Ironman Arizona 2011 Morning

The day truly started waking up at 1:24 in the morning to have half of my breakfast. Nothing like hearing the buzz of your phone from across the room knowing 140.6 miles is awaiting you. The first half was a bagel, a 28 ounce Gatorade endurance and a marathon bar. I went right back to bed until a quick 2 am alarm went off. My second breakfast was just as exciting, another bagel, Gatorade endurance and a banana. This time I actually got to stay asleep tell 4:15 am.

you have to make things easy when planning to get up at 1am to eat

I awoke with 8 hours of sleep including adjustments for my breakfast ready to face the day. I threw on my contacts, covered all the sensitive areas with body glide and began putting on my race clothes for the day. I stretched for ten minutes and coated almost all muscles that would be used during the three disciplines with a thick layer of icee hot(it's an addiction right about now). I made sure the fake Wheaties Fuel tatoos on my shoulders were in place and donned my dry clothes to fight off the cold morning as well as be warm post race. We took some pictures. There really isn't that much that is needed to be done at the hotel so it makes for a quick start to the day.

I drove with my beautiful wife to the athlete parking garage stopping by the ice machine to fill up a cooler so that my family could have cold drinks for the day. It's an easy drive into the athlete parking garage, I walked out and met the Firefighter outside the garage to start the day. First thing after getting into the transition area I put nutrition on my bike. For this race 3 marathon bars cut in half, a little plastic zip lock with 14 salt tablets, 4 tums and 2 gel bottles with 8 power bar gels in them. With that out of the way I walked out of transition to drop off special needs bags. This is pretty easy being that they put both of the drop offs just on the other side of the Mill avenue bridge. After this it was off to my bike bag to add a hotel towel for drying my feet (sorry Hyatt, I never returned it). The run bag was next, I ran out of icee hot in the room and needed to complete the job so i grabbed a little from the run bag.

picture is out of place, it's vitamins icee hot and chapstick... all essentials

Feeling the tingling sensation that was my muscles being calmed down I grabbed my bike and waited in line to get my bike tires pumped up. This was nice, I just waited tell the front of the line and without any questions the guy pumped up the tires to a pressure setting I still don't know. I wish I had asked because it was the fastest bike time I've ever had. To keep up with the face the Firefighter and I are slightly ambiguously gay I called him to see if he wanted to hang out with me in the bathroom line. I know it's like something off a Miller light commercial. We did pretty good waiting in a line behind the transition tent (hidden bathrooms are usually better), and took one more visit to the bike.

One the way back we ran into a couple friends also doing the race and chatted, this is when our wives called to let us know we needed to come take cute pictures. Yes, we did come and the pictures do a good job of capturing how naive we were to the pain about to be endured for the next 12 hours. We do have the best support any Ironman could ask for in two wonderful wives we probably don't deserve, which might be another reason for the goofy smiles at 6 in the morning. We could only hang out for a few minutes because transition was closing soon and they had to get in position for the big start. We left them with a kiss for good luck (we only kissed our own wife), and then the fun began.

pointing to the only reason I can do these, my Lord and Savior

My wetsuit had been expertly hung up in the hotel room by myself in a way that kept the inside of it wet and cold which was wonderful with the temperature outside being in the fifties. I put the wetsuit on, then immediately took it off realizing I had forgotten to put on sun screen. Now with sunscreen on I put the suit back on and began prep work for the nutrition.  I took a sudafed to not have any congestion during the race (it worked I snotted all over myself throughout the entire bike) and can now tell you it was a terrible idea. I next took 2 pepto bismol tablets to calm my stomach (it also helps keep you from having to poop because of nerves). The last part of this wonderful cocktail would come later.

notice woman in sweatshirt, this water is COLD

You take everything that isn't in a transition bag at this time and not going in the water with you and leave them in a dry clothes back. This last sentence is important because I thought I did this until 5 minutes before jumping in the water I was reminded that I was still wearing sandals. Sandals are not very aerodynamic and cause lots of drag in the water so I had to return to the dry clothes drop off and have them create a second bag for me to put my sandals in. Running back to find the Firefighter and two other friends doing the race I chugged a 5 hour energy to give a boost of caffeine for starting things off. This was followed immediately by a berry blast power bar gel and an entire Ironman perform lemon lime sports drink. Armed with that wonderful mix of chemicals swishing around in my stomach we made our way towards the lake to the sound volunteers with megaphones yelling at us to get in the water.