In each monthly issue, Runner Triathlete News will publish one chapter from the new book "Becoming an Ironman." This month's story begins in the January 2002 issue of RTN.

To order your copy of "Becoming an Ironman: First Encounters with the Ultimate Endurance Event," send $23 per copy (plus $2.95 per order for shipping/handling) to Runner Triathlete News, P.O. Box 19909, Houston, TX 77224. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery

Virginia bought me a new bike for my birthday the month before the race, and it was a very expensive deal - a real splurge. It cost $189 for the whole thing, an SR Grand Course, which to me was totally state of the art. It weighed twenty-eight pounds, but I thought it was pretty cool. It was much better than what I had before, which was basically a rusted-out, converted beach cruiser. I usually borrowed bikes for races because I couldn't afford a real ten-speed.

When we landed at the airport - Kona's airport was this ten-foot- square stand - we took a cab to our hotel. We were driving where the Wal-Mart is now, but back then it used to be the dump, although we didn't know that at the time. They were burning trash and all this smoke was coming up. To show you how green we were, my wife says, "Look Scott, there's the crater and it's smoking." I didn't know for sure, but the guy driving the taxi was laughing so hard. He wouldn't tell us one way or another.

We stayed at this tiny place for thirty dollars a night. It was a closet. I laid all my stuff out the night before thinking I had everything. I had my touring shoes with the straps that go over the top, my wool shorts with the big chamois in the bottom, and then, to stay cool, I had this big cotton tank top that was more like a parachute. There wasn't a rule, but I wanted a helmet anyway so I had one of those Skidlids. Remember those? It was basically foam rubber with a piece of polyethylene plastic over the top of it. Actually, it didn't even connect to the top. It was the weirdest thing. The only other options were the leather hair net, which didn't do a thing, or those big Bell Tour Lights, which were like turtle shells. I had all the stuff out and I was sure I was ready. I could not ask for any more stuff, perfectly satisfied in my selection.

Still, there were no expectations. I knew I'd done okay in some of the shorter races in San Diego, but it had no bearing on what I was trying to do, mainly because it was an entirely separate thing. I was intimidated by the swim because it was so long. I was okay in the ocean having swum a lot as a lifeguard, but I knew I wasn't that strong. I ended up swimming 1:05, which I thought was slow because I had seen the times before, and they were just over fifty minutes. As it turns out, the course was measured wrong and even the fastest guys came out barely under an hour.

In transition I changed my clothes and put Vaseline on - only because Mark Montgomery told me I should. I had seen Mark at a couple of races in San Diego and, to me, he was everything because he had done Ironman the year before, in 1980. He knew all about it so he told me all these little secrets, which really didn't amount to much. But I looked at his bike, and he had a big handlebar pack with a map of the course on it and a big glass jar of peanut butter inside, and I thought, 'Okay, you're the expert.'

I got on the bike and I remember thinking, 'Oh, this is kind of fun.' Then it got really arduous and my attitude turned to 'I want to get off this stupid bike.' Fortunately, in 1981 they still made us get off our bikes to weigh ourselves. I stopped, I weighed myself, got back on, and on the way back, had to weigh myself again. In Hapuna we went out to this cul-de-sac, up to the parking lot, up to a cabin, and got on the scale. It was great to get off the bike. I liked those little breaks. By the last twenty-mile stretch, I hated everything about the bike.

Volunteers had all sorts of things at the aid stations and I ate my share of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Just recently I was talking to Tom Warren about the early days. He said, "Do you remember peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? If you look at all the nutritional things now, that was the absolute best thing you could eat: carbohydrates, low fat, low protein, it tasted great, you would digest them, you were used to them." We washed them down with ERG - electrolyte replacement glucose - the thing to drink back then.

It was developed by a high school science teacher in San Diego named Bill Gookin. They used to call it Gookinade, and the only place you could buy it was from Bill's garage. We'd go to his house in La Mesa, east of San Diego, and buy Gookinade by the pouch. I had bought my own Gookinade and mixed it up, but they had it on the course. He had shipped over a couple of cases. They don't make it anymore, but it's a pretty good formulation. He was a smart guy way back then.

When I got off the bike I changed into this outfit that was going to be the thing - cotton running shorts. I didn't feel like I was running that fast, but I passed so many people. Later on, I found out I'd passed something like fifty people. I ran 3:19, but at that time, even though I was only running about 7:50 minutes per mile, everybody else was walking, running, walking, running, or just running nine-minute miles. It was cool to pass all those people. We made the turnaround in the airport, got weighed again, and went back out to the Queen K. I thought, 'Oh gosh, I might be in the top ten.' Then I saw this guy - the first guy coming back - and he's a tall, gangly- looking guy running right by a cameraman. It was John Howard with a quirky little bike hat right out of the movie, Breaking Away. About twenty minutes behind him, firmly in second place, was my friend Tom Warren.

I realized I didn't remember John Howard passing me on the bike. Somebody might have gone by for a second, but 326 people over fifty-six miles - you just don't see people. At one point I could look - as far as I could see - not a soul, not a car, not a cyclist, not an aid station, not one damn sign of life and I turned around and looked back, and it was the same thing. I thought, 'How barren and desolate is this experience?'

I ended up placing third and to this day it was the most exciting finish of my career. Placing well was completely unexpected. It was innocent - I wasn't prepared for it, wasn't in the mind-set. In fact that was the only year I took my surfboard with me, which says a lot. That rawness left me with a greater capacity to feel more emotion for what I had just accomplished - much more than I was ever able to feel in the ensuing years.

Scott went back to his job at the marine recreation facility but only for a year. He returned to Hawaii the following year and won, going on to compete in more than four hundred triathlons, winning nearly one hundred of them, including the Hawaii Ironman again in 1985. He was inducted into the Ironman Hall of Fame in 1996. Although he continues to race, he is equally well known in the triathlon community as a writer, scholar, poet, and philosopher. And, when he does race, he takes his surfboard.