IM-Wisconsin 2008 RR
Well lets just say I owe my wife a big thank you. She has put up with a year of me being away training, traveling and working way too much. What a trooper and now I hope I have made her proud.
The year leading up the race was injury free till one week before. My littlest one jumped on my foot while I was lying on the floor and we thought it was broken. Short story, it wasn't. I went to the doc, they took x-rays and told me it would just hurt. I bruised some tendon. I visited the Chiro who is a multiple marathoner and he checked it out. He popped it back into place and all was good.
Pre race - Got out of bed at 4am after a night of almost no sleep. Nerves were getting the best of me. I kept having dreams and visions of not making the swim cutoff of 9:20 am. I kept wondering if I did enough training to make it. I had one hell of a time knocking out the self doubt going into the swim. After a diet coke things calmed a bit :) Well I grabbed a bit to eat and headed up to the Terrace to get the party started. Walking down to the Terrace, I could hardly believe I was going to do THIS! I have spectated since it started in 2001 and I was hooked. I always wanted to do but never thought it would actually happen. This day was my one and only shot so I was going to make it happen. I saw a few friends and family on the way down to the swim and this made it all better. I was in a calm state ready to have fun.
Swim - I started really wide, standing waist deep in the water. I did not want to deal with getting pummeled in the water or treading water for half an hour. I knew I would have to swim farther but oh well. The cannon went off and I let the mass of crazy fast swimmers go. There was about a 20 second delay and then I was off. I got in a groove and got to the inside of the buoys three quarters of the way down on the first straight away. I circled the 2 red buoys and hit the clear water on the inside of the rectangle. My friend Becky who does this every year let in on a little secret. As long as you go around the outside of the red buoys you are in the course. I had clear water in front of me with only a handful of people here and there. I never got kicked, punched or swam over. Pretty uneventful for the rest of the way. I hit the beach in 1:44. Saw friends and family and that gave me that extra boost that everything is OK. I do remember asking the people at the swim exit if I made the cut off and they laughed. I made it by well over 35 minutes! I felt spent coming out of the water but not completely shot. I got to the wetsuit strippers. Boy that is something I have never experienced before. It is probably the weirdest part of the day. As I was going towards the area, one lady unzipped the back, 3 people were waiting for me, told me to drop. They had that wetsuit off of me in a matter of 3 seconds. I trotted up the Helix slapping five with people and seeing more friends and family and I knew it was going to be a great day!
The year leading up the race was injury free till one week before. My littlest one jumped on my foot while I was lying on the floor and we thought it was broken. Short story, it wasn't. I went to the doc, they took x-rays and told me it would just hurt. I bruised some tendon. I visited the Chiro who is a multiple marathoner and he checked it out. He popped it back into place and all was good.
Pre race - Got out of bed at 4am after a night of almost no sleep. Nerves were getting the best of me. I kept having dreams and visions of not making the swim cutoff of 9:20 am. I kept wondering if I did enough training to make it. I had one hell of a time knocking out the self doubt going into the swim. After a diet coke things calmed a bit :) Well I grabbed a bit to eat and headed up to the Terrace to get the party started. Walking down to the Terrace, I could hardly believe I was going to do THIS! I have spectated since it started in 2001 and I was hooked. I always wanted to do but never thought it would actually happen. This day was my one and only shot so I was going to make it happen. I saw a few friends and family on the way down to the swim and this made it all better. I was in a calm state ready to have fun.
Swim - I started really wide, standing waist deep in the water. I did not want to deal with getting pummeled in the water or treading water for half an hour. I knew I would have to swim farther but oh well. The cannon went off and I let the mass of crazy fast swimmers go. There was about a 20 second delay and then I was off. I got in a groove and got to the inside of the buoys three quarters of the way down on the first straight away. I circled the 2 red buoys and hit the clear water on the inside of the rectangle. My friend Becky who does this every year let in on a little secret. As long as you go around the outside of the red buoys you are in the course. I had clear water in front of me with only a handful of people here and there. I never got kicked, punched or swam over. Pretty uneventful for the rest of the way. I hit the beach in 1:44. Saw friends and family and that gave me that extra boost that everything is OK. I do remember asking the people at the swim exit if I made the cut off and they laughed. I made it by well over 35 minutes! I felt spent coming out of the water but not completely shot. I got to the wetsuit strippers. Boy that is something I have never experienced before. It is probably the weirdest part of the day. As I was going towards the area, one lady unzipped the back, 3 people were waiting for me, told me to drop. They had that wetsuit off of me in a matter of 3 seconds. I trotted up the Helix slapping five with people and seeing more friends and family and I knew it was going to be a great day!
posted by bbieberitz at 10:28 AM
1 Comments:
Oh, the anticipation of what's next, you're leaving your readers hanging;) Seriously, you done good.
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