IRONMAN - Sports Illustrated Vault | SI.com
He was taking the gale head-on now, but at least I the stinging rain had stopped and his mind was still working. Keep concentrating, Tom Warren told himself. Still 20 miles to go, most of it into that awful wind, the same gale he had been fighting for 120 miles and almost nine hours. The bass drum in his leg was getting louder, and his head flopped sideways. Up ahead stood a man and his wife, paunchy, middle-aged Hawaiian tourists, watching a spectacle outside their ken. Past the astonished couple the runner stumbled, shirtless, eyes down, concentrating to avoid delusion and shock. Finally the tourist could be quiet no longer. "Go, Iron Man!" he shouted. "Go, Iron Man!" Tom Warren, age 35, shuffled off. Still 20 miles to go. And the others were back there chasing him. The athlete had been stung by a jellyfish and partially blinded by salt water. He had been lost and confused. Physically he was a mess. But still he kept on in this, the Hawaiian Iron Man Triathlon, an event that involved
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