Cayman Islands triathlete Patrick Harfield started the World Ironman Championships with ambitions of a podium finish.
Kyle Brown was aiming to become only the second person with ALS to go the distance in the sporting world’s most gruelling challenge.
Neither man achieved their goal.
But, as they shared a tearful embrace at the finish line, they had both gained far more than sporting success.
Harfield, a triathlon coach and dominant competitor in Cayman, had realistic ambitions of victory in his age group at the event in Utah in May.
“I was hoping to come back to Cayman as world champion,” the 44-year-old athlete told the Compass.
He was in ninth position coming out the water after a 2.4 mile swim. Despite feeling nauseous on the 112-mile bike ride, he had moved up to seventh by the time he pulled on his running shoes for the 26.2-mile marathon.
At that point, he was on track to hit his target time of just over nine hours.
But his health was deteriorating fast.
He had a pocketful of gel packs, which provide bursts of nutrition during the calorie-sucking race, but he couldn’t hold them down. On more than one occasion, he stumbled to the side of the course to throw up.
With about 14 miles to go, he ran out of gas.
Lying in a heap on the roadside, staring down the barrel of his first ever DNF – the dreaded abbreviation that denotes ‘did not finish’ – he admitted to himself that he could not go on.
“I was in a dark place in the race,” he said.
Lying there on the asphalt with 14 miles still to run, it wasn’t a sip of water or some vital nutrition that revived him.
It was a story.
A chance meeting
Harfield could have collapsed anywhere on the marathon course. But he happened to hit the wall at the exact point Kyle Brown and his family had chosen to watch the race.
It was Brown’s wife who first came to his aid. He turned down her offers of food and water, or the use of her cellphone to call for help.
After a few moments she tried a different tack.
“I bet I can motivate you to finish,” she said. Then she started to talk about her husband.
How he had been diagnosed with ALS, a terrifying motor-neuron illness also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease; how he had been told he may have less than a year to live; and how he had a dream to complete an Ironman race before he died. Despite the disease wasting his muscles and impacting his speech and movement, he had already completed a half-Ironman.
Brown began the race in St. George, hoping to become only the second ALS sufferer in history to complete the full 140.6-mile race.
By the time he met Harfield on the marathon course, his day was done.
His body had struggled in cold temperatures and he had battled against the odds to complete the 2.4-mile swim, but his time was outside the cut-off and he was eliminated from the race.
By the time Brown’s wife had finished talking, Harfield was in tears.
“I knew I had to finish,” he said.
“I looked at Kyle and I asked him, ‘Do you want to walk the rest of the course with me?’”
Somebody to lean on
Together they pushed through the pain barrier, shrugging off their personal disappointments, and made their way in fits and starts towards the finish line.
As they walked and talked, Harfield learned that Brown, now in his early 50s, had been a professional cyclist.
The ALS diagnosis came out of the blue.
“His story was so inspiring. His days are numbered but he is living life to the fullest,” Harfield said.
A few miles from the end, Brown’s wife picked him up, telling Harfield they wanted to watch him finish.
Revived, the Cayman Islands athlete jogged the home stretch, breaking the tape in a time of 12 hours, 54 minutes.
The race had taken four hours longer than he had hoped, but he felt a surge of euphoria.
He looked for Brown in the crowd, but couldn’t find him.
As he staggered towards the medical tent, he scanned the faces at the finish line, but there was still no sign.
Then he felt a towel being placed around his shoulders.
“I turned around and it was Kyle,” he said.
“We embraced. I was in tears, he was in tears. It was a really emotional experience.”
The two men had become firm friends over the miles they had walked together. And Harfield felt unexpectedly thankful that his dreams of glory had evaporated in the Utah heat.
He will get another crack at the world championships in Hawaii later this year.
But the experience of his failed attempt is something he will never replicate.
“It was very emotional. I was pleased that I had finished, pleased that I had been fortunate enough to meet such an amazing person and had such great conversations and been inspired by him and his story.”
Crossing the line
Next time, says Harfield, the two athletes aim to cross the finish line together. They have stayed in touch since the race and the 44-year-old, who runs Cayman Tri Training coaching, wants to help Brown achieve his dream of finishing an Ironman.
“I can be there with him on the swim, the bike and the run,” he said.
“We are talking and hoping to find a race we can enter together. I would love more than anything to be able to help him achieve that dream.”
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