Ironmen, Hermosa Style

Just before noon Friday, Hermosa Beach City Councilman Robert (Burgie) Benz grabbed a microphone, turned toward a sunbaked crowd on the beach and belted out a proud, passionate and incredibly off-key rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

As the councilman warbled on, finally getting to the part about this being the land of the free, many in the crowd could take it no more.

They dashed toward the sea, and just like that the Hermosa Ironman was on--a running, surfing and drinking contest that serves as testament to the vitality of beach culture and to the occasional virtue of outrage and excess.

Sure, Cannes has its film festival, Pasadena the Rose Parade and Indianapolis the 500--but only Hermosa has this take on the Ironman. That, however, may well be because other communities aren’t exactly clamoring for such an event. It’s hardly the conventional marathon of running, swimming and biking.

Instead, contestants must run a mile on the beach, then paddle a mile aboard a surfboard, then sprint ashore to a yard near the Strand and chug a six-pack of beer; the first one to hold the beer down for 20 minutes without upchucking is the winner.

Entrants must provide their own surfboard and canned beer. The rules also state that all “kooks who leave prior to the end of the national anthem will be disqualified” and stress that the beer must be consumed in its entirety.

In Hermosa, the police graciously tolerate the Ironman. “It’s an irreverent fun time,” Officer Paul Wolcott said Friday while watching the festivities.

The Ironman, believed to be in its 18th year, now attracts sponsors and has even made something of a local hero out of the 39-year-old Benz, who organizes and promotes it.

Benz, who once exploded a cockroach and goldfish in a microwave oven on a local cable TV show, cheerfully endured an unsuccessful recall movement after the 1993 Ironman--when he and other contestants were seen drinking illegally on the beach, subsequently earning him a $271 infraction.

“All the big politically correct muckety-mucks came out of the woodwork,” Benz said. “They suggested I apologize. I didn’t. From then on it just started ballooning in popularity.”

An engineer who has been on the Hermosa council since 1992 and who served as the town’s sober-minded mayor in 1994, Benz said he still sees no reason for apology.

“What a politician does on his own time is [nobody’s] business,” he said.

“Besides, you’re getting $300 a month,” Benz said, referring to his council salary. “Like that’s a big deal. For $300 a month, all of a sudden you’re supposed to compromise on what you really like to do on your free time? Come on.”

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What Benz--and so many kindred souls attracted to the South Bay’s beach cities--like to do is, of course, the essence of the Ironman. The race attracted about 200 contestants and a crowd estimated by police at about 500 people.

“I surf. I run. And I enjoy drinking beer,” Kevin Komick, 35, of Manhattan Beach, a contractor and ski instructor and the two-time defending Ironman champion, said before the contest. His advice to first-time entrants: “Run hard and drink fast.”

Greg Seares, 24, a Manhattan Beach accountant, said he had been “training” for months. He added: “I’ve been drinking heavy beer instead of light.”

Chris Brown, 27, of Hermosa Beach, a beer company marketing representative and the 1994 Ironman champion, said the race does demand strategy and pace.

The mile run, he said, “is like a 100-yard dash gone terribly wrong,” because “everybody sprints.”

By comparison, the paddle is a “piece of cake.”

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“Then, after you get out of the water, you want a beer,” Brown said. “The first two go down really easy. Then you start to hit the wall. The fourth or fifth beers, you feel like you’re going to lose it. That’s when you have to relax--and take it to the edge and push on.”

As the race began Friday, the “kooks” who bolted near the end of Benz’s rendition of the anthem were promptly disqualified. Since none of them were going to win anyway, they paid the judges no heed.

The leader at the end of the mile run was Jeff Atkinson, 34, who as a U.S. Olympian in 1988 finished 10th in the 1500-meter race in Seoul. “A close second, my Olympic experience, to the Hermosa Ironman,” Atkinson said with a smile.

During the paddle, Atkinson was overtaken by Adam Buckley, a sophomore at UC Santa Barbara. “I do a lot of drinking,” Buckley, a Sigma Chi, said as he was chugging in the drinking pit, a sandy yard on 29th Street.

Shortly behind Buckley into the yard was Komick. It took him less than five minutes to drain his six-pack.

Twenty minutes later, as a local band called Bookmobile played loud surf music and as the increasingly frenzied contestants slam-danced in the pit, Komick was proclaimed the 1997 Ironman.

As Komick was showered both with congratulations and warm beer and pelted with cans, Benz called for silence--and led the crowd in a heartfelt but drunken rendition of “America the Beautiful.”

“In this day and age of political correctness, I just think this is a wholly appropriate bash,” Benz had said earlier.

“It has no real purpose other than to get you really, really primed for the Fourth of July.

“Plus, it flies straight into the notion of creating proper role models. Which,” he said after a pause for effect, “I ain’t.”