Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin United States JMC Partners 80F / 27C Sunny

Total Time = 2h 46m 38s Overall Rank = 298/661 Age Group = M35-39 Age Group Rank = 63/96

Ok, out of consideration for the servers in Marmadaddy's basement I'll try to keep this short. Ha! A year ago I found out I had Celiac disease and my life changed dramatically. Not only did I need to get in shape anyway, but I turned to excersize as a crutch to help me deal with my diagnosis. It is very easy to get depressed when 95% of the food you have eaten all of your life is taken away from you. So I zeroed in on something I has wanted to do all my life but was too much of a couch potato to do - triathlon. I went and watched one and was hooked. I began training and almost immediately found this website. So I've done one other tri before this but this race is what the last year of my life has been about.

I feel like it begins on Saturday when I rolled into town with my buddy Larry and my two kids. We got to transition, checked in, got the sweet backpack they gave out (nice shirt and hat too) and racked our bikes. Then we went inside to hear the race talk. During the race talk the guy kept mentioning that on the bike course there were gravel shoulders with steep ditches on some of the curves so it was important to stay on the road. Me, Larry and Jeff (another friend) looked at each other and said, Ok the theme of the bike course is "stay on the road". Duh! What kind of moron needs to know that? heh. (this is called foreshadowing). So after the race talk Laura (Whizz) walked up and said hi. She seemed almost embarrased to be talking to me. Could it have been the bright red home-made shirt that said GO WIENERS!!!? Was it my kids shouting "Go PP Weiners"? Maybe. So while we were chatting two very tall men walked up to us. Thankfully they were BT'ers! Mark (triingforsept07) and Todd (chirunner). So we all said hello and talked a bit. Headed to the hotel with my kids, checked in and then went down the enemy headquarters, I mean Schmize's room. Scott and his wife Holly were there with their two oldes kids. Our kids met and immediately began that hotel room ritual of kid bed jumping. Scott and I both had suprises for each other. He had P3 logos for his team name printed for signs they were making. I had my Go Wieners shirt. My wife, Jen, MIL and youngest showed up shortly after that so we went back up to the rooms to meet them. Settled in and got ready to go to dinner. I also gave them their thank you gifts. I got Jen and MIL tickets to a play and told her I'd watch the kids so they could go out. I got all three kids t-shirts that said GO DADDY! on the front and Hangin' in the Prairie 2006 on the back. And cowbells. Cowbells are loud. Really loud. We left the cowbells in the room.

Eight of us, plus some friends and family, met at the Chancery for dinner. We had a great time at dinner. MarkK and CindyK were the first ones there after us and it was great to finally meet them. They were great and very patient with my kids, which was cool. To continue the trash talking and since we were already bodymarked, I had Jen write "Bye Scott" down my right calf. It was funny on Saturday night but didn't really come in handy for the race. I told her I needed to get all my trash talking in on Saturday because come race time, well, it's hard to talk trash from behind. Dinner was a lot of fun. Laura (StartingToTri) called me the biggest dork she's ever met 5 seconds after meeting me so I've got that going for me. :) We all wrote down goal times. After dinner we went back to the hotel and took the kids down to the tiny pool so they could blow off some steam (and Scott and I could continue to talk about the race). The pool was like an ice bath and the hot tub was wetsuit legal. Yuck. Went back up to the rooms around 9pm and starting trying to get to bed.

Here is where things started to fall apart for me. I'm usually a VERY sound sleeper. I fell asleep right away at about 10:30. I woke up at 11:50 to pee. Fine. Got back in bed. Could not sleep. At 12:50 I could not believe I had been tossing and turning for an hour. My wife couldn't sleep either. At 1:50 I couldn't believe it had been 2 hours. At 2am I gave up, took my bags down to the car. I got in and went for a drive. I thought about driving the bike course, decided THAT was NOT going to help me get back to sleep and went back to the hotel. Got back in bed at 2:30. I don't know when I fell asleep but I woke up just before the alarm went off at 3:40. Wonderful. Met Schmize in the lobby and we drove to the race. He didn't sleep much either.

Remote parking, shuttle ride to the race. Funny moment. On the bus Scott says "here's the one hill I was telling you about." Guy on the bus says, "You guys must be from Illinois if you think this is a hill." So we get to race and it is still night-time dark out. We're the first people there and there's only about 6 of us. The setup is in full swing. We start soaking it in. We're finally here. What a rush! Unwrap the bikes and prep transition. Hmmm, only an hour and 15 minutes to stand out here in chill. Now what do we do? Scott and I walk the ins and outs of transition and realize we are in the WORST possible spot for transition. We are sworn not to reveal our secret methods but we negotiate more favorable rack positions on the other side of transition. Pre race I see Jonathan (jowisc) his wife Jen (jschmitchicago) and big Mark. My early morning litre of Diet Coke has its intended effect, wetsuit on and I'm ready for the swim warm up. We head to the water. It is warm and feels good compared to the chill in the air. The beach down to the water is steep and the entry is even steeper. At the swim warm up we see Laura (StartingToTri) and her friend who I completely embarrassed myself in front of. I introduced myself since I had not gotten to meet here at dinner and asked if she did triathlons too and it turns out she's IN THIS RACE. I felt like a complete ass. She just looked so calm and cool and was wearing a t shirt I didn't think she was racing. Kudos to her for having it so together! And I'm an idiot. So I recovered from that and we got into our waves. Time to get ready to swim.

Just a 5 minute swim in warmish water, followed by 20 minutes of standing around in the crowd.