Last day off

So today (thursday) is my last day off from work. As fun as it was sitting around doing absolutely nothing (besides drinking beer/watching movies) I swung by the shop to give my bike the bath it desperately needs and it was completely hectic. They're backed up about 4 custom bike builds, probably a few other builds, and had more repairs and customers than the 4 people working could handle. It really snowballs because when everyone gets stressed, everyone deals with it differently. Don and Adam just give up trying to stay on top of everything and hang out, usually on slowtwitch.com, and not uncommon for them to be drinking beer. then brad tries hanging on to his end while picking up don and adams, and missy maintains her norm by consistantly working harder than anyone else. Often times I keep on working and hold off the catastrophic crash, but sometimes adam and don make relaxing look way too tempting. It really is one of the most entertaining disasters you can witness. The end result is Brad takes a week or 2 sabatical, lately working at the repair shop at his house, and we eventually get caught up.
On a lighter note, my new bike came in and my lineup now includes an '08 Cervelo soloist-carbon along with my cervelo P3C. Woooo

Still Alive!

So for those who've never done an ironman before, you wouldn't know that for the 2-3 days following the race it feels like you've been hit by a truck. Walking hurts, sitting hurts, moving hurts, eating hurts, sleeping hurts, showering hurts. I tried taking ibuprofen constantly to try to get ouf of some of the aches and pains of muscle soreness, chafing-scabbing, sunburn, and a totally distorted sleep schedule. I found yesterday that the only way out is drinking beer all day. That didn't help how I felt this morning :-P The back of my neck has a few good sized scabs from where the skin chafed off from rubbing on the wetsuit during the swim, then sunburned from the rest of the day. Probably the worst of the pain because I can't move my neck much since it's so brittle. And the worst catch-22 of all is I'm always hungry, but can't function without a couple cups of coffee, then in too much discomfort to eat so I take a couple ibuprofens which make me naceous and no longer want to eat and I try taking a nap until I wake up again and repeat the cycle. The muscle soreness is still present but not painful and slowing me down anymore. I just can't wait until I can get a good nights sleep at decent hours, a few good/regular meals, and the sunburn/chafe to go away. Being conscious sucks right now but I promise I'm going to swim at least 500 meters this afternoon and be back on the bike tomorrow.

Arizona Airport

Thank god I made this blog. Again I've stressed everything else there is to do on the internet when there's nothing else to do but sit at a computer. Our checkout time was 1 and our flight is at 7:30 so we're just sitting in the airport for a few hours. Luckily I did an ironman yesterday so I don't have the excess energy that has to be burned off before I can sit still for the next 20 until I get my next whim. Honestly my parents are saints for putting up with me as well as they do. As we've found in the past I don't do so stellar in airports where you simultaneously need to be quiet and behave. The only dumb thing I did so far on our trip back was send my boarding pass in with my items being scanned and worried they wouldn't let me through the metal detector without it, they did. I also got a new book today, which I feel is something to mention since it only happens every couple years or so, and I plan on finishing this one! It's titled "I hope they serve beer in hell" and saw it very fitting as a book I can relate to. Brittany, I'll lend it to you when I finish it. Happy monday and I hope all 3 of you who read this have a great week :)

Recap

Well....shit. The good news is i finished, the bad news is I messed up my right calf at the end of the bike and my time was not between 10-11 hours like i wanted. It was a brutal day, much hotter than expected, and winds so strong I couldn't get up over 14 mph for half the ride. At the turn around on the last loop of the 3 loop course i didn't have enough electrolytes in me and so my body stopped digesting anything, I threw up then blacked out and next thing I know the medic is holding me up telling me I'm out of the race... I said no and got back on my bike :) At the very end of the bike I stood up to climb a small hill up to the finish without realizing my calf was completely cramped up so I get up and push down on it as hard as i could and it felt like every muscle and tendon just shredded. Then I had to run a marathon on it. During the transition from bike to run Dr. Sellers found me and checked it out while i got my helmet and sunglasses on. He gave the ok and I ran my marathon about an hour slower than planned at 4:40 on a very painful leg. During and after the race I swore up and down I'm never doing an ironman again, but now I'm seeing mistakes that could have made the day much faster and less painful. My finishing time was 11:27:16 for a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, and 26.2 mile run, and coming in 263rd place. For a first ironman I'm happy I finished and happier it's over with. And thanks again for all of the texts and phonecalls!

Last pre-race post

Well... It's race morning. It's 4:15 here and I've been up since 3:30 trying to eat a big enough breakfast, which is grossly difficult this early/nervous. I think the whole pot of coffee will be sufficient. I couldn't turn my phone off last night because then I'd only have 2 alarms this morning instead of the 3 I'm used to but thankfully I didn't get any calls at ridiculous times of the night, so I'll do what I've never done before and thank everyone for not calling me. Today's itinerary is to leave the hotel at 5, park and be at transition by 5:30, air up tires, fill up bottles, make sure i didn't forget something stupid, get my swim stuff together, then talk some last minute shit to some random participants to make sure everyone knows I'm going for the win :-P Then the pro-race goes off at 6:45, us regulars go off at 7. I have no idea when I'll be posting again. I get home late monday night and plan on sleeping for about 16 hours straight, go to my massage wednesday night, then lay in my parents' pool drinking beer for a week or so, open invite to that if anyone cares to join.

IMAZ eve

Alright so thanks for the comments! It's good to know people are actually reading this so I'll just continue to talk about myself :-P Tomorrow is the race, and i gotta be up at 3-3:30 am, or about 19 hours from now. We were supposed to get up at 7 to be at the last open-water practice swim that started at 8, but apparently Hammer and I were the only ones who woke up on time. By the time i realized the swim wasn't going to happen for T3 and i didn't need to be anywhere until 10:30 I'd had too much coffee to go back to sleep. The tension of the race has already kept me from getting much sleep...for the past 2 weeks. Today is bike and transition bags check-in, team dinner, and early to bed. Of the people I'm spending all the time with here I'm the only one who hasn't done a full ironman so I'm the only one stressing over every minor detail. The comments, messages, texts, e-mails, and phone calls from everyone with encouragements about the race has totally helped me hold my focus and stay somewhat relaxed, I know i completely lucked out on having so many people be so supportive of this, so thanks to everyone. Turq just called and needs help with his bike so I'm headed out! peace

IMAZ '08 and first post

Alright so i made this cool blog primarily because I'm 2 days out from my first ironman and I've over-stressed my interest in facebook, myspace, and slowtwitch. After reading a couple friends' blog i thought it'd be fun to have my own. So I'm here in the hotel room with crappy internet bored out of my mind. Being here in Tempe leading up to the ironman is one of the coolest experiences i can recall. Being here with all the T3'ers competing has relieved huge amounts of stress since alot of them have been through this before. Nothing too exciting at the moment but tomorrow is crunch time getting bikes/gear bags checked in and then sitting around another day waiting to get this over with and stressing over the things i forgot to put in my gear bags. It'd be great to have comments/PM's/whatever just to know people are actually reading this in hopes it's maybe possibly somewhat interesting.