Crawl of Fame

by Julie Moss

  I didn’t even know what the details were.

  Kathleen’s thoughts at the turnaround had nothing to do with rainbow ribbon fashion details or cover girl finish-line photo opportunities. Well, they did have to do with the finish line, namely, getting there ahead of me. “Up ahead I saw Julie,” she recalled. “She was in first place, running toward me. But as Julie got closer, it was obvious her form was breaking down and she didn’t look too good.

  “I looked her in the eye. Then I looked down at my watch to get a split. Eight minutes down with eight miles to go. My legs burning, my body pushing itself to the limit, I knew I had to dig deep with every ounce of strength. But, if I could keep up this pace . . . I believed I could catch Julie. Every minute I chipped off the lead, my confidence grew.”

  Besides my body now beginning to feel the loss of that melted Snickers bar, I was dealing with a runner on the move. Worse, I had no idea how to manage a race from the lead. The next time my new BFFs from ABC pulled around, I asked, “Hey guys, find out how far back she is,” in a voice that sounded distinctly Valley Girl. I also yelled out to spectators, “Can you see how far back she is for me?”

  Kathleen was trying to take the lead from me!

  From somewhere deep inside, far further than I’d felt anything before, a realization or insight moved through me like a command: I don’t want this taken away! I’d never felt such possessiveness over a result before. I responded to this surge of inner whatever-it-was by promptly recasting Kathleen into my archrival, the archenemy for a day. Wonder Woman would prevail. But which one?

  My brain screamed at my legs and body to push, speed up, fire ahead, ignore the pain. I was focused, trying to account for every stride, make it my best effort, but my body started protesting like a five-year-old throwing a hurricane tantrum. I want to stop! Now! I’m going to hurt you if you don’t let me stop!

  Suddenly, I couldn’t fire anymore.

  I hit it. The wall. Bonk! Every marathoner and ultramarathoner knows the feeling. When our glycogen stores deplete, our bodies literally begin to feed on themselves for protein, sugar, the fuel to keep going. The wall arrives quickly, in a matter of minutes or even seconds, and it can instantly turn your race on its head. If you’ve ever finished a marathon, you’ve witnessed the scene during the last six to ten miles, with active racers passing those who dropped out. Or you’ve bonked and had to labor through the rest of the race, sometimes running, sometimes walking, mostly doing the “marathon shuffle.” Pushing ahead after you bonk is like trying to paddle out toward monster waves after being beaten up and held down by the five waves that preceded it. It’s extremely difficult.

  The race punched back, repeatedly and hard. I bonked first at about twenty miles, then hit the wall again at twenty-three. Kathleen was still a few minutes behind, but gaining. I knew it, but I also knew that I deserved to win this race. After struggling on the hot roads, this race took on an importance I’d never experienced.

  Something was emerging from inside myself, beyond anything I could reach consciously. It was this tenacity and grit, an instinct as deep as DNA itself . . . keep digging. Don’t give up. Push like you’ve never pushed. I started feeling this added tenacity when the ABC camera trucks gave me attention, then more so when I was leading. Suddenly, the switch flipped . . . you deserve to be here. You earned this. It’s okay. You just might be good at something, and that’s all right. Don’t hold back. Just go with us.

  Who was us? I didn’t know. I only knew something cracked open, something silent and hidden until this moment; I was interacting and even conversing with my inner self for the first time in a competitive situation. My inner voice. My physical breakdown was allowing this other part to emerge, a component I never attended to or even acknowledged—my self-worth.

  Before, the ego was involved—how do I look in front of the camera? Are they getting good shots of me? Where’s my ribbon? That was being stripped away, like peeling layers of paint to get to the bare wall. As I opened up to this voice, this articulation of self-worth, this feeling I deserved to win, a strange energy moved through me that kept me going long after my physical reserves had been exhausted.

  It also brought out the fighter in me. My self-worth was worth fighting for, to the outermost limits of my capacity to perform, if necessary. I’d never dreamed of leading the Ironman. Now, I was willing to suffer through these final miles to hang onto this new feeling of being good at something and being worthy of it.

  No matter what happened as Kathleen and I headed for home, this moment of realization, which visited me in my time of greatest struggle, became the turning point of my race. And later, my life.

  Kathleen, a crafty racer though admittedly ambivalent about competition itself, found an interesting new reference point to gauge the distance between us. “Running the final miles of the marathon, I’m also running out of time!” she recalled. “I feel like I’m gaining on Julie, but I can’t tell how far ahead she is as I strain to see her along Queen K Highway. Then, I look up and see that Julie and I each have our own ABC helicopter. With each mile, I can see our helicopters are getting closer together!”

  I began to manage my deteriorating physical condition. I walked a little more, only through aid stations at first. I shoved down oranges and coke but wasn’t feeling fueled by those calories. Soon, I couldn’t make it the mile that separated one aid station from the next without a couple of walk breaks. Halfway from one to the other, I’d have to walk. I put my hands on my hips to give my arms a rest, but then that inner voice commanded me: Get going. Go again. I found a way to push hard every time my body wanted to stop . . . until all I could manage was walking.

  I reached the final 1.2 miles in the lead, but struggling big-time. I looked ahead at the long downhill into Ali’i Drive and the finish at Kailua-Kona pier. The borrowed bra distracted me. My unsettled and bloated stomach felt like a full blender running on low. As soon as I started running into town, it switched from a low rumble to liquefy. The water, coke, banana, and orange slices had whirred into a frothy fruit smoothie that wanted to explode from my body. How am I going to run down this hill?

  Along with my growing need to use the restroom came an even more distasteful thought: She’s coming!

  I focused on the Sizzler restaurant halfway down Palani hill, about a mile from the finish. If I could run down the hill and duck into the restroom, then I could avert an emergency and get back on course.

  My old nemesis from the Snickers bar episode, vanity, struck its final pose: Is the ABC guy going to get off the van and follow me into the restaurant with his camera? Are the commentators going to say, “She’s in the Sizzler! She’s going into the ladies room in the Sizzler!” Another next troubling image rumbled in my head: I’m in the ladies room with my camera guy just outside the stall when a second ABC crew member bursts in, yelling, “Get out here! Kathleen McCartney’s now in the lead!”

  Not going to happen. I’m not getting passed while sitting in the Sizzler stall. Talk about disgraceful! I had to take my chances and play it out.

  I ran right past the Sizzler, then turned left onto Kuakini Highway for a half mile. Fortunately and thankfully, my gut settled down.

  We turned right onto Hualalai Road, and reached a slight downhill. Suddenly, without warning, my legs buckled beneath me. When I crashed to the ground, everything in my turbulent gut spilled out. Everything. Worst of all, ABC recorded it all.

  I was terrified. My legs wouldn’t respond. My limbs felt like a splayed cat. I was humiliated that my body lost control. Suddenly, I went from being an upright race leader to a woman exposed in the most vulnerable way, which I’d later describe to Sports Illustrated as “a hot chocolate mess.”

  All the while, Kathleen closed in, her pace steady, relentless. Fear and panic squeezed my chest. My mind screamed Go! Go! Go! But the impulses never reached my legs. The disconnect felt as wide as Waimea Canyon. My extremities were rolling down their sleeves and calling it a day.

  Kathlee
n remembers the increasingly surreal scene as she ran toward it. “I make the turn at ‘Hot Corner,’ where traditionally, the crowd is cheering wildly as you run the last quarter mile to the finish line. I’ve dreamed of running down Ali’i Drive for a year. But when I turn the corner and I’m actually here . . . all I get is this solemn, obligatory, anticlimactic . . . clap, clap, clap. Their lukewarm response is so unexpected that I feel confused . . . I’m thinking, ‘What’s going on?’ Suddenly, I hear someone shout out from the crowd, ‘You can still catch her!’”

  Kathleen did not know I was on the ground.

  For the first time, the idea of quitting started to surface. Never mind that I was leading the Ironman. When your body pushes itself to its extreme physical edge, it’s really hard to focus. I was laid out, humiliated; it’s still on YouTube for everyone to see. The ego said, “Just lay back; it’ll all go away.” I liked that idea. I wanted to lay on the pavement and disappear . . .

  For three minutes, I sat on the ground, staring at the street, a camera truck right there. Then I stood up, and saw the mess on my shorts and legs. All. Over. Me. Diana Nyad, the Olympic swimmer-turned-commentator, delicately described the moment on Wide World of Sports: “In situations of extreme stress you sometimes lose control over bodily functions.”

  I had to work through my humiliation, get underneath it, meet the ego where it tries to sabotage when we’re most vulnerable—and fight back.

  No, Julie, you want this.

  GET UP!

  Again, the inner voice roared from deep within, as commanding as a hungry lioness and filled with wisdom well beyond anything I consciously knew. That silent inner roar canceled everything else out—the fear, the panic, the humiliation, the crowd, the camera . . . even the thought of Kathleen.

  My mind cleared. Julie, use your arms!

  First, I had to figure something out: how to stand. My legs weren’t working anymore. The voice in my head and gut didn’t exactly say, “shut the fuck up,” though it was inwardly implied! It was more like a louder version of “GET UP! Clear the mechanism. Forget about everything else.”

  I placed my arms in front of me to form a tripod to support my legs. It took a couple of tries to get my balance right, but then it worked.

  I stood again. Once I can stand, I can walk. Once I can walk, I have to try and run . . . I made it around the next corner, onto famed Ali’i Drive, the finish line so close . . .

  And collapsed again, just under a huge centuries-old banyan tree on Ali’i Drive.

  I always felt that I would reach the finish line. It was just a matter of getting there more quickly. Could I figure it out in time? I still held the lead. I approached the wall of spectators on both sides of the flagging used to keep them off the road. It looked to me like the Tournament of Roses Parade, so festive and noisy, with spectators spilling in the street so close to me.

  I got up quickly and tried to run. Bad move. I fell for the third time. Race officials rushed to pick me up, which sent my brain into survival mode: Will I be disqualified? I can’t let them touch me or try to hold me up. I’ll be disqualified! They were trying to hold me up and I was thinking, I’m DQed if they touch me. I tried to push them away, but when I did, I started falling again, right into one of them. I grabbed hold of him like my life depended on staying up. Then I pushed him away and staggered on.

  Twenty yards from the finish, I spotted my mom among the spectators. She held out a plumeria lei to put around my neck, but I waved her off. The motion of leaning forward to receive the lei would have sent me to the ground. I wobbled another five yards. The finish line was right there. I couldn’t win the Ironman Championship without running across the finish, right? My mind braced for one last final run, just a few strides. What are a few more strides after just running about 27,000 of them? I would cross the line, throw my arms into the air, and soak it in. Julie Moss: 1982 Bud Light Ironman World Champion.

  That is not how it ended.

  I fell for the fourth and final time. I struggled to my hands and knees, but my arms were too weak to lift me up. My legs were frozen, done, unable to hold my 115 pounds any longer. Raucous moments before, the spectators grew eerily quiet, nearly silent, like skyfall when an eclipse covers the sun. I couldn’t see their faces, but I could feel their arms trying to lift me up, worried people and their wonderful energy helping me along.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted rainbows again. Kathleen. That damned rainbow uniform and hair ribbon! Without further ado, she passed me and crossed the finish line. She didn’t even know she’d won until someone told her. “I couldn’t see the finish line,” she said. “I knew I must be close to catching Julie. But where was she? I had no idea what she had gone through, and I didn’t see her the last mile, so I figured I was coming in second.

  “I wove around dozens of spectators who spilled out into the street, blinded by the bright lights. There was nowhere left for me to go; the ABC camera van blocked the road. In the midst of the chaos, I was forced to stop. I yelled out, ‘Where’s the finish line?’”

  “You’re standing on it. You’ve won!” someone yelled.

  “Suddenly, a finish tape appeared, a medal was placed around my neck and I asked, ‘Am I first?’”

  Sadly for Kathleen, the crowd was emotionally drained by the time she arrived. Drained, distracted, and riveted on my struggle. “I noticed something different about the crowd,” Kathleen told Triathlete magazine. “Rather than happy and screaming, the crowd was very emotional.” Because of that, she never received the typical rousing cheers an Ironman champion hears at the finish.

  It was quite a sight as Scott Tinley watched from the curb with 1979 winner Tom Warren. Scott was a bit tired: two hours before, he’d triumphantly thrown the monkey of Dave Scott off his back and captured a hard-fought Ironman overall victory, igniting one of the great careers in triathlon history.

  “I’m on the curb, right by the finish line and ABC truck, tired, hungry, can’t find my wife, can’t find food . . . can’t even find a beer,” ST recalled. “All of a sudden, all hell breaks loose at the finish line, Kathleen not even knowing she’d won, and a few seconds later, here comes Julie. It was pure chaos. And then I heard shouting in the ABC production truck behind me, everyone realizing what they had was great TV, trying to figure out who had the best footage—you could feel their whole plans for the show changing on the spot. They knew they had something they’d probably never see again.”

  While Scott was taking in the race dramatics from the curb, growing thirstier by the second, excruciating pain surged through me, the worst of the day. Strangely, it wasn’t physical pain. Even though I could not stand up, I did not hurt so much physically. However, I was devastated by the emotional pain and disappointment of having a dream ripped away—the dream of winning Ironman, hatched not four hours before on the marathon course.

  I had nothing left to give, nothing to offer this race, nothing inside. Still, my inner voice said, less urgently now that the imminent threat was gone: Crawl. Crawl to the finish.

  So I did. I dragged myself those final few yards, one arm in front of the other, head down, inspired by a growing awareness that I was crawling not only across the line, but into the power to uncap all limitations of what I thought possible. A face-to-face encounter with the Wonder Woman buried deep inside. I let go of the humiliation, let go of the disappointment, and let go of the win. All I held onto, like a lifeline, was getting across that line. Armen Keteyian, writing for the San Diego Union, stated it clearly a month later:

  All you could think was, “Oh God, she’s going to fall again. She’s 15 feet from the finish line, 15 lousy feet from all the glory she deserves, and she’s going to fall again. Dammit, she’s not going to make it.”

  Eleven hours, ten minutes, and nine seconds after the cannon blasted at Kailua Pier, I reached my hand across the finish line. I broke 1980 Ironman champion Robin Beck’s women’s record by twelve minutes. I also finished six minutes ahead of Tom Warren’s o
verall winning time from 1979! Kathleen only beat me by twenty-nine seconds. Speaking of gratitude, can you imagine how grateful she was to even start the race two days after laying in a hospital bed, her dream of winning down the toilet? And then winning? Gratitude is one of our greatest allies.

  My finishing moment became frozen in time, thanks to Wide World of Sports and photojournalist Carol Hogan, a recreational triathlete whose husband Bob was an Ironman competitor and Southern California lifeguard competition legend. Carol shot the photo of me leaning on one arm, trying to struggle to my feet, now an iconic image in triathlon history. I told Armen Keteyian, “When I saw the picture at the finish line, I thought, ‘That’s what dead people look like.’”

  With my hand firmly on the line, a smile stretched across my face. It spread throughout my body. I closed my eyes, and kept smiling. It was finally over.

  I am an Ironman.

  What you don’t see in Carol’s iconic photo is the “caption,” my words to the volunteers at that very moment: “I’m so sorry; I’m such a mess. Take me and drop me into the bay!”

  Instead, I dropped into a whole new life.

  CHAPTER 4

  Going Viral, Circa 1982

  When I give motivational speeches, people sometimes ask, “As you crawled across the line, did you know the impact you would make around the world?”

  How I’d love to revise history to say, “Sure, I knew that my race and the way I finished would elevate a sport worldwide and inspire women and men to find what is possible within themselves.” I’d love to say that, except it isn’t true.

  What held true is that, for some time after finishing the Ironman Triathlon, I healed physically much faster than I did emotionally. The humiliation stuck with me for a long while. Yes, I’d experienced that incredible moment of authenticity, and felt awesome about finishing. I’d also ensured my graduation because of it! But how did that play against what fans in Kona experienced and Wide World of Sports viewers would watch: a 23-year-old coed losing it just before reaching the finish line?