The thought of writing this blog post is daunting to me. People write entire books about a life experience such as this and I very well could. To make it a little more manageable, I decided to divide it into a few sections. I'll start with pre-race :)
I guess I should start off by explaining how Josh came up with this crazy notion to do the Ironman race. That is swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles and run 26.2 miles in one day. It all started way back in college, sitting at 908 Newton Rd with Josh and watching the NBC broadcast of the Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. His eyes would never leave the screen. He was absolutely fascinated. From that day forward he always said "I am going to do that race some day." And if you know Josh, you know when he says something like that he's typically not kidding.
After my pregnancy with Maryn and him gaining quite a bit of sympathy weight along with me ;) he decided it was time to get back into shape. Josh and two other Washington wrestling coaches started training for the local Pigman sprint triathlon. He completed his first triathlon in June of 2007 and thus a passion was born. He was bit by the bug... in a really bad way. Over the years he has completed a large number of sprint triathlons, one olympic distance triathlon and three half-Ironman triathlons.
Fairly soon after his first triathlon we started to talk about when it work to do an Ironman race. We knew the timing had to be just right to affect the kids and our marriage as little as possible. My biggest caveat... he couldn't do it a summer when we had a newborn or I was pregnant :) We both knew it would be a huge sacrifice on every one's behalf, but I was willing to do my part so he could realize his dream. People ask me constantly, how I could do it?? Very simply... we are a team. If I decided I want to something equally as crazy tomorrow, he would be there for me hook, line and sinker. That's what our relationship is about and it always has been. So of course I was going to support him in his dream.
Thus you think the journey was easy, that it was not. Nine to twelve months of hard training. He did early morning workouts (we're talking 4:30 am sometimes), lunchtime workouts and late night runs after the girls went to bed. Despite it being inconvenient for him, he chose to workout at those insane hours in order to affect the girls' lives as little as possible. He guaranteed me that doing this race was not going to interfere with him being a good Dad (and I knew it wouldn't). One of the hardest parts of all of this, was our lack of time together. We often joked that we were two ships passing in the night.
There were many pitfalls in the journey to this race, oftentimes with me thinking it wasn't going to happen. Of course Josh never thought that for a second (Maybe that's the mental toughness and perseverance that makes him such a great candidate for this kind of race). He was going to do a marathon last October as a precursor to this race but wasn't able to compete due to a knee injury. He stopped running altogether to let it heal for awhile. He finally got back in the swing of things with running and then ran into foot problems that side-lined him from running January through April. With a half-Ironman scheduled in Kansas in June, I was doubtful about how all of this was going to play out. But the good Lord was on our side and it all worked out in the end. He didn't even complain about his foot after the race :)
So back to the actual Ironman!! Here is how things went down the week of the race...
Josh took off for Louisville with all of his gear on the night of Thursday, August 27th. Makenna, Maryn and I saw him off that evening right before bedtime. He drove to Peoria, Illinois and stayed there for the night.
He spent his day on Friday driving the rest of the way to Louisville and then getting into race mode. He registered for the race, got all of his gear, checked into the hotel, went to the rules meeting and race banquet. Saturday morning consisted of getting his bike put together and race ready, setting up his transition area, practice swim in the Ohio river, driving the race course and then picking me up at the airport on Saturday afternoon. That evening Josh showed me the transition area and swim start and then we headed downtown to 4th Street Live for dinner. 4th Street Live is the AWESOME location of the Ironman finish.
3000 bikes in transition
6000 transition bags
The entire transition area (my camera lens wasn't quite wide enough to capture it all)
His bike is somewhere in that row!
Josh by the Ohio River with the race buoys in the background
Galt House Hotel, where we stayed during the race
4th Street Live! This is an awesome hot spot in downtown Louisville and the Ironman race finished right in the middle of it!
As we were wandering around the night before the race, I think it really started to sink in that he was going to do this!
The atmosphere in Louisville is like nothing I've ever felt. 3000 people in one place all trying to conquer the unimagineable... 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run in less than 17 hours. So many people that had sacrificed so much to reach a life goal. A year or more worth of blood, sweat, and tears all culminated into this one day.
It was the land of the fit people. Holy smokes. And shaved legs... I only saw one other man other than Josh that was competing in the race that didn't have shaved legs. Josh got spoused on that one :) But I felt bad about it after the race... all the abrasions and irritations on his legs after the race were proof enough why shaved legs are appropriate for this kind of event!
Saturday night it was so hard to sleep. The last time I looked at the clock it read one something and then the alarm went off at 4:00. Didn't really feel I had room to complain when I wasn't the one racing that day :) Josh was up immediately and trying to consume as much race friendly food as possible. His pre-workout morning meal of choice is typically a peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich and a powerade. He put his timing chip on and off we went to transition. Walking in the dark of night with 3000 other crazy people and all of their supporters!
Josh putting on his timing chip in the hotel before we left
Can't complete the weekend without a self-portrait!
The site at transition that morning was so cool. Keep in mind I've been to numerous triathlons, but there is no transition quite as massive as this one. It was still dark outside but the transition area was lit up like a football field with motivational music blaring through the air. I've never seen that many people that wide awake at 5:00 am before!
The transition area at 5:00 am on race day.
Josh prepping his bike in transition. Most of the athletes just wanted to check tire pressure and pump up their tires a little bit. All morning long you would hear what sounded like bombs going off... I soon learned it was the sound of various tires bursting from too much pressure. An athlete had blown his/her tires up too much, to the point they burst. Luckily they had an awesome tech team that came in fixed bikes if the athlete was already gone from transition.
Next blog... Race Time!
