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Reprinted from: "Ironman 25
th Anniversary, with
permission of Bob Babbitt.
The
paw is big and hairy and it’s coming across the counter, demanding
money. This presents two problems: One, this fuzzy mitt is attached
to a beefy and increasingly strident Greek shopkeeper with a knife
in his other hand, an attention-getting implement he was using
moments ago to disembowel rolls. Two, Greg Welch and his two mates
don’t have any money. Spent it all at the pub.
Welch reckons
this clearly explains how he and his mates ended up in a Sydney
hamburger shop ordering food, oblivious to the basics of a
cash-and-carry society.
“We forgot we
left the pub because we were out of money,” he says. “We would have
stayed at the pub otherwise.”
Faced with a
single sensible option, they take it. Running down the street,
shopkeeper and knife in hot pursuit, Welch drops his hamburger.
Faced with a single sensible option, Welch stops and turns back.
Once in the game, Welch is dogged.
“There was no way
I was going to miss out on eating my hamburger,” he says.
Fortunately, at 5’ 6”, Welch is also short. He bends and scoops up
the soggy patty just under the shopkeeper’s swipe.
Eventually the
cries of the shopkeeper die away in the distance. Welch and his
companions hop a train home. The clacking and swaying after the
excitement of the chase are too much. Welch spits up the hamburger
and a goodly portion of beer in the middle of the train.
In the end, even
the most sorely won prizes are temporary. The train clacks on.
Welch’s head, swinging loose, measures its beat.
It’s October
1989, and an odd time for barfing. The Hawaii Ironman is a week
away. Around the globe the world’s best triathletes are chanting
their mantras, spooning down strained cottage cheese and beating
most pre-schoolers to bed, putting the final delicate touches on a
season’s worth of training.
Here in
Australia, Welch is eyeballing his evening’s excesses. Welch did
train today – a hot, hilly beach run is what drove him and his mates
to the pub in the first place. The speed work with the shopkeeper
was just icing on the cake.
A full-time
construction worker, Welch will touch down in Hawaii and spend much
of his time before the race ogling triathlon’s elite – awe with
sound basis given the fact that Welch hasn’t swam more than two
miles and rarely runs more than 15 miles in a day in preparation for
this race.
He will place
third behind Dave Scott and Mark Allen and put himself on the
Ironman map.
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