Having Won Race Against Death, Md. Man Tackles Triathlons

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.