Coeur d' Alene, Idaho United States 58F / 14C Overcast

Total Time = 15h 09m 35s Overall Rank = 1701/2058 Age Group = W50-54 Age Group Rank = 14/32

WEDNESDAY: After a mostly injury-free year, I woke up on Wednesday before the race with a condition I'll call pretzel-back. I couldn't lean my head forward, and the entire area from the base of my neck to my shoulder blades was painful. Taper madness? Psycho-somatic pre-race syndrome? Was it real? Or Memorex? Sheez. I had already scheduled a half-hour massage for Wednesday night, so that helped somewhat.

THURSDAY: I arrived in Spokane Thursday to find that Budget car rental had overbooked. They wanted me to taxi into downtown to Dollar to get a car and bill Budget for the excess cost. But there was a 45-minute line waiting for taxis, and the shuttles were booked, too.

I stood with my backpacks and two bags of tri gear by the side of the airport exit road with a sign that said, "CdA $25 Gas Money" but nobody picked me up. Then I saw a city bus for downtown, and got on it to go find the alternate car rental place. There was another couple on board doing the same thing, and they agreed to take me to the house I had rented in CdA. Very nice of them, and the $25 was about half what a shuttle would have cost, and one-fourth of what a taxi would have cost.

Finally at race HQ on Thursday afternoon, and reduced to walking the mile between the house and IM village, I spent what was left of my $190 rental car budget on souvenirs. Race jersey ($80), bike bottles ($5 each), coffee mug ($12), string bag ($11), and temp tattoos and assorted sundries.

I changed into swim pants and a tri top and waded into the lake up to the bottom of my rib cage in an exercise of neoprene respect and appreciation. I think the lake temp was about 56 degrees or so. The water was okay on my legs, but took my breath away the closer it got to my lungs.

I meant to pick up my bike from TriBike Transport Thursday, but forgot my pedals at the house, so I left my bike there until Friday. Meanwhile, I called all the storefront chiro places I could find seeking help for my pretzel-back.

FRIDAY: Started the day at a really thorough chiropractor, the first one that called me back. He spent about a half-hour doing heat, adjustments, stretch, deep tissue massage and the back-thumping machine.

I picked up my bike, and started an Olympic-calibre round of pre-race futzing. I rode the bike to a bike shop to buy a lock so that I could leave it at the grocery store so I could buy food for the next few days. I bought what I thought was a small amount of food (yogurt, milk, juice, apples, bananas, brown rice, cereal, mayo -- just the essentials) but then I was shocked when I could barely fit it into my big bike backpack.

It was so heavy, and my back still messed up, that I was afraid to ride my bike the mile back to the rental house. I had this vision of losing my balance while clipped in and falling over, and ruining my race. So I walked my bike home.

Although it was a major carbo-loading day, I didn't cook or eat the rice. I poured it into a long woman's trouser sock and tied a knot at the end. I heated it up in the microwave to wrap around my neck and heat up my back.

I walked back to IM Village for the athlete meeting, and caught the end of the welcome dinner speeches. I'm too paranoid to eat industrial official race food that close to the event, so I cooked for myself earlier. Then I did some interviews with athletes about their Ironman tattoos, current and future, for a possible public radio piece, and returned home.

SATURDAY: Another low-key day. I dropped off my bike and run gear bags, did a wetsuit swim in the lake and spent the rest of the day slamming down as many carb calories as I could.

A couple of Tylenol PM at 7:30 p.m., in bed by 8:30 and I heard the midnight rain storm, but did not regain full consciousness to stress about it until about 3:45 a.m. By then the weather had passed through, and it was looking like a calm, cool and possibly perfect day for racing.

SUNDAY: Breakfast was 2 cups of Cream of Wheat hot cereal with 250 calories of maltodextrin powder dissolved into it, and cinnamon sugar crusted on the top. Also a 600-calorie banana, yogurt, strawberry, Emergen-C and maltodextrin smoothie. And a cup of coffee. I also took a half-bagel with me but couldn't choke it down.

At transition, I borrowed somebody's pump for my tires. I worried a bit about using the pump because another woman had borrowed it and broke her race tire stem, but my set-up is very basic.

I put my nutrition on my bike. I had prepared eight 2-ounce knotted baggies full of a mixture of yam, almond butter, honey and the powdered innards of 16 S-Caps for salt and potassium. The rest of my nutrition, Clif gels and a few Nutri-Grain Breakfast Bars -- were already packed into my bike jersey.

I dropped off the special needs bags and got ready to race. At 6:25 when the pro athletes started, it was time to put on my wetsuit, a two-piece DeSoto T1 suit. It's warm, but a bit difficult to strip off.





As I walked toward the entrance chute in my full suit, neoprene cap and rubber swim socks, I spotted a jar of vaseline left on top of a trash can. I grabbed a handful and put it on my face, hoping it would dull the sting of the cold water. I seeded myself to the far left of the swim start, had time to go swim a few dozen strokes in the lake, and got out to wait for the cannon.

That's when I finally reflected on the past year. Every waking day I had thought about this challenge. Early in the year, I worried I had been egotistical in signing up for such an ambitious event. When my training approached 8 hours a week, I felt burdened by the time commitment. In the last three to four months, as I got used to training 14, even 18 hours a week, I realized I was surviving and thriving with the volume. I bailed on very few workouts. I threw myself into the things I feared -- the hill rides, the open water bay and ocean swims, the long swim-run bricks.

But then, in all my confidence and with just days to go, my neck and shoulders seized up and threw me into a pit of worry. The four worst days of my training year were Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

So, waiting in the back ranks of pink- and blue-capped athletes on the beach for the swim, and the announcer said, "Your dream is about to come true," that's when the emotion of this year finally hit me. I stood and looked out at that cloudy sky and that fearsome lake and just teared up. Another woman looked at me, and she was crying too. Between the two of us, our ages had to be at least 100. We did a mutual high-five, the cannon blasted, near enough to us that we ran through the smoke on the short run into the drink.