 45 mph. At the base of the hill they bear right to stay on 270, and the road turns upward. The eighteen-mile climb to the turnaround point at Hawi has begun.

  Dave stays seated but pushes the pedals with impatient force, aiming for a tempo that is slightly faster than Wolfgang’s up the road. He figures catching Wolfgang before Hawi is a good game for the moment.

  Heart rates climb; breathing deepens. Another match is lit, albeit a slow burner this time.

  The ABC crew members are growing restless. They decide to send forward a woodie station wagon containing a cameraman and Mike Adamle, a broadcaster who used to play football and will later achieve his greatest fame as the host of American Gladiators, to get some footage of the surprising upstart, figuring Wolfgang has earned it.

  On any given day mumuku winds roar through this part of the island. They come in violent, unpredictable gusts from the ocean, shoving riders left to right across the road as they climb toward Hawi and right to left during their subsequent descent. At a minimum, the mumuku are a nuisance, forcing athletes to pedal with tension held in every muscle as they brace for the next invisible shove. At worst, they are deadly. Cyclists are routinely blown clear off their bikes by sudden 60-mph gusts. In more than one instance riders have been forced to lean so far to one side to stay upright that a wheel edge has scraped the road, stripping the tire from the rim.

  Today, however, the mumuku are unusually quiet. Only soft breezes blow in from the water. This happens twice a month or so—or once in every fifteen Ironmans. Mike Adamle has been told about the legendary mumuku and notices their absence as his van catches up with Wolfgang six miles into the climb.

  “Not too much wind today, huh?” he shouts through an open window.

  Conversation between athletes and reporters during competition is unthinkable in most sporting events, but at Ironman it has a rich tradition. It’s a long day, and in a way everyone’s in it together.

  “No wind,” Wolfgang answers. “It’s all right. Maybe in two hours. We will see.”

  It’s not only the language barrier that forces Wolfgang to speak like a caveman. He’s climbing a tough hill at an aggressive tempo, standing out of the saddle and mashing on the pedals, pushing a massive gear at a low, diesel cadence of sixty revolutions per minute. But with the camera on him, he will spare what breath he can.

  “How’s your stamina at this point?” Adamle persists. “Pretty good?”

  “Yeah,” Wolfgang answers. “It’s very good today. Good swim. Not very good, but good. Bike is okay.”

  “Are you aware of how close Dave Scott and Mark Allen are behind you?”

  “How far?” Wolfgang asks, not sure he’s understood the question.

  “Yes. Are you aware?”

  “Nah. It doesn’t matter. I will make my race, and we will see.”

  The terrain that surrounds Wolfgang is nothing like the arid coastal plain he traveled through along the Queen K. He now pedals through fertile tropical highlands. Whereas the ride through the lava fields was totally exposed, the road here is intermittently banked on either side by hedges, earth mounds, and rock formations. Squat trees grow close to the roadway. Grassy hills rise into the distance on the inland side. Here and there a small pack of cattle or a solitary horse grazes on a hill. Wooden fences along the roadside mark the boundaries of ranches and are virtually the only signs of civilization. The ocean is intermittently visible to the left, falling farther below with each reappearance. Sunlight sparkles on the rippled surface of the sea. On any other day those ripples would be bearded with white foam, a warning to competitors to fear the mumuku on the way down.

  The climb starts at sea level at the Port of Kawaihae and tops out at almost 700 feet of elevation in Hawi. There is a three-mile reprieve from the ascent roughly halfway up, where the road turns gently rolling before bending consistently upward again. If not for this break from the fight against gravity, 190-pound Rob Mackle would be in trouble. Climbing is not his forte, and he burns matches like a pyromaniacal 7-year-old through the heart of the climb. The reprieve affords him just enough recovery to stay in contact with the group, usurping Mark’s place at the back of the caravan, all the way to the top.

  Unable to resist, Dave sneaks a look back at Mark as they ascend. Mark quickly lowers his head so Dave can’t see his face.

  So that’s how it’s going to be, eh?

  Fifty miles—the distance between Kailua-Kona and Hawi—is a long way, especially on an island as small as Hawaii. Hawi is a place unto itself, with no connection to Ironman’s host city. Yet it’s close enough for intervillage resentment. Hawi locals complain that, despite the event organizers’ assurances, Ironman is not, in fact, good for business. Sure, a fair crowd assembles in Hawi on race day to see the bikes come through, but then the roads are closed to vehicle traffic and not a single new customer blows in after early morning. It’s not as if the athletes pause to shop.

  Hawi is tiny—little more than a main street with craft shops, boutiques, and homey restaurants packed into the space of a few blocks and serving a clientele that is almost exclusively tourists. There are other streets tucked behind the main, but the chamber of commerce prefers that they not be seen. Most of the town’s residents, many of whom are mainlanders who moved here to “get away from it all,” live in shacks; some in veritable shanties. Times have been hard in Hawi since the sugar industry went bust in the 1970s. Even the structures on the commercial strip show long neglect. Faded paint and sagging eaves add sad character to much of the nineteenth-century western colonial architecture.

  Hawi is the sort of village where you’re sure to see a mangy dog running loose in the middle of a street if you stay longer than fifteen minutes.

  Wolfgang Dittrich’s blue-and-green kit becomes visible at the edge of town. Now back in the aero position, he grinds toward a banner floating above the road and marking the turnaround point of the bike course. A few dozen spectators and an almost equal number of volunteers wearing light blue T-shirts greet his arrival. Closely following the scooter-riding course marshal who warned him against drafting, Wolfgang makes a hard left turn at a traffic cone onto a paved cul-de-sac that passes through a tiny park and dumps him back on Route 270 heading back the way he just came. He grabs a squeeze bottle from one volunteer but does not avail himself of the portable toilets. Like the other top contenders, he will urinate on the fly.

  A full three minutes pass before Dave Scott’s group follows, having seen Wolfgang making his way down. Wolfgang will later claim that he did not see Dave and the others approaching, so thick was the swarm of race and press vehicles around them, but that is a memory of convenience. In fact, all press vehicles except ABC’s are stopped at Kawaihae and prevented from climbing to Hawi because the road is so narrow.

  Dave winces anew when he makes the turn and learns that, far from erasing Wolfgang’s remaining 1:40 advantage on the climb, he’s allowed Wolfgang to nearly double it. Dave’s blood boils, as though the leader has gone back on an earlier promise to cooperate.

  The five riders in Dave’s group grab their special-needs bags from volunteers. Each has his own chosen Ironman feast waiting for him. Rob’s consists of two peanut-butter-and-guava-jelly sandwiches, a can of tomato juice, and a fruit smoothie. He takes both hands off the handlebars, sits up, and forces it all down as fast as he can.

  The human body was not really designed to absorb food during exercise, but in an Ironman race the body must defy its nature and absorb food anyway. Completing an Ironman is a 10,000-calorie task. Without refueling on the go, it could be done only at a crawl. Some bodies absorb food energy during exercise better than others, and in Ironman this ability is almost as important as speed and endurance. Many a successful short-course triathlete has failed to make the jump to Ironman because his gastro
intestinal system wasn’t up to the challenge, even though his lungs and muscles were.

  Mike Pigg’s GI system works just fine, normally. Back in April, however, on his way to the America’s Paradise Triathlon in St. Croix, he stopped in Texas to undergo some physiological testing and, while there, ate a bad hamburger. The intestinal parasite he acquired from the tainted meat has left him largely unable to absorb carbohydrates during exercise so that he now suffers from “runner’s trots” whenever he tries to eat during long workouts and races. Lately Mike has had to plan routes for his long training runs around bathroom opportunities. He’s doing okay so far, but he looks ahead to the run, where things usually get dicey, with dread.

  Ken Glah has a different concern. He knows he can’t run with Dave and Mark. To have any chance of winning, he has to get off the bike several minutes ahead of them. Although he doesn’t look it, being tall and lanky like Mark, Ken is a power cyclist, a big-gear guy, stronger going down than up. The descent from Hawi to Kawaihae is therefore tactically his best chance to make a move. He puts himself in position by leading the train through the turnaround and hurriedly scarfing the contents of his special-needs bag. The moment the road turns downward, he gears up, lowers his head, and punches the accelerator. A gap opens. Mike makes the most serious effort to counter the move, as he too is a power rider and knows he must finish the bike leg ahead of Dave and Mark to win. Last year, in fact, Mike caught Ken from behind on the descent from Hawi. But today Ken is stronger, or more willing to burn matches, and he gets away. Some proper mumuku winds would help his cause, but he’ll work with what he has.

  Ken’s best hope is to catch Wolfgang alone so the two of them can work together to reach transition ahead of Dave, Mark, Rob, and Mike. He won’t know if his effort is succeeding until he gets a time-gap update when he turns back onto the Queen K, but he is indeed cutting into Wolfgang’s advantage as he barrels toward Kawaihae at speeds exceeding 40 mph on the steeper declines. Unfortunately for Ken, his chasers are also pulling closer to Wolfgang, having silently agreed to work hard enough to keep Ken’s margin in check.

  Several media vehicles have sat parked on the dirt shoulder of the road at the Port of Kawaihae as their occupants waited for the race leaders to climb to Hawi and return. Now they see Ken Glah come screaming down the last descent and merge back onto the port access section of Highway 270. Among those who stopped and waited was Triathlete’s CJ Olivares, who has been a passenger on the back of a motorcycle with a bulky camera slung around his neck. Seeing Ken fly by, CJ leaps back into the saddle and taps the driver’s back. The driver pulls out blindly and is immediately sideswiped by the station wagon carrying Mike Adamle. The Harley fishtails as it rebounds back onto the dirt shoulder, and it’s all the driver can do to keep it upright.

  This kind of thing can happen at any time, not just to journalists but also to racers, whose awareness of such ever-present danger causes them to ride in an uninterrupted state of low-grade mental stress. Later today Lisa Laiti, a top female pro, will collide with a car on her bike and break her neck.

  Ken starts up the nasty hill from the Port of Kawaihae to the Queen K just fifteen seconds ahead of his chasers—not enough, given his relative weakness as a climber. By the time he reaches the top, he has been swallowed up.

  “Two thirty!” Mike Norton shouts at Dave as the re-formed group passes. Wolfgang’s up-and-down lead is coming down again.

  As soon as they’ve completed the turn onto the Queen K, Mike Pigg moves to the front and ratchets up the tempo. Mike is as gutsy as any athlete in the sport, and although he doesn’t feel great, he’s still racing to win. The weakest runner in the group besides the behemoth Rob Mackle, he has to take his shot now. And he has the chops to do it. There isn’t a triathlete in the world who can match Mike’s top-end speed on the bike. In April 1988 he rode perhaps the greatest bike leg in the history of the sport, outsplitting all rivals, including Dave, Mark, and even Lance Armstrong, by more than seven minutes on the grueling 58-mile course in St. Croix, which includes a hill known as the Beast.

  Mike pulls hard for a few miles, but he’s unable to achieve any separation. Dave refuses to let him go, Mark refuses to let Dave go, and Rob and Ken are just hanging on. Like Mark, Mike wears a heart rate monitor. His Ironman heart rate is 165 beats per minute. If he goes any higher, he’s burning matches. Mike checks his monitor and sees he’s lighting matches by twos and threes, and to no avail. He eases up, and Dave moves back to the front of the train.

  Rising heat ripples the air above the road in front of the group. It’s almost eleven o’clock. The sun has moved high overhead. The day continues to heat up—80 degrees and climbing.

  By this time most of the other athletes in the race have passed Dave’s train coming the opposite way. There now approaches a strange bike with three wheels bearing a young man whose body is locked and twisted and who wears an openmouthed grin, catching a ride on a hammock-like seat in front of a barrel-chested pedaler.

  Dave and Mark and the others watch the Hoyts with mild interest as they pass. The father-son team will not finish until well after dark, but they will finish. Dick’s total lack of desire to race except as his son’s workhorse is a world away from Dave’s consuming need to see what his body can do and to prove himself able to outlast anyone. Dick’s utterly selfless support of his son’s brave but pitiable athletic ambitions is a world away from Ken Allen’s neglect of his son and subsequent efforts to hitch his wagon to Mark’s star. Yet here they are, in the same race, all belonging equally in their own ways, each getting what he alone needs from the challenge.

  WOLFGANG’S PURSUERS have now ridden seventy-five miles. If anyone in this group is going to make a move that has a meaningful effect on the race, it must happen soon. But Ken and Mike have already given their best shots and failed to escape. It’s obvious that Mark will not initiate anything. Nothing is expected of Rob, who after all started the bike leg three minutes ahead of the other four. It’s all on Dave. Either he goes or no one does. Meanwhile, Wolfgang continues to ride frequently out of sight ahead, although easily tracked from behind by the helicopter floating above him.

  At eighty miles the group returns to the Waikoloa Road intersection. Dave’s supporters are still there. Pat Feeney started a watch when Wolfgang passed and now shouts out the gap: “Three minutes!”

  Golly! Dave thinks. This is ridiculous. Who the heck does that crazy Euro think he is? Underneath his anger, Dave knows it doesn’t matter. Wolfgang won’t survive long on the run even with a three-minute lead off the bike. But still.

  The hills of the Queen K are bigger on the way back to Kailua-Kona than on the way out. At least they feel bigger. A slow leak of fatigue has sprung in all five members of Dave’s pack. Exhaustion is still many miles away, but none feels as fresh as he did charging up Pay-’n’-Save Hill. Every turn of the pedals is now experienced as something like the sixth repetition in a set of ten machine leg extensions. But all perceptions are relative, and Dave feels fantastic relative to this point in past Ironmans. He has matches to burn, and his confidence inflates as he fingers them in his pocket.

  The biggest hill on the Queen K section of the course comes at eighty-four miles. It ascends more than 250 feet at a steady grade of 7 percent. When Dave reaches the base of the climb, he jumps out of the saddle and launches. It’s a serious move, requiring the others to show their cards. Mark is ready and counters with apparent ease. Mike and Ken lose ground initially but are able to hang on. Rob, his meaty butt still in the saddle, teeters at the brink of freefall at the back. Dave sees none of this, and doesn’t need to see. He can assess the damage later. Right now he needs to inflict it.

  As he reaches the summit of the hill, Ken cranes his neck to the left and vomits. Throwing up is never done more nonchalantly than in an Ironman. Stomach emptied, Ken calmly returns to his aero position and chases after Dave and Mark. A mile farther down the road, and another match poorer, he regains contact. Mike and, eventually, Rob follow.r />
  Ninety miles into the bike leg the five men in Dave’s group can’t wait to get it over with, including the two—Mike and Rob—who dread the run. Their butts are killing them. No matter how often they ride 100 miles in training, athletes’ bodies never fully adapt to passing four or five hours hunched in a near-fetal posture, with 60 percent of their body weight supported by a three-inch strip of tender flesh between the private parts and the butt crack, so that the perineum and low back scream always for relief in the final miles of such a journey. Rob is especially uncomfortable. He has spondylosis, degenerative arthritis in his L3 vertebra, and must stand and stretch frequently to slow the steady intensification of pain in his low back.

  The last big hill comes at ninety-six miles, about eight miles outside town, just before the airport. As Dave leads the approach toward the base of the 200-foot rise, the four men behind him are asking themselves, Will he do it again?

  He does. As abruptly as a stalking cat pounces at an unsuspecting field mouse, Dave leaps out of the saddle and crushes his pedals. This is his last chance to soften up Mark before the run, and he’s going to make the most of it. Ken cracks almost immediately; he leans over and barfs a second time. Pigg tells his heart rate monitor to go to hell and chases with everything he has. Given the choice between staying within his known physiological limits and staying in the race, he will always choose to risk all and fight.

  Despite his abandonment of all caution, Pigg loses ground. Rob lifts his tempo enough to prevent a cataclysmic time hemorrhage but stops short of crossing the red line, knowing he’ll be left behind on the run soon enough anyway. Dave and Mark have been together all morning, but for the first time in this race they are alone together as they pull away from their longtime traveling partners.

  CJ Olivares, none the worse for his recent collision with Mike Adamle’s station wagon, observes the moment from the back of his motorcycle and appreciates its significance.