The following is a rush transcript from an interview with our Senior Leisure correspondent, Bryce Macombe. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.Walter Jefferies (HHWT News): And now let's check in with our Senior Leisure correspondent Bryce Macombe, who's been in Madison, WI for the last 14 hours covering the Ironman triathlon there. Bryce, describe the scene there for us.
[live video image – Bryce Macombe on street at night with runners and state capitol in background]
Bryce Macombe (Madison, WI): Well Walt, I find the words to describe this grueling event difficult to come by. Hour upon hour of soul-crushing physical exertion with no conceivable end in sight. The monumental effort expended constantly fighting the immense crowds just to stay hydrated and obtain much needed nourishment. The psychological toughness required to maintain a single-minded focus on the task before you in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Walt, it is truly inspirational just to be shoulder-to-shoulder with these people, no, these heroes.
WJ: That's very moving, Bryce. I think many people feel the same way about these exceptional athletes. The Ironman races always seem...
BM: [interrupting] Whoa, Walt! Athletes?! I'm talkin' about the Ironman spectators. These fan-thletes take part in the trifecta of grueling spectator events: Walking, standing and driving aimlessly around the countryside.
WJ: [beat of stunned silence] Fan-thletes?
BM: That's right, Walt. The unsung heroes of sport-going spectators everywhere, these Ironfans start their odyssey by rising before dawn to fight each other as well as the racers themselves for prime parking. Sometimes they circle the same city blocks half a dozen times in the near-hopeless search for a spot, often exhibiting parallel parking prowess that would stagger those “fans” of other “sports” with their cushy ten thousand-car, taxpayer funded lots.
If, against all odds, they successfully park within the allowed time-limit their journey has just barely begun. A cruel slap in the face awaits them as they make their way to the start of the swim venue. For even the most eagle-eyed fan among them has nary a hope of discerning individual athletes among the churn of surf and swimmers, anonymously and androgynously sheathed, as they are, from head to toe. And so, as the sun hangs low in the morning sky, an Ironfan's journey begins, as it will end, with a near intolerable wait for a fleeting, assuredly anticlimactic view of their raison d'être.
As if the wait alone is not mind-numbing enough, the incessant throb of stadium-concert volume, training-mix-tape music isolates, by its shear intensity, each Ironfan from their neighbor. This music thins the early crowds sending the psychologically feeblest among them back to their cars for mid-morning naps. Of those who persevere, after an interminable stretch of squinting through thick throngs of begoggled emergent swimmers, only the luckiest are rewarded with a brief and uncertain view of their racer. For these Ironfans, soaked by the slap-spray of hastily stripped wetsuits, the real race is about to begin.
The next seven to nine hours will see the separation of Ironfans into two formidable groups. The Waiters and the Wanderers. Waiters passively resign themselves to a lonely workday-length stretch of tedium. Camped along some god-forsaken stretch of rural route they can hope, at best, to cheer on their chosen chaffing champion for mere seconds in an otherwise eternal string of similarly-suited, sweaty strangers.
As dismal as this ratio of clapping-to-napping seems, the Wanderers, in a Sisyphusian effort to maximize their cheering chances, run the all-too-real risk of missing their racer entirely. Even for the well-prepared Wanderers, armed with internet-capable cell phones, course and county maps, and teams of drivers, the dangers are many. Something as seemingly innocuous as an ill-timed lunch break can prove just as disastrous as a brazen bumper-to-bumper course-crossing short cut. And whether it's absent rural road signs, backseat drivers barking patience-testing orders, or map-reading passengers tempting “navigator-nausea” on the curvy country roads, these and countless other scenarios can bring Wanderers to a screeching halt in the middle of nowhere on their Icarus-like flight toward Ironfandom.
By hour ten the Waiters and the Wanderers, equally worn down by entirely different stresses, are all too often reduced to little more than catatonic clapping even before the final leg begins.
WJ: That's all very interesting, Bryce, but what about the numerous intimate human dramas being played out on the course for all to witness as each athlete faces their own unique challenges of will and heart?
BM: [indignantly] You want human drama? You want tests of will and heart? Try getting outdoor seating at a course-side café along the marathon route, my friend! This is the white hot furnace in which true Ironfans are forged! As grueling as the endurance aspects of Ironman spectating can be they are no match for the full-contact, cut-throat conflicts involved in the search for that elusive Eden of paradise: nourishment and libation seated within sight of the course. That siren's song can cause even hardcore Ironfans to miss entire hours of competition reducing their already meager cheering chances to a pittance.
In the final hours, after the sun has long ago dipped below the opposite horizon and as the stream of walking athletes dwindles to a trickle, the cold glow of streetlights illuminates the carnage: Entire families torn asunder and cast across a city, left to reunite in the darkness. Broken fans, sun-burnt and starved, collapsed curbside staring up-course with a vacant gaze waiting for their Godot. One cannot help to ask, “Was this arduous endeavor worth it?” This question is one which every Ironfan must answer anew every time their crazyass friends and relatives enter these races! Walt?
WJ: Wow. Thanks for that powerful report, Bryce. It sounds like you've been through quite an ordeal.
BM: Who? Me? Pfft! C'mon Walt. I've been holed up in the air-conditioned satellite van all day watchin' football. [looking beyond camera] Oh, I think that's the Chinese food. Gotta go Walt! [leaving frame, shouting] Hey that better not be my Chow Fung!
WJ: Umm... Well... Alright Bryce. That was Bryce Macombe at the Wisconsin Ironman race.
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