For one Hawai'i doctor, the starting line at Sunday's XTERRA World Championship triathlon will be a uniquely lonely place.

Dr. Eric Kollai, an emergency physician at Kaiser Hospital in Moanalua, is one of 550 competitors expected to descend on Maui for the prestigious (and punishing) off-road event.

Considered the toughest of the 17 XTERRA Championship races, the event is composed of a 1-mile open-ocean swim, a 20-mile mountain bike leg that climbs 3,000 feet up and down Haleakala volcano, and a 7.5-mile trail run over rock, forest trails and beach.

It will be Kollai's first race since his father, Darryl, died of a heart attack on Aug. 30 at the age of 53.

Darryl Kollai was a esteemed figure in Cleveland's triathlon community, known as much for his patient, generous mentorship of young athletes as for the high level of athletic accomplishment he maintained until his death.

"He was just a go-get-'em kind of guy," Eric Kollai said. "From 6 a.m. until he went to bed at night, he was on the go nonstop. He loved triathlons and he loved bringing people in to the sport."

Darryl Kollai, a construction inspector for the Cleveland Water Department, completed his first triathlon in the 1970s after watching coverage of the Kona Ironman on TV. He helped pioneer the sport in his home state and neighboring areas, watching it as it moved from the fringe to the recreational mainstream.

He competed internationally as a member of Team USA, and remained a staunch competitor, routinely placing in the top third of races into his 50s.

Just three weeks before he died, he posted the fastest bike time in the Cleveland Triathlon, besting competitive riders more than half his age.

Darryl Kollai was finishing a 50-mile ride, a training session for yet another young triathlete, when he suffered his heart attack.

News of his death rocked not just his family, but the extended network of Midwest triathletes he had befriended in his 27 years in the sport. Within days, triathlon chat boards were filled with messages of condolence and fond memories of the fallen racer.

At his funeral, Kollai was dressed in the Team USA outfit he proudly wore for years and one of the country's pre-eminent multi-sport athletes.

Eric Kollai, who had devoted months of rigorous training in preparation for XTERRA, initially planned to withdraw from the competition. His body was ready, even after a 3 1/2-week layoff to return to Ohio, but his spirit was deeply wounded.

"It was definitely a question whether I would go through with it or not, but I think it's the best way to pay tribute to him since he had devoted so much of his life to the sport," Kollai said.

In fact, it was his father's passion for the sport that tilled the soil for Kollai's own athletic development.

"Every weekend was a vacation," Kollai said, recalling the family road trips that attended each of his father's out-of-state races.

Kollai was himself an athlete born and bred. He ran cross country and track in high school and later at Mt. Union College in Ohio. He also swam competitively for local master's clubs. Kollai's triathlon career began shortly after high school and he briefly flirted with the idea of turning pro before deciding — on his father's advice — to attend medical school instead.

Father and son competed together on several teams, and the two often talked of their respective adventures in the sport. Kollai's last conversation with his father came two days before he died. Kollai was on his bicycle, lost somewhere on the North Shore, when he reached his father back in Ohio. They talked briefly about the upcoming XTERRA race, just the second off-roader event of his career.

Kollai schedules his training session around his overnight work schedule. He'll often train before going to sleep in the morning, then again before he heads back to work.

"My dad used to run to and from work, so I knew from an early age that you have to just make time for it," Kollai said.

In memory and celebration of his father, Kollai will do his best tomorrow to abide by a legacy of lessons bequeathed to him.

"The thing I've learned from all of this is that you've got to enjoy every moment that you have," Kollai said. "I think about my dad every day and it makes me cry. But I also think about the way he lived his life, and it's like that old saying: 'It's not the years in your life, it's the life in your years.' That was my dad."