John Pendergrass competes in an Ironman Triathlon last month in Brazil.

By anyone's reckoning, the toughest, most demanding athletic pursuit one can undertake is the appropriately-named Ironman Triathlon.

The name is fitting, because to compete in and complete this event, one almost has to be superhuman, robotic, a man - or woman - of, well, of iron.

"It's the most unbelievably arduous journey you can take in sports," said Hattiesburg attorney Tony Mozingo, who has completed several of the events. "It's a life-changing experience."

A true Ironman consists of a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and a marathon race, all 26.2 miles of running. All of it is done more or less non-stop.

It is not a race for the weak of mind, body or spirit, and it is not a race for the infirm.

You might think of this as a young person's event, but recently one of the elder statesmen of road running in Hattiesburg completed an Ironman for the first time.

John Pendergrass, just a few months short of his 60th birthday, finished the Brasil Telecom Ironman, and even today, he's a little shocked that he actually did it.

"It's something I've wanted to do for a long time," said Pendergrass, an opthamologist with the Green Eye Institute at Wesley Medical Center. Pendergrass also served as a running columnist for the Hattiesburg American in the early 1980s.

"I was a little apprehensive about it, because it's twice as long as anything I'd tried before, but it worked out pretty well."

Triathletes still refer to Ironman races in upper case, but it has almost become a generic term for a full triathlon, as opposed to triathlons of lesser distance such as the Hub City Hustle that was held near Hattiesburg for many years.

The name originated with the famous Ironman Triathlon in Hawaii, where the sport began in the early 1980s.

The Ironman Brasil was held May 29 in the resort town of Florianopolis, in southern Brazil. The event drew about 1,000 entrants, including some 200 Americans.

Proper training

Pendergrass chose the event largely because registration was open until two weeks before the race. In the United States, all of the major Ironmans fill up a year in advance.

"I was able to wait and see if my training and work schedule held up before making the decision to enter," Pendergrass said. "The key to it was getting my bike ride up to where I could do 100-plus miles."

Also, with the race being held in May, it allowed him to get his long bike and run training in during March and April, when the weather in South Mississippi was still relatively cool.

And in southern Brazil, May is mid-autumn, meaning the conditions on the day of the race were cooler and nightfall came earlier than it would in the Northern Hemisphere.

Still, it was an ordeal. Pendergrass finished well back in the field, placing 783rd. But the main thing is he finished, and was 11th in his age group.

Pendergrass completed the swim in 1 hour, 56 minutes and 39.1 seconds, the bike ride in 7:14:27.9 and the run in 5:09:09 for a total time of 14:20:15.

"He called me that night after it was over, and I was glad to hear from him," said Pendergrass' wife, Polly. "The reason is the bicycle riding can be very dangerous. He's had several accidents just bicycling right here on Longleaf Trace."

Pendergrass kept his involvement in the race a secret from his friends in the Pine Belt Pacers running club, of which he's a prominent member.

"I'm one of his closest running buddies, and I didn't even know he was going," Mozingo said. "He called me up from Rio de Janeiro two days after the race and told me about it.

"My reaction was, 'What?' But he said he didn't want to tell anybody in case he didn't finish it."

But finish he did, and he didn't feel terribly bad afterward.

"(After the race) my legs felt good and I didn't have that feeling of my thighs being made of concrete like I've had after some marathons," Pendergrass wrote in an account of the event on the Pine Belt Pacers website. "I did feel extremely exhausted, sort of like you feel after you bonk on a long bike ride."

Modest about it

Mozingo has run with Pendergrass since the early 1990s, and he is astonished at his friend's feat.

"Can you imagine a 59-year-old man doing that?" Mozingo said. "But he is so modest about it. He's the consummate Southern gentleman, and he's accomplished so much in his life."

Pendergrass has been a dedicated runner for some 35 years, since he earned his boards in opthamology in the late 1960s, following service in the U.S. Air Force that included flying missions in the Korean War.

"He's just a really dedicated person," Polly Pendergrass said. "If there is anything he thinks is going to improve his life, he's going to do it. And he thinks running has improved his life."

The couple celebrated their 35th anniversary Monday, and while Polly has never shared her husband's pursuit of running, she's been supportive all along.

"I've never been as disciplined as he has been," she said. "But he loves doing it, and if he loves it, then you've got to be a supportive spouse."

At his age, Pendergrass is finding it takes some time to recover from an Ironman, so he's still a little unsure when he'll race again.

"I'm taking it easy right now," he said. "I'm sort of curious to see how it's going to affect me. I don't want to push myself right now, because it's only been a little over two weeks since the race, and that's not very long."

Mozingo said they'll probably run a race similar to the Hub City Hustle in Meridian next month, and there are several other races scheduled within a day's drive from Hattiesburg.

"Even at age 59, he still outruns me," Mozingo said. "He's an inspiration to all of us as a gentleman and as an athlete."

To find out more about the Brasil Telecom Ironman and see complete race results, visit the competition's Web site at: http://www.ironmanbrasil.com/

Originally published Tuesday, June 15, 2004