Guerneville, California United States 72F / 22C Sunny

Total Time = 14h 35m 56s Overall Rank = 129/210 Age Group = Age Group Rank = 22/38

We started off this adventure by spending a week driving up the coast of California, starting in San Diego and ending up in Guerneville for the race. Mom and I had some great beach time, rode rollercoasters (and stood in line) at Magic Mountain, and cruised around in our bright orange convertible. We got to Guerneville on Thursday evening after spending the morning at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The following morning we got up to meet Jon and his parents for breakfast and after some wonderful Swedish pancakes, we headed over to the packet pick-up in Windsor. Since the pre-race meeting was mandatory, we piled into the gym with several hundred other people for the video. After 45 minutes or so of course information, they piled us out the door into the expo. I loaded up on race swag and browsed the expo for some arm warmers since I left mine at home. I ended up with some really awesome, yet completely obnoxious arm warmers that could probably be seen from space. I wanted Mom to be able to find me on the course!

The pick-up process was honestly a complete disaster. Pick-up was in one of the small gyms at the high school (the size of a basketball court) and there was likely several hundred people and their families (and dogs) trying to navigate through the sea of tapering, moody, nervous athletes. First, you had to stand in line to get your packet; a process that took an hour and twenty minutes. The volunteers were dumping out the packets and explaining to each individual person the contents and what to do with them (this information was exhaustively explained in the video we were required to watch just an hour previous. The volunteers were actually quite wonderful and they were obviously doing what they had been told). Then you had to stand in another line to weigh-in, which was required of all full distance athletes for medical reasons. In order to get out of the gym, another line was required so that your chip was checked. And finally another line to pick up the relatively ugly race t-shirt. The entire pick-up process took us just over 3 hours.

After the packet pick-up fiasco, Jon, Mom and I piled into the convertible and drove the course. We noticed right away the bumpy, rutted roads as it made even the drive uncomfortable but the scenery was spectacular. Miles and miles of grape vines and countless wineries. It was awfully tempting to stop in for a quick tasting, but getting hammered 24 hours before an Ironman is probably not the best idea. Instead, we made a few doodles with sidewalk chalk along the way, but since it was so late in the day we didn’t really do much. We drove back to Guerneville to do a quick swim course preview and meet Jon’s parents for our pre-race sushi dinner. I finally got back to the hotel and put the final touches together for the race. Lights out around 10.

The alarm went off at 4:00am which gave me plenty of time to get up, wake up and get some food down before transition was scheduled to open at 5:30. Since our hotel was less than a quarter mile from the swim start, Jon and his parents met us at our hotel to get ready for the race. Jon and I were going to walk down to the beach to set up T1 then walk back to finish breakfast and relax before the start. We walked over to transition with our bikes and T1 stuff, only to stand in another line to get into transition. It took us nearly 20 minutes just to get in to T1, leaving only 40 minutes to set up and get back to the hotel to get our swim stuff then back to the beach. Looking back on it, one hour is just not enough time for nearly 1,200 people to get themselves ready for a 12-14 hour day. It was a bad call on our part but also another example of poor organization by the race staff. People were really frantic and upset.

I had plans, like many others, to change at T1 into bike shorts. I looked around expecting to see the large changing tent usually seen at Iron distances races. Seeing nothing of the sort, I asked a fellow athlete if they knew where the changing tents were. She pointed at the tiny 10’x10’ picnic canopy surrounded by tarps in the far corner of transition. “That’s it. Both men and women.”
I began to panic a bit, as I didn’t see how there was any possible way that a tent that tiny could accommodate all of the athletes that were expecting to be able to change. I envisioned another line waiting in T1 to use the changing tent.

Jon and I got a nice little warm-up jogging back to the hotel to pick up the rest of our stuff. I grabbed my Infinit bottles out of the fridge, my wetsuit and goggles and cruised back over to the start. I got my bottles into the cages on my bike just as the first wave went off. With 3 minutes between waves, I knew I had a bit of time to get my wetsuit on but time was ticking down. I couldn’t find Mom again to give her my flip-flops so I had to leave them by the fence (they ended up being one of my casualties for the day since they weren’t there when I went back). I loved those things L L

I got my wetsuit pulled up and situated, cap and goggles on with a few seconds to relax a bit before our wave went off.

Pfffft... its Ironman. The swim is the warm up. ;)