Ironman

I think people who do marathons are amazing… but people who do the Ironman…. WOWZA. The city of St. George was CRAZY town on Ironman day.

The bike route came across the main street by our house.

 

Our activities started with a pancake breakfast for the spectators. I thought that was a little mean--- “ Hi, you’ve just completed your 2 + mile Swim and now are on mile 20, while you’ve still got more that 100 miles to go, we’re going to eat pancakes and taunt you with the smell of them…” weird, right?

The city set up drums for the kids to use to cheer on the bikers.

And by kids, I mean Zach:

Then from noon to 5 we were able to volunteer at the bike transition. We caught the bikes and placed them on the rack while they transitioned into their running gear. So inspiring. Zach heard that ipods weren’t allowed in the Ironman, because they wanted it to be a true mental feat-but I swear I saw a dude crossing the finish line with white buds in his ears…. but I also saw a guy crossing the finish line eating a Carl’s Jr cheeseburger … so….

Here’s us catching bikes:

 

This is zach’s first “catch” and it just happened to be the Ironman women’s winner.

 

The finish line was ALWAYS busy. St. George did such a GREAT job of hosting this amazing event and the spectators ROCK!

We made it to see my coworker Locke finish. He is STILL this stoked. Something I thought that was SOOOO cool, was that when you finish an Ironman they say “So and SO, You are an Ironman” This one lady crossed and as soon as they said that to her, she just broke down and started bawling. I’m not gonna lie, the finish line is a pretty emotional place. I was crying a lot. Who knows why, maybe its just that amazing that someone has that much control over their body and are so dedicated.

Here we are just after midnight. I was SIMPLY exhausted! We were running back and forth from the bike yard to the transition line for 4 hours.

 

Congrats to EVERYONE who ever started an Ironman, half-ironman, marathon, half marathon, 10 K or 5K….. to commit to something like this and complete it is commendable.  There were so many amazing stories; one guy finished with a broken collar bone that he broke during the bike race and still ran a marathon, I saw another guy with a prosthetic leg, competitors as young as 67 years old. Amazing.

 

To get a competitors story ( cuz let’s face is this post is pretty vanilla) visit this blog

http://trainingpayne.blogspot.com/2010/05/ironman-st-george-venue-race-report.html