What the hell kinda fun is this?

There is a classic line in the third and final instalment of the Back to the Future movie trilogy. During his time travelling adventures, Doc Emmett Brown is entertaining some bar flies in a typical western saloon in 1885 by telling them how everyone will have cars instead of horses in a century's time.

“If everybody's got one of these auto-whats-its, does anybody walk or run anymore?” one of the baffled listeners wants to know.

“Of course we run, but for recreation. Fun,” is the eccentric scientist's reply.

“Run for fun? What the hell kinda fun is that?!”

The bemused hillbilly would have surely choked on his poorly distilled bourbon had he known what other hellish additions were to be made to this running-forfun business.

Surely not even the organisers of Hawaii's three long-distance endurance events, the Waikiki Roughwater Swim, the Around-Oahu Bike Race and the Honolulu Marathon could have known how their original idea to combine the three races would take off over the decades that followed when the idea of the standard length Ironman triathlon was born in 1977.

“Swim 3.8km! Bike 180km! Run 42.2km! Brag for the rest of your life,” was a handwritten note on the three-page rules sheet given to the 15 competitors brave enough to line up for the inaugural Ironman event in Honolulu in 1978.

That 15 grew to 50 entries a year later, to 1 000 at the end of 1982 and today there are 40 events worldwide where well over 2 000 participants have become the norm. Not to mention 95 of the 70.3 races – known as ''half iron'' events – taking place around the globe annually.

At an entry fee of R5 300 for tomorrow's South African leg of the full Ironman in Port Elizabeth, not to mention the cover charge of more than R2 000 that thousands more fork out to take part in one of the country's two “half irons” in East London and Durban, shows that the gruelling events haven’t just become popular, but hugely profitable too.

When I nervously fiddle with the sand between my toes and constantly re-adjust my swimming goggles alongside thousands of fellow wetsuit-cladded hopefuls on Hobie Beach tomorrow morning, there is one thing I might just ask myself.

“What the hell kinda fun is this?”