Born to Perform

by Gerard Hartmann

  I have to stay positive and upbeat in my job. It is physically challenging working with my hands, but mentally tiring as well. All healing professions demand that the healer is giving of themselves in body, mind and spirit. It does not happen by chance that I am in my clinic at 7.30 a.m., full of drive and positivity. I am doing what I love and using a God-given talent, but it doesn’t happen without effort. My lifestyle conditions me to be charged up, positive and driven. It takes planning, discipline and even some sacrifice.

  I have a duty of care and a responsibility in my chosen profession, so being full of energy is important. People put their trust in me and depend on me. I recharge my batteries in a planned and methodical fashion. I go to bed early, for a start, and I am fastidious about good nutrition, such as regularly juicing organic vegetables, high in phytonutrients, and drinking two litres of water each day. I avoid negativity – particularly people who are negative or have a moan-and-groan attitude. I don’t allow negative media or negative situations to drain my bucket. Taking half an hour down time each day to reflect, to pray, to give thanks and appreciate my talents, and not take for granted that they will last forever, charges up the spiritual batteries and emotional self.

  I know all too well the meaning of anima sana in corpore sano – a sound mind in a sound body. Physical fitness and mental health go hand in hand. As I am well aware, there is a fine line between being the fittest man in Ireland and being finished as an athlete. Drive and positivity comes from life experience, from knowing how to respect and use your talents when you have them. Most important of all, they come from being truly happy in your own skin.

  My friend Moses Kiptanui from Kenya, who has broken numerous world records in middle distance events, once told me, “We come into this world with nothing; we will leave this world taking nothing. Live life to the full every day.” An upbeat positive attitude always wins friends. You make a decision about whether you want to be the man who wakes up and exclaims, “Good morning, God!” or the man who wakes up and exclaims, with a moan, “Good God, morning!”

  My focus for 1989 was simple and straightforward: to get back to full fitness by July 23 for the All-Ireland Triathlon Championship; to win the event and bring the trophy back to Limerick. I had won three All-Ireland Triathlons in a row, finished second in one, been too injured to shake a leg the previous year, and now I needed to put the record straight, not just in winning the title, but also in getting back on the international stage.

  Tom Heaney had won two titles. He was gunning for the three-in-a-row. Sligo 1989 was going to be a head-on battle of two titans. I had to keep my head down and let Tom take all the hype. When you have been kicked in the teeth, when you suffer a career-threatening injury, when you are left on your own to find a way back, you toughen up fast and you get smart.

  There was nothing I wanted to win more than that title. I put a photo of Tom Heaney on the back of my bedroom door and every morning when I got out of bed, I would glance once at the photo and it fired me up to get into peak shape for the head-to-head battle I’d dreamed of. I returned to competition and won two sprint triathlons in the Limerick Triathlon series of events held at St Enda’s Sports Complex. The Kilkee Triathlon was set for June 24 – four weeks ahead of the All-Ireland in Sligo.

  Kilkee always gave me a yardstick of my fitness, but it was never an event where I faced true competition. It was a little too far to travel for the Northern boys, especially when they had a series of good triathlon competitions in their own province. I put in a big training week leading into Kilkee; and, in fact, the day before the Kilkee Triathlon I trained twice. There was no point in easing down.

  On the morning of the Kilkee race, athletes rolled into the Victoria Hotel to check in, and those who had not pre-entered could do so on the day of the event. Tom Heaney, the man I was gunning for, showed up at the check-in; but Kilkee was not where I wanted to meet him head to head. For two frustrating years, I had dreamed of getting back to Sligo and having a duel of a race, this time without a hip injury to determine who was champion. Now I had a dilemma: to pull out of Kilkee, a race that was neither televised nor covered by the national press, or to win the race quietly, without any excitement.

  Indeed, I considered pulling out, but I needed a race. Heaney had thrown me off my game plan, for sure. He came out of the 1-mile swim with a 3-minute, 30-second lead, and into the bike-to-run transition 3 minutes up. I knew he’d run like hell to beat me. My weakness was swimming; his was running. The Kilkee running course is three miles out along the famous Dunlicky Coast Road, and three miles back. Tom was averaging six minutes per mile when I strode up to him at the three-mile mark. His game was up, but he was in for a bigger surprise. When I caught him, I shut the pace down and tried to make conversation with him, even suggesting we run in together and keep our racing until Sligo.

  He was non-committal. In fact, I didn’t even get a nod of his head response. To have kept going for just one mile at the pace I had run the first three miles meant I would have opened up a full minute on him, and could have then run on to win. But, no, my instinct was to amble along beside him. I had seen enough; my yardstick had got a reading. We ran down the promenade side-by-side and, with 100 metres to go, Heaney sprinted. I did not respond, and he crossed the finish line winner of the Kilkee Triathlon and, with that, favourite for the Sligo All-Ireland. This was just what I wanted to make the All-Ireland truly worth fighting for. Later that evening, I ran back out the Dunlicky Road, plotting my strategy for Sligo.

  The 1989 All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo was set for Sunday, July 23. It was irrelevant who else was competing, either from Ireland or abroad. It was penned in the press as the clash between the two titans. On paper, we were neck and neck, as in Kilkee only a couple of seconds had separated us. It was shaping up to be a worthwhile duel.

  On the Friday morning before travelling to Sligo, I got up early and pedalled out for a steady two-hour cycle. Approaching home, I jammed my front wheel into a pot hole and heard a snap. My nerves were being tested. The steer tube of my lightweight Raleigh racing bike had cracked. I got off the bike, took off my cycling shoes and hobbled the two miles home, walking on the hard pavement in thin socks.

  I drove into town to the bike shop. The steer tube had a three-inch crack; there was no way the bike could be used. Amazingly, in the heat of the moment, it did not faze me. I went home and took out my training bike and travelled on to Sligo. When I arrived in Sligo and went out for a cycle, I found the chain on the training bike was well worn and was slipping on the cogs of my racing wheel. I left the bike into Gary Rooney at his bike shop in Sligo Town to be serviced, and collected it the following afternoon.

  By pure coincidence, Tom Heaney and his dad ventured in at one stage and saw my bike sitting inside the shop – they saw my name on the top tube. Tom Heaney enquired: “What’s Hartmann’s bike doing here?” And when Gary explained that my racing bike was broken and that I’d be using this training bike, which was three pounds heavier, Tom went over, lifted the bike and exclaimed, “Jesus, that’s heavier than a gate; there’s no way he’s racing on that.”

  But race on it I had to; I had no other option. It wasn’t the first time adversity had shown its face to me and it wasn’t going to be the last.

  Tom Heaney had a superb start to the day – he was out of the water with a full four minutes’ lead. On a superlight triathlon bike, he powered his way around the cycle course. He was clearly a man on a mission. Adrenalin and fear of defeat do strange things to you: Tom had known that I pulled back three minutes on him in three miles in Kilkee and then shut down my engine. His Kilkee win was at a price. He had emptied his bucket, while I had not revealed what I had left in my tank. I paced myself to a calculated measure. I set my stall out to pull back 1 minute on Heaney over the 56-mile bike course, and then run 30 seconds per mile faster than him over the 13-mile run, which I calculated would see me win by over 3 minutes. That was a conservative and cautious estimate, but in a Half Ironman all logi
stics can go out the window in a matter of moments.

  Heaney had blown a gasket. He overextended his physiological limit on the bike course, going way too fast in the first 30 miles. I pulled up at the bike park at Rosses Point to see Tom changing into his running shoes. A quick change, a tap on his backside, and I commented to myself, “Now Tom, let’s run and see who’s champion!” I had waited for this head to head. The last time we had met in Sligo I graciously praised his win, and I declined to tell anyone on the day about my injury. I strode across the beach and onto the country roads with a new lease of life.

  Sligo had been won and lost in Kilkee. Mind games in sport have always fascinated me. Tom withdrew from the race at five miles, well back on the road. I danced my way to the finish line – breaking the 4 hours to win in 3 hours, 59 minutes and 38 seconds.

  I never spoke to Tom Heaney after the race. Indeed, what’s fascinating is that, in the duels we had in triathlons since 1984, I don’t recall that we ever spoke to each other at any length. We were two boys from the same island, north and south, with nothing in common with each other except the sport of triathlon and striving to win. Sport can be strange: sometimes it binds us together; sometimes it separates us.

  That day in Sligo put the nail in the coffin of Tom Heaney’s triathlon career. Competitive sport can be cruel. There are no courtesies, no easy wins, unless handed on a plate because of another’s tactic or agenda. Triathlon at the top level is a tough sport, physically and mentally. You put in so many hard miles on the clock, punish your body day after day and extract the last ounce of energy out of yourself to win a race. There has to be a point when your body rebels; it just won’t co-operate anymore. When an athlete gets a stuffing in a race on a day when expectations are high, when the going gets tough and the body throws a curve ball at you, it is almost impossible to bounce back and have the same unbridled enthusiasm. A bit of you can die on a day like that, and all it takes is that one bad experience to knock the stuffing out of you and you say, “Never again. I’m done.”

  My experience in 1987 of crashing off the bike and being tormented with injury for eighteen months certainly had me analysing where I was going with triathlon, and also what I was doing with my life overall. Yes, I wanted to continue competing and I believed I could be one of the best triathletes in the world. My ultimate goal was to win a medal for Ireland in a European Championship, World Championship or Hawaii Ironman event.

  But during that period I was asking myself a deeper rooted question: what was I doing with my “real” life? Sport can tie you up in knots, in a false cocoon. Free bikes, sponsored equipment, paid-for travel and hotels, press conferences, photo shoots, interviews, racing the race of triathlon – but what about the real race of life? What about life without triathlon? Where to? What to?

  I dug into my inner heart and began to realise that triathlon was only a sport, only a phase; it was about boys and their toys, and the fancy glitter of being an athlete, being a champion. I was not ready to let go yet, but I was searching. The deeper truth that emerged from delving inwards was the realisation that working in the family jewellery business in Limerick was not what I wanted in life. This was a bigger issue, an issue that tormented me for some time. I understood that I was the only son, that my great-grandfather established the business over 120 years ago. How could I face my parents? How could I do this to them? I would look like a fool and make a laughing stock of myself and my family by walking away from a secure, established business. What could I do? How would I go about it?

  It is always best to face the truth sooner rather than later. Discontent festers away in you. My mother always drilled it into us that, if we had a problem, not to bottle it up, not to run from it, but to bring it to her or my dad’s attention immediately. No problem is ever too big a problem when there is support. My mother knew, as all mothers do, when a child is not content. She could read me like a book and had been praying that I would get direction. But I had to figure it out on my own and come up with a plan. Only I could decide; it was my life to make a success or a failure of and parents can only do so much for their children. They, too, have a life to live and enjoy.

  The runner talks about that unique euphoric state of what’s often known as the “runner’s high”, when the endorphins are released into the bloodstream and you feel invincible. You have radiance, a glow; maybe you have sore legs, but you also have an increased mental happiness. Sex does the same thing, and that’s why it, too, can be addictive. The same goes for drugs.

  I always find it fascinating, when going on a long training cycle in a group, how most have their two large jumbo bottles full of concentrated carbohydrate drinks, plus their pockets filled with energy bars and energy gels, and all types of goodies to fuel their journey. It’s like they need all that junk to survive. It’s their crutch, insurance that they will finish the ride. I am the opposite. Maybe I am a masochist.

  A long cycle is more of a spiritual, almost out-of-body experience for me. All I need are two water bottles, one banana and a testing 100-mile course. Nowhere, with the exception of being out on the Hawaii lava fields competing in the Hawaii Ironman, can I learn so much about who I am, what I am and what I want in such a short period of time.

  On such a cycle, the first 60 to 70 miles are a breeze, but with only half a mashed banana left in the back pocket you hold on to it and ration that 3 or 4 inches of carbohydrate like your life depends on it. And it does. That is your life line to make it back to base. The legs weaken; the mind questions. You start to wonder if you can stay upright on the bike. If you stop, it’s over – you’ll never get back up. You must keep going. Body and mind feel like two separate entities. You are only half alive, only hanging on by a thread. It’s a temporary state of being – nothing that a good feed of pasta can’t cure – but still a feeling close to a near-death experience.

  When you are in such a place, you draw on your inner strength. It tests you physically to the limit, plus your ability to suffer and to endure. More importantly, it tests you mentally. Like a sick person, you have a choice: you can take your chances, fight the good fight or throw in the towel and give up. Like the ill person, it becomes very clear to you what you want to do with your life and who you want to spend time with for whatever time you have left. You realise that you have been living in the comfort zone, taking the easy option, chugging along. You have choices. The reality may be hard to swallow, but the choice becomes clear on a long bike ride, when reaching home can feel a little like arriving at the top of Everest. You have not just finished a 100-mile cycle; you have found direction, purpose and something meaningful. You have found your true self.

  13

  Life beyond Triathlon?

  Six weeks after regaining my All-Ireland Triathlon title in Sligo, I was in San Antonio, Texas, competing in the most competitive triathlon in the US: the US Triathlon Championship – a 2-mile lake swim, 50-mile bike ride and a 10-mile run. It was dry and very hot – 103°F, in fact. I had arrived from Ireland just three days earlier. I knew I needed to return to international competition to try to claw back to where I was in 1987, before injury derailed my progress.

  When you are a weak swimmer, swimming in a lake can make you even weaker. The water is dead heavy, unlike the salt-water buoyancy of the sea which gives you some lift. Without a wetsuit, I was sinking to the bottom. But I placed seventh overall in that triathlon, and there was some life coming back into my legs again.

  A few weeks later, I was in Hawaii on my own: no RTÉ, no funding, just me on a shoestring budget. One part of my mind was concentrating on the athletic feat ahead, while the other was trying to picture what I wanted to do with my real life. I was to get plenty of time on October 14, 1989 to tackle my demons.

  I exited the water in one hour, one minute – an eight-minute improvement on my 1985 Hawaii Ironman swim performance. I stormed into a 4 hours and 48 minutes bike split, some 42 minutes faster than in 1985. A 3-hour marathon would have given me a finishing time of 8 hours a
nd 58 minutes to 9 hours – still allowing 6 to 8 minutes for transition time. But it wasn’t to happen.

  My cycle time had been one of the fastest of the day, but when I stood up from putting on my running shoes, a bulge the size of my thumb protruded out of my stomach. I had torn my gut and got a hernia. The pain came on sharp and sudden. I could not run a single step. The gun was put to my head for the first time in such a situation and I said to myself, “Don’t deal with the negative; answer the question, are you an Ironman?” The chance of a top finish having dissipated, I walked out of the bike park and bent over, clutching the right side of my stomach. I had made up my mind to finish out the day in true Ironman spirit, and drag myself mile after mile towards the finish line, walking all the way. I crossed the finish line on Ali’i Drive in 244th place in 10 hours, 44 minutes. I had covered the marathon in 4 hours and 58 minutes, a near crawl to me.

  The performance at the top level in triathlon was reaching staggering levels. Ironman 1989 is still considered the most competitively stacked Ironman ever. It was a dramatic race, with Dave Scott and Mark Allen running stride for stride, mile after mile, not once looking across at one another but just focused on the task in hand. For eight hours they had been going at it hammer and tongs, not separated once by more than a body length. As Allen and Scott moved closer and closer to the finish at Kona, the thought of a sprint finish had to be going through each of their heads. At 24 miles, Allen surged on a hill and opened up a gap. He held it right to the finish line, having to run the marathon in 2 hours, 40 minutes and 4 seconds, off a 51-minute swim and a 4-hour, 37-minute bike ride. It was a truly awesome performance.

  But that day stands out in my mind, too, in that my almost-great day in the Hawaii Ironman race still turned out to be one of the most important days of my life. Competing in the swim and bike ride had been all about pumping adrenalin and focusing on performance. Once a top finish was scuppered, I wore the hat of just another middle-of-the-packer, trying to survive a long, long day in the sun. That same day, I was meant to be in Little Rock, Arkansas for the wedding of my best friend Frank O’Mara, but I’d reckoned the triathlon and the Hawaii Ironman were far more important.