| 4.1 | Marian Davidson’s Impossible Comeback |
At the 2002 Vineman triathlon, 61-year-old Marian Davidson raced with a fanny-pack on. Just in case, the fanny-pack contained a check that she could make out and hand over if she qualified for the Hawaii Ironman.
At any given qualifier, many triathletes show up and begin the race without strong expectations of winning a Hawaii slot, but everyone knows that on race day, anything goes. We see the variables at work all the time: who shows up, who’s hot, who’s not. Then the award ceremony comes up, and the slot gets passed up by those who have already qualified and those who don’t want it. The drama of who finally gets the golden tickets to Hawaii can be as dramatic as the race itself.
In the story of Marian Davidson of Portola Valley, Calif., the drama leading up to the post-race moment she dipped happily into her fanny-pack goes back much farther than the 7 hours and 6 minutes it took her to finish second in the 60-64 age group. Drama is the correct word. Despite growing up in a time when opportunities for women, athletic and otherwise, existed well outside the margin, she still got into Yale medical school and embarked on a career as an emergency room physician. These past two years, she has spent fighting through a minefield of bad luck just to get to the starting line of Vineman, and her path to Hawaii goes into the books as one of the classic tales that the Ironman tends to conjure.
Despite the complications of degenerative arthritis, Davidson decided to become a triathlete in 1998, after she volunteered to help out in the medical tent of the Hawaii Ironman. “I was inspired by everything I saw,” she recounts. “I decided to give the sport a try. What did I have to lose?”
The following spring, she entered the mountain biking sprint triathlon at Wildflower. “I was terrified,” she says. “I’m not an athlete; I never have been an athlete. But I did it! I did it, even though I was barely able to run.”
Shortly thereafter, Davidson, who lives with her husband and fellow triathlete, Michael, began working under the tutelage of triathlon coach Marc Evans. Evans has been coaching triathletes for two decades and is known throughout the sport as the first-ever triathlon-specific coach.
Despite the long history of coaching, Evans is as cutting-edge as they come. His approach spans from the larger-scale needs of aerobic and power development to the microscopic details of technique, using every tool he finds worthy. But Davidson’s affection for her coach goes well beyond his technological wizardry:
Evans, who is only interested in working in one-on-one coaching relationships, is the antithesis of a Web-based computer coach. The two remain in constant communication, they meet for workouts and testing sessions, and a similar sense of humor binds them. “He’s a bit weird and a bit crazy,” says Davidson. “That’s one of the reasons I like him so much.”
By her own account, Davidson is not an easy project to take on. “I can’t swim,” she remarks. “I had only piddled around on a bike. And I can’t run either.” But one thing she can do is execute a plan.
“If I’m told to do something, I do it. I’m very Type A,” she admits. Her training log itself serves as heavy evidence: an extra not required by Evans — she took it on herself — resembles the lab book of an electrical engineer working on a skyscraper.
Every workout is meticulously recorded in color-coded detail, including the riding work she does on her beloved show horse, Patrick. Riding in shows is the other sport Davidson took up in her 50s.
It was such precision and self-discipline that allowed her to persevere through the months leading up to Vineman.
“It was the year of hell,” Davidson says with a sigh. In the last weeks of training before the June 2001 San Jose International triathlon, a goal race for her, the first of three freak disasters occurred. She was at her horse’s side when, while talking with a friend, the friend revealed that she was battling cancer. “I was shaken up by the news, and I startled Patrick.”
When Patrick “freaked out,” the fingertips of four of Marian’s fingers, looped in the reins, were torn off from her right hand. Three were surgically re-attached, but the middle fingertip couldn’t be saved.
Davidson recovered in time to compete in the Pacific Grove triathlon in September, where she won her first age-group championship in an Olympic-distance event. Two weeks later, competing in a horse show, she was thrown from her horse and landed badly, directly on her head.
“When I hit the ground, I thought I was going to die,” she says. While she didn’t die, Marian did suffer broken vertebrae and a central spinal cord contusion. It turned out, remarkably, to be something she would eventually heal from.
“The paramedics who came all knew me from when I worked at the Stanford University Hospital,” Davidson says. “It was like ‘old home’ week.”
After the injuries were healed, Davidson began preparing for the Wildflower triathlon in May. On a training trip to Lake San Antonio in early April, Davidson suffered a third accident that would prove — despite first appearances — to be the scrape that would come closest to being fatal.
While riding her bike over a section of gravel road, her glasses fell down to the bridge of her nose, and in the moment she pushed them back up, things got awkward. She crashed to the ground.
“It left me with some deep abrasions, but I was still able to finish the ride.” It was a week after the accident that the real trouble began.
“Six days after the crash, I was shaking with the chills.” It had turned out that Davidson, who is allergic to antibiotics, had developed a severe case of cellulitis, a deep infection of the skin and tissues below the skin. For two weeks, she remained hospitalized and hooked up to IVs, coming dangerously close to dying. A small woman, her weight had dropped from 112 pounds to 106.
But, once again, she bounced back. Her greatly relieved husband quipped, “It’s never boring around you.”
And her desire to race a half-Ironman was fully intact. Both she and Michael decided to do the Vineman in early August.
Strange how persistence pays off: Both Marian and Michael would have great races in the wine country of Northern California.
When she called Evans, who also coaches Michael, to tell him the news of her qualification for the Hawaii Ironman, it was the completeness of the day that struck the coach emotionally. Michael, who trains around a schedule challenged by his law career and a daily two-hour commute, recorded a breakthrough split on the bike leg of Vineman.
Evans said the report brought him to tears. “It wasn’t just all the adversity that they had been through, but that the two of them had their best race performances on the same day. That really made it special for me.”
“If you grade their performances on a curve that takes into account their age and their careers,” Evans continues with pride, “what they achieved were world-class performances.”
“On those rides, I went out and bonked on purpose,” he
| 4.2 | Chris Sustala’s Battle with the Bulge |
Christopher Sustala had been an athlete all his life. It seemed a given. Yet, when the Texas A&M engineering student was a semester away from graduating, the variables would begin to change, and his body would snowball the other direction.
For years, Sustala had been taking on some of the more grueling events in competitive swimming for Texas A&M, including arduous monsters like the 200 fly and the 400 IM. At the time, he was a powerfully fit 190 pounds. “What happened was my athletic eligibility ran out when I still had that last semester of academic work to do,” recalls Sustala, who is now 32 and lives in the Houston area. “So I started doing some coaching for the team. Which meant that even while I didn’t have to swim anymore, I still got to eat in the athlete’s dorm.” The food doesn’t only taste better in the athlete’s cafeteria, reports Sustala, but it’s all-you-can-eat.
The voracious appetite that fought to put back the calories he burned during swimming was still in full operation, as if by momentum. But Sustala’s work at the pool was now all from the deck, and the calories mounted up in oversupply. He began to put on pounds.
He took his first job as a mechanical engineer. With focus now on work, he was oblivious to the dietary missteps he was accruing in his routine. “Generally, I’d skip breakfast. If I got hungry at the office, there were usually donuts and the like around. I wouldn’t eat lunch until halfway through the day. And at night, I’d eat a big dinner.”
The pattern took shape and time took its toll. Sustala’s weight climbed upward into husky elevations. His scale began to read 300 pounds and over. Alarm grew.
“What really got my attention was that I started waking up at 2 a.m. with heartburn,” Sustala recalls. This was about six years ago. “I knew something had to be done. My brother, Tommy, and a friend, Kevin, were doing triathlons and proposed a challenge. My triathlon career began.”
For starters, Sustala’s greatest “challenge within the challenge” was running, and his first precarious steps were taken in 100-yard gulps, with 200-yard walks in between. But he was steadfast in his pursuit, and he improved enough to enter a triathlon.
“I successfully completed an Olympic distance triathlon and was hooked,” he says. “I then set two goals. One was to lose weight and the other became to do an Ironman. It might never happen, but I would have to train for it in case it ever did.”
Sustala realized that if he were ever to take on an Ironman, he first had to tackle a marathon. He had burned his weight down to 250 for his first attempt of the 1998 Houston Marathon.
His goal was to break 4 hours, mighty ambitious considering his weight, but understandable considering his athletic background and the mindset that comes with it. Sustala finished in 4:50, and, although disappointed he’d missed his time goal by almost an hour, he did finish.
He tried again the following year under a particularly blazing Texas sun, but dropped out at mile 23 from dehydration. “In 1999, I had Achilles tendonitis. And then, in 2000, I finally broke 4 hours with a 3:53. Meanwhile, I’d been racking up experience in the local sprint, Olympic distance and even a half Ironman.”
2002 would prove to be a pivotal year, as Sustala lowered his marathon PR to 3:33 and his weight to 230. Earlier in the year, at 205 pounds, he raced to an amazing 3:09 finish and qualified for the Boston Marathon.
“But Boston had never been my goal,” he says. “My goal had always been the Hawaii Ironman. So I decided to enter the lottery.” As if a mystical reward for his commitment to regaining his fitness, his entry into the Ironman Lottery — his first — was a success. In training for the event that followed the next month, Sustala had shed off another 15 pounds. He was now at his college race weight of 190.
Sustala’s work as a mechanical engineer now involves specializing in chemical and waste treatment plants. Weekdays he works 8 to 5. His training exists outside of these borders, either early morning or early evening. He travels often, mostly to Michigan and Georgia, work trips he deals with the best he can in regard to his training. “I’ve done my share of runs in mall parking lots,” he says.
Throughout this adventure, Sustala repeatedly credits his wife, Shelby — who is also a mechanical engineer — with his fitness turnaround. “She’s been so amazingly supportive. She does the same kind of work I do. We actually met in college, so she knew me when I wasn’t fat. But I think she’s about at her limit now. After this is over, it will be time to become a husband again.”
“She’s started to ask why I can’t apply myself to helping clean the house the way I apply myself in my training. She asks me, ‘Why don’t you pretend it’s a race?’”
Chris Sustala successfully went on to finish the 2003 Hawaii Ironman. It was an opportunity he didn’t take lightly. Said Sustala before beginning the race, “This is a once in a lifetime experience. It’s happening much sooner than I had planned.” In Sustala’s case this turned out to not be a bad thing at all.
