Ironman Race Report: Race Morning

I would like to say I was nervous and excited like Xmas morning, but I was calm like a serial killer.  I guess being nervous and excited for the past year of training leaves the tank empty.  This was a blessing as I was able to consume 2 Clif Bars, water and some Infinit because I had no butterflies.

Part of my type A routine required me to check the weather from 3 sources.  If I was in an ice age, I'd check the weather to see if it was going to snow and if the high was going to be 10 or 15 degrees below.  All 3 sources agreed that rain was coming in the late afternoon, mid 70s til then with a south wind.  If all the athletes heard this my lone groan of disappointment would've been drowned out by hoots, hollers and celebratory high fives.  This was a serious blow to my slimest of slim Kona chances.  The only bright spot was it wasn't suppose to rain during my bike.

I spent the next 10 minutes applying body glide everywhere.  I applied from my heel up my entire calf to ease wetsuit removal in case I had to remove my wetsuit without the help of the wetsuit stripper volunteers.  I painted a body glide turtleneck to prevent wetsuit strawberries and hickies.  It gave me a couple of hickies/strawberries in my race week open water practice swims.  I love my wetsuit but I don't want to show everyone that we have that "type of relationship".

My support crew(Amber, Elena and Joe) and I left at 4:30AM to head over to the start area.  They grabbed spots for viewing the swim start while I went through the simple motions.  Dropped off special needs bags, loaded the bike with nutrition and left a deposit at the portapotty or as I would call it later, The Fortress of Solitude.

I did a quick bike/run/swim exit walkthrough and spotted Miranda Aldritt in the tire inflation line.  I rode the bike course with her last year after she had posted on Slowtwitch.  I can't say enough about how cool the Slowtwitch community is.  Between last year and now, she became a pro and placed 7th at Ironman Coeur d'Alene.  We wished each other luck and planned to look for each other on the run out-n-back.

I hung out just relaxing and waiting to put on my wetsuit.  Again this was quite strange for me as before a major race, I'm about as calm and relaxed as a meth addict needing their next fix.  I had to piss again so I got in line.

I was just a couple of folks behin Jonathan Caron, 2nd place overall last year.  Amazing even pros have to wait in the portapotty lines like the rest of us.  I always thought they had special VIP portapotties which were freshly cleaned, smelled like potpourris, had Ultra Charmin toilet paper, and had a staunch British man had you a towel to dry your hands.

It was time to don the wetsuit.  Other people started putting theirs on so I didn't have to be the first but I followed like a good lemming. I walked over to the swim start entrance as they wouldn't let us on the beach til 6:30am to warmup.  I ran into Jeff as he wanted to actually warmup before the race.  He's a sub 60 swimmer so I guess a warmup wouldn't slow him down.  I just wanted to get all the way over to left of the start line without having to navigate hundreds of people.

As we stood there, I had to piss yet again.  Jeff also had to piss.  We both made like homeless people and just let her go.  Perfect, my wetsuit is officially broken in for the race.  I was warm and my foot was wet.  They opened the swim start and we wished each other luck.  He made his way to the buoy with the fast guys and I made my way out to the far left with the slow I don't want to get beat down by hundreds of swimmer folks.

I saw my support crew and handed them my backpack.  They were right above where I was going to start with the video camera ready to go.  I went to the front and took a 15 second swim to test the goggles and just get a feel for the water on my face.  It wasn't very cold so I was ready.  As I was waiting for the start, I pissed 4 more times.  I finally realized who was nervous, my 2nd in command.