Triathlete MacNaughton a Tough Actor to Follow

Andrew MacNaughton is an actor. He has done a few commercials. His longest-running appearance was for the Wisconsin Bell telephone system. He also has been in a few industrial films. His career has, in summary, been as successful as Lyndon LaRouche’s presidential campaign.

But it is on weekends, far from any TV props and stage hands, that MacNaughton has turned in his most dramatic performances. Suffering is his specialty. He portrays a man so overwhelmed by pain, agony and sadness that he would have to hear the world’s funniest joke just to work his way back to a frown.

As a means of reaching this level of self-abuse, MacNaughton, 25, of Woodland Hills, has chosen the most likely of methods.

He competes in triathlons.

Watch now as he thrashes his body through the final few yards of a 3-mile swim in Lake Tahoe, immersed in water so cold that the trout wear earmuffs. MacNaughton lunges toward the beach, his body trying desperately to recover from being turned into a 160-pound goose bump. His face is twisted in grief. His top teeth slam repeatedly against his bottom teeth. If you’re only listening, you think you’re attending the Secretarial Speed-Typing Championships.

The next scene, which begins just seconds after the swim scene has ended, finds MacNaughton on a bicycle, pedaling away from the beach like a newspaper delivery boy on amphetamines. In his never-ending search for the uncomfortable, exhaustion and frostbite have now picked up a good friend: chafing.

For mile upon mile MacNaughton pedals, his wet swimsuit and rock-hard bike seat combining for a most unpleasant feeling, which is just what he is after. Gradually, as the miles pile up, the swimsuit dries and the bike seat no longer feels like a picket fence. This, of course, is only because the pain in his legs has become so intense that he can’t feel anything else. Twenty. Thirty. Forty miles. Now he’s really in character. He really feels awful. Sticking his nose into a whirring electric blender would be a relief.

But there is more. After the swim and the long, long bicycle race, there is a nice run awaiting. Maybe as little as 10 miles. Maybe as many as 26. For legs that already feel so heavy that he finds himself glancing down at his ankles, expecting to find anvils attached, this is starting to approach the ridiculous phase. But on and on MacNaughton charges, leaden legs pounding the asphalt roadway. His body is starting to feel like it is being dragged behind the nonstop Seattle-to-San Diego Amtrak, and the train is just passing through Santa Barbara.

And now MacNaughton is really happy. Jason’s victims in the film(s) Friday the 13th suffered from mere flesh wounds compared to what MacNaughton is feeling. And even though it all seems a bit loony, this tremendous suffering just in the pursuit of an acting career, you accept it. Show business is, after all, a business known for heavy suffering. Many Americans will willingly sit in front of a TV and watch a Geraldo Rivera special, for instance.

But MacNaughton does not go to these extremes to practice his method acting. He enters triathlons because he likes them. He says he enjoys swimming, riding a bike and then running the equivalent of the width of Rhode Island.

“It’s the thrill of competition,” MacNaughton said. “It’s the thrill of trying to push yourself harder and faster than the guy next to you. Seeing just how far you can take it . . . just how hard you can push your body. That’s a triathlon.”

MacNaughton began his triathlon career in 1984. By mistake.

A former high school cross-country runner in Montreal, he had maintained his pursuit of fitness after he and his family moved to San Francisco in 1980. Four years later, he was living in the Lake Tahoe area and a friend asked him to take his place in the cycling segment of a local triathlon. MacNaughton, who had been riding and competing in local cycling events, agreed. And he was hooked.

And early in 1987, he emerged as one of the top triathletes in the world, winning several races and accumulating $16,000 in prize money in three months.

“It was like I got so good overnight,” MacNaughton said. “I couldn’t explain it. Every time I raced I almost knew I was going to win.”

But as the summer wore on, MacNaughton wore out. He struggled to stay in the top 10 in most races. He finally hit bottom during a race in Vancouver, Canada. After the swim and the bike race, he got off his cycle and noticed that the other competitors around him were women. They had started five minutes after him and had caught him.

“I was dumbfounded,” he said.

More rest got MacNaughton back into the men’s competition, but in the biggest race of the year, the Nice World Championship Triathlon in Nice, France, in October, he turned in another dismal showing. He led much of the race, putting his cycling experience to use to build a 1 1/2-minute lead. But when it came time for the run, MacNaughton’s legs would have no part of it.

“I was so tired I stumbled off the bike and nearly fell down,” he said. “I kind of staggered along for a quite a while before I could even get my feet to go in a straight line.”

He ended up running a mile and then walking a quarter-mile. He finished 34th, more than a half-hour behind winner Richard Wells of New Zealand.

“I didn’t know what I was doing wrong and I couldn’t remember what I was doing right when I had been winning everything,” he said. “I was really confused.”

He returned to California and continued to work out but did not resume serious training until three months ago. He opened the 1988 triathlon season by finishing seventh in the Virgin Islands on April 10, and finished seventh again May 1 in a triathlon in Miami. His cycle blew a tire in the next event in Memphis, Tenn., and he did not finish, but May 28th he finished fourth in a triathlon in Oceanside and gave hints that he was returning to his early 1987 form.

And earlier in June he roared back, winning the Orange County Performing Arts Triathlon.

“I think I can get back to the top, or near the top,” said MacNaughton, who will compete in an event in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday. “It’s starting to feel right for me again.”

Which means, of course, that MacNaughton’s weekends will once again leave him looking like a man who just spent a few hours being stomped into the earth by a crazed rhinoceros.

In other words, he is happy again.