At the end of a regular college day in late spring, the threat of final exams and the promise of summer in the air, I opened the mail box. It was May 14 of 1979 and mixed with a utility bill and a “your rent is late again” note from the landlord was a copy of Sports Illustrated Magazine (SI). Hmmm, must belong to the neighbors. I don’t read about team sports. I pondered the mag until seeing the hand-written note clipped to the cover that featured a horse named Spectacular Bid.

It was November, 1982, and the sport of triathlon had just begun a claw its way out of the primordial multi-sport ooze.  This was back before aero bars, or even Power Bars.  It was a time when the choice of technical rehydration was mostly limited to green and orange Gatorade, and when a “professional” triathlete was anyone capable of running six miles off the bike in less than 46 minutes, and willing to do so in a Speedo, in public.  There was no such thing as an Ironman back then; there was only the Ironman -- one race, one place -- and the fact that the e