Iron War

by Matt Fitzgerald

  By the time Mark made the right turn onto Ali’i Highway to head toward that sweltering rocky crucible, Thomas Hellriegel had already gone through it and returned and was now cruising toward town on Ali’i Drive. Mark carried this demoralizing knowledge with him as he descended into the Pit. When he reached the one-mile point of the marathon, with the burial ground on his right, Mark learned that he had gained only a few seconds on Thomas—not nearly enough. To make matters worse, Greg Welch, who had started the marathon 10 seconds ahead of Mark, remained 10 seconds ahead. A wave of exhaustion swept over him, and he suddenly doubted that he could even finish the race, let alone win.

  A door had been opened for another visit from that serpent in the garden, the voice, which Mark still heard in almost every race. Right on cue, the familiar tape loop began to play in Mark’s head, with a new twist.

  I’m too old. I’m too far behind. Screw it. I’ve won this thing five times. Isn’t that enough? It’s not worth the pain. Let the young guys have it.

  Mark trundled along in a miasma of self-pity for some time before a second voice entered his consciousness. It was not quite the same voice Mark had used to rally himself in races before Iron War. It was the voice of Brant Secunda.

  Be fearless in the face of your fears, he said. Quiet your mind.

  Mark used all the power of concentration he had to imagine his thoughts, good and bad alike, slipping down into his legs, leaving his consciousness empty and free. It didn’t happen right away, but it happened. In the moment his mind went quiet, Mark could feel the whole dynamic of the race change.

  Greg Welch abruptly stopped to stretch out a muscle cramp, and Mark slid into fourth place. His rictus grin emerged, and his tempo increased. At the top of Palani Hill, now running side by side with Rainer Müller, Mark learned that he had lopped nearly 10 minutes off the leader’s advantage. Thomas was not running slowly—his rate of progress was well under a 3-hour marathon pace—but Mark was flying, running faster than he had at any time since his great battle with Dave Scott. At 11 miles Mark dropped Rainer and took over third place. A mile down the road Jürgen Zack went down. He refrained from commenting further on Mark’s wardrobe.

  The final catch became possible, then likely, then inevitable as Mark gained strength through the lava fields that used to weaken him and as Thomas ultimately faltered. Mark snatched the lead with 3 miles to go. Thomas bravely counterattacked, but Mark parried with a ruthless surge that finished off the youngster. Twenty minutes later Mark consummated the greatest come-from-behind victory in Ironman history, surpassing Dave Scott’s performance in 1984, when Mark had given away an advantage of just under twelve minutes. When he broke the finish-line tape, Mark smiled the smile of a satisfied man—a man who had now done all he could do and all he cared to do in his chosen field of endeavor. He went straight to Julie, already retired, who reached toward him with a baby held between her palms. Mark kissed the head of his 11-month-old son, Mats, whose birth had been another motivation for his year away (Mark was determined to do fatherhood differently than his father had), and then he threw up a quart of Gatorade and was dragged to the medical tent.

  Mark’s body had rallied just in time, held itself together just long enough, and now it fell apart. Always a big sleeper, he would sleep more than ever for the next two years.

  As Mark lay shielded from attention on a triage cot with an IV jabbed in his forearm, he experienced a moment that he understood as the matching bookend to that distant moment in November 1982 when he had run along a boardwalk in the south of France on a warm night and seen that it was all in front of him.

  It’s all behind me, he now thought. I will never again face this test that has meant so much to me for so long—this test that has made me who I am. It’s over now. I will never be this strong again. I’ve reached the pinnacle, and it’s time to go down. Tomorrow my body will be less than it is today, and the next day less still.

  Mark grieved deeply for the passing of his athlete self, but briefly. For he truly was ready to move on. He knew he would not regret quitting, just as he had known he would love swimming before his first lesson, and surfing before his first wave, and triathlon before his first race, and shamanism before his first sweat lodge. He said a tearful good-bye to triathlon and turned his back on it.

  THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER Mark had experienced a recurring dream in which he found himself at a post-race awards ceremony where everyone received an award except him. The dream challenged him to be happy anyway. It reminded him that he would not have true peace and wholeness until he no longer needed to win.

  Deep down Mark knew that he could never be a happy loser and that he would have to leave the sport to complete his journey toward the inner peace he desired. For a time winning had served him well. The growth and self-discovery it had taken Mark to win—and to beat Dave Scott and win his first Ironman, most particularly—had moved him closer to wholeness than he had been before he had discovered triathlon. But by 1995 Mark recognized that winning could take him no further. To complete his journey, he had to let go.

  After his last, triumphant Ironman, Mark never again dreamed his dream of being left out at the awards ceremony.

  IN MAY 1999 Mark Allen and Brant Secunda cohosted a four-day retreat called Sport and Spirit in Sedona, Arizona. By this time Mark had moved with Julie Moss and young Mats to Santa Cruz, thus becoming Brant’s neighbors, and the two men had gone into business together. These Sport and Spirit retreats had been created to expose athletes to the physical and spiritual secrets of Mark’s success.

  At the height of a dry, warm Wednesday afternoon, guests trickled into the Sedona Dahn Retreat Center, a cluster of clean-lined, fresh-looking low buildings designed to blend in with their famous red-rock environment, manifesting a sort of adobe-meets-Pier-1 aesthetic that was probably attractive to the thirty spiritually open-minded endurance athletes who assembled for the event. Many of the campers arrived with a certain amount of anxiety in their guts. They admired Mark, respected him, and were prepared to be embarrassed for him. This whole shamanism thing was a bit out there from the perspective of mainstream triathlon culture. News of Sport and Spirit’s creation had inspired more than a little joking at Mark’s expense in the broader triathlon community. Scott Molina had taken to calling it “Grip’s hoodoo guru thing.”

  Those who wished the best for Mark could not help but feel some concern that he might be slipping off the deep end in middle age. As the new arrivals shook the hand of their legendary host, having found him at Brant’s side in the center’s conference building, they reflexively searched his eyes for that ineffable but impossible-to-miss glint of madness. It wasn’t there. He looked completely sane.

  Mark and Brant’s guests would soon discover that their hosts were keenly aware of how they were perceived, and that they took pains to prove their normalness. Brant, a man with regular features on a broad, appealing face that was perennially framed by a cowboy hat, then 47 years old, took the first speaking turn after the group had eaten a healthy welcoming dinner.

  “I grew up in New York and New Jersey in the ’50s and ’60s,” he began. “Has anyone ever heard of those places?”

  Appreciative laughter. Brant then told the story of his adventure in the Sierra Madre Mountains and his entry into Huichol culture, summarizing, “Anyway, that’s a little bit of the story of how I came to be here today, except that I flew here from Santa Cruz, where I live.”

  More laughter. Growing up in New York and New Jersey, flying from Santa Cruz—that’s not weird at all!

  Then things began to get weird. Drums and rattles were brought out and put to use. Brant began to sing. The thirty gathered athletes of three hours’ acquaintance were instructed—and then pressed—to perform the dance of the deer around a candle. Embarrassment invaded the room. Mark and Brant broke the ice by demonstrating the dance. Guests stole frequent glances at Mark as they aped his prancing movements, all probably thinking the same thought: I can’t believe this is happening.
Yet, as they continued to dance, an amazing thing happened. The embarrassment vanished, and a sublimely atavistic feeling of connection between the music and the movement and something deep and ancient inside each person took its place.

  The next morning Mark distributed heart rate monitors to everyone in the group and led them on a forty-five-minute run on dirt roads through the high desert. Mark was careful not to confess that this was about as long as he had run since he had retired. When Mark quit, he quit, leaving behind his training as thoroughly as retiring tightrope walkers probably do. While Dave Scott continued to train two to four hours a day through his forties and into his fifties, Mark let his bike slowly rust in the garage and forgot what chlorine smelled like.

  In 2002, at one of their rare public appearances together, Dave and Mark were asked who would win a race between them now. Dave pointed a thumb at himself. Mark just smiled.

  On the second night of Sport and Spirit Mark’s guests found themselves seated on a dirt floor inside a canvas tent, forming four concentric rings around a shallow pit filled with a pile of lava stones. Every few minutes Brant ladled water over the hot stones, which instantly transformed the liquid into a stifling blast of steam that filled the tent with a fog of heat.

  Sweat-lodge time.

  The glowing stones were the only source of light, illuminating faces like moonscapes in the blackness surrounding them. Brant explained the significance of this ceremony, of whose kind Mark had experienced many. To keep the mood light, Brant tossed the occasional joke into his monologue. To keep it from becoming too light, he made everyone sing Huichol spiritual songs they had learned earlier in the day.

  The heat was unbearable. The first-timers tried their best to obey Brant’s gentle encouragement to focus on singing and praying instead of their physical misery, but they kept forgetting the words as they submitted to their bodily discomfort’s insistence on completely dominating their attention. After a few minutes of such internal warring, a few of the guests felt that they were beginning to gain a bit of mastery over their suffering, but then a fresh ladleful of water was dropped onto the hot stones and they were forced to recognize that they had gained nothing; the tent had merely cooled down a few degrees. And that problem was now corrected.

  As they had done the night before, Mark’s admiring but bewildered guests stole frequent glances at the six-time Ironman champion. What they saw was a man who was completely unself-conscious, totally absorbed in the moment, singing and praying openheartedly and showing every sign of existing in a state of real connection with the mysterious spirits everyone present was supposed to be connecting with. This was not a celebrity spiritual pose or lark. This was not Madonna’s kabbalism. The tenth anniversary of Mark’s first Ironman victory—and of Mark’s shamanistic vision on the lava fields—was coming up in a few months. It was now apparent that nothing short of a life-changing spiritual transformation had been required for Mark Allen to beat Dave Scott in that race.

  Breaking from his normal breviloquence, Mark spoke for hours at a time during those four days away from reality. He spoke about the “go slow to get faster” training philosophy he had relied on over the course of his career. He talked about how all of this spiritual stuff had helped him in his racing.

  “Your physical capacities are only part of the big picture,” he told the gathering. “If your spirit is happy and strong, then you’re stable under pressure.”

  In the few days they spent hiking in the wilderness, making hilltop sacrifices to nature gods, dancing like deer, sweating like pigs, and singing and praying with Mark and Brant, the campers did not embrace Huichol Indian shamanism as wholly as Mark had on the seventh day of his own first retreat, but most gained a genuine respect for it that they took home with them.

  A couple of Sport and Spirit’s attendees found themselves on the same flight as Mark from Phoenix to San Diego. When they deplaned at their destination, they were herded like cattle through a confining Jetway and thrust into the chaos of a crowded concourse bustling with harried and disconnected persons—something they had experienced many times but now felt differently.

  One man turned to Mark with an expression of shock, bordering on horror.

  “Oh, my God!” he said.

  “I know,” Mark said quietly, smiling his Mona Lisa smile.

  MARK ALLEN LIVES a couple of blocks from one of the best surf breaks in Santa Cruz. Each morning he crosses the street with his board and passes a couple of hours riding waves. He still loves everything about surfing. The cold, smelly, living ocean. The rush of the ride, which rewards the labor of paddling and the patience of waiting. The circular purposelessness of it.

  Mark returns home to an empty house, where he typically spends the rest of the day in his own company unless Mats is around. Life is less crowded for Mark than it used to be. Retiring from triathlon and moving to Santa Cruz tore him loose from most of his existing friendships, and he now draws companionship mainly from the spiritual community in which he has immersed himself. The major social occasion of Mark’s typical week is a Wednesday-night drum circle. He sees Brant almost daily and often exercises with him, slowing way down for his spiritual mentor’s sake. Mark also has a few surfing acquaintances, and his mom, Sharon, still lives in Palo Alto, less than an hour’s drive away. That’s plenty.

  In their last years together Julie accompanied Mark on trips to retreats that Brant Secunda hosted at places of power such as the lush and historical island of Crete, where the couple, accompanied by Mats, lodged with fellow pilgrims within earshot of the ocean and traipsed about fragrant fields of sage, thyme, and oregano. It was in such outwardly perfect circumstances that Julie came to recognize that her marriage was at a crossroads. While she fully respected the path Mark had chosen, which she once described as “a beautiful little practice,” it just didn’t speak to her as it did to him. So she took her own path and left Mark to his without bitterness.

  “If I had to rank the reasons to leave a marriage,” Julie told one nosy fan, “I think that’s a good one. To pursue a spiritual path is a profound choice to make.”

  ANYONE WHO HAS as much passion for a spiritual path as Mark has for his yearns to share it with the people he loves. Ironically, the person in Mark’s life who was most responsive to his shamanistic evangelism was his father, who listened without uneasiness when Mark talked about it and who asked questions that weren’t just polite chitchat.

  In 1995 Space called Mark and told him he would like to attend a retreat. A few months later Space dragged Toot, still a good Catholic girl, along to Palm Springs, where Brant hosted a three-day gathering. Mark was busy training for his last Ironman, so he was not present to share the experience with his father. The retreat culminated, as always, in a sweat lodge. Toot refused to enter. Most of those who gave it a whirl staggered out long before it was complete. Space was among the very few who hung tough till the bitter end.

  Space was not motivated entirely by an interest in shamanism. There was a second motive, which also induced him to participate in the following year’s Ironman—not coincidentally, the first Ironman after Mark’s retirement. Space was 65 years old and still afraid of the water when he started preparing for the race. Mark could have coached his dad, but did not, foisting him on Paul Huddle instead. The day before the race, Paul guided Space through a practice loop around the 2.4-mile swim course. The old man was able to complete it just inside the two-hour, twenty-minute time limit. Unfortunately, the next morning brought choppy seas. Space failed to complete the swim before the cutoff time and was humiliatingly dragged from the ocean, vomiting seawater.

  That took some courage. Perhaps it was the courage of a repentant father seeking to show his son some kind of acceptance before it was too late.

  Mark spends his afternoons working in a home office adorned with colorful Mexican Indian art pieces. Most of his work is triathlon related. While Mark made a clean break from his participation in the sport, he did not cut himself off from triathlon completel
y. He remains passionate about the swim-bike-run game, and he knows he has much to offer those who continue to practice it. Mark has less interest, however, in entertaining large mobs of athletes as the coach of masters swim classes or running groups, than Dave does. In recent years the sport’s competitive ranks have been overrun by training geeks who tend to get on the nerves of old-timers like Mark and Paul Huddle and Scott Molina with their endless talk about power output numbers and body-fat percentages. It is sometimes tempting to shake them by the shoulders and shout, “Wake up! Don’t you know you’re a human being?”

  In 2001 Mark partnered with triathlon coach and professional computer programmer Luis Vargas to create an automated online coaching service. It was the perfect solution. Mark Allen Online provides premium-quality, fully customized training plans based on Mark’s “go slow to get faster” philosophy that are delivered online. Each year Mark hosts a celebration in Kona for his customers who, thanks to his coaching, are able to claim coveted Ironman qualifying slots. In 2010 there were more than thirty of them.

  Mark also seeks out a select few to help individually. In fact, he has made a cottage industry of counseling elite male triathletes who have come close to winning Ironman several times but who can’t quite take the last hard step—in other words, athletes who remind him of himself. Mark believes that the secret to taking that last step is not physical but mental and spiritual, and he believes he holds that secret.