This -- from the official online marathon rules page of the Ironman Triathlon world championships -- should be a big tipoff:

"No form of locomotion other than running, walking or crawling is allowed."

Crawling? Well, it has happened, and NBC generally is quite happy to broadcast it to the world.

Shaler's Lauren Henzler doesn't expect her second try at the event in Kona, Hawaii, next week will come to that, but she did mention her goal is "really, just to cross the finish line. Everything else is just icing on the cake, as far as I'm concerned."

It's a legendary event, beginning at dawn with a 2.4-mile ocean swim, followed by 112 miles by bike, then a full 26.2-mile marathon. Weather in Hawaii can be brutal with temperatures ranging between 82-95 degrees with 90 percent humidity.

"You're going to get baked," said Bethel Park's Ed Koontz, 34.

"There are so many variables with the weather; nothing is constant in that race," said Fox Chapel's Paula Bennett, 40.

"With the wind and the waves, it's almost like to give yourself any expectations is to jinx yourself."

Henzler, 32, placed fourth in her age group three years ago but figures it will be tougher sledding in the women's 30-34 bracket. She was fifth in her age group last year but will be "the young girl" in a new category this time.

They are three of seven Pittsburgh-area athletes who will compete at the Ironman championship event Oct. 15. Roger Brockenbrough, 71, of Mt. Lebanon and his son, John, 47, of Murrysville, also are veterans of the event -- Roger won his age group last year -- as is Deb Cully, 52, of Hampton. Only Lucas Marsak, 26, of Shadyside is a first-timer. This is Cully's fifth trip to the event.

A series of roughly two dozen events are held worldwide each year as qualifiers. In addition, 200 athletes are permitted in as lottery winners. Henzler qualified last year at an Ironman in Wisconsin, where she competed with her sister, Meredith Colaizzi, 28, of Shaler.

Henzler was a runner and swimmer at Shaler Area High School and John Carroll University. By her senior year in college, she gave up the team sport aspect and concentrated on training for a marathon. She had run about five marathons in the following years, then was watching television one day with her husband, Kurt, and saw the Ironman.

"I told him, 'I want to do that someday.' My husband bought me a bike for Christmas in '98, and I ran the Pittsburgh Marathon in the spring of '99.

"I tried triathlons that summer and I haven't stopped since."

The Pittsburgh-area group often trains together, meeting at Pitt for 5:30 a.m. swims or heading to Seven Springs for long bike rides.

"The [younger] athletes do a little bit more and with more intensity than I would do," Roger Brockenbrough said, laughing. "We might go for a mountain ride and do hill repeats. Maybe I'll do it for six hours and they'll do it for eight."

Yet Roger Brockenbrough is going to do two triathlons in Hawaii. He left Tuesday for Honolulu to defend his age-group title in the world Olympic-length triathlon championships tomorrow, which is a relatively sane 1.5K swim, 40K bike ride and 10K run. He plans to catch up with the group early next week.

"Well, I have a full week to recover," said Brockenbrough, who, like his son, is an engineer. "I think the trick at my age is to make sure you don't get injured."

John Brockenbrough grew up in Scott, swimming at Chartiers Valley High School and biking through Canada with a friend. He tried a triathlon in 1983 and got hooked. His father would come along to some events and soon Roger was involved as well.

There's little offered around Pittsburgh in the way of preparing for ocean swimming, but Bennett said she and some of the others try to swim in the Allegheny River around Washington's Landing about twice a month.

"No, it is not clean," she said. "We take Scope and we take showers and try not to think about it. It's too gross. [Somebody] bumped into a dead fish the other day."

Bennett's forte is the cycling. She was a competitive downhill ski-racer until getting into triathlons three years ago and despite her relative ease at flying down hills at top speed, has a few reservations about the bike.

"I've had a lot of crashes in recent years, fluky crashes," she said. Bennett, a personal trainer originally from Ligonier, is also the mother of three ages 10, 8 and 6.

Cully completed her first mini-triathlon on a dare in 1982, and is rebounding after an August 2004 back injury.

This will be Marsak's first full-length Ironman triathlon. He qualified at an Ironman half-marathon event.

"It's scary, but everyone has been helping me. They've all been through this before," said Marsak, a coach with the Franklin Area Swim Team (FAST) and a part-time model who recently won a talent search sponsored by Whirl magazine. He was a swimmer for Gateway High School and Denison University.

NBC is scheduled to feature coverage of the Ironman championships Nov. 12.

"I watched it last year," Bennett said, laughing. "But I didn't learn anything from it."