“Go H-Diesel, go!”

For almost 11 hours on Aug. 24, this was the cheer that went out over and over on dozens of e-mails between South Whidbey endurance athletes. So who is this H-Diesel guy and what was all the online chatter for? It was for Harvey Varga, South Whidbey’s lone representative at Ironman Canada in Pentictin, B.C.

In just his second year of competing in the sport of triathlon, Varga, 32, of Clinton was carrying the torch for his training partners back on the island as he tackled the ultimate in endurance racing. After training with two South Whidbey Ironmen who raced at Pentictin last year — Curt Gordon and Brandon Henry — Varga, a former competitive swimmer, said he had run out of excuses as to why he couldn’t swim 2.4 miles, bicycle 112 and run 26.2 all in the course of a single day.

After doing three short triathlons last year — each with a total distance no greater than 33 miles — Varga started training in September 2002 to take on the Ironman distance this summer.

“There’s no reason to take small steps,” he said of his move from the short races to the granddaddy of them all.

Varga is proof that great things can be accomplished by ordinary people. Having first seen an Ironman on television when he was in junior high school, actually doing the race has been a longtime fantasy. A swimmer in high school and college and later an assistant swim coach at the United States Olympic Training Center, Varga had little running or bicycling experience until last summer.

This summer, he put much of his energy and almost all of his free time into training, taking Sunday mornings to run up to 20 miles at a shot with island running buddies, swimming laps around Deer Lake, and any opportunity he could to wander into the countryside for four or five hours on a bicycle.

Though much of this work was done in a solitary way, Varga was hardly alone on race day. Several Whidbey triathletes and Varga’s wife, Rachel, travelled to Pentictin to watch the race, which came within hours of being cancelled due to the advance of forest fires around the town. At the same time, most of his training partners were at home monitoring his times and progress online through the Ironman Canada Web site. Even his co-workers at PCC Markets in Seattle had him on their minds that day.

Going into the race with the primary goal of finishing, Varga also had a goal time of 12 hours or less to go after. Coming out of a lake swim that included six 90-degree turns, Varga noted that his time — 58 minutes, 32 seconds — was well within his target range. By the time he’d ridden a few miles on the bike, he knew he was in the middle of a good race. He averaged slightly over 20 mph for the entire ride.

Though tightness and pain in his knee tendons slowed him on the run, his 4-hour, 6-minute marathon was still fast enough to bring him across the finish line in 10 hours, 41 minutes. It was also enough to relieve the pressure he had felt as dozens of friends raced vicariously with him.

“It was tough,” he said of carrying the expectations of his training partners with him.

Just as tough was the look and smell of the race course. Smoke from the forest fires cut visibility to about six blocks and boxed competitors into a multiple-loop running course — the longer, non-looping course normally run at the race could not be maintained since the firefighters who normally man the course were off fighting fires.

Varga said there was no way to forget that he was in a fire zone.

“It smelled like a campfire all the time,” he said.

Varga is the fourth South Whidbey triathlete to compete at the Ironman distance. Last year, Curt Gordon raced at the Ironman world championship in Hawaii. Brandon Henry and three-time Whidbey Island Triathlon champion Peter Oakley have also completed Ironman races.

Already signed up to race his second Ironman in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, early next summer, Varga said he’s grateful that his race came off as smoothly as it did.

“I didn’t want to dread the second one before I finished the first one,” he said.