I figured the best way to find out was to go to the source, to Mark himself.
So with Mark Allen in mind, I wondered: Was O’Donnell’s near miss in 2015 the all-given, nothing-left proposition it seemed to be, or was there a final layer of mental performance yet to be added – a layer only a guy like Mark Allen could identify and coax out an already superb athlete? What the books do not, and cannot, record was the precise, almost surreal way in which that time, and every other portion of the race preceding it, had been visualized and executed. The record books show that Allen’s 2:40:04 marathon that day has yet to be surpassed. Allen’s legendary “Iron War” race with Dave Scott in ‘89 was a master class in focus and single-minded concentration – eight-plus hours of locked-in, tunnel-visioned competitive intensity designed to achieve a single outcome.
Even before he won the race in 1989 he was known as “The Grip” and the “Zen Master” for his ability to take his body places where few of his contemporaries could, or even dared. The most naturally talented triathlete of his day, Allen struggled through a years-long gauntlet of failure and frustration in Kona – including a mechanical failure in his first attempt at the race in 1982 - before finding a workable formula for success, the final pieces of which lay not in his training or technique, but in his mind. I couldn’t help but ponder in that moment what O’Donnell’s coach, the legendary Mark Allen, was thinking. His brief shining time in the driver’s seat of the Ironman World Championships had passed. It was a sure sign that O’Donnell was done, that his fate was now in the hands of the course, the gods of the Big Island, the long day of racing, the man coming hard behind. But the gap re-opened quickly, then widened, and before long, O’Donnell was asking folks along the course about the German, Andreas Raelert, who was in third. Watching the race updates on my phone, I saw that O’Donnell had closed the gap to a little more than a minute coming put of the Natural Energy Lab. O’Donnell didn’t stay in front all the way into town, but he stayed close, then ran in second place for the first half of the marathon, a little more than two minutes behind the leader Jan Frodeno. “I just said to myself, just ride your ride,” he told Triathlete magazine, “ride what you’re capable of doing. There was hesitation in the field after early leader Ben Hoffman had been caught and passed it was someone’s turn to step up, step in, so O’Donnell picked up the flag and pedaled on. What now?įor O’Donnell, it was a take-or-leave-it moment. And in interviews after the race, O’Donnell admitted to sharing in that surprise – at least a little. There was a discernable note of surprise in the race-day coverage when O’Donnell went strongly to the front on the way down from the turnaround at Hawi. By all accounts,the performance of 35-year-old American triathlete Tim O’Donnell at the 2015 Ironman World Championships in Kona was a breakthrough – especially so on the bike.
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