Clarence Johnson crossed the finish line of the Ironman Canada last year with a rush of pride. A strict training regimen helped Johnson, an amateur triathlete, complete the grueling 140.6-mile course in a respectable 13 hours 45 minutes 14 seconds. But his race to get into the race, held in August, seems just as inspiring.
"I was in Las Vegas at a seminar," said Johnson, 58, who was living near Seattle at the time. "I caught the earliest flight home. I jumped into my truck and started the five-hour drive'' to the race site in Penticton, British Columbia. By 4 a.m., he was outside a hotel, behind 300 athletes camped out with sleeping bags and checkbooks for the race registration, which began at 11 a.m.
"I was out of the building by 2, then I drove back home for another five hours," he said. "Insane? I'm sure a lot of people may think that."
But Johnson's tales on and off the race course will raise nary an eyebrow in the triathlon community, where athletes accustomed to extremes are going that extra mile for a chance to do an Ironman. The race entails a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a marathon - a 26.2-mile run - which must be completed in 17 hours.
Benjamin Fertic, president of the World Triathlon Corporation in Tarpon Springs, Fla., which licenses Ironman races, says the organization cannot seem to add races fast enough. "Someone is always asking, 'Why can't you open more events?' " he said.
Indeed, entry lists for many of the 27 full and half-Ironman races held worldwide, as well as iron-distance races run by other organizations, fill within hours, or at least days, after registration opens. Ironman USA, which takes place Sunday in Lake Placid, N.Y., filled its 2,262 general entry slots within two days. The inaugural Ironman Arizona, to be held in Tempe in April, sold out 2,300 slots in less than two weeks.
"We are now where we were about 10 years ago with marathons," said John M. Duke, publisher of Triathlete Magazine. The Ironman, he said, is a natural evolution for those striving for a higher pinnacle of fitness.
Some athletes like Johnson, an insurance executive now living in Tucson, think nothing of camping out overnight to secure a spot.
Other athletes, hoping to participate in the Ironman Triathlon World Championship in Kona, Hawaii, in October, will fly halfway around the world to compete in qualifying races, or pay an $85 nonrefundable fee for 150 lottery slots. A few have turned to eBay, where slots have been auctioned off for charity, at up to $50,000 apiece.
"It's like a rock concert," said Paula Newby-Fraser, eight-time winner of the Ironman world championship.
Newby-Fraser, 42, now a partner in the coaching business Multisports.com, has seen a growing interest in Ironman races among everyday people. In her training camps, she said, "We used to get a lot of real ringer athletes - good athletes trying to improve - and now the level is much more beginner oriented."
Few people had even heard of the Ironman, now in its 26th year, until 1982, when television viewers around the world watched in awe as a fatigued graduate student named Julie Moss, who had been leading the 48 other women, crawled the final 440 yards and finished second in Kona.
Fertic, a 1996 Hawaii Ironman finisher, said that moment ignited his own interest in the sport, and undoubtedly many others. The addition of the triathlon - 1.5-kilometer swim, 40-kilometer bike ride and 10-kilometer run - to the Olympics in 2000 has not hurt the event's profile, either.
"We really are in the dream fulfillment business," Fertic said. "Each person we touch with that dream never forgets it and recruits two or three other people - that's how our business grows. The Ironman becomes kind of a lifestyle."
It is a lifestyle that requires months of training for each event. And there is a financial commitment: race entry fees as high as $450, in addition to travel expenses and the cost of equipment like racing bikes and wet suits.
"It's a high socioeconomic sport," said Duke, noting that his magazine's average reader earns $153,000 a year.
All this, of course, has not gone unnoticed by corporate sponsors like Timex and Subaru, which pay six- to seven-figure sums to link their names with the Ironman. "More companies not sports related are approaching us," said Fertic, estimating that sponsorship is up 25 to 30 percent in the last five years.
In return, millions of tourism dollars are pumped into the economies of the host sites. The Hawaii Island Economic Development Board says that the championship brings in about $15 million each year.
None of that matters to Judy Molnar, 38, of Palm Harbor, Fla. Once "morbidly obese," she said, she started jogging in 1996 to lose weight.
"After I did a 5K, I wanted to go a little bit farther," she said. "It was the same thing with triathlons, which I literally stumbled upon as a way of cross-training."
Molnar, more than 100 pounds lighter today, met her husband, Rick Wilson, also a triathlete, while training. In 1999, she finished the Hawaii Ironman in 16 hours 48 minutes 18 seconds. She was recently hired by the World Triathlon Corporation.
"When you cross the finish line, you will forever be changed," she said.