John Collins admits a dose of "beer muscles" played a role in the creation of the Ironman Triathlon. A career Navy man, Collins enjoyed running and open water swimming while stationed in Honolulu. One night while attending a running race's awards ceremony, he got involved in a lively debate. "We got into an argument about who was in better shape - runners or swimmers," recalls Collins. "I had been reading in Sports Illustrated that Eddie Merckx was the fittest athlete in the world. I proposed that cyclists were the fittest." Collins formulated an unlikely challenge to settle the argument. He surmised it was possible to tie a well-known local swim event called the Waikiki Rough Water Swim to a perimeter bike ride of the island and then conclude with a run of the Honolulu Marathon course. The full race would be a little over 140 miles.

As he visualized the race route, the band playing on stage took a break. Collins seized the moment. "I ran on stage and just issued the challenge," he said. "I laid out the course, the locations and how one race naturally led to the next. I said the gun will go off at 7 a.m. The clock will keep running and whoever finishes first we'll call the 'Ironman.''' On February 18, 1978, 15 competitors, including Collins, came to the shores of Waikiki to take the Ironman challenge. Prior to racing, each received three sheets of paper listing a few rules and a course description. Handwritten on the last page was this exhortation: "Swim 2.4 miles! Bike 112 miles! Run 26.2 miles! Brag for the rest of your life!" Collins and 11 others finished the entire course. Gordon Haller, a taxi cab driver and fitness enthusiast, crossed the finish line first in 11 hours, 46 minutes and 58 seconds to become the "original" Ironman. Collins finished the race in a little under 17 hours. Having only lost $25 on that first race, Collins agreed to organize a second event in 1979.

Among the 15 athletes who did compete was Lyn Lemaire, a cyclist from Boston, Mass. The first "Ironwoman" maintained second place for much of the race before finishing sixth. The overall winning time of 11:15:46 posted by Californian Tom Warren, improved upon Haller's first-year mark, and Warren became a minor celebrity when he and the race received exposure in Sports Illustrated. The SI coverage was a stroke of good fortune in the race's crawl to attention. Barry McDermott, the magazine's golf writer, happened to be on the island covering a tournament and saw a small notice about the Ironman Triathlon in the local newspaper. He tagged along with Collins in a support vehicle for about 15 hours. "McDermott told me he thought this race could become a big deal," remembers Collins. "He said it had cache, that people were looking for something new. I told him he was crazy, and that I thought I was going to have to go to relay teams of swimmers, bikers and runners to keep this thing alive. " McDermott's story changed that. Collins says that within months of its publication, he had a shoe box filled with hundreds of letters from people around the world who wanted to do the race ABC Sports called and asked Collins if it could film the 1980 event. "I said, `I don't think you can make it interesting; it's almost like a lawn growing contest,'" Collins recalls. ```It's all over the island, it takes all day.

But sure, go ahead. It's your equipment, your people.'" Ironically, Collins transferred out of Hawaii just as his baby hit the big time in 1980. He turned the event over to the owners of a local health club. No money changed hands, but Collins did receive assurances that he could race for free any year that he wanted, and that "they would save a few racing spots among the elite Ironman competitors for the `common man,' because these were the type of individuals who created the race." The event continued a somewhat unorthodox path to fame as the husband-and-wife partners of the health club divorced. He got the health club; she reluctantly took ownership of the race. Despite initial trepidation, Valerie Silk moulded the race from a loosely organized, anything-goes affair into a classic test pitting not only athlete against athlete, but also man and woman versus nature. One of her earliest and best decisions involved moving the race from the tranquil vistas of Oahu to the harsh, barren lava fields of Kona on the Big Island. The move, made in 1981, came because Silk desired a less congested area to run the race. It's only a half-hour plane ride from Oahu to the Big Island. But the contrast in atmosphere between the two locales suggests something closer to a space-shuttle trip. It was as if the Ironman Triathlon had moved from the Garden of Eden smack into Dante's Inferno. The distances of the three events became even more daunting paired with a race course that snaked through some of the most rugged land known to man. Along the Kona Coast, black lava rock dominates the panorama. Against this backdrop, athletes would cover 140.6 miles by sea, bike and foot while battling "mumuku" crosswinds of 45 mph, 95 degree temperatures and a scorching sun. The new Ironman Triathlon became the benchmark that all extreme sporting challenges would be measured against. Silk heavily involved the local community in the race, selling the Ironman Triathlon as the event that would put Kona on the map. In return, she recruited an army of volunteers who would man "aid" stations along the course.

This meant that athletes no longer had to bring their own support crews with them to the race and that every competitor would compete with the same degree of assistance. ABC's broadcasts in 1980 and 1981 continued to generate interest from mainland athletes, and U.S. Olympic cyclist John Howard added another layer of credibility to Ironman by competing and winning in 1981. But Ironman's signature moment came the following year in surprising fashion. With the men's championship already claimed, ABC's cameras zeroed in on women's leader Julie Moss. Of the 306 athletes entered, Moss was among the most green. A college student from San Diego, she came to the lava fields to conduct first-hand research for her senior thesis on exercise physiology. Moss' lifeguard background helped her stay among the early women's leaders.