I signed off, or was that signing on, with "It's gonna be a long day" and a long day it was. The alarm was set for 4 AM and I was stirring before then. The schedule had been laid out for a 5 AM departure, leaving T1 for the swim start at 6. Catherine and Nate got up to drive us to town which alleviated the need to park who knows where.

Since the bikes, T1, and T2 bags had been checked in on Saturday there was not much to do. Check tire pressure, put water bottles on the bike, and get body marked. We were walking the 15-20 minutes to the swim start before the planned 6 o'clock time since we were all set. Once there after a short period of time it was time to change from our warmer morning clothes to wetsuits, sun screen, body glide, and put clothes in a drop bag to be retrieved later. We then move toward to beach where the athletes have to pass under a big arch and over a mat to register who went in the water. They are real big on accounting for everyone in the water at these things. It's really bad press to lose someone in the water; they even have scuba divers out watching from below because they could never notice one of 2300 in an insanely packed flurry of churning water.

At precisely 6:50 a F15 overflies the starting line and the pros go out ten minutes ahead of us riffraff. It gets real serious and quiet as we all await the start. Julie was still talking and commented I was not saying anything. I looked at her still saying nothing, just taking it in. Mike Reilly, the Mike Reilly was ten yards to my left.

It looked to me like it could be much more crazy than anything I have done in past tris that have wave starts. Sure I have started with 200-300 but 2300, what have I gotten myself into? I've heard stories of people that panic and bail from races at the swim but can't grasp that. Sure there is no pool line and is deeper but we really only swim in the top 3 feet of water anyway.

I watch the clock displaying the time counting down seconds, the F15 makes another pass, the canon goes off, I start my watch and head toward deeper water as it was a beach start. I thought we had a bit of space and was off in a free style swim. Yep, it's crowded but we knew that was to be expected, just swim. It wasn't long before it was much worse than crowded and I was unable to take anything near a complete stoke but slowing down in a stampede is not the thing to do. It was bad and I knew exactly why people bail out of a race at that point. But it's a stampede and you can't get out to quit. I'm sure I can't explain this in enough detail to get the point across. My only consolation is David said it was the worst he has ever seen also.

Eventually it gets manageable in a crowded salmon stream kind way and I try to get into a normal training swim fashion and get my breathing under control. That likely took a half a mile. Did I mention it's a long swim? But we knew that also. I stayed a bit wide of the line of buoys where the real crowd was and did fairly well with drafting. It took a long time to swim out to the first turn and gets crowded again at the turn buoys but they are nice progress markers. The narrow part of this long rectangle course was none too short but 3 or 4 more buoys and we get to head home. The short report on the swim is I was two minutes in front of David at 1:12:14 just like he said I'd be and had just a bit of collar rubbing. That's 86 Age Group, 773 Overall, 629 Gender.

T1 was 11:21. There was quite a long run from the swim to T1 and I jogged at a moderate clip on red carpet we later heard was $80,000 of carpet that got rained on. I thought I was getting through in short order until I got to trying to put dry clothes on my wet body.

We had been out here in July so the bike course was familiar. I am used to monitoring my speed in 5 mile increments and generally ride 17 mph or so. 5 miles in 15 minutes is 20 mph, 15 mph yields 20 minutes. The course was marked in kilometers. Eventually I figured I could use 10k @6.2 miles as the estimate and saw 41 minutes on the watch at 20k. 20 some minutes for the 10k, and the upper end of the range for 5 miles. I was going relatively fast. You learn in these endurance events that going out fast is not to be celebrated, it's energy spent that you are going to need later. It is nice to get to turn arounds to mark progress and the end of Rt. 117, the town, and back down Monte Ryan came and went. The course passes near transition and heads out for a climbing rolling 7 miles and that wrapped up the first lap. On 117 I got swept up in a pack and flagged for following too closely and might have had to stop for a 4 minute penalty. I missed the penalty tent on the way in but spotted it coming out and stopped. There I learned you can not eat, another doable event. Will never know if I had really been flagged or what the consequences would have been for not stopping but I had decided it would be best to stop and take advantage as a rest stop.

I didn't understand how they did it but the second lap was much longer than the first. The wind was worse and my back and left quads were complaining. I stopped at a med tent asking for aspirin, Tylenol, ibuprofen, codeine, morphine, anything really but they did not have it available and would not allow a volunteer to provide it either. Bummer. I had taken 4 gels and 4 Clif bars, was taking Honey Stinger products and bananas for the course and drinking lots of Perform.

The last 14 miles out and back had people walking the hills but I carried on and flew down the hills at a death-defying speed, at least for me. Bike Split: 7:02:02, 196 Age Group (-110), 1681 Overall (-908), 1352 Gender (-723).

T2, 5:59, for a complete change of clothes and off on the run.

I started off jogging along OK but then noted I was breathing too hard for the pace and decided to walk to get that under control. We've all run a lot and know what is normal. The beginning of the run has some notable hills which did not assist in the quest of restoring a normal state to feel like a regular run. It never came. David has long said if you get to the run you can walk the whole thing. I started calculating how much time I had and what pace would be required to make the midnight cut off. 20 min mile, 5k an hour, yes I have time, just keep moving.

I felt bad and didn't know what to eat or not eat. Somewhere along the line I said "there's no reason to think an IM marathon shouldn't be your worst marathon." At the first turn around at about mile 6 a volunteer asks if I'm OK, I say fine. In hind sight I really should have stopped and talked to them and maybe they could have gotten me on the right track. Instead I carried on for another 5 hours with a lot of doing all the wrong things. I had forgotten to strip my arm warmers off at T2, and had them in my pockets which came in handy when it got cold. It also rained along the way; I was out there a long time.

I walked a lot, jogging a hand full of times just to prove I could if I needed to shave some time. One of Catherine's reports said I was walk/running but that implies much more running that I did. It really should be said I walked the whole run.

4 miles out after walking miles saying "oh my god" every step, I finally succumb, stop, and bend over feeling I may throw up and multiple volunteers are on me like vultures or angels, you take your pick. They ask my name, likely to see how coherent I am, and how I feel. Ha, how I feel. I feel like I want to throw up. They ask if it hurts, cramped, nauseous, or bloated. I said they all sound the same to me. They really do understand that we do not want to be pulled off the course and advise me the can help up ahead but they can not give me a ride and I'd need to walk. So I walk on to the med tent at the next aid station in view. They ask if I want to sit down, I look at the chair and think I'd never get up and choose to stand leaning on their truck. Information is passed on my condition and I am offered some nausea medication which I see them drawing into a syringe so I ask if they are giving me a shot. It turns out they are just using that to measure like we do for the kids at home and they give it to me with some water. As I squirt it all in my mouth, I'm advised not to take it all at once. I drink the water and when about to continue washing it down with my bottle of Perform, I am stopped and advised to stop drinking anything because I am so bloated already. I'd been drinking way too much given I was not running nor sweating.

2 miles out I start hearing the sounds of the finish area and it draws me in. What I have done all day does not matter, I have a 2 mile race in front of me, I try out my legs. My wife and daughter who had been walking with me are shocked and have a challenge keeping up but they want to see me finish. There was a good hill in the way and I walked it while evaluating my standing. I made sure no one was approaching from the rear, walking for hours being passed constantly and now I think it is a race. It's funny thinking about it now but the sound of the finish was that much louder. The approach to the finish was lined with cheering crowds for at least a third of a mile and nobody can walk in that environment. The finish line is the goal, the one place I had been approaching for 16 hours and Mike Reilly, The Voice of Ironman, was there to welcome me to the club with his signature proclamation: "Roger Shanks, You are an IRONMAN!"

Run (walk) Split: 7:45:43, 224 Age Group (-28), 2005 Overall (-324), 1529 Gender (-277).

Even with what I thought was an acceptable bike and a atrocious run, it was on the bike where I dropped in ranking. The bike needs a lot of work.

In hindsight the difficulty of the run was all nutrition.


Awesome Race