Before
(This is all pre-race stuff, feel free to skip to the swim portion if you're not interested.)Fortunately I diligently kept up with journaling the days before the event, so I don't have to include any of that. We'll begin with the morning of June 24th, 2007, race day.
I went to bed around 8pm the night before (oops, I guess I'm actually starting the night before.. but that's all I have to say about that) and miraculously slept straight through until about 2:30am. I just sat in bed kinda meditating and trying to keep my heart rate somewhat normal and take deep breaths until the phone rang for our wake-up call at 3am. Since I was already awake, it was easy to just jump out of bed and start getting ready.
I got into my tri costume, which miraculously still fit (I considered that a very good omen), put on sweats over it, made 3 pb&j sandwiches, ate one sandwich, cut one sandwich into quarters for my bike special needs bag, and stuffed one into my hoodie pocket. I was afraid since I was eating at about 3:15am and the race didn't start until 7am, I might need to eat more before the start. Normally I just eat a gu right before the race starts, but normally my race doesn't take the entire day. Then.. I was pretty much ready, and it was 3:30am, and we weren't planning on leaving the hotel room 'til around 4:15 or 4:30. And Matt had just barely even gotten out of bed. So I puttered around and rechecked my bags a little, put my stuff in the car, peed a couple hundred times, asked Matt if there was anything he needed help with, and just tried to keep busy until Matt was ready to go.
We got to the race site and parked in our normal parking lot in a space that Matt was assigned to remember, because I can't remember where I parked two hours later after NOT doing a triathlon, so odds were low I'd remember after an Ironman. I had four bags with me: special needs bike, special needs run, a bag with the stuff I needed to put on my bike, and my dry clothes bag. All of these were ridiculously overfilled, and I felt like a complete rookie when I saw some people didn't even bother with special needs bags, or barely had anything in them. But I had made SURE that I put every single thing I might possibly need into my special needs bags, because I wanted to be prepared and be comfortable. I mean, what if it rained on the run? I could definitely need an umbrella! (note: I didn't seriously bring an umbrella, but I brought just about everything else I could think of that I might need/want.)
First we got bodymarked, which required removing my sweatshirt enough to expose my arms, which was cold. Our numbers were sharpied down both arms, our age was written on the back of our left calf and.. that's it. That's the least amount I've ever been body marked. Nothing on the hands, nothing on the thighs. I did have my body marker apply a happy face to my right hand, though, as is tradition, so that when I looked at my hand, I'd remember I was supposed to be having fun.
Matt went to put his nutrition stuff in his T1 and T2 bags. I had already put mine in there before I dropped them off the day before, so I sat outside transition and just.. took the whole thing in. There was an amazing amount of Stuff happening everywhere, athletes and spectators and volunteers and gear. And it was coooooold. Mid-40s, and very windy. Some people were walking around in their wetsuits already, even though it was 5am (which is when transition opened) and the race didn't start until 7am, simply because wetsuits are warm.
When Matt was done, we headed to our bikes, which we'd racked the day before, to put our water bottles and food on the bike. My bike was still there! I'm not sure why it wouldn't be, but it was still a small victory. I loaded up my bento box with about half of the food that I'd brought to put on my bike. Did I mention that I brought way too much stuff? Yeah. See, I'd like to say that I sat down and planned out my whole nutrition and hydration schedule for the day, but.. uh.. I didn't. Matt has a personal coach who holds him accountable for those things. I don't, so I just figured I'd kinda wing it, because nobody made me write out what I was going to do. So my plan was (a) to eat as much real food as possible on the bike, rather than gu and Cliff bars, that way eating would be fun rather than a chore, and I would be more likely to eat close to enough (I almost never eat enough on the bike, so I'll take what I can get), and (b) to have so many food options that if one thing (or two or three or four) didn't sound appealing, I'd have SOMEthing that would appeal. So I put in a cut-up Cliff bar (in the bottom, in case I got desperate), a bag of 35 Cheez-Its and a pack of peanut butter crackers. There was no room for my sports beans or my shot blocks, so those went into my dry clothes bag. I put my bottle of eload into my bottle cage and filled my aero bottle to the brim with water.
Inside Out Sports was supposed to have a bunch of volunteers in transition with bike pumps, but they were apparently late in arriving. I borrowed someone's pump and proceeded to try to pump up my tires while leaning my bike against.. myself. There wasn't much room in transition, and it was full of people and bikes. Immediately my bike fell over, pouring 3/4 of my water from my aero bottle directly into the special needs bags of the girl next to me. Oops. She was fairly gracious about it, though. A guy nearby kindly held my bike for me while I pumped up the tires. Then it turned out he had ulterior motives, since he wanted to use the pump. I pointed him at the pump's owner and let them negotiate, and refilled my aero bottle with the water I had left.
Rejoined Matt and we dropped off our special needs bags, then hit the portapotty. We ran into Cam, who recommended putting on sunscreen, even though there would be sunscreen-appliers theoretically outside the changing tent. We had a lot of time to spare at that point, so we went back into transition and got Matt's sunscreen out of his T1 bag and reluctantly removed our sweats and put on suncreen while chatting with Scott who'd happened by (and borrowed our sunscreen). I made sure to get the spot at the top of the shorts which is covered under normal circumstances, but which is exposed as the singlet rides up when I'm in my aerobars.
I realized I hadn't put on any bodyglide in any of the nether regions that might chafe on the bike, and it was getting close to 6:30, when they'd kick us out of transition, so I hightailed it over to the portapotties in transition.. to find a truly horrendous line. But I didn't have a lot of choice, plus my stomach decided it was ready to finally cooperate. So I sat, and sat, and sat (well.. stood) and waited, and they kept announcing it was getting closer and closer to time to close transition. Finally around 6:28 it was my turn. Got in, took care of stuff, bodyglided, and dashed out in record time. I had bodyglided my neck and wrists while in line, so I ran over to where Matt was, sadly took off my sweats, pulled on my wetsuit haphazardly, figuring I'd adjust it while we waited on the beach, stuffed all my sweats and assorted other gear in my dry clothes bag, got out my swim cap and goggles (mask, actually) and confidently led Matt in the exact opposite direction of where the dry clothes bag dropoff actually was. Turned around and went back to where we had just left to drop off the bags, then fell in with the herd of neoprene, including Amy and Gary (er.. he was spectating, so he wasn't in neoprene), headed toward the swim start.
(Coach Jamie, Amy and Matt. Photo by Julia)
Crossed the timing mat, which they made abundantly clear that everyone needed to do, and everyone spread out along the beach. They said swimmers could go as far up the beach as they wanted, but the further out you went, the farther from the buoys you'd be, and the farther you'd have to swim. Matt and I ended up near the middle between the wall and the water, pretty far in toward the buoys. I was happy there.. I figured it was probably too far forward, given my ability (known) versus the ability of all the other athletes out there (unknown, but presumed to be good.. you should have SEEN some of these people), but I'd rather get in peoples' way than have people get in mine. :) Matt said he was going to move up further, and I said this is where we part ways then, 'cause I definitely didn't feel like I should or could be any further up. A hug and a kiss and a good luck and a "win!" (traditional), and I was alone on the beach with just over 2000 other people.
I still had a bottle of water, and I had a mask that I hadn't worn in about a month that was somewhat filthy, and I was nowhere near the lake to clean it out. I poured the water into my mask and swished it around and tried to clean it with my thumbs, but it was still pretty gross. A guy two down from me was holding a ratty tshirt, and I asked him if I could borrow it to clean my mask, and he said sure, since he was just going to throw it away. Polished my mask up, and it was nice and clear with good visibility. Yay!
I mentioned in my posts the days before the race that the water was choppy. It was even windier and choppier on race morning. So choppy, in fact, that the announcer announced that they were offering up a duathlon. If you weren't comfortable swimming in those water conditions, you could just go on and do the bike and the run. You wouldn't be eligible for awards, and you wouldn't officially have done an Ironman, but some people are freaked out enough by swimming in open water in the best of conditions, especially with 2000 other people.
Speaking of which, a little about the swim start. Most triathlons group people into age groups and genders and send off some subset of people (50, 100, 200, somethin') every few minutes. So it's a mass start, but you can usually find some personal space to swim in pretty quickly. In an Ironman, all 2000+ people start at the exact same time. It's often compared to a washing machine. You can maybe imagine that'd be a little intimidating to someone who isn't a strong swimmer, even in GOOD water conditions.
So they offered us an out, because they said that they had about 1000 first-timers (myself and Matt included) out there, and they didn't want anyone to get hurt or dead. I never considered it, but it's still weird being offered an out in an event so overwhelming. Around 50 people ended up doing the duathlon, we found out later.
I chatted some with the guy next to me, who was trying to complete his first Ironman as well. However, he'd started one the year before, and ended up having to drop out due to leg cramps on the bike. So he was back again hoping to have better luck. I have no idea if he made it, but I told him I wished him the best out there. National anthem was sung (later I found out it was by an athlete, wearing a wetsuit. Singing the national anthem in a wetsuit sounds taxing).
It was about then that I really had time to think about what I was doing. It's pretty easy, if somewhat (okay, more than somewhat) expensive to sign up for an Ironman. Just a couple clicks and a credit card number is all there is to it. And the training is time-consuming and often difficult, but manageable. And the days before are busy, filled with planning and organizing and carting stuff around. And so at about 6:55am on race day, I finally had a spare moment to myself to realize.. "Holy shit. I'm going to do an Ironman." It was the first time it really hit me that I would be out there the entire day, possibly until midnight, definitely close to it, and that even if I made it through the really choppy, cold and chaotic swim, and the long and very hilly bike.. I had to run a marathon at the end. I tried to figure out how I had ever thought that this was a good idea. I manage to stave off any "I can't do this" thoughts, but I did have some "Do I really WANT to do this!?" thoughts. I told myself it was too late, though, which wasn't true and I knew it. And I thought about how funny it was that I hadn't even really considered how overwhelming the whole thing was until so late in the process, and I was glad that it hadn't, because I'd been sleeping GREAT the whole week because of it. I looked out at the sea of people, I thought of all the people that were going to be watching for my progress on ironmanlive, and I thought of the finish line, and I realized that I knew exactly what I needed to do to be okay with this, and that was to be in the moment. 17 hours of triathlon is overwhelming, but I know how to swim. I know how to ride a bike. I know how to run. And if I just did those things in the proper order, each one admittedly for a long time, I'd eventually see the finish line. I knew I'd be out there a long time, and 17 hours of fretting sounded really unappealing, so I calmed myself down and just told myself to get in the water and swim, and the rest would take care of itself naturally eventually.
Which was good timing, because suddenly people were wading into the water. I hadn't heard any gun or canon or "go" or anything, but apparently it had happened, and I was officially doing an Ironman.