by Julie Moss
Nothing says legacy faster than jumping into the family treasure chest and grabbing the baton.
Oh, boy. It didn’t matter how many Ironmans I’d run. Despite my initial excitement, I would become another worried parent watching their kid take on the Ironman. There’s the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and the torment of being the mother of a young Ironman athlete. I would be experiencing the third piece of that reality . . . and one of the other two as well.
CHAPTER 21
Kathleen
My story is incomplete without bringing in the woman who, on February 6, 1982, deserved all the accolades due an Ironman champion.
America first became acquainted with Kathleen McCartney as the perfectly put together California girl who beat me at the finish line in Kona. She is the 1982 Ironman champion, not me. Yes, a few sips of coke at Mile 25 could’ve resulted in a different outcome, as Scott Tinley speculates, but it didn’t happen that way.
From that day on, Kathleen and I were regarded by media and fans alike as rivals. Part of that perception drew from our dramatic race—if you only beat someone by 29 seconds after 11 hours and 140 miles of racing, it must be a rivalry in the making, right? This prevailing thought continued despite the fact we crossed paths like two ships navigating different courses, occasionally intersecting, but never really docking in port together. When we finally got that chance in 2012, we clicked in several ways. Now, we enjoy a nice friendship.
Kathleen’s life changed as much as mine in 1982. She was one quarter away from graduating from UC-Irvine, but didn’t go back right away. “The phone was ringing off the hook, I’m loving this triathlon life, this was a rare opportunity, so I focused on triathlon with the idea I’d return to college the next year to finish my degree,” she recalled. “That turned into two years.”
The instant name recognition that comes with winning the most-watched Ironman race in history launched her career too. In hearing her story, I’m reminded of how remarkable Kathleen is, still determined to run Kona despite debilitating injuries over the years. In ten appearances on her own, she has finished ten times. Now she has found a larger purpose, teaming with triathlon pioneer Mike Levine, who is battling pancreatic cancer. Their story, which played out in 2017, leaves few dry eyes in the house; we’ll get to it.
“The Ironman experience has been so influential in my life,” Kathleen said. “To have the experience to win as a twenty-two-year-old, when I was just developing my foundation for life . . . everything I learned through Ironman has carried through. It’s about doing things that seem impossible, never giving up, and continuing to dream the big dreams.
“This has manifested in every way possible. The event gave me a completely different mindset. I was not a competitive athlete. I was a recreational athlete, had never been on a team, and had no reason to believe I could win an Ironman. Are you kidding? I got totally inspired when I watched people dive into the ocean on February 14, 1981, including my then-boyfriend, Dennis Hearst. As soon as the cannon blasted, I knew I would never be a spectator. I wanted to be a doer. That decision changed my life.
“I’d already done some extraordinary things, just not athletically. I took a trip around the world between high school and college. That’s another thing where I felt like, ‘Wow. I just did something totally outside the box.’ I’d worked hard, saved the money, planned the trip . . . When you do things unique and empowering, it gives you the feeling of ‘Hey, I can conquer the world.’ Life is the series of choices we make. When we make big ones, they can elevate our lives to a point we didn’t think possible the year before . . . or maybe the day before.”
While I showed up in Kona as a neophyte in 1982, Kathleen had kept busy since watching Dennis—and quite successfully at that. Few triathlon experts remember this, but Kathleen’s Ironman victory was her third of five consecutive race wins—six, if you count the 100-mile century cycling race she also won. “When I first started training for Ironman, my goal was to finish in something like fifteen hours (her winning time: 11:09). I trained with my boyfriend, now my ex-husband, and we discovered that I had a lot of endurance, natural body awareness that helped me to cycle and run.”
She came to Kona red hot, off victories in the Santa Barbara Half Triathlon and Navy SEALS Triathlon. After Ironman, she captured the first two Bud Light USTS events, in San Diego and Long Beach. I finally got her in Malibu, winning a hefty $2,500, but let’s be fair: 1982 was Kathleen’s year. She capped it by defending her title admirably to place fourth among women in the October 1982 Ironman, the second of the year in Kona. She lost this one because she hit the wall and had to walk the final two miles of the marathon. Ironic, considering what happened eight months before.
When recalling our February race, it’s easy to assume we became heated rivals, or spent all our time recapping our race dramatics—which would land us in ABC Sports Studios three weeks later. Neither was the case.
“It bothered me a little that we were portrayed as rivals,” Kathleen said. “There was no particular basis for it. She hadn’t done anything to me, and I hadn’t done anything to her. I can’t really blame the media, but I’ve always had trouble with that. We tried to click, but never really did, only because we spent a very limited amount of time together. The main obstacle was where we lived: When I was in San Diego, she was in Santa Cruz. When she was in San Luis Obispo, I was in Santa Barbara and then Irvine. There weren’t many races in those days. Even when we were in Hawaii in 1982, we didn’t see each other much.
“The finish still feels surreal to me. I didn’t know I’d passed Julie; I was just happy to finish. I didn’t get to congratulate her; they whisked her away. So we never had a chance to go over our race. The next time I saw her was in an awkward moment at the awards ceremony. Then she was off here, off there, and I was back home, except for our weekend in New York [at ABC]. So our experience in 1982 was so poignant, but so limiting. When we did see each other, it didn’t feel warm and fuzzy, because we hadn’t really had time to figure it out.”
Kathleen ran well in 1983, but by the spring of 1984, she was off the circuit. Triathlon was growing, but did not yet provide a comfortable living. She sized up her options and realized that, for her, one thing needed to happen: finish her degree.
“I thought, ‘my gosh, I can’t put this off any longer.’ That’s the reason why I pulled back,” she said. “So many people were doubting I’d finish school. My course load was tough. I was making some money in triathlon, but I felt I had to have a career to support my life. I didn’t know where the sport was going, so I decided to get the degree, then get a job.”
That didn’t last long. Running Ironman is quite seductive . . . especially for a champion. We saw each other again at the 1985 Japan Ironman. “I went as a guest of Penny McCoy and her family. She had watched my Ironman win, and we became close friends after that,” Kathleen said. (Penny’s father, Dave, created Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort in the central Sierra, installing the first rope tow in 1942 and the first chair lift on the massive volcanic mountain in 1955. He celebrated his one hundredth birthday in 2015.) “I was working, and Penny called and said, ‘Hey, you want to go to the Japan Ironman and run with me? I’ll line us up some sponsors.’ I ran in the rain and finished fourth. It wasn’t a bad race, especially since I hadn’t done an Ironman in two years. Julie won with a fabulous race. I got the Ironman bug again.”
However, one thing hobbled Kathleen—her nerves. The party line was that when Kathleen was hospitalized two days before beating me in Kona, she suffered from food poisoning. That’s been written in most articles since. It took Kathleen one more hospitalization to realize food poisoning did not cause her severe discomfort. She also realized a huge difference between us: while I thrived on competition, she was not a natural competitor. Interesting to say that about a champion, but it’s true.
“I’ve been hospitalized twice for nerves in Kona, once in 1982, and then again in October 1983. The same thing happened both times. It was horrible. I would even g
o down to the swim start beach, and get an overwhelming feeling of nerves and fear. I could barely get down to the beach. I think it was due to the pressure, wanting to win or at least compete at my best.”
She might have been nervous, but she was still damned good. From 1982 to 1988, she fought off her nerves to finish in the Top 6 at Kona three times. We both had great races in 1988, when I ran a Kona PR 10:09 to her lifetime PR 10:19.
After the race, she left the sport to start her family with Dennis, while I stayed for two more years and then bowed out to support Mark’s Ironman journey and start a family of our own. She didn’t return until 2003. When she did, the triathlon world beheld a more relaxed Kathleen. “I wanted my kids to know me as the Ironman/Ironwoman, and it was finally a good time for that,” she said. “I wanted them to see me set goals. They’d never seen that side of me—ever. I didn’t even race triathlons; I did some marathons and half marathons, but that was all.
“I thought that I would have terrible nerves. I was approached by NBC to do a piece, and I said, ‘No. I’m doing this for my kids. I’m not doing this to get attention.’ I knew if I jumped back into all the activities, I would have terrible nerves and it would be a bad experience. I quietly did my training, went to Kona, and had no nerves. It was amazing. I got to run the last one hundred yards with my kids, from the banyan tree to the finish. When I was training, I kept envisioning running the end of the race with them.
“That was the turning point. I realized, ‘I don’t have any pressure. Nobody cares; I don’t care; I’m not going to be on the podium. I’m just here because I truly love the sport and the training, how it makes me feel.’ It gave me calmness . . . to this day. I sleep the night before races now, and I don’t have any nerves. It’s almost like a meditative feeling on the course. The key was to step away from the competitive side. If I have competitive goals or ambitions, I get nervous.”
We enjoyed a nice interaction in 2003, but never reached the point of friendship. Kathleen returned to San Diego and I flew back to Santa Cruz. “We never had the opportunity to get over whatever was created; never had the time to build the substantial, meaningful friendship,” Kathleen said. “There was never time to nurture it.”
This was not a simmering rivalry, but two busy women raising kids . . . as single women. Mark and I were already divorced, and Kathleen and Dennis followed a few years later.
In 2011, after I moved back to Cardiff, my phone rang. It was Kathleen.
“I had reasons to go back to the 2012 Ironman, and I’d heard Julie was back,” she said. “Here was the time we could finally develop a friendship and be training partners. I didn’t know if she was interested, but it was a split-second decision by me. This was the first good possibility of merging our triathlon lives, since we finally lived in the same area.”
This time, we concentrated on building a friendship. “I think foundation-ally, we’re both pretty much the same people we were in the ’80s. I definitely felt like she had a more relaxed approach to me, and I to her,” Kathleen said. “I told her what I’d been going through with my divorce, she’d been through a divorce, and I told her about my goal. She wasn’t thinking about going back to Ironman—at all. But she was really kind, and said, ‘You know what? I’ll be there for you as a friend. I’ll support you and train with you while you go on to do Ironman.’ It felt really good, two people coming together and forming a friendship. When you’re going out on bike rides and spending five or six hours, you’re going to get to know someone. This was the first time we’d ever trained together.”
A lot of people might find that amazing, given how we were joined at the hip on the day triathlon exploded globally. How could we be in the sport for thirty years, the first several as top-shelf elites, and not have trained together? Two ships passing . . .
“We found a lot of common bonds. We know we’re different people, but we respect and admire each other. It was so amazing. We had a fresh start. I was so excited that Julie came onboard for the 2012 Ironman; it was phenomenal.”
Kathleen and I made Iron Icons appearances for the next few years until we decided to move into other areas as well. We rarely pass up an opportunity to speak together. We also make it a point to get together every February 6—the anniversary of our race. We ride the Ironman in Minutes, all 140.6 minutes of it. Only a few select people join us, part of Kathleen’s mission to keep the anniversary gathering as organic as triathlon was in 1982.
In 2017, Kathleen and I each worked with another triathlete. While I trained with my Iron Twin, Khalil Binebine, and assisted his two-year quest to race in Kona, Kathleen took on something far different. She decided to help old-school Ironman Mike Levine return to Kona, a miracle, in that Mike is battling pancreatic cancer. Mike ran his first Ironman in October 1982 for the same reason as Mark Allen and many others: the Wide World of Sports telecast.
Not surprisingly, Kathleen found her wisdom and strength as an Ironman champ stretched to places she never imagined. “Mike told me that I breathed the life back into him,” she said. “I never thought anyone would tell me I’d brought them back to life. I can’t even put into words what that means. I dedicated basically my life to that journey with him. I was between jobs, and decided to focus exclusively on working with Mike. It was more meaningful than anything I’ve done.”
Everything about their effort was challenging. I would have liked to train with Kathleen more, but her focus was on Mike, and rightly so. “We rode at a much different pace,” she said. “We had a major training challenge. Mike’s on chemo for life. He goes on for two weeks, comes off for two weeks, goes back on. To train through chemo when you’re down, you can’t sleep and take medication to do so, you’re groggy in the morning . . . literally every day was a game-day decision. I had to keep him in a protective bubble, away from other people.”
Nevertheless, Kathleen decided they were ready to go. They petitioned Ironman World Championship Executive Director Diana Bertsch for a special entry. “We’d talked about Kona since Mike had expressed interest. He sent a letter to share his story. We wondered for three months if it was going to happen. After he got in, every time I saw him, I’d say, ‘Hey Mike, you’re going to Kona!’ We were so excited and thrilled, couldn’t believe it happened,” she said.
Whenever you work with someone in a life-affirming situation like this, magic happens. You may have no idea when or how, but sometime during the big day, a magical moment pops up, one on which you look back and say, “Wow.” In Kona, Kathleen and Mike experienced several such moments.
“We had to split for the men’s and women’s swim start, which turned into a very poignant moment,” Kathleen recalled. “I didn’t know how his swim was going. He thought he’d come out ahead of me. We thought we’d meet at the first transition, or I’d catch him on the bike. I got to the turnaround boat and looked at my watch—thirty-four minutes. I breathed to my right every stroke, as usual, but after I went around the boat, I took a breath to my left—and there was Mike. I saw his purple cap, I had a purple cap, Julie had a purple cap; that’s the cap some people wear so the NBC cameras know who to follow. He stopped to look at the swim finish; he was taking a little break. There were 2,500 people in the water—and there he was, the one time I breathed to the left. One of the most serendipitous moments of my life. It was like finding a needle in a haystack without looking.
“He was struggling. I told him to stay right behind me, draft off me, but we swam together. It was so spectacular; we’d never thought about finishing the swim together. I’ll never forget our first steps out of the water. I put my arm around him, and we were both smiling, then holding hands. It was really special.”
They shared other poignant moments, though not in the manner either of them had imagined—or hoped. “When we were training, Mike didn’t spend a lot of time drafting me [on the bike]. He spent a lot of time fighting the wind, because we knew it would be windy on race day. I have this thing where I look over my shoulder; it’s a natural thing
. The plan was for me to stay ahead of Mike, keep checking on him, make sure he’s riding near me. But he had to stop at every aid station, which was really bad. He’d crashed three times in training, so he became insecure about reaching down to get a water bottle. At Ironman, you need to eat and drink constantly. So we’d stop at every aid station, and I’d run around, getting him drinks, getting him food.
“When we got back on the bike, Mike didn’t really let me know how badly he was feeling. I could tell that we were really slowing down; our average speed went down to twelve mph, compared to twenty to twenty-five when I was racing to win. I tried pushing the pace, but he couldn’t go any faster.”
Then came a crushing moment: at the forty-five-mile mark of the bike ride, Mike said, “Kath, I don’t think I can make it.”
“I didn’t expect to hear that; I didn’t have any contingency for that,” Kathleen said. “I thought we were going to finish the bike, then walk or run the full marathon.
“I said, ‘Mike, we’re in Kona. Let’s figure this out, pull over, and let medical check your pulse.’ He felt dizzy, like he was going to black out. We had him checked and got him back on the road. He pulled over one more time, and I said, ‘Mike, we’re at fifty miles. Let’s at least make it to the turnaround.’ We were six miles away. We knew of a pancreatic cancer patient, Dave, recovering from his chemo in Hawi—the turnaround—and he’d read Mike’s story. On race week, he contacted Mike and said, ‘I just want to meet you. I’m recovering from Stage 4 chemo, you’re inspiring to me, you’re giving me hope.’ He was waiting for us in Hawi.
“I thought the one way to see if Mike had anything left was to remind him that Dave was waiting for us in Hawi. If we could just get there, and then drop . . . I knew Mike would do something for someone else as much as he’d do something for himself.”
“Kath, if we do, I will crash. I will black out. I can’t,” Mike said.
