Born to Perform Page 15
I prayed ten Hail Marys, one for each of the ten years since my accident, in thanksgiving for being alive. Then I cried to myself for the next six miles, and banished all bad thoughts and fears. When I dismounted the bike, Cyle Sage and I drove south. He asked, “Gerard, how was that?”
I said, “Cyle, I confronted my demons face to face. They don’t exist anymore. I now want to go back and relive the Ironman in Hawaii.”
Cyle was taken aback. “Gerard, you’ve got to be in serious shape to do the Hawaii Ironman. You haven’t trained for ten years; you can’t run with your hip.”
He was right in ways but, for my sanity, I needed to go back to Hawaii, do the Ironman and suffer for ten or eleven hours on those lava fields; I did not want to do some low-key triathlon. I had turned my back on triathlon, blanked out my friends, held myself to ransom in fear and deprived myself of being an athlete. I had treated myself like an invalid. The true test of my character and willpower would be to face the Hawaii Ironman head-on; to confront the most famous and toughest one-day endurance event in the world. I had been a prisoner for too long. I wanted to put myself to the test, to prove that, yes, anything is possible. To finish is to win; to win is to finish. So-called experts sometimes place limitations upon us, and thus we underachieve because of someone else’s expectations, or the fact that they place the bar too low. From working with Olympic and world champions, it is my observation that most people, indeed many sportspeople, live in a comfort zone. Many people set the bar too low and never come near reaching their true potential in life.
Haile Gebrselassie, Usain Bolt, Sonia O’Sullivan, Kelly Holmes, Paula Radcliffe and the top champions of sport are champions because they set absolutely no limits. When Usain Bolt is asked before a 100-metre race to predict his time, his answer is, “I’m here to win. I’m here to run fast.” For him or any great athlete to announce a time is setting a barrier.
Before 1954 it was thought impossible for a human to run a mile in under four minutes. When Roger Bannister broke the four-minute barrier, he shattered the myth. By the end of the twentieth century, the 1-mile record has been lowered to 3 minutes, 43 seconds, and I am sure that I will witness the 3-minute-40-second barrier being bettered in the not-too-distant future.
In 1993 I had the pleasure of working with and treating one of my boyhood heroes Eamonn Coghlan, who became the first man over 40 years of age to break the 4-minute barrier for the mile. At age 40 he actually failed to achieve this mark. He had injuries that did not allow his body to run with ease and efficiency. The pundits said if he could not do it at 40 he would be best hanging up his spikes, as there would be no way he could do it at 41. Over a ten-week period, Eamonn stayed with me in my home in Gainesville, Florida. He trained away, quietly and consistently, and every evening I treated Eamonn for two to three hours, fine tuning and manipulating every sinew and muscle in his body. In February of 1994, at 41 years of age, Eamonn ran a mile in 3 minutes and 58 seconds, becoming the first and only human being over the age of 40 to break 4 minutes for the mile run. To set limits is to sell yourself short.
Everyone has demons. Some of the finest athletes and businesspeople and celebrities I have worked with have hidden demons. People can be talented and gifted in their chosen field but have weaknesses such as alcohol, drugs, gambling or simply over-spending. Such demons may be the result of abuse or something bad that happened years earlier, and they can ruin a life. There is only one solution: confront your demons. Face them head-to-head. Stare them directly in the eye, and fight them. That can be through counselling, or through walking away from the stressful situation or the relationship that caused it.
A few years ago, one of the international top sport stars rang me up in a very disturbed state. I knew him well and had worked with him for years. He came to me and produced a registered letter, which he had just received. It informed him that he had failed a drug test. He pleaded with me to come up with some solution to get him out of the mess. He wanted me to formulate a medication for a musculoskeletal injury and state the banned substance was an active ingredient, and that the amount of this substance in the prescribed medication resulted in the positive drug test.
I explained to him the simple message I was taught by my parents all through my life: do not hide from your problems. Do not lock them up in a closet and wish them to go away. My parents urged my sisters and me to come to them straight away with our problems when something could be done, not when it was too late. My friend handed his troubles over to me. He admitted to me later that, if I had not been there for him, he would not have had anyone else to turn to. I travelled with the sports star to the residence of his manager, and together we shared the registered letter with him. The manager was not happy, but he understood human frailty. The sports star was hit with a six-month ban, and he underwent special rehabilitation to help deal with the banned substance he had consumed and his drug abuse. He then reintegrated back into his profession a clean man. He did not know what to do in his hour of need, but he found a solution to confront his demons. Everything can be dealt with, if dealt with sensibly. I always draw on Rudyard Kipling’s verse:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn out tools…
Be careful what you wish for. Certainly, 2003 was a year stacked with opportunity and commitments, and left me close to the brink of what my energy and time limits could handle. I spent seven weeks at high altitude in Albuquerque, New Mexico, seldom seeing daylight, as my days, from morning to night, were consumed with treating a group of great athletes. The most prolific was Paula Radcliffe, with whom I spent 4 to 5 hours each day working on her every muscle and sinew in preparation for an assault on her own world marathon record of 2 hours, 17 minutes and 42 seconds, which she had set in Chicago the previous October. A total of 25 to 30 hours lying on a treatment table each week, on top of running 140 to 150 miles, plus strength and conditioning sessions was the level of commitment that Paula applied to reach record-breaking heights.
People ask how I can treat just one athlete for up to five hours daily. Is it not counterproductive? And I would agree that, at times, I became overwhelmed by the intensity and magnitude of pummelling and stretching every sinew of Paula’s body to make her tick like clockwork over the 26.2-mile distance. Whatever about it wearing out my hands, it certainly worked for Paula. She responded and benefited so much from this extensive hands-on treatment that she completed some of her training runs in eye-opening record-breaking times. The London Marathon on April 13, 2003 was when she would shock the world.
Several other top runners came to me in Albuquerque, ensuring that I spent several weeks stuck in a small apartment, treating from morning to bedtime, with no time for doing any physical training myself. Sonia O’Sullivan had been training in Melbourne, Australia and injured her Achilles tendon, and she flew to Albuquerque to receive intensive daily treatment. Elana Meyer, the 1992 Olympic 10,000-metre silver medallist from South Africa, had injured her hip and hamstring, and she flew across the world to see me. The US 1,500-metre champion Suzy Hamilton also flew down from Wisconsin and stayed three weeks, willing to wait her turn to get on the physio table. So, too, did US 5,000-metre record holder Bob Kennedy from Indiana, along with US steeplechase champion Pascal Dobert and Irish athletes Mark Carroll and Keith Kelly, who flew in from their training base in Florida.
Some nights I would go to bed and ask myself: how did I create this monster? Being in demand has its price, and there is no one more demanding than an elite athlete whose lifeline depends on staying healthy and injury-free. But it was all worthwhile. Paula Radcliffe
ran like clockwork in the 2003 London Marathon, averaging 5 minutes and 11 seconds per mile, to achieve an amazing world record of 2 hours, 15 minutes and 25 seconds for the historic distance.
Back in Limerick after the London Marathon, feeling very unfit and with a patient list that had built up in my absence, I spent a full day sorting through stacks of correspondence and mail. Towards the end of a weary day, trawling through the mundane paperwork, an envelope with the Ironman logo on the top corner caught my attention. I opened it, slowly read it and just froze. Be careful what you wish for, indeed! Two years earlier, ecstatic after tackling my bottled-up fear and cycling across the Paynes Prairie outside Gainesville, Florida, I had told Cyle Sage that someday I would like to go back to Hawaii and participate in the Hawaii Ironman. The letter read:
Dear Michael Gerard Hartmann,
The Ironman Corporation has invited you as their guest to participate in the historic 25th Anniversary Hawaii Ironman which takes place on October 18, 2003 at Kailua-Kona, Hawaii.
Dumbfounded, I sat mesmerised for minutes, trying to figure out what I should do. I hadn’t participated in a triathlon in over twelve years. I had not swum for almost as long, other than a splash in the sea on a sun holiday. When time allowed, I kept fit with a simple 30- or 40-minute run along the Shannon’s river bank, yet in less than six months time I could be facing a full-blown Ironman…oh, my God!
It had actually been several weeks since the letter was sent and I had done virtually no exercise for nearly two months. A day later, I felt a cold coming on and a lingering cough had me sitting in the waiting room of a long-serving stalwart of the Limerick Triathlon Club, Dr Michael Griffin, at his practice in St John Square, Limerick. While waiting, I spotted the most gorgeous of gorgeous young women, an almost-six-foot beauty. During the consultation, I rattled Dr Griffin for a prescription to cure my cough, and then asked him about the long-legged blond girl who had grabbed my attention.
“That’s Diane Bennis,” he replied. “She’s one of the GPs working here – a fantastic girl.”
I had seen and heard enough. Once my cough was better, and after three days of pondering, I picked up the phone and dialled the number of the Griffin practice. I asked to speak to Dr Bennis, and asked her out on a date the following evening.
I had a patient list that would keep my hands and time full for months ahead, up to and including the 2004 Olympic Games. I had an invitation to participate in the 25th Anniversary Hawaii Ironman event. And, at age 43, I had met the first girl in my life who took my breath away, and who I would marry in 2006.
What more could I ask for but time – plenty more time.
This article, by Simon Lewis, first appeared in the Irish Examiner Arena magazine supplement on November 5, 2003:
For someone whose sporting career had been brought to a sudden and traumatic halt by a horrific accident twelve years previously, it took a huge amount of grit, determination and soul-searching for Gerard Hartmann to get back on a bike, not just once but twice in order to compete in the 25th Anniversary Hawaii Ironman Triathlon.
So when the world-renowned physical therapist crossed the finish line at Ali’i Drive at Kona on Hawaii’s Big Island ten days ago, having completed the daunting 140.6-mile event in eleven hours seven minutes, the forty-three year old was not just finishing one of the toughest sporting tests of human endurance, he was closing a chapter of his life that had been left open since a very dark day in 1991.
He may now have a client list at his hometown Limerick practice, including such luminaries of the track as Kelly Holmes, Colin Jackson, Paula Radcliffe and Sonia O’Sullivan and over sixty other Olympic medallists, but, when disaster struck Hartmann on a training ride along a Florida highway twelve years ago, he was in his seventh year as Irish triathlon champion, having finished as high as fourteenth in the World Championships and sixth in the Europeans.
He had also competed in the famous Ironman event in Hawaii on two previous occasions, finishing twenty-fourth overall at the tender age of twenty-three on his first attempt. […]
Following his accident, however, Hartmann had thrown all his energy into his physiotherapy career, and blotted out all thoughts of the triathlon and its components. Until, that is, he received an invitation from the Hawaii Ironman Cooperation to compete in the 25th anniversary event. Hartmann phoned his friend Cyle Sage, the US National Triathlon Team coach and old training partner, to inform him that he had been invited back to participate in the 2003 Hawaii Ironman event.
“Cyle told me all about the 25th Anniversary Hawaii Ironman and how it was going to be a very historic day and how 25 athletes from the past were being invited back as guests of the event. It was always at the back of my mind and deep in my heart that one day I would go back to that island. I just didn’t know when. It is a very spiritual event and for me there are deeper issues that I wanted to resolve. […]”
Having decided to compete and having told illustrious clients they would be seeing a lot less of him between June and November, Hartmann turned his attention inwards for some “me time”. He had spent that period wisely; in fact, his preparations – including a mandatory Half Ironman Triathlon to ensure his fitness, his first event in twelve years which he completed in England – had gone great, he finished 3rd in the veterans’ over forty, all came undone the week of the “big race” in Hawaii.
Of all the problems that could hinder him, it was one involving his nemesis, the bicycle. […]
Imagine what was going through Hartmann’s mind when, a couple of days before the race, he was going downhill on a practice ride in Hawaii and the bike went into a major speed wobble.
“It was as if someone was shaking the bike violently,” he said. “I took it to a bike shop; they took a look at it and couldn’t see anything wrong with it. So, I took it to another bike shop and still they couldn’t see what was wrong with it.
“So, that was fine, but coming up to Ironman race day you don’t want to be changing your plans just before the event but my mind was playing games with me, my demons were messing with my head, and it just felt like my bike had deserted me and all my confidence in it had gone.”
Standard practice for athletes in the build-up to an event such as this is to wind down preparations around forty-eight hours before start time and do very little other than rest-up.
Hartmann had wanted to follow that routine, but, despite the experts’ clean bill of health for the bike, doubts about it kept nagging away. He knew there was something wrong with the bike and he didn’t want to have it proved to him halfway through the 25th Hawaii Ironman as he descended a steep hill travelling at nearly 50mph with a tailwind.
“I wanted to ride it again just to make sure. So, I drove out about twenty miles into the middle of the lava fields where there is a very fast downhill. I decided to go down the hill at 45mph and get this thing out of my system. So, I went down the hill, but the bike went into a frenzy of a shake. I held on and pulled up because the bike, for some reason, just wasn’t right.”
Hartmann’s instincts hadn’t deserted him. Just minutes after he had pulled out of his high-speed test and at a far gentler pace, this time standing out of the saddle and climbing up the hill he had just descended, his cycle frame split in two.
“My bike was in two pieces. The bike shop mechanics had missed it, as it had been a hairline crack under the paintwork. It was probably caused by the impact of weight on the bike case during handling at airports, […] I had four flights to get to Kona....
“But, if I did not listen to my gut sense and own intuition and gone for that test ride, it would have given out during the bike race and, fuelled with adrenalin in competition, I would certainly have suffered a serious injury myself and probably brought some other cyclists down in the process.”
The bad news was that, with a day to the big event, Hartmann didn’t have a bike. Despondency had set in and he had thrown in the towel in participating in the event, until he visited the Expo Trade Fair at the Ironman venue.
He went to tell his friend Cyle Sage, who was working on one of the Stands. […]
Opposite him was the Cannondale Stand, the official bike sponsors of the Ironman. Cyle Sage chatted up the reps, told them of his Irish friend’s plight, coming all the way from Ireland as a guest of the event. Not only did they offer him a helping hand, they loaned him their showpiece demo bike, the prototype of the Cannondale 2004 Ironman Slice, which was to be launched the following January.
The only problem was the frame was the wrong size, not by much, but enough for Hartmann to go away and sit down over a coffee and discuss his options with his wife Diane.
At this level of competition, bikes are set up very specifically for the individual riding them and the bike the athlete has used for training for months beforehand fits like a glove. Every muscle and joint in the body is dialled into working in harmony together, bike and body in unison. The bike becomes an extension of the athlete, an amalgam of cycle and sinew, fused together by mile after mile of training on the road. You just cannot hop off one and climb onto another and expect the transition to be seamless.
Hartmann’s borrowed whiz-bang Cannondale of the future had a 60cm frame and that could have serious consequences for a set of muscles so finely attuned to his normal spec bike – a 58cm frame with a different geometry. Riding that would be like a runner with size 8 feet racing in size 10s. So, on the evening before the race, he was left with a stark choice: withdraw from the race and walk away from months of preparation for an extraordinary event or go to the start-line, ride a strange bike and risk the strong possibility of his muscles seizing up half-way through.