INTRODUCTION
This is the fifth of ten untold stories about the incredible moments of personal challenge and the decisions made that led to the 1989 side-by-side eight-hour battle between Dave Scott and Mark Allen. Everyone has seen accounts of the race itself. Neither Dave nor Mark have told this story from each of their perspectives. But, more importantly, no one has ever heard the details of each of their personal journeys during the year leading up to The Greatest Race Ever Run.
In the upcoming stories Dave and Mark will reveal their personal struggles, their daily triumphs, and the seemingly impossible challenges that brought them to this iconic clash.
Dave raced Ironman Japan and set a new world’s record. Mark won in Avignon. Both men needed to put early August victories aside and get on the Ironman Kona train. They couldn’t have chosen more opposite approaches. Dave took two weeks completely off due to the birth of his first child. Mark climbed Mt. Ventoux the day after winning the world title in Avignon. They both questioned those choices. Dave’s fitness slumped. Mark pushed himself to near burnout. Both struggled with their choices the day after each logged great victories. Neither seemed to be on the right course to set up what we all know would be the greatest showdown in Ironman history.
As we reach the halfway mark in the series Dave, Mark and I wanted to show our appreciation for the unsung hero (or heroine) in the creation of these stories. That person is Becca Borawski Jenkins who is a brilliant freelance writer/editor and has written for some of the top sports and fitness magazines and websites in the world. Becca has been responsible for editing and blending these two very diverse voices together and without her this could never have happened. From all of us, Thank you.
Scott Zagarino
Dave Scott
In Japan, I set a new world record of 8 hours 1 minute. My fastest time in Kona had been 8 hours 28 minutes. During the Ironman, the only time I was aware of the record pace was over the final 12 kilometers of the run. Calculating my pace for the finish of the marathon, I thought the eight-hour barrier could be broken. Realizing the goal was within my reach, I was able to quicken the tempo to hopefully eclipse 8 hours and set a world record.
I came up short—but that was okay. My ultimate goal going into the race had been to win. The secondary motivation had been to be back home as soon as possible. Not having attained the sub-eight-hour goal was just a fleeting thought.
Even the upcoming World Championships evaporated from my mindset. I ungraciously left the awards ceremony in Japan, changing my flight immediately after the victory, and headed home to witness the birth of my first child on August 5th, two days after Ironman Japan.
From that point, Ryan became my focus. The summer’s long benchmarks and training for the World Championships were pushed aside. Mark did not enter my mind.
I completely stopped training and quickly fell into a daily routine of watching and experiencing every minute with Ryan. Changing his diapers and getting up in the middle of the night after hearing him cry were a joy for me. I was sleep deprived but the diversion was welcome and, in hindsight, a convenient way to hide from my training preparations and the closeness of the 1989 race in Kona. “
Mark Allen
“My break from thinking about the upcoming IRONMAN was coming to a quick close. The ITU World Championship race would unfold on August 6, 1989, in Avignon, France. I’d been focusing solely on that race for almost two months. I’m not a great multitasker and I knew I had to completely block IRONMAN out of my mind and cut all IRONMAN training out of my workouts if I was going to have a chance at putting together something spectacular in France.
You have to understand that at this point in my career, my successes had been pretty equally split between wins at short races and at long ones. The first ever Olympic Distance World Championship was going to be the first major stepping stone to getting triathlon into the Olympics. If I could win in France, a huge fork in the road would appear before me. I’d never won in Kona, so a win in Avignon might be a sign to specialize solely on the Olympic distance. I also knew that if I ended up with a win in Avignon and then also in Kona that same year, I’d have to make a choice.
But for the moment there was only one task at hand: have a great race in France. In seven years of competing on French soil, I’d only lost one race. It happened to be in Avignon and was a half IRONMAN race that Scott Tinley won. I had momentum on my side, but this race would be different. Every top short-distance specialist in the world would be in the race. Everyone would be competing not only for their own pride, but for the pride of their country. No one in the event spent a second thinking about IRONMAN.
But in an entirely different part of the world something dramatic was happening I had no idea about.”
Dave Scott
“After the birth of my son Ryan, during my two-week hiatus from training, I got a call from my close friend Mike. He knew when I took downtime from training that I had an uncanny ability to overeat and gain weight. Despite my enthusiasm for Ryan, when I replaced my training with long bouts of inactivity, the psychological gnawing left me uneasy, uncomfortable, and insecure. My true peace came while training. As a result, within a ten- to fourteen-day period I could easily tack on eight to ten pounds. Mike had witnessed these weight gains in previous summers when I’d had a lull in my training. He wouldn’t allow this to happen this time around—knowing the stakes in Kona.
Even though I was captivated and enthralled with Ryan, my mindset had always been “all or nothing.” When I trained, I was maniacal and when I took breaks there wasn’t a compromise of shortened or easier days—I just stopped. Counseling through the first ten years of my racing career had not resolved this psychological weakness. I called it a weakness because I had 100% control over the spiraling cycle. How did I know this? Because it didn’t matter if I talked to my wife or a counselor, the trigger to regain my “training order” was always initiated by me.
By August 20th, two weeks past Ryan’s birth, I was restless, feeling fat and out of shape. Mike and my sister Jane almost simultaneously sensed the urgency to kick me in the pants. Despite their prodding, I had to turn on my internal switch . If I was going to be race ready it was ultimately up to me to get out the door. The race day was coming up quickly. “
Mark Allen
I had heard that Dave Scott was going to be racing the Japan IRONMAN exactly one week before Avignon. His race would be July 30, which if looked at through the lens of preparing for Kona, was a great time to do a test race in a faraway place to see if you were on track to be in peak shape for Kona in October. At the time, I had been pretty sure Dave would be racing in Japan, but I didn’t know with 100% certainty. As mentioned, he and I were in Boulder, Colorado, at the same time but our paths rarely crossed. And we when they did it was an unspoken pact that neither of us would bring up anything to do with how training was going or what was next on our schedule. Yes, we might acknowledge a recent race one of us had been in, but that was it.
This shared silence was not something that came out of animosity. It was a dynamic that evolved out of respect. We both knew if October went the way we each wanted that we would be each other’s toughest competition. So, instead of getting into verbal sparring matches ahead of time, we went to the neutral zone around each other. Yes, I wanted to win in Kona just as Dave did. But, for me, the rivalry that had grown was fueled by my admiration for what Dave had shown was possible and simply wanting to see if I could match that—or even go one step beyond.
Dave Scott
The 20th of August was the initial step to renew my passion and conviction for Ironman. Jane told me she would ride her bike while I ran for the first time in fifteen days. Historically, knowing how I would feel, one of the symptoms I anticipated on this run was leg cramping from extra fluid, weight gain, and probably an imbalance in electrolytes. We started out for my eleven-mile run and within three miles my legs seized up. I stopped to slowly stretch and try to regain a bit more range of motion. It was an ugly reminder of how I let my body slip out of my supreme form from Japan. Jane wouldn’t buy any excuse and in 98-degree heat, I continued to labor through my first run.
This struggling run—plus a 5000-yard swim and a two-hour ride—unleashed a wave of panic over my lost fitness but also a resolve to not look back. Regaining and elevating my fitness was now my emotional driver. I could not fail.
I was back but my confidence had eroded dramatically in those two inactive weeks. Regaining and superseding my pre-Ironman Japan fitness was my renewed goal—one that was unparalleled during my career. The looming motivating factor was Mark. I had no idea what he was doing after his victory in Avignon. Time was clicking by and I had to be ready for Kona and a possible showdown.
Mark Allen
As the final hours counted down to Avignon, one part of my brain was getting ready to dial into Kona the day after the Olympic Distance World Championship was in the books. I was starting to think maybe I’d slacked off a bit too much from my endurance training in trade for the speed I’d need in Avignon I hadn’t heard a word about how Dave’s race had gone in Japan, if indeed he’d even raced at all. I’d likely have to wait until I got back home from Avignon before I could get a pulse on that.
My focus shifted back to where I was at. It was France. I loved that. It was hot. I loved that, too. The race ended up not going according to plan at all, but the result was what I had dreamed of. I won the first ever ITU Olympic Distance World Championship with a lousy swim, a decent bike, and a run that closed the deal. I was faster than the fastest in the sport. But…
Dave Scott
The power of my conviction as an athlete was not a seamless path. I was continually confounded with failure, success, and striving toward nearly unattainable goals. Throughout my life, dating back to my teens, I had a drive that seemed reasonable but it was actually quite destructive. Looking merely at my athletic results has never been a valid indicator of my psychological and emotional makeup. I feel it’s important to share this insight.
I was athletically driven my entire life. From nine-years-old, I relentlessly pursued my athletic dreams. This quest rolled into hours of solitary practice—practicing basketball (my hidden passion) for hours on end at my home basketball hoop or working on my golf shots. The simplicity of this probably parallels thousands of kids, but my enjoyment was always darkened by not attaining my desired level of success. A level of success that was at times improbable and impossible
This attitude paralleled my high school and college swimming and water polo years. Practicing water polo between classes, doing strength training with my teammates until they completely burned out, and driving everyone and myself to a higher goal was always my conviction. And I held myself to a standard that was never gratifying. I reached new levels of satisfaction, but a victory or a new level of fitness was never enough. I was always driven to compulsive behavior. My goal in sharing this is not self diagnosis or feeling sorry for myself. It’s merely to point out the potentially reckless behavior I pursued with my pathological conviction for success.
Mark Allen
The day after the race in Avignon brought a complete shift in focus. Speed was done. It was time to make a change in direction and start building toward Kona. What I felt wasn’t exactly panic, but it was certainly a need to be completely on task. I didn’t give myself even one day to bask in what I had just accomplished. I shifted gears and started my Ironman training.
To put a big stake in the ground, I wanted to bike up Mt. Ventoux. This is one of the classic climbs often included in the Tour de France. The actual ascent is 21km (over 13 miles) and has an elevation gain of about 1,600m (5,000ft). The average gradient is 7.5% but it peaks in sections that are over 12%. Perhaps the most mind-numbing aspect of the climb is that there are very few switchbacks. It’s a long steady grade of road that ends up well above tree line on a stark moonlike rock landscape.
From Avignon, the round-trip up Mt. Ventoux and back would feel like doing an Ironman bike ride even though the actual mileage was around 90 miles. Not to mention the fact I had just raced the day before at one of the two biggest races of my season.
The fatigue would add even more spice to the ride. I recruited Mike Pigg to join me on the ride. He’d finished second the previous year at the Ironman World Championships, so he too had some motivation to get back on task for Kona.
I also needed to do that ride to give myself a mental boost against the impending showdown with Dave in Kona. He wouldn’t know about the ride, so it wasn’t to make a statement to him. It was a personal thing to boost my confidence in my own ability to do something that was almost cruel to my body. Doing the ride fresh would have been enough. But doing it the day after a big race was stupid at best.
The approach to Mt. Ventoux is not flat, but it’s also not anything dreadful. Then you hit the climb. It starts from one pedal stroke to the next. There is no easing into it. My legs immediately felt like they had been shocked and injected with a dose of lactic acid. Fortunately, after about fifteen minutes of grinding up what seemed to be an increasingly steeper slope, my climbing muscles kicked in. The rest of the ascent was epic. I was climbing one of the historic mountain-top finish stages of the Tour. Past winners of this stage had included Eddie Merckx, Marco Pantani, and Chris Froome. But they got to stop at the top. Pigg and I had to descend down the other side and then make it back to our hotel in Avignon.
I was completely spent by the end of the ride. I was also happy. I was back on track for Ironman and that felt really good. Avignon was a success. My attention span for doing short, intense workouts had reached its limit right at the point where I could now go back to longer training with a slow-bake kind of focus.
My ride up Mt. Ventoux was an affirmation that it was time to go long. But it took something out of me. I try to structure things so I don’t look back when tomorrow comes and question whether I made the right decision today. But this was one of those moments I did come to question.”
Dave Scott
I had fear of success and at times, as described above in the summer of ’89. Dating back to my first World Championship in 1980, the Ironman World Championships in Kona was the Wimbledon in our sport. Every Professional athlete that stepped into the Ironman arena wanted the coveted prize of winning this race.
Throughout the course of my Ironman career, adding a new victory heightened the pressure exponentially. The expectations from the media, sponsors, race organization and athletes collectively elevated a deep engrained fear of being successful. My personal standards for this race created immense anxiety and simultaneously channeled the greatest opportunity to reap and conquer the ultimate challenge.
Preparing for 1989 the pressure to live up to my personal expectations: only a victory was acceptable. My fears oscillated from failure to success: controlling my thoughts were paramount for the latter to prevail. , I could channel this power.
We all have minds that can override fear of failure or defeat or of the unknown and if you can savor the successes along the way, the journey in life can be immensely rewarding.
It’s taken me a long time to recognize the journey and I hope all of you can enjoy the process and accept any outcome. Whether these statements help you, I have no idea, but it was important for me to put these thoughts on paper so you can see that within this story of athletics lies a mountain of successes—maybe I’m just realizing this as the story unfolds thirty years later.
Mark Allen
That climb was a huge request to make of my body the day after racing a World Championship. On top of that, the news of Japan Ironman made its way across the oceans and I heard what Dave did there.
He’d shattered the world’s best Ironman time. His finishing time was 8:01:32. Dave’s fastest time in Kona three years earlier in 1986 had been 8:28:37. I’d raced that course in Japan and it is in many ways comparable to Kona in terms of its difficulty with heat and humidity. To hear that Dave had gone about 27 minutes faster than his best Kona time was so far beyond anything I could wrap my brain around that I thought there must have been a mistake. Maybe the course had been changed and it was short (it hadn’t and it wasn’t). Maybe it was unseasonably cool (it wasn’t, and the humidity had approached 100% to boot).
Dave was already showing he was in better shape than he had ever been at Kona and it was only the first week of August. I knew he would be building on that fitness over the next three months. I had let all my IRONMAN training go in pursuit of Avignon, and, yes, I had just laid down an epic ride, but as exhausted as I was when I got the news of Dave’s performance in Japan, I couldn’t see any way I could close the gap between us.
I fell into an emotional trap where I look at an impossibly bad moment and let it feel like it’s set in stone for eternity and that there is no chance of turning it around. It’s the trap that dealt me the dead blow every year in Kona. Something would go wrong and I’d project it out to be the final word on how the day would go. Dave seemed to be so opposite of this. No matter how bleak his situation might look to someone else, he just kept charging until it did turn around.
This pattern was so ingrained that I didn’t even know I had it. I was tired. Dave had just set a mind blowing standard. The trap caught me. The long flight home from France should have been a celebration of my win. But now knowing what Dave had just done, that flight was nothing but eleven hours of seeing one more defeat coming my way in Kona.