Having Won Race Against Death, Md. Man Tackles Triathlons

By Ashley Halsey III
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 19, 2008; B01

Last weekend, the bike went nowhere, the running shoes sat in the closet and Brian Boyle took a minute to reflect on the season just ended and the lifetime ahead.

Since the near-certainty of death four years ago -- few people who tangle with a moving dump truck survive -- he has competed in two Ironman world championships, the longest one a 2.4-mile swim followed by a 112-mile bike race and then a 26.2-mile marathon, all on a single day.

From the instant that turned his Camaro into a tangled wreck, he has been smothered with care -- from the rescue workers who cut him free, doctors and nurses who revived him and pieced his shattered body together, therapists who helped him do the impossible, Ironman race officials who allowed him to achieve the impossible and, most of all, from friends and devoted parents who have been the very foundation for his survival.

So why have there been moments when he has felt terribly alone?

"I needed to talk to somebody who'd faced this adversity, but there was nobody to talk to," said Boyle, 22, of Waldorf. "I had to talk to myself. I had to look within myself."

The powerful body that had made him a state champion high school swimmer had been crushed. He felt weak, fragile, vulnerable. And he realized that the path to recovery required reawakening his sense of identity and purpose.

"I knew I had to fight," he said. "I told myself, 'You can't keep thinking yourself as Brian Boyle, the hurt kid.' "

Those conversations within his own head created a drive and desire that transformed the kid from Southern Maryland into an icon for bouncing back.

Not since Lance Armstrong has an American athlete been so celebrated for dodging death and competing again.

Boyle has been featured on magazine covers and national network programs. There are more than a dozen versions of the Brian Boyle story on YouTube, including one he produced, and he has an autobiographical book -- "Iron Hearts" -- in the works. He will appear on "The Ellen Degeneres Show" today.

He has told the story so many times that it rolls off his tongue in a polished cadence. Four years ago, 18 years old and freshly graduated from McDonough High School, Boyle was driving home from swim practice when a huge dump truck T-boned the driver's side of his car at an intersection in Charles County.

The car was crushed. So was Boyle.

His organs had been knocked sideways; his shoulder, pelvis and ribs were broken; and more than half the blood in his body was lost. He spent two months in a medically induced coma at Prince George's Hospital Center, was revived from death eight or nine times, lost 100 pounds and endured 14 surgeries, 36 blood transfusions and being told he would probably spend the rest of his life as a paraplegic.

"I had a clock in my room, and I watched the minutes and hours go by and I wondered if I ever was going to escape," Boyle said. "Everybody was coming in, saying their goodbyes, and I'm saying: 'What's going on? What happened?' "

Nowhere in his laundry list of recovery is there an accounting for 10,000 moments of pain. It hurt to speak; it hurt to move when sensation returned enough to allow movement. Sitting up hurt. Withered muscles and joints frozen by weeks of immobility rebelled when commanded to move and screamed with pain when he forced them.

The milestone moments that were photographed included sitting up for the first time, taking a step or two, leaving the hospital, going home and, later, returning to the swimming pool.

The true triumphs, less notable to others but meaningful to Boyle, were much simpler: putting on his own socks or fighting excruciating pain to raise his left hand higher than his head for the first time.

"It was a whole lot of little steps," he said. "It was a mental struggle to get up every day and look into the mirror at the skeleton. It was like my dreams were gone.

"If I had a life, it was going to be in a nursing home, because that's what the nurses were telling me."

In a moment that proved pivotal, Boyle realized that he had to overcome the "negativity" of those limited expectations. He had to turn the tables on his parents, his doctors and nurses, and all the others from whom he had drawn strength.

"That's when the role reversal took place," he said. "I had to be the strong one now. I thought: Okay, I'm already defying the odds. What else can I do?"

After battling to achieve the "little steps," he was tempted to take larger leaps. His goals before that crash had been to go to St. Mary's College, to make the swim team and, "maybe someday," to compete in an Ironman triathlon.

"After a few months, I'm thinking maybe I can go back to college. Maybe I can swim again," he said. He did both, and he made the swim team.

Figuring he was years from his third goal, he contacted Ironman, a company that puts on an international series of races that culminate each autumn in two world championships. They told him that if he completed one race at the 70.3-mile half-Ironman distance, they would waive qualifying requirements so that he could race the full 140.6-mile championship in Kona, Hawaii.

He did both races, and halfway through the 112-mile bike leg in Hawaii, he turned at the top of a huge hill and began to race down it.

"I just started yelling, screaming. I let it all out right there, all the agony and emotion. I wasn't Brian Boyle, the sick boy. I was Brian Boyle, the Ironman," he said.

This year, he finished third in his age group in a race in Newfoundland, qualifying for the half-Ironman world championship held in Clearwater, Fla., two weeks ago. Now his goal is to return to Kona, qualifying with no waivers needed.

His larger goal, however, is to use his story to help people overcome devastating life experiences. "People say, 'You got out of your deathbed and did an Ironman?' " he said. "No. It was a very slow process. I had to grab onto every positive sign."

Boyle paused. He has not forgotten the lonely feeling.

"And I promised myself that if I got out of that hospital, I was going to be there for people in the same situation."


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