Een trainingsdag van de gebroeders Raelert broers, in voorbereiding op het WK Ironman op Hawaii. 20 km lopen, 110 km fietsen, 5 km zwemmen. Focus, commitment, toewijding en plezier.

It’s ten minutes to five in the morning and it’s still very dark at Kailua-Kona Pier, where the race announcing crew for the Hawaii Ironman World Championship is preparing the finish line tower for an 18-hour day of being both emotional and informational conduits between the competitors, the spectators and the War Room, a team of volunteers that pieces together bits of intelligence from roving spotters wired in throughout the course. The chief announcer surveys the activity surrounding Dig Me Beach and says, “What the hell is going on?”

In the 12 years Mike Reilly has been announcing at the start of Hawaii, standard operating procedure has him switching on the first microphone at 5:30 a.m., but here it is, 4:55, and an almost startled Reilly turns to his sound man. “Jimmy, turn on a microphone.” Reilly begins the normal spin. “Good morning everyone, swim caps out, place your computer chips on to get into the transition area.” If things were proceeding as they had in the past, Reilly would climb down from the finish tower and walk up the pier to the swim start at 6:40, twenty minutes before the start. But damn, it’s 5:30, and Reilly’s thinking to himself, I’d better get down there. “Geez,” says Don Ryder, another voice of the Ironman, “look at all the people getting in the water.” They all knew that something was different, that something was going on.

“It was freaking me out,” said Reilly. “The earlier they get in and the more that get in, the harder they are to get back to the starting line.” The announcing team donned headsets, and Reilly made his way to the marker for the swim start.

People couldn’t wait to get into the water. It’s possible that they couldn’t help it; the nervous energy of ’99 race week in Kona was thick and deafening. It was as if every one of the 1,470 peaked and cut triathletes that had descended upon the village were a struck tuning fork. The din turning the tiny Hawaiian village into a white noise swamp of pre-race jitters.

Maybe Wednesday was the culprit. That day the skies unleashed a solid day of rain, and the masses were jailed from quality tempo runs up and down Ali’i and spin sessions down the Queen K, both of which provide outlets to release the building convection of internal steam. If the collective rising pulse had an epicenter, it was within the nervous system of the race favorites. When a selection of the top pros assembled at a press conference on Thursday,  less than 48 hours from the race start, they had all the facial expression of apparitions and answered questions with a pensive demeanor one might expect from someone on death row.

Reilly is at the swim start and he has asked Jan War, the swim director, to confirm to him that he’s standing at the correct place. He always does this. The correct place is at an imaginary line that is drawn from an orange buoy placed at the bow of a yacht on the southeast side of the Kailua Bay, which is to the left of the athletes as they face the arc of buoys that guide them on the first segment of the rectangular 2.4-mile swim in the pacific Ocean. As the time runs closer to the start of the race, Reilly looks to his right and feels a pulse of shock when he sees why the athletes are ignoring the pleas of the paddlers who are passionately trying to coax them back to the start: an inflatable Gatorade bottle, perched 20 yards further out, is also orange-colored.

Minutes before the start and as the morning sun breaks over the southern flank of Mauna Loa, a clear sky begins to brighten and color. And everything begins the happen at once.

The first of two helicopters carrying NBC cameramen flies in from the west, and yaws to a stop several hundred feet above Dig Me Bach, where it hovers. An instant later and the second helicopter takes a point on the axis west of the start and hovers. The beating thunder of rotor downwash meets with the fumes from an idling motorboat with twin Honda engines. The bay sounds and smells like war. Reilly’s amplified voice rises above the cacophony, and he is no longer asking the athletes to go back, he’s yelling at them. “YOU HAVE TO GET BACK! YOU HAVE TO GET BACK NOW! WE WILL WRITE DOWN YOUR NUMBER IF YOU DON’T GET BACK! PADDLERS, GET THEM BACK TO THE START!”

The bay is simmering with swim caps, paddlers, sailboats and yachts, adrenaline and a bicycle-powered kayak. Zebra-striped referees on surfboards slide up and down the start line, pleading and pulling at triathletes with a mix of desperation and empathy and fear. The triathletes release a roar of their own, a thank-God-it’s-finally-happening cheer, and a chill sweeps across the crowd. Reilly looks down for a split-second, trying to keep himself disconnected from the swell of sound and emotion that has taken over the pier and the bay, and he sees two girls, one sitting to his left and one sitting to his right, and in the frozen instant he sees that their legs are covered with goose bumps.

It’s a minute before the start and Reilly resumes the impossible task of trying to hold the field in place, all the while telling himself to stay calm. Seconds later and the swell is continuing to rise. He drops his arm and the microphone and turns to the swim director.

“Jan,” he says, “let’s shoot the friggin’ gun.” War asks for a few more seconds and Reilly says, “There’s nothing more I can do.” The decision is made. Reilly shouts, “Clear the surfers!” and the surfers dog-paddle madly toward the pier. War taps the starter on the shoulder who presses a button on the back of the replica of a Civil War cannon. Wham! The race begins, and grid-locked swimmers are freed.
Bron: Triathlete, January 2000 – T. J. Murphy – page 46-51.