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Roland had loaned me his very slick looking Polaris bike box and anyone who has used one of these will tell you, getting your bike into one of these things is not always the priority; it’s mainly about how much space you have to throw everything else in! Bottles, shoes, tools, nutrition, pump, tubes, sombrero. You can design your own package with Nirvana that can include race entry, meet & greet, bike carriage, a 2-day event transfer and even a bike course recce. The array of bikes, kit and granite-lean athletes that paraded around the reception area of the hotel was intimidating to someone who was embarking on their first Ironman adventure. The rest of Friday was spent putting my bike together in my hotel room, sorting out my kit and watching re-runs of the 80’s TV programme Minder dubbed in German. Bike racking started at 3pm so it was back to the hotel, a light lunch and then another shuttle later in the afternoon with your bike. The swim route consisted of 2 laps, 4 right-hand turns and the unique experience of running over a small island to start your 2nd lap. As soon as he mentioned it to me, I had started training in 2 pairs of shorts. The first 30km of the IM Switzerland bike route is fast & flat but comes with a warning: don’t go off to fast! Again, more advice I had been given came to the fore and this time I remembered Roland’s words at his Going Long evening: always finish the bike like you could’ve gone harder. It’s important not to fill the Aero Bottle too much because it will affect the handling of your bike so it was a maximum of about a quarter full for me. For some reason, I started to panic and feeling like I wasn’t going to make the cut-off, I started running steadily again.
Follow my Journey to becoming an Ironman Triathlete
After several meetings and a lot of planning and fundraising, the first ever group of HARFORD COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE riders was formed and joined the Police Unity Tour Chapter IX out of Delaware to ride in the tour. So with the group set, our fundraising done, and our training complete; we all set out for Philadelphia to meet the other riders and prepare for our week long Journey to DC. May 8, 2013- DAY 1. One of the things about this ride was that you needed to wake up at like 5am to get your gear on the truck, get your bike set up, tires inflated, eat breakfast and get out of your room for the 7am start time. Our official first day of riding! I was up by 5:15am and took a shower, got changed and went down for breakfast. Anyway, after everything was packed up, we all lined up out front of the hotel in two lines side by side and departed for DC. Our chapter only had about 100 riders but later in the week, we would meet up with all of the other Chapters from across the country and all 2,000 of us would ride into the memorial together. Today, we biked approximately 65 miles from Philadelphia, PA to Newark, DE. The first part of the ride was pretty flat. Today we would ride approximately 88 miles from Wilmington, DE to Aberdeen, MD and it was going to be in the mid 80’s so I made sure to put my sunscreen on. After a couple more minutes, the rumors were confirmed and we were told the ride for the day was cancelled. Turns out, a huge thunderstorm with lightning was coming our way and already trapped other chapters in different states who were riding. The Tour president has the authorization to cancel the ride for any safety reason and that is exactly what they did.
Triathlon World Championships
For the Olympic race on Sunday, it was raining so hard that volunteers didn’t show up early enough to put out cones for the bike course. You might have to jump into very cold water, you might have to race in the rain, you might not have the hills you like, you might have to jump over potholes in the street, you might not have many spectators to cheer you on, you might not know any of the other racers, you might not get a chance to look at the historic buildings along the course, you might be tired and cranky from loss of sleep and strange food, and you might have all kinds of problems, but you can do it. If you’re a racer here, you’re a racer everywhere. There were rumors that the officials would shorten the race by lopping off the first 2.5K run because the water was cold enough to REQUIRE a wetsuit. We were to swim only 1000 meters and run 2.5K. I was grateful I could take my time getting into my wetsuit and grateful to be reasonably warm before the race. THANK YOU, CAROLYN. I couldn’t have done that race without you. Finally, on Friday night I got out a pen and paper and added up what I remembered of my typical race times. Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Distraction! Distraction! Don’t think about the water! Don’t think about the leg pain! So I resumed my silent worries about the time cut-off as I went to bed the night before the race. Among amateur aquathletes in my age group the gold means on that particular day in that particular race I was the best in the world because I showed up and finished. Sunday after Carolyn left, I felt disorganized and almost lonesome, so I went out to the race site and watched some of the Olympic age group swim starts.
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