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Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008

Mark Story: A bond forged of iron

What would you do in memory of a friend?

Push your body beyond all reason? Risk a very public failure?

Even if you are far from a national-level endurance athlete, would you attempt an Ironman triathlon as a means of saluting and saying goodbye to a friend?

From the time Bunky Harkleroad — the women’s basketball coach who brought the unorthodox, bombs-away playing style to Berea College — was 7 or 8, Mike Caudill was a big part of his life.

When Caudill married his Berea College sweetheart, Lisa Pennington, he entered Bunky’s life. “She was real close to my family. So from the time I was little, Mike was always around,” Harkleroad said.

Over the years, Mike and Lisa took Bunky so many places “we used to joke that Bunky was our oldest son,” Lisa Caudill says.

Of course, time passes and Mike and Lisa raised their own family, daughter Erin and son Steve.

Mike Caudill became a school teacher, then a middle school principal, finally a popular and respected Madison County Schools superintendent.

Bunky Harkleroad, now 36, became a public school teacher himself in his day job, and an innovative small-college women’s hoops coach on the side.

As both men progressed through life, the bond they first formed when Harkleroad was little stayed strong.

Which is why it was so difficult for Bunky when Caudill died last December at 51 after a long battle with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

“I think Bunky has had as hard a time with this as anybody,” says Steve Caudill. “He and Dad were real close. This has really hit him hard.”

Fun from triathlons

Mike Caudill was still in college at Berea when he first became interested in distance running. Lisa ran track for Berea, and Mike helped out as a team manager.

In 1977, famed distance runner Jim Fixx published The Complete Book of Running. “Mike read that in college and got all excited,” Lisa says. “He started running.”

Caudill became something of a running evangelist. When his best friend from college, Lon Hays, started a medical internship, he found it impossible to maintain his regular tennis games. An intern’s schedule was not conducive to finding partners.

“Mike kept badgering me about taking up running,” says Hays, now the chairman of the department of psychiatry at the University of Kentucky.

Soon, even running wasn’t enough. Caudill became intrigued with the concept of triathlons — endurance events that combine lengthy runs, swims and bike rides on the same day.

In one of the duo’s early triathlon excursions, Lisa remembers how pumped up Caudill and Hays were. “They really believed they would win,” she says.

As it turned out, “Lon wound up bent over at the side of the road, just heaving,” Lisa Caudill says. “Mike wound up face down in the lake, he was so hot.”

Yet even from that inauspicious start, Caudill never lost his enthusiasm for endurance training or triathlons. “He must’ve completed at least 20,” Lisa says.

Even more than competing, Caudill loved the camaraderie and friendships that sprang from the time spent training with others.

“Mike was a very good athlete,” says Susan Bradley-Cox, the long-time Lexington-area triathlete, “but he never took it too seriously. He really enjoyed the sport. Mostly, I think he enjoyed the cycling with his buddies. He had a really good time.”

Across the years, among those Caudill cajoled into dabbling in endurance races was Harkleroad. In years past, Harkleroad has completed three marathons and one half-Ironman.

“All very, very slow,” Harkleroad says. “Mike always said I could do a triathlon, but I just wasn’t obsessed enough.”

After his friend passed, a grieving Harkleroad suddenly had the source of a triathlete’s obsession.

Will he finish?

While most of the commonwealth will be focused on the Kentucky-Louisville football showdown next Sunday, Harkleroad will be in the Derby City attempting to swim 2.4 miles in the Ohio River; bike 112 miles; and finish by running a full 26.2-mile marathon.

The field for the Ford Ironman Louisville was already full by the time Harkleroad tried to enter. He was able to tap a connection of Mike Caudill’s in the triathlon world to get into the race.

Assured of being among the entrants, he commenced to train. Some days, Harkleroad would run in the morning, then swim in the evening. Other days, he’d do a long-distance run before jumping on his bike.

“I’ve just tried to get my body used to going these distances,” he says.

If he finishes the Ironman, Harkleroad hopes it will inspire people to make a financial donation to the Mike’s Kids Scholarship Fund (P.O. Box 518, Richmond, Ky., 40475), set up to keep Caudill’s memory alive by helping kids from difficult backgrounds.

On Sunday, Steve Caudill and Hays — Mike’s son and best friend — plan to be in Louisville “to work as Bunky’s pit crew,” Hays says.

For Harkleroad, completing a full triathlon for the first time “will be very difficult,” says Bradley-Cox, who has competed at the international level for the United States in World Short Course Triathlon. “But Bunky has certainly put the training in for this thing. That’s the whole key to why he can do this.”

Actually, it’s part of the key. When you’re trying to run a marathon after you’ve already done a distance swim and biked more than 100 miles, it is going to come down to “want to.”

“I think he’ll finish it, I do,” Lisa Caudill says of Harkleroad. “He’s got a very deep desire to do this because he’s doing it for Mike.”

What would you do in memory of a friend?