"...as dusk approached, I started wheezing out that lick ‘I am Ironman,’ imagining what it would feel like to cross the finish line. I tried to get the syllables in sync with each painful step, but my parched lips stuck together, and it came out as ‘I am Moronman!’ Perhaps that was more fitting after all..."

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Got an ironman on your bucket list? Well, think again...or think it through...or at least think...

Here's the alternative:

Julie Moss, the agony of defeat icon, got passed at the last minute while literally crawling to the finish line of the 1982 Ironman triathlon in Hawaii. Fifteen years later – now finding herself in her forties – she returned to Kona to give it another shot. What drove her to seek out more punishment?

“There's something so noble, so dignified about the Ironman competitor who carries on in the dark,” she told a reporter, “I want an experience like that, too.” 

Frankly, she's nuts. I’ve been there now (both nuts and in the dark), and my account doesn't include any form of the words nobility or dignity. Here's how it went:

Back in the days when break-dancers in parachute pants roamed junior high hallways, a scrawny kid with a Midwest mullet sat at home flipping channels between Saturday morning cartoons and American Bandstand. As the only kid in his school deprived of cable television, he had just four channels to choose from; since the brand new phenomenon called MTV wasn’t among them, on most Saturdays the inevitable afternoon lineup of golf, bowling, and PBS telethons would finally convince him to shut off the TV and head outside. But this day would be different: The familiar bars of ABC’s Wide World of Sports intervened, and the TV kept right on flickering. The Ironman was in the lineup, and the broadcast came complete with gratuitous replays of Ms. Moss’ famous finish.

They say that this particular footage can be used to divide mankind into two groups: Group 1 will see it as the ultimate test of endurance and will be convinced to try it for themselves. They’ll use the footage as their motivation. Group 2 will be convinced that Group 1 is somewhere between masochistic and suicidal on the crazy scale. They’ll use the footage as their justification.

Well “The Day After” never came...   [click below to continue]

Crawling to the finish line