Reprinted from: "Ironman 25 ^th Anniversary, with permission of Bob Babbitt.

Greg Welch pulled the Timex rep over and proudly showed him the messages he had typed into his new 100-lap watch. Two things he never, ever wanted to forget. One was for the love of his life: I love Sian. The other? It was for the fantasy of a lifetime: Win Ironman.

The gap went from 20 seconds to 12 in the blink of an eye. Welch didn’t even need to look. He could hear the breathing, the applause, the “You da man!” shouts and that oh, so familiar duck-like foot strike.

It’s hard to hide when you’re sauntering through the lava fields wearing a matching peach-colored singlet and swimsuit. Dave Scott was so close Welch could damn near smell the guy. Look back? No way. Remember the first commandment from Racing 101? Thou shalt never look back. A definite sign of weakness, a message to the chaser that yes, there is a major concern.

No, the best response is to be oblivious, to ignore impending doom. “Who am I?” Welch scolded himself again and again, with Scott looming full frame in the rear-view mirror. “Who the hell am I?”

Welch’s commitment to Ironman this year has been six solid months of race-specific training. And, after 2.4 miles of swimming in a blender, 112 miles of cycling in a wind tunnel and 16 miles of running in a sauna, he discovered all that was only a precursor, an appetizer, a cocktail weenie, a lowly warm-up for the gut-check main course. Now, with 10 miles to go, in 95-degree heat, with the six-time winner of the Gatorade Ironman practically flatting the backs of his racing shoes, Welch was being asked to ante up, to dig down to a place he had never been before.

“I could feel him drawing in on me,” he says. “I though, ‘I’ve got to get rid of this guy.’ Dave knows how to race this race. Forget that Dave Scott is 40. It doesn’t matter if he is 40 or 50. He looked awesome.”

In years past, Welch might have chased. But last year he was injured a week before leaving for Kona and was forced to watch the race from the sidelines.

“I thought about what I learned from watching last year,” says Welch. “Jurgen likes to do his thing off the front. ‘I’m not going to be suckered into that,’ I said to myself. ‘I want to have a good run.’ The idea is to win the race…. Not the bike ride. Mark Allen told me to relax and go with my instincts. ‘Go when you want to go,’ he told me. ‘Be patient.’”

Welch could feel his momentum slipping away. “When Dave got to within 12 seconds, I knew that I really had to dig,” says Welch. “I said, ‘If you don’t dig now, you never will. You can do anything you want to do.’”

After taking the right turn out of the lab, he finally allowed himself a quick glance back. He smiled and bounded to his toes.

On his seventh try, just like Allen, he knew his fantasy was coming true, and the biggest race in the triathlon galaxy was finally his.

“I’ve measured it,” Welch admits. “After you come out of the Natural Energy Lab, it’s exactly 10.67 kilometers to the finish line. I knew I could do that.”

Behind him Scott was content. He finished four minutes back of Welch with an impressive 8:24:32.