Barry McDermott's SI article

Wow! I may be dating myself here, but I remember reading that article. It came out during the late 1970's running boom that was started by the Jim Fixx book.

That year (actually 1978, but I am exercising my poetic license here) I read two books that were to have a profound impact on my life

• Jim Fixx The Complete Book of Running
• Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

It took me 18 years to recover from HST. Jim Fixx is proving to be a chronic affliction. That SI article has dwelt in the depths of my subconscious since I read it. One late night sitting on a hotel room floor in New Orleans, smoking a surreptitious cigarette and hating my job, some part of that article came back to me like some ancient peyote vision (may have been the hurricanes and hand gernades).

I resolved at that point to actually do a triathlon because it seemed to be the thing that was furtherest from where I was at the moment. Much time passed between the resolution and the realization, but I pulled it off. Jim Fixx is dead. Hunter Thompson is dead, and New Orleans is wounded. I turn 40 this year, and I realize I dont know sh*t.

I will raise a glass to the departed and the dispossessed. I will reflect on the King-Hell bad craziness of the storms, natural and of my/our own making. I will train like a vengeful monk in a Hong Kong Kung-Fu movie. I will run through the streets of Evangeline and shoot big rockets into the night. I will frighten upstanding citizens with my rants. I will wake up in the morning and swim in my orange goggles.

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The story was reprinted in one of this years Triathlete magazine.  Had original pictures of the first Ironmen...   Interesting athletic attire back than.