INTRODUCTION
In the winter of 1989, Dave Scott and Mark Allen chose very different landscapes to lay the groundwork each needed to be ready for another epic clash at the IRONMAN World Championship that would take place later that year. Scott stuck to his proven winter training grounds in Davis, CA. Allen took a leap of faith and set the wheels in motion for his season in New Zealand. Dave would race some Olympic distance events. Mark would do a handful of running races.
Time would tell if each had made the right decision!
This is the second 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 in tandem. But, more importantly, no one has ever heard the details of each of their personal journeys during the year that made this an even more amazing accomplishment and why I truly believe it is “The Greatest Race Ever Run.”
Scott Zagarino
Mark Allen
Year after year this scene repeated. Dave passed me on the run. How could I pick up the pieces for a seventh time and get a different result?
“If you look back at key turning points in my triathlon career, it might look like every significant element I put in place was part of an elaborate, well thought-out plan. But I’ll be honest. Some of the biggest changes in my approach to training and being ready for the IRONMAN started with me having absolutely no idea if they would help me or be a waste of time.
The truth is I got lucky — a lot. Without knowing it, I was about to make one of those lucky, random choices yet again, and it would turn out to be a pivotal turning point in my career.
I was going into that year disillusioned. My normal training rhythm was to spend the winter in San Diego, California. Then I’d transition out to Boulder, Colorado, for the summer months.
But after years of doing that, I was still zero for six in Kona. I was pulling off victories just about everywhere else, so I knew the basics of my training were solid. But, after my sixth IRONMAN in 1988, it was pretty clear the Kona puzzle was missing some huge pieces for me.
In early January of 1989, I wracked my brain trying to figure out what needed to change. I always felt strong going into the race, but clearly my results revealed huge weaknesses in my physical performance. In six IRONMAN starts, I’d only been able to run the entire marathon twice. In all the others, I had been reduced to a walking, barely surviving mess.
There was also some part of my inner character that had to be transformed to be able to handle the pressure. In every other race — other than that one ominous day each year in Hawaii — I would lock into a calm that gave me the ability to overcome just about any race situation that looked impossible. The calm just seemed to find its way into me. It replaced the nerves, and in that moment I would know that even with weaknesses and my humanness I’d be able to rise above it all and lock into something extraordinary for the rest of the race.
In six years of racing in Kona, I’d never even for one second felt that same type of calm. I certainly looked it there, but the only things I locked into were fear, dread, and avoidance. That is not a champion’s mindset. That was a guy who would never fulfill a dream.
I needed to do things differently if I wanted a different result. Something had to change about my training. Something had to change inside me. I had no idea how I would do either. Believe me, I spent a lot of nights in the early weeks of 1989 lying in bed going over every possible idea I could come up with to get better.
In my mind’s eye, I’d play each one out to the end game in Kona. But the images were always the same. I’d see someone else winning. I’d suddenly know why every idea I had was flawed. Add more volume? How could I! I was already at the limit of what I thought I could handle. And winning IRONMAN is not just about fitness. It’s also about being fresh on race day. This idea was out.
Maybe I needed more fast training? But that seemed like a waste. I could already go fast, just not fast enough for long enough. Scratch that idea too.
I also knew I needed some way to feel strong instead of withering when I got off the plane in Kona. No idea was coming on how to do that!
None brought that ‘Aha’ moment that said I’ve got it. I’ve come up with the missing pieces to my IRONMAN puzzle. No, I was still not a complete athlete. I was still trying to figure out how to win without doing the right training and still trying to adopt the aura of a champion without there being a shred of self-confidence when it came to Kona.”
Dave Scott
“After bowing out of the 1988 IRONMAN World Championships, I had a renewed spirit to come back in four separate yet interconnected pathways:
- I would stay fit and elevate my fitness during the winter of ‘88 and the spring of ‘89.
- I would override the depression that manifested following all my previous IRONMAN races through the consistency of a physical training regimen.
- I had to be ready for my first child! In December of 1988, my wife and I learned she was pregnant and due in early August ‘89.
- I had no idea what Mark was altering in his training program but with six failed attempts, I knew he had to change his approach.
Starting with my first victory in 1980, I always fell into an emotional abyss after each race. It manifested in weeks of minimal exercise, self abuse, weight gain, and sliding into a dark emotional hole. Each time this happened, I leaned on my wife and close friends for support, but as the years went by the depth of the abyss deepened. I tried seeing a counselor, but it was not the answer. In fact, it seemed to heighten my mental resolve that I was weak and unable to conquer my mental demons.
I tried to relish the victories at the IRONMAN, savor the euphoria from the races, enjoy my home life, dive into my business and prepare myself to defend my title. Without that where would I be? Taking action in all these areas became psychologically overwhelming. I wanted perfection and this was an impossible goal. If I lost control in any one of these areas, I felt I would be a failure.
The fear of failure became my single biggest demon, yet also my impetus to finally pull myself out of a spiraling abyss. In late ‘88 and leading into ‘89, I vowed never to repeat this debilitating trait.”
Mark Allen
Christchurch was a world away from California. It freed me of the distractions that kept me from see what I was truly capable of doing in my training.
“In mid-January of 1989, I received a phone call from one of my training partners: Scott Molina. He had won Kona in 1988. Scott talked about how one of the pieces that fell in place for him was training in New Zealand during the winter. He said I should come down and join him for a month or two to get a new outlook on things.
Scott had been making New Zealand his winter home for a few years. His wife, Erin Baker, who also won the IRONMAN in Hawaii, lived in a small town on the South Island called Christchurch. The invitation to train with them had been extended to me a few times. Maybe this was the year to take them up on it?
And, so it happened — in February, I headed to a country I’d never visited before. I would train there for six weeks with no idea what that would look like.
But I knew it had to be good because Scott had given it his stamp of approval. He didn’t train in bad places.
There was another reason I was going there. I wanted to run away from the most pressing question in my life: how was I going to go from thinking I could have a great race in Hawaii to actually having it?
I’m usually pretty good at figuring out this kind performance question, but clearly Kona was not “usual.” Instead of exploding from not having the answer, I felt like going to the other side of the earth might allow me to just take a breathe. I’d be so removed from my normal life that it would give me a break from the big gnawing question that plagued me every night: what’s it going to take for me to win Kona?
Keep in mind that in 1989 there were no cell phones, laptops, or any other tech devices to keep me connected to the Northern Hemisphere. Once I arrived in New Zealand, I was completely disconnected from my busy life back home. I actually hadn’t thought my life was so busy, but after a few days in New Zealand I got to see what life was like when it was slow and simple. Waking up in the morning, there was only one question and one answer that never changed for six weeks.
Question: “What should I do today? Answer: “I think I’ll train.”
Molina loved to load on the volume. My response? “Why not? Nothing else to do.”
We cycled the traffic-free backroads in the countryside around Christchurch. We ran for hours and hours on headland trails that connected an endless patchwork of open, grassy sheep farms. Unlike Americans, the Kiwis like that you want to run through their land. The fences that kept the sheep corralled all had handmade ladders that enabled you to hop over the fences. You were never kept out but could run from one field to the next and then the next. Each track or trail that traversed this vast network of paths had signs that proudly told you who each part was named after.
There was zero training I did during those six weeks that was fancy. The first half was just a lot of longer workouts. Runs were almost all hilly, and they all had a revitalizing quality about them. Maybe it was the clean air or the Southern Hemisphere’s sunlight or simply that it was an incredibly beautiful place to be. Long runs passed in what seemed like half the time they took back home. Training was mentally easy, even if the sessions were demanding.
We cycled on roads with pavement so rough it was impossible to pick up any real speed. It wasn’t easy riding. At first, I didn’t like it. I wanted to go fast. But eventually I saw how those rough roads were a gift. Riding them was building incredible strength in my legs simply because of the resistance they gave.
In those first weeks, I did things I’d never done before. I ran for over two hours in training for the first time. I rode for over five and a half hours in training, again for the first time. I swam over 4,000 meters, which is something I had never done as a triathlete. And I saw that instead of becoming more tired from the training that I was feeling stronger from it.
One huge, missing piece to having a great race in Kona was taking shape. My endurance ran out in every one of my first six competitions in Hawaii around hour six of the event. But now I could tell training was being logged that would carry me through that time barrier and help me to finish just as strong as I started. Before the simplicity of New Zealand, doing the amount of training I completed there would have been impossible to absorb. But now, everything had shifted to a new level!”
Dave Scott
“Preparing for the 1989 season, one of my early season goals was to include four spring races. These included two short races at the Olympic distance and two longer races. My career had been categorized as that of an IRONMAN Champion. I wanted to reestablish my confidence and fitness early in the season to send out a message to my competitors that I was ready to race anyone at any distance–all the while knowing that October’s race in Kona would be the pinnacle of my early season preparation and racing.
Training in my hometown of Davis, California, was darn difficult. The winters were notoriously foggy all day long, with the Sacramento Valley completely immersed under a cold gray blanket. The temperatures remained between 39 to 42 F (4-6 degrees C) for the entire month of December and into January. I found these conditions brutally challenging both for cycling and for overriding the dour mood that engulfed me.
But this was a new year and I had vowed that it would be different. I made it a goal to ride up to 500 feet in elevation (starting from 50 feet of elevation in Davis) on my route to Lake Berryessa. My climb up to the lake via the dam and the subsequent ride up Cardiac Hill always opened up to glorious sunshine and a ten to fifteen degree swing in temperature. The round trip from Davis up to the sunshine renewed my spirit and became a daily ritual that helped me feel physically and psychologically alive. My only means of self measurement was to look at my wrist watch taped to my handle bars and mentally time the two climbs. I became obsessed with my ride, and as the winter progressed I became crazed in my attempts at lowering the times for my climbs.
Most of my training wasn’t up in the heights of the sunshine though. And before I started a session, I would check the temperatures in balmy San Diego. My perception was that Mark and the rest of my competitors in Southern California were training under beautiful conditions. My inner tenacity was heightened by my frigid training days and hours of solitude in Davis. Throughout the cold months, I trained religiously.
I added biweekly runs climbing the only hill in Davis, which was merely an overpass. I never wore a wrist watch on my runs but used my intuitive senses about my breathing and heart rate plus my muscular fatigue to validate my fitness. This was all I needed.
In January, I ran ten miles in 53-minutes in Stockton, California. This was a fast time for me and a solid indicator of my renewed fitness. Equally important—my emotional wellness was at a euphoric peak.”
Mark Allen
“I was absorbing it all in New Zealand. It was energizing. Setting new personal standards was inspiring. The simplistic lifestyle revealed a completely new level I could go to. And, best of all, my training wasn’t about doing something complicated. All it required was for me to focus my energies differently. I just needed to live simply and expand my potential without being afraid.
In addition, I had accidentally found my way into an underground athletic real world research lab. There were a number of world-class triathletes training in New Zealand that season. We all supported each other. It was like a think tank for endurance athletes. We’d sit around and come up with new training sessions until we all agreed on them, then we’d go out and execute them. There were no limits. Everyone was exploring underdeveloped athletic turf.
For my final three weeks of training, I moved into speedwork. But, in keeping with our unconventional approach, none of it was done on a track or anywhere that times or pace could be measured. We ran through flat sand forests by the ocean. We climbed as hard as we could up the never-ending hills close to our homes. We time-trialed on dead flat roads that more days than not were hammered by relentless winds that kicked up as New Zealand headed into its fall time and the storms generated off the Antarctic loomed closer each week.
It was time to wrap up my training there, to close the book on a chapter that elevated both my physical fitness and my mental solidity. I’d fly home the first week of April. The next autumn I’d experience would be six months later in the Northern Hemisphere. A lot of miles still needed to get logged. But for the first time ever I had a feeling I was on the path to being ready for a great race in Kona.”
Dave Scott
“As the spring months slightly warmed, my first two races of 1989 drew closer—the United States Triathlon Series (USTS) events in Phoenix and Miami. All of the short-course athletes would be at these races and my first true tests were looming.
I won Phoenix and, unbeknownst to me, the USTS Miami race was soon to become legendary due to a showdown for second place between one of the top athletes, Steve Fitch, and a cocky upstart, 17-year-old Lance Armstrong. In both races, my running was the dominant leg and winning both openers allowed my confidence to tick upward. But my validation when it came to how my training would turn into results was far from over. Measuring and calculating my season would require participating in two longer distance events–one of which would involve an inevitable meeting with Mark.
I was on a role winning my first two race, both of which were Olympic Distance. I was sending a message.
The St. Croix Half IRONMAN and The World Cup Triathlon Gold Coast in Australia (3k, 130k, 30k) were the races next on my agenda and I was ready. Then, two days before St. Croix on a training ride, I went down. I ended up with a pretty deep bruise and a sizable abrasion on my hip. The day before the race, I was able to run, but the swelling on the hip joint limited my range of motion. By the day of the race, I had convinced myself that worrying about this injury was just an excuse and a sign of mental softness. I was ready to compete.
The race began. Mike Pigg and Mark dominated the show. I squeezed into an embarrassing top ten and immediately shifted my sights to the Gold Coast one week later. Healing, personal redemption, and upending Mark and the strong international contingent in Australia was my focus. In my mind, the race would be an indicator of what was to come at the World Championships in Kona.
Mark Allen
“Two weeks into March, it was time to head back north. I knew something fundamental had changed for me. Yes, when I got home, I would be busier than I had been in New Zealand, but I would keep my life less busy than before. More importantly, I’d seen how something I hated at first (the rough roads) became something that gave me huge amounts of strength. I’d need that kind of shift to happen in Kona: to go from hating racing on the Island to seeing it as a gift that was strengthening me. I could tell I would no longer be intimidated by being in Hawaii when I went there in October. I knew I could embrace it this time. I would still give the race the utmost respect, but a missing piece of the Kona puzzle had fallen into place. My connection to the island of Hawaii would be different. I didn’t have to try to be like Dave to win. I could just be myself.
When I landed in San Diego, I thought about how it had felt to be inspired to train every day. I’d be able to call on that feeling in the future regardless of where I was or what the terrain looked like. New Zealand’s beauty and simplicity had done work on my DNA, and I’d carry those changes forever. The 1989 season was yet to come, but something significant had changed for me and in me.
I wouldn’t need to wait until October to have a test of my training and my enthusiasm. I’d be racing Dave Scott in a short few weeks time at two back to back races. One would be a half IRONMAN in St. Croix, which would mostly be for bragging rights as it was not close enough to the type of challenge IRONMAN had.
But the real test would be right after that at a long distance race on the Gold Coast of Australia. Dave Scott would be there. And the race was perfect. It was long enough to ferret out any weakness in my endurance. It was tough enough to expose any hidden trap doors in my mind. I couldn’t wait!”