Kona Bound Again: Brian Scott

Matthew Dale profiles age group competitor Brian Scott

The first time Brian Scott raced an Ironman his watch stopped during the swim. While he was wearing a heart-rate monitor during the bike, he wasn't obsessive about reading the watch.

“I was just focusing on doing my game plan,” recalls the 34-year-old San Diego scientist.

Halfway through the run at the 2001 Isuzu Ironman California, Scott passed an official clock and thought, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m going this fast.”

Scott finished in nine hours, 35 minutes, good for fourth in his age group, fast enough to qualify for the Ford Ironman World Championship. Barely 14 months later, he placed ninth overall at Ford Ironman USA Lake Placid, again qualifying for Kona, where he went on to lop nearly 30 minutes off his time from the year before.

Friends and training partners badgered him to turn pro but with a doctorate in chemistry, Scott opted for the real-world job lifestyle and continued racing as an amateur.

“At that point,” Scott says, “if I did a full prep I assumed all I had to do was show up and I was one of those guys who would get (an Ironman Hawaii) spot. No big deal.”

Then came a broken collarbone, a staff infection, a bum Achilles, a battle with anemia and a frightening bike crash in July that left him with a permanent plate in his chin. Seven years after that maiden Ironman, Scott is bound for Kona again, having qualified at Ford Ironman Arizona last April on a day when the desert treated athletes to a 95-degree furnace. It will be his first trip to the Big Island since 2004.

Evoking memories of Joni Mitchell’s 1970 “Big Yellow Taxi” hit with the lyrics, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone,” Scott says, “When things went wrong with my health, you realize you enjoy racing more afterward. You want to get back to where you were.”

Scott grew up outside Dallas and began racing bikes on the road his senior year in high school. He continued racing through his undergrad years, reaching the Cat 2 level. When pursuing his master’s in chemistry at the University of Florida, Scott turned to distance running because it required less time. He would later clock a 2:47 at the ironing-board flat Chicago Marathon and ran a 1:15 half marathon last February on a hilly layout in suburban San Diego.

Scott was running the rim of the Grand Canyon in 2000 when a friend told him that he had sampled an Ironman race, said it was way cool and that Scott should give it a try.

Thus, a triathlete was born.

As for Scott’s run of injury and infirmary, it began with a mountain bike crash that caused a broken collarbone. While in the hospital for the busted collarbone, Scott picked up a staff infection that required two surgeries on his hands. The down time led to a 10:03 finish at Ford Ironman Coeur d’Alene in 2005, which wasn’t fast enough to qualify for Kona. He didn’t race in 2006 while recovering from Achilles tendinitis. He clocked a 10:20 at Subaru Ironman Canada last year, again failed to qualify for Hawaii and began scratching his head.

“It was one of those things that tests why you’re actually doing (the sport),” Scott says. “Normally when you show up to do workouts, they hurt. Training hurts. You’re going hard, you’re putting in the effort, but you know what kind of times you can turn. You’re suffering, doing mile repeats at 5:15, 5:20. Then you go from struggling at 5:15 to struggling at 5:40. You start to sound like the old guys who played high school football, talking about their glory days. You look down at the awards underneath your bed and realize the glory days were not that long ago.”

The passion was still there. But befitting a man with a doctorate in chemistry, Scott wanted the why answered. Why had he slowed? His deduction? Excessive injuries and illness. Tests last summer showed he was slightly anemic. Scott spent months dealing with doctors and discovered he had a hormone imbalance. Medication solved the problem, so Scott set his sights on Ironman Arizona in April.

Ironman world champion and Olympic silver medalist Michellie Jones has said it’s better to be 10 percent under trained for a race than one percent over trained. Adopting a similar philosophy, Scott, while wanting to qualify for Kona, focused on base training.

“Almost no intensity,” he says.

The less-is-more philosophy worked splendidly as Scott placed second in his age group in 9:26. His tale, though, would not be complete without another smack to the body. Riding in rural San Diego County on July 5 with Kate Major, former pro and age-group champion Terry Martin and Hawaii qualifier Kim McDonald, Scott hit a pothole while on a descent, flew head over handlebars, landing face first.

The toll: a jaw broken in three places, two chipped teeth and a broken right elbow.

“He looked pretty bad,” McDonald says. “He was bleeding all over his face and his chest was all bloody. He was definitely dazed. It looked like he was ready to go into shock.”

In the aftermath of Barbara Warren’s crash last month in Santa Barbara, which led to her death, Scott considers himself fortunate.

“Nothing happened to my brain, nothing happened to my neck,” he says. “To see her accident made me feel very sorry for her family and made me realize how lucky I was.”

So Scott, who has recovered from his spill, returns to Kona. Unlike those who wax eloquent about the lava fields, the Queen K Highway, Madam Pele, mumuku winds and the road to Hawi, the picturesque setting isn’t what Scott has most missed. To Scott, the cast of characters is more important than the scenery.

“You’re racing against people who you know put in the time,” he says. “They’re the real deal. And to do well against them means a lot. It means, maybe I’m not bad at this.”

You can reach Matthew Dale at mdale@ironman.com.