St. George Ironman 70.3 May 7, 2016

Just yesterday, my Salt Lake Tri Club family members and I got to take part in the St. George Half Ironman.  It's still hard for me to wrap my head around the experience I had there!  I'll try to describe and document all my thoughts.

Thursday, May 5, 2016
I was able to get off early on Thursday afternoon to get last minute items packed.  I didn't get to see my hubby before I left, which I was a little sad about, but he had an exam to take that day.  After checking and double checking my bags, I headed down to pick up my teammate, Gerald.  We got his bike rack situated on my Civic, our bags situated, and then headed to Adobe to pick up our teammate, Eric, who both hadn't met yet.

We then made our trek down to St. George together, getting to know each other!  We got to our houses/campsites, and then went out to dinner at Barista's in Hurricane.  Their burgers there were delicious!  Afterward, we wound down for the night to prepare for race check-in and other such pre-race prep in the morning.

Friday, May 6, 2016

We headed over to Ironman Village in downtown St. George to attend our pre-race meeting and to check in (for those who arrived late Thursday).  It was so awesome to see the hustle and bustle of so many athletes preparing for this race.       My heart was racing, but I was excited to be participating in Ironman!  I had been psyching myself out for awhile, since I hadn't really trained much (my last half marathon was September of 2015, and two friends and I decided to put together a relay team at the end of March... eek), and I missed the run at camp two weeks ago!  Everyone was saying what a hard run course it was, and that "Turtle Hill" was pretty brutal.  Anyway... I met up with Michelle and Chanda at the Village.  Gerald and Eric already went to check in, and we girls ended up doing a little shopping at the Ironman shop.  I think I spent a little too much, but I couldn't help it... it was Ironman!  We eventually made it over to check-in to get our team situated.  We originally had my friend, Brandy, on the bike, but because of an irritated injury, we had to find a new biker for our team.  Thankfully, Chanda offered to take her spot.  As we approached check-in, we ran into more of our teammates!  It was like a big reunion away from home!

This was it... check-in time!  Needless to say, Michelle, Chanda, and I were all pretty much freaking out!  Could you blame us?  We totally signed up for this on a whim!  But at this point, there was no turning back. 

SLTC Bee Babes at athlete check-in

We got our swag bags and then headed back to Sand Hollow for the team open water swim and to check Chanda's bike into transition.  When we got there, the storm clouds started to roll in, and it got super windy.  And then it started to rain.  We got out of there and dispersed to finish preparing for the race.  I got dressed into nice clothes and prepared to go to the temple.  I know it sounds weird, but I wanted to find some peace among the chaos and to quiet my soul.  We stopped by town square/T2 one more time to drop off gear for Gerald and Eric, and  I picked up some Rip Laces.  Then Gerald took me over to the St. George Temple so that I could visit and go to an endowment session.  It was just what I needed.  I felt so much peace there.  And the temple was small, simple, and beautiful.  Gerald picked me up, and we grabbed some groceries for dinner.  We all took a team house picture together, too! 

It was fun having so many of our teammates together under one roof.  We finished packing up gear, going over our race plans, applying tattoos, and then got to bed.  Nighty-night for all the triathletes!

Saturday, May 7, 2016

5 am wakeup call!  It's race day!  All those racing individually were off to T1 to get final gear checked and wetsuits on before the pro wave went off.  Chanda got to our place, and then she, Michelle, and I headed over to Sand Hollow.  When we got there, they were announcing that "Light Pink Wave Caps" needed to be in the water.  We had a little bit of a panic attack, as our wave had light pink swim caps.  But they were calling for Age Group Males with that cap color.  Michelle really had a rush of anxiety, as she was our swimmer.  Chanda ran over to get the rest of her gear situated, but was kind of getting kicked out of T1, since transition closed right before we got there.  Michelle got her wetsuit on, and then we headed over to swim start to see her go off.

SLTC Bee Babes at Swim Start

Chanda and I waited and chatted, and she was trying to strategically plan out her nutrition, etc on the bike.  The storm clouds then started to get dark, the wind picked up, and it started raining.  And for those of you who know Utah rain... it's cold!!!!!!  We waited for Michelle to get in.  She came in a bit later than she expected due to the choppiness in the water after the wind picked up.  It was quite strong that there were white caps in the water.  Chanda donned the timing chip, and off she went.

Michelle and I headed back to the house, along with Jonathan, to dry our wet clothes and shoes and eat before heading to T2.  We were tracking Chanda on the race tracker.  We expected her to finish around 1ish, but Michelle happened to watch the tracker, and Chanda had already pinged mile 30... it was already 11:30!  I freaked out, grabbed my gear, and drove into town.  Mind you, our house was near the reservoir!  Traffic was a bit pokey getting into town, and I had no idea where the parking garage was.  Some streets were blocked off, so I had to figure out a place.  I finally found a parking space, and started running as fast as I could towards T2.  But then some of the streets were blocked from the run, so I had to find a way through. Once I got to the relay pen, I had to pee really bad.  However, the other relayers were telling me that the volunteers weren't letting the relay teams use the one at bike-in, or the ones at run-out.  There was one on the outside of transition, or flushable toilets outside of ironman village (which I passed on the way in, with a seriously long line).  I tried to go to the one outside transition, which was in the Event Staff area, but there was someone in there who was taking quite a long time.  I wasn't sure what to do, as I expected Chanda to be there any minute.  With her pinging mile 40, sooner than I expected, she should have been there somewhere around 12:15-12:30.  So I waited it out.  The volunteers told me that I could use the bathrooms at run-out only when our biker got back in (insert pissed off face here.  Ironman seriously needs port-a-potties near the relay pen of T2... not even joking).  We saw a lot of our teammates come in.  Some were having a rough race, and were freezing from the rain on the ride, but were powering through it!  Chanda finally got in around 1ish.  She was telling us that she flatted out after mile 40, and it was her rear wheel, which is such a pain to fix.  We were cutting it close to our time to give me enough buffer time to finish the race, so I headed off after I got my chip on my ankle.  I gave her a hug and headed off.  I had already been holding my pee for over and hour, so my first stop after run out was at the port-a-potty.  As soon as I went off on the run, a pain started on the bottom of my foot between my big toe and second toe on my right foot.  I distracted the pain by thinking of other things, and enjoying the atmosphere, the  moment, and the beauty of my surroundings.

As I headed out of town, I started the uphill of the race.  The wind picked up making it really hard for me to breathe.  I felt myself start to wheeze.  I was grateful at this point to have my inhaler on hand.  I took that, and it started to work right away.  I was also telling this lady on the run that I wasn't sure what was worse... being fatigued after swimming and cycling, and then having to run, or to be waiting around, getting cold, and then going for the run.  The next few miles were a gradual uphill, and then I reached "Turtle Hill."  I ran, quite slow (get it, Turtle?  Yup... that's why they call it that), and then did a bit of a run-walk to save my legs/calves for the rest of the race.  I caught up to this one lady, Debra, whom I ran and chatted with for awhile.  She ended up stopping at the next aid station, so I went on ahead.  I was feeling great... I kept a nice pace for awhile, and then realized I was breathing shallow.  I made sure, at that point, to continue getting as much as as I could.  Before I knew it, I was at the half way point.  There were a few turn arounds on a downhill.  Mile 6 and then mile 8 were down and then up on the same hill, which was a little bit of a cruel joke.  I ran into many of my teammates.  I loved seeing my friend, Tamra, as she sent me some good vibes and told me ho proud of me she was!  That totally gave me such a warm feeling, and hope!  We then had to head back, with one more uphill at Turtle Hill.  Debra ran ahead at that point.  I told her she needed to finish strong!  And then I started to feel it... my foot was starting to hurt, and I felt cramping pangs in my calves.  I walked a little bit to try to stave them off.  I finally started to feel a bit better and ran until about mile 11.5 when both calves cramped up.  It really slowed me down.  I stopped for a seconding to apply pressure and try to get them to loosen up.  I was so close to the finish.  At this point, I was on track to finish on time.  I could have walked the rest of the course if I wanted to, but I just wanted to get in and be done.  My cramps finally eased up, and I was able to run.  I made it back into downtown, and made a break for the finish.  I took a second to walk.  There was an older lady that passed me, but I wasn't about to let her beat me!  So I picked up, and hit a sprint at the straight away, and crossed the finish line!  By the way, my dragon mascot, Xena, ran with me the whole way!  I was so happy to be done.  I expected to take the whole 3.5 hours to finish, considering my lack of training, but I ended up finishing (according to my Garmin) 5 minutes after my goal time of 2:45 (and without clocking time in the portapotty).  I was happy! 

Overall, this experience had been a great one! Our team definitely learned a lot during the whole process of the relay team.  I had run a relay before, but not one to this capacity and length of triathlon.  There is a lot of planning and strategy involved, as well as dependence and trust in one another.  I'm grateful that we got to be part of this grand event, and that we did better than we expected!  It's true that most of these events are mental, but the feeling of completing it is indescribable.  Thank you, Michelle & Chanda (and Brandy too), for making this an awesome experience for me... and for being just as crazy to sign up with me too!  Here's to our next crazy ideas and adventures!  Love you all!