`Nirvana' hits town in August

One of these days, the man goes back. This you must understand.

"Someday," Phil Suelzer muses. "Someday after I retire."

Someday he gets the bike out again and does the running and swims the laps and then boards the plane for Hawaii, where the monster awaits. A swim through ocean swells, a bike through volcano fields, a full marathon at the end: Welcome to the Ironman, King Kong of triathlons.

And welcome to Phil Suelzer's version of Nirvana.

"An awesome experience," says Suelzer, who did the Ironman a dozen years ago. "I think the scariest thing for me was just swimming a mile or so out into the ocean and then straight back in, through 2- or 3-foot swells. And then I kind of came apart halfway through the bike."

But he finished, eventually. And if you're thinking by now that this is one seriously bent individual - who gets a jolt out of physically "coming apart," for pity's sake - then there's one more thing you need to consider.

Phil Suelzer isn't alone.

As a matter of fact, he figures on 100 or so like-minded folks showing up Aug. 16 for a triathlon in Fort Wayne, jointly sponsored by the Fort Wayne Track Club and Progressive Insurance. Suelzer is the race director, and he already has half the field of 125 filled, three weeks before the starting gun.

"That's quite a bit," Suelzer says. "We put a limit on the field this first year, because it's a short course and we wanted to keep it tight and compact and then expand it if we feel the course allows it to be done."

The course, half the international distance, comprises a .75-kilometer swim, a 20-kilometer bike and a 5-kilometer footrace. It's located close to the intersection of I-69 and 469 next to Lafayette Center Road on land owned by Bob and Marilyn Gibson.

Bill Sohaski, one of the event organizers, found the layout in early spring, just driving around checking out prospective sites.

"I spent a lot of time doing that," he says. "I looked at every body of water bigger than a puddle. And then . . ."

And then one day he was driving by the Gibson place, and there it was: a pond and a practically deserted road and a transition area, all grass, and a school for parking and registration. Perfect.

"I thought `Gosh, this was made for triathlons,' " Sohaski says. "The school's right there, and right smack across the street is our water, and you run north and bike south in straight lines. We really lucked out."

Apparently the word has spread, too. Sohaski reports getting calls from as far away as South Dakota and Tennessee, and the track club has advertised the event on the Runner's World and USA Today Internet Triathlon sites; in Indiana Runner, Mideast Triathlete and Inside Track; and with running clubs in Toledo and Indianapolis.

"Actually, we may have overdone it, because of the cutoff," Sohaski says. "But there's a lot of interest out there."

And if you're Phil Suelzer, you understand why, of course. He ran his first triathlon in 1983, when he was 31 years old. He had to buy a new bike and join the YWCA and learn the proper training techniques, all in two months, but he did it. And by 1985, he was winning triathlons against seasoned pros all over the Midwest.

He was earning a trip to Nirvana.

"It's like anything else you take up sports-wise," he says now. "The first one I did, I was hooked."

And the Ironman?

"It had kind of just become big-time at that point," he recalls. "The race was in late October that year, so by the time I got out there, we'd had some real cool weather in Indiana and I wasn't acclimated to the heat. And I kind of came apart."

He chuckles.

"I remember I did a fair amount of walking through the marathon. In fact I had lunch at every one of the aid stations. I walked through every one and just loaded up - cookies, little sandwiches, the whole bit."

And again he chuckles.

One of these days . . .

Ben Smith is a writer for The Journal Gazette. His columns appear Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

PUBLISHED WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 1997