Up for the challenge
By Lance Vargas

It's been 10 years since the San Diego Triathlon Challenge was first held in La Jolla's Cove and Scripps Park.

In that time, the event's organizers, participants and beneficiaries have seen it grow from a small, 42-person competition that raised $42,000 to what it is now a 550-person exhibition that has raised more than $3.6 million and helped more than 1,000 athletes around the world.

Each fall thousands of San Diegans show up for the start and finish of the triathlon that has attracted word-class athletes from Ironman triathlete Scott Tinsley to movie star Robin Williams.

The athletes themselves have also become famous in their own right. People like triple amputee Melanie Benn, who affixes swimming gear to her appendages and swims the 1.2 mile leg of the race, Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah who used a bike donated to him by the Challenged Athletes Foundation to bicycle 2,756 kilometers through Ghana to raise awareness of from the triathlon challenge in his country.

The event has become a source of inspiration for the both the athletes, disabled and not, who participate and those who contribute funds and efforts each year. It all started with an inconceivable set of circumstances that upon first glance seem horrific but later proved to be a gift.

Oct. 20, 1985

Jim MacLaren was a muscular former football player pursuing dreams of being a Broadway actor when, on a what he calls "a perfect New York evening," he was struck by a 40,000 pound transit bus and thrown 90 feet from his motorcycle. The accident caused major internal injuries including a ruptured lung, a torn spleen, liver damage and numerous broken ribs and a collarbone.

After initially pronouncing MacLaren dead on arrival before resuscitating him, New York's Bellvue Hospital amputated his left leg below the knee. MacLaren would remain in a coma for five days before awaking with no knowledge of the accident.

"Visually, I looked like a guy who had just lost his left leg but, I had a huge scar up the middle of my chest where they had done all that internal work and put tubes in my chest because I was literally breathing blood through that torn lung," said MacLaren.

In the months that followed his life-shattering accident, MacLaren worked to rehabilitate his body, was fitted with a leg prostheses and was forced to learned to walk again. Psychologically, he endured the onset of depression from the lingering pain from his broken ribs as well as the uncertainty of life as an amputee.

MacLaren found solace swimming, calmed by the fluid movement of the exercise. Then, to ease the pain of constantly pounding his 300-pound frame against his protheses, He began cycling to his classes a couple miles a day. After picking up a book on triathlons, MacLaren began reading about, and being inspired by, Ironman.

"I thought, 'The Ironman,' I'm going to do that someday," he said. "Even if I have to walk the marathon, that's how it all started. I started losing weight. Long story short, after about a year and a half, I had lost close to a hundred pounds in training and nutrition and I entered my in my first endurance event, a biathlon. It was a 10k run followed by a 24k bike and I came in last place in the run. It took me over an hour to do the 10k. It was so painful but I just knew I had this feeling. As I was changing into my other leg to get onto the bike I thought, 'There is something for me here. This is what I need to be doing.' "

More triathlons followed, and MacLaren discovered a calmness and vitality within his training and competition.

"There was something about being dead on arrival," he said. "A lot of the stories are true, when you come back. Things smell better, things taste better. All the pain didn't matter. I just thought, 'I'm back into it. I'm back in life.' "

Then, things got competitive.

In 1987, MacLaren ran the New York Marathon in four hours and four minutes. In 1988, he ran in the Boston Marathon and set a world record for an amputee, finishing the marathon in three hours and 27 minutes. Eventually, he began finishing in the top 30 percent of all runners in any event.

"I never even realized there were disabled events," he said. "I just always did the regular races. By the time I realized there were disabled games, I was sponsored and running against other athletes with two legs who treated me as an athlete. ... It was a funny thing. I used to get a lot of people who passed me in the old days and say what an inspiration I was. And I always loved that. I thought it was great. ... Then as I got faster, I'd be passing people in these races, and I could see there were definitely people who had a difficult time with it."

MacLaren remembers a particular opponent who said, " 'There are people who I hate to get beat by: Women and guys with one leg,' " MacLaren remembered. "If he beat me by one hundredth of a second, he'd let me know about it."

Sponsorships and media coverage began to follow MacLaren. In 1989, his dreams of finishing the Hawaii Ironman finally were realized. He would go on to complete four more and, in 1992, set a world record for disabled athletes by finishing the course with a time of 10 hours and 42 minutes.

In that time, MacLaren also graduated from the Yale School of Drama with a master's degree and also landed a spot on the daytime television soap opera, "Another World."

Something amazing

On the morning of June 5, 1993, Mac-Laren was sitting on the front porch of his friend's home in Boulder, Colo., when he was overcome with a feeling that something amazing was about to happen to him.

"Seventeen hours later, I'm at the start of the race being announced with all these pros and I am thinking, 'Wow, I have finally arrived,' he said. "I got out of the water. It was a mile swim, 25-mile bike ride followed by a 10k run. ... A couple miles into the bike ride, I remember passing this kid. It was a closed bike course, no traffic. He had obviously beaten me coming out of the water, but I hammered past him on the bike. I was going 35 miles an hour. I remember these people screaming as I came down this hill. I thought they were cheering, then I realized they were screaming. ... I look over to my left and, very close, I see the grill of a black van coming towards me from the side, from the same side that the bus hit. Everything slows down at that point, and I thought maybe if I click one pedal faster I'll beat him across the intersection. So, I clicked one pedal faster and as I do that I hear more people screaming, and the guy hits his accelerator instead of his brakes."

MacLaren was smashed into the van's windshield and thrown into a signpost.

"You're never going to move again from the neck down," was his doctor's diagnosis.

"There was no part of me that wanted to die," said MacLaren. "I just thought, 'I don't know if I can do it again.' There was all this stuff being done to me. They are doing everything from putting their hands in me to go to the bathroom to people putting stuff in my nose every night to clear my lungs. I'm wearing a halo on my head. They are putting four screws in your skull. There's a big chestplate, so your neck doesn't move. I ended up getting a blood clot while I was in ICU. ... I got pneumonia. They ended up doing two more surgeries on my neck. They put a steel plate in the back and used a hip bone in the front. Then, they had to re-halo me. I wasn't ready to laugh yet, but they said, 'Now you truly are a real Ironman.' "

From fund-raising to challenge

From that horrific set of circumstances, the San Diego Triathlon Challenge grew. As word of MacLaren's second accident spread, the genesis of La Jolla's triathlete event was set in motion. Originally intended to be a one-time event to purchase a specially fitted van for MacLaren, it became much more.

The first event was spearheaded by Bob Babitt, Rick Kozlowski and La Jolla's Jeffrey Essakow. It included 42 participants.

"We put on the event. It a was huge success," said Essakow, a triathlete who has also competed in the Hawaii Ironman.

"We ended up raising $49,000 (for Jim) and decided, since we received so many phone calls telling us what a wonderful event it was and what a wonderful course it was, we decided, why stop there?"

The next year, the race was held again and instead of just helping MacLaren, four more challenged athletes benefited as $78,000 was raised. Sixty-five athletes turned out for the event.

Each year, the Triathlon Challenge grew. More athletes began to participate and proceeds were growing into six-digit figures. Last year's event raised $812,000.

"It was Jimmy who got us all motivated and inspired," said Essakow, "and that's why it's been a very special event for many, many people."

Inspiration

Fity-eight-year-old La Jollan Stephen Doyne was among the first 42 participants. He and a group of six others made up "The Six Pack," a group of participants who have participated in every San Diego Triathlon Challenge. The group includes Scott Tinley, Brian Lorenz, Jack Berghaus, Bob Kaplan and Ray O'Dell.

A psychologist, Doyne draws inspiration from MacLaren and the many other athletes who participated in the event.

"No matter what my circumstance is, there are other people who have more challenges than I do," said Doyne. "So, it sort of puts it in perspective, and it gives me the courage to keep going. Because these people don't think about their disabilities, they just move on, and it is very humbling to be out there. It helps me minimize whatever problems I think I'm having."

Doyne is pleasantly surprised at the success of the event over the years.

"This was originally just to help this one challenged athlete, Jim MacLaren," he said, "but now it has grown to help hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the world with prostheses and whatever they need to keep active. And it is just sensational."

Doyne cited an early experience in the race. When he was nearing exhaustion on the bike portion of the race, he discovered he had inadvertently pedaled 13 miles off course. To him, this was a sort of epiphany about the spirit of the event.

"What really reeled me in was thinking about Jim MacLaren ..." he said, "and what he had to do to overcome his obstacles. That pulled me back, because I was not feeling great. And it doesn't help to be lost and knowing that you have added about 15 miles on your bike route."

Sarah Reinertsen, a disabled athlete who has participated in multiple events, names MacLaren among her role models.

"I remember meeting him and hanging on every word he said about doing Ironman," she said. "I was like, 'Wow, you've done Ironman?' For my little track and field experience, that was very impressive."

Reinertsen states that her goal is to participate in next year's Hawaii Ironman and possibly be the first woman to finish the course.

"I know it can be done from the challenged athletes before me," said Reinertsen. "I don't know of any women on an artificial leg who have done Ironman."

Reinertsen's desire to finish Ironman is just one of the positive benefits Mac Laren's accidents have spawned.

Essakow said that many times, people who have been recently disabled have come to the Challenged Athlete Foundation contemplating suicide and have been turned around by what they have seen at the triathlon.

"We've taken them into our program and said 'Come to our event. Just come see what we do.' ... We've taken people and seen them a year or two later and they have completely blossomed. They have transformed. ... That's what I love more than anything else. ... We see tangible results."

The Challenged Athlete Foundation's San Diego Triathlon Challenge will be held Sunday, Nov. 2, at 8 p.m. at La Jolla Cove. Call (858) 793-9293 or visit www.challengedathletes.org for more information.