I like to research.

With an engineering mind and the internet at my fingertips for 8 hours a day I am notorious for looking things up.  Why be in the dark when answers are so readily available? – yes, I’m well aware I’m a victim of my generation’s stereotype (whatever, at least I stayed at my first post-college job for longer than a year).  But I digress… when bragging about my sweet blog yesterday a friend asked me what the history of an Ironman triathlon was.  She had a point.  Why on earth would anyone come up with this endurance competition?  Who wakes up one morning and decides to swim, bike, and run all day long?  Who was originally fit enough that they would even consider this possible?  VOILA a blog is born…

So I’m sure nearly everyone knows the history of the marathon.  Some soldier back in the BC’s runs from Marathon to Athens to inform the Greeks of their victory in some battle – I guess it was approximately 26.2 miles.  But the best part of this story is the drama – he runs all this way to inform his fellow Athenians, spits the news out, and dies.  What a way to go!

The Ironman on the other hand had a much more recent birth.  And who other than the Navy Seals would come up with such an event to prove who was the fittest athlete?  Story goes that in 1978 Navy Commander John Collins was a little annoyed that Eddie Merckx (a professional cyclist) was named the fittest athlete in a Sports Illustrated article.  This was a bit of an issue seeing as how runners, swimmers, and cyclists were always contending that their sport was the pinnacle of all things endurance.  I guess the theory was to combine all three to really test out who actually was the fittest athlete – someone so fit they would  gain the title of ‘The Iron Man’ (don’t worry this term is gender neutral).  So I actually think that Mr. Collins was clearly on drugs and thought if he made the event long and painful enough he would be the only one to battle it out and finish it.  He combined what was previously three independent events: the Waikiki Rough Water Swim, the Around Oahu Bike Race and the Honolulu Marathon.  Sir Collins did a little re-route to the bike race so that the bike leg could start at the finish of the Waikiki Rough Water and end at the traditional start of the Honolulu Marathon and the race was ready.  What truly surprises me is that 15 people signed up for this thing…. and more shocking – 12 finished!  From there I guess more and more people started showing up, more event venues were added, etc, etc.

So there’s the history lesson of the day… let’s just hope Kelly doesn’t get inspiration from good ol’ Pheidippides.