Snickers Girl rides again!

Yep, I finally got on my bike this morning! Conor is home sick, so I got on my bike and did a tiny, little ride. Trying to keep my HR in zone one is always a challenge, but I hardly sweat. Isn't it nice of Bill to capture me at my loveliest?

The real start of the 2007 season

I survived the party and ran to church as planned today. Except I forgot my "butt band" and my water bottle -- I feel like such a rookie again. My HR recorded the average temperature of my run at 59 F. My last run before this was the day before the Hawaii IM and that run's average temp was 89 F! Ahhhhh, I miss Hawaii!!

Last night's party was Halloween themed. Bill went as Steve Irwin and I was a very scary bride's maid -- my dress from my sister's St. Patrick's Day wedding in kelly green did the trick. Poofy sleeves and all. Sadly, I have unloaded the matching shoes and white stockings with shamrocks that would have completed the outfit. The kids had a blast running around the house. Chris and Alyson always know how to have a great time!!

When we got home I still had the broccoli soup to finish (before the party I turned the recipe over and discovered the part about letting it cool to room temperature before pureeing it in the blender). So I discarded the lovely dress and returned to the kitchen to finish up making the soup. It is delicious, but any parent will confirm that the look and consistency of the soup are green baby poop. Now there's a scary Halloween dish!!

OK, another bit of the Hawaii trip (Bill took almost 2000 pictures during the week, so I will continue to publish tidbits over time). Here I am being interviewed by the folks doing a documentary on Rick and Dick Hoyt. Most of you know the father son team that have competed in hundreds of races over the years. I was fortunate to meet the Hoyts during the trip. The guys making the documentary sat next to me on the flight out. When I met Dick and told him that I met them he quipped, "I hope they weren't in first class!".

Training for 2007 . . . or not

I have been so good about taking October off. I have done virtually nothing structured since my marathon on September 30. So today was supposed to be my first bike ride to start my base. Ha! The wind and rain came -- oh wait, I'm riding indoors. Alright, surely Conor's 9:00 AM soccer game will be cancelled -- no, my phone check with his coach at 8:30 revealed an indoor game. Off to soccer instead of my bike ride. Then a flurry of shopping for food and stuff for Liam's soccer team party tomorrow afternoon. Fine, I'm home all afternoon and should have time to ride. Well, that damn Hawaii time difference still has me messed up (seriously?) so a little nap is in order. Finally, time to ride late today, but wait -- I'm dying to make this broccoli soup recipe Naira gave me. So now I sit here while the soup is simmering. No riding tonight -- we're off to a martini party! Sacrifices must be made!

Tomorrow should be a good day to run to church. I promised after I skipped last time and we had that little earthquake thing in Kona. Better take it easy on the martinis . . .

Relaxed at the Awards ceremony

Post race soak

Breakfast at the Four Seasons on Sunday

Heather Gollnick and her husband joined us for breakfast. They were really wonderful to talk with. She gave me great info on training for the heat -- what a doll!

Now this is Hawaii!

Lava fields -- the day after

Naira, Chuck and I try to navigate the lava fields to get to where Bill spelled out "CHUCK". We gathered the coral from our beach and Bill took it out the night before the race to put on the lava.
Turns out he did a second one -- HUCK! Here Chuck adds the "C". In a race earlier this year, they wrote his name on his arm -- but his sleeves covered the "C", so folks yelled "Go Huck!" for 26 miles.

Chuck at 13:18:22 and looking great!

Karen Smyers has another great race at the age of 45

Natascha finishes 10th . . .

. . . but always with a smile!

Ken Glah setting a record of 23 straight Hawaii IMs

Lisa Bentley rounds out third

Desiree Ficker having the race of her life!

Michellie has it locked up as she heads for Ali'i

Faris . . . won't be wearing #1 next year

Yes, the sponsor on his jersey is a beer sponsor . . .

Macca digs deep

Check out the times on the chalkboard next to him. How would you like to stare at that mile after mile?

Stormin' Normann

You know I just had to use that phrase at least once! After the turn off Palani Dr. and headed to Ali'i. You can bet he knows Macca is closing, but at this point he is running out of real estate. Short of a Paula meltdown (and anything is possible with this race), he's the 2006 winner.

Barry and Jodee from 5430sports

Barry Siff is a writer as well as a race director (along with Jodee) out in Boulder, CO. He was covering the CEO Challenge. I spotted a couple articles authored by him in my Triathlete and Inside Triathlon. It was a lot of fun meeting them. I always say triathletes are some of the nicest people and it has held true out here. We may have to check out one of their Boulder races in the next couple years . . . :-)

Naira and Chuck in perfect step at mile 10

Lori Bowden and Wendy Ingraham at mile 10

Chuck coming in from his awesome bike

Chuck passes by with a huge smile! He had a phenomenal bike split. The last 24 miles were his fastest!

Kate Major . . . or is it?

Yep, this is Kate, but at the pre-race press conference her twin sister, Emma, sat in. Apparently Emma did some trash talking ("no one will be near me, so I'm not concerned . . ." type of stuff!) and no one knew until Kate started asking questions from the audience. Gotta love the sense of humor!

Kate was my pick this year (remember, we could not pick Natascha or Michellie), I fully expect her to stand on the podium here some time down the road.

Natascha always has a smile and a wave

In spite of getting sick several times on the bike, Natascha posted a sub-five bike split. She also suffered on the run, but you wouldn't be able to tell from her photos.

Spotting and getting updates

Top photo is me working with Ted and Elie on spotting CEO Challenge athletes. Below, Naira gets updates from home. About this time I'm questioning the sanity of entering the lottery.

Chris McCormack on his way to a tremendous run

In the background is the sign from 5430sports -- Barry and Jodee from Boulder, CO.

Paula working the hot corner

Faris knows he has a lot of work to do

Luke Bell heads out on the run

Check out his custom suit -- it was designed via a contest and Luke picked the final design.

Normann breaks the bike course

Back home

We are back home . . . and freezing!! I'm home for one more day to try to adjust to the time and the cold. We left Chuck at T1, so I'll pull more pictures (Bill took over 700 on Saturday alone) and stories to round out the trip.

Thanks for reading!

Heading home . . .

We must leave for the airport in 1/2 an hour, so I have to stop here. I'll sort through the remaining photos and finish the trip once we get home. I hear there is snow in Cleveland and we just had a beautiful swim in the ocean.

Liam and Conor - love you two and can't wait to see you tomorrow! So glad to hear you have been good. :-)

Finally meeting Writerguy

Helping Peter were his buddies, Clint (aka Writerguy) and Trevor. Check out Pete's website on my links for more

PR's most relaxed Ironman ever!

Chatting with Pete on the pier

We waved to Pete and once he spotted Bill he paddled over to say hi. He stayed with us in '95 before the Cleveland race. He is a class act all the way!

I want to be in the water sooooo badly . . .

Chuck's swim

Chuck had a 1:14 swim!! The loudest cheers are for those with the biggest smiles!!!

Pete directing swimmers

He said that people actually swam up and talked to him during the race!!

Michellie had a great swim

McCormack, Bell, and Brown heading to the bikes

Just behind the guy in the white is eventual 2nd place finisher, Chris McCormack, followed by Luke Bell (7th) and Cam Brown (8th).

Our first adventure -- getting to the dock

This week seemed to be summed up by "where the hell is Bill?". We had access to the dock to watch the swim, but we lost Bill by the transition area. Naira and I spent a lot of time looking for him and trying to find Chuck to wish him well. Finally we heard that Chuck had a stem issue on his tire and was having it fixed, so we figured we may not catch him before the start. Once we gave up on Bill, Naira and I tried to find out path to the dock, but security kept telling us we couldn't access each entrance. Finally Naira spotted Eric from Ironman and we followed him back through an entrance I am sure we were not supposed to use. We walked by the bike bags, the changing tents (stopped for a little bathroom break ourselves), the medical tent and finally found a spot around at the edge. Naira kept looking for Bill and returning. Just before the start my phone starts ringing -- Naira can't get back into the area!! I passed my phone to Cindy who was in charge of the VIP access and she told Naira she'd get her on her way out after the start. Once Cindy got to Naira, the security still wouldn't relent. As race director, Diana Bertcsh walked by, she was enlisted to help and literally grabbed Naira's wrist and pulled her into the area -- what an adventure, huh? Well, it gets better -- as we walk back on the dock, lo and behold, there's Bill who's been there all along! Great!

Race conditions

Race morning was beautiful and calm. Also, overcast -- nice! The swim looked perfect. Well, it turns out the current was pretty strong out in the bay. There were quite a few who didn't make the swim cut off. Dick and Rick Hoyt were unable to complete the swim this year. They are a class act.

Now to recount race day . . . the first stop

Whoa! Who is that number 3? I didn't think Peter Reid was racing this year!

It was cool that they didn't use #3 since Peter wasn't racing. He actually led the age groupers out on a boogie board, but more about that later. Here, Chuck yucks it up with the girls marking him.

Worth every moment . . . .

Sweet -- finisher's medal!

Soggy finish line

Mickey saved me at the finish line when the downpour came. He got me towels to keep me warm which I desperately needed!!

Two time Hawaii Ironman Finisher!!

I'll use Naira's update to describe Chuck's race . . .

Chuck had a great race and is very happy and quite sore :) He actually improved his time in all three disciplines, cutting a total of 22 minutes off of last year's time :) He finished in 13 hours and 18 minutes.

It started to rain very heavily for about 30 minutes before Chuck crossed the line so me and our friends Deirdre and Bill were thoroughly soaked by the time Chuck crossed the finish line. Well worth it though...

After Chuck finished, we hung around for an other hour or so and watched others finish but because we were so wet and tired, we ended up heading home around 10:30 PM and couldn't make the Midnight finish. Well, it was a fun one to see apparently... a lovely woman named Sister Madonna Buder (retired Nun age 76 years old) finished and thereby again claimed the world record for oldest woman finisher by coming in at 16 hours 59 minutes and 06 seconds! Now that was close! Very cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More soon!
Naira

Find the sea turtle . . .

OK, if you look in the center of the picture you will see the sea turtle coming up for a breath! We have swam with them every swim in the bay this week. Very cool!

The Big Day

It is 4:20 AM here and I've been up for almost an hour. Chuck and Naira still appear to be sleeping since I don't see any light from their room across the pool. I am excited to see how the day plays out.

Last night we had dinner at home -- fabulous pasta with meat and mushrooms, salad, garlic bread, wine. Of course I ate like I was competing . . . Naira is an incredible cook. After dinner we had a contest to see who we thought would win -- the only rule was you could not pick Natascha or Michellie for the women. I went with Kate Major (I think top 3 are Natasha, Kate, and Lori Bowden -- not sure on the actual order). For the guys -- it is truly wide open there too. I picked Cameron Brown, but would not be surprised by Chris McCormack coming through first. Luke Bell could be in the mix too. OK, what the hell do I know?

See you after the race!

Mike Reilly -- the voice of Ironman!

At the carbo dinner on Thursday, the best line of the night may have been when Mike asked the youngest participant (a 20 year old guy from New Zealand) which part of the race he considered his best part. The guy immediately shot back, "the swim to the bike transition part".

The dinner was nice and they showed the movie "What It Takes" at the end. We watched most of it, but since we had a long drive, we stepped out just before the end. We'll definitely pick it up. It is nice to see the pros are subject to the same junk we are -- arriving at pools in the morning and finding them closed -- *&#%^@#!

Observations before the Big Day

The first surprise here was the undeveloped length of the Queen K that the bike goes through for quite some time. I guess I was thinking Hawaii -- beaches, hotels, palm trees, you know the beautiful brochures. Well the lava fields are truly desolate looking and span both sides of the highway. Sure, I've watched the races forever, but it just doesn't sink in until you see it for real -- at least not for me.

Then there was the swim start. It isn't on a large beach like I expected. (Again, selective memory at play from all those NBC specials). You literally walk down a set of steps to a tiny beach -- it could fit into my back yard. Then the waves hit you and continually push and pull you while you stand there. I guess they put some type of ramp up to exit the swim on race day -- I'll see tomorrow.

Anyway, the trip has been awesome. We are staying about 27 miles north of the race venue, so it is very quiet. The house is just incredible. We were supposed to be in a 4 bedroom house, but got moved to a 3 bedroom due to the earthquake. The only damage here is our bedroom's automatic blinds were stuck until Bill got them down. One of them got stuck down which wasn't a problem. However, we returned tonight to find maintenance had removed the blind. No problem -- Chuck is already in bed and we are not far behind. We're leaving here at 4:45 AM, so early to bed is good.

Now that I've done an Ironman and I've come here, I realize that there is one more challenge remaining. This race is a bigger gamble. It is often said that nutrition is the fourth discipline. Well, conditions are the fifth here in Kona (those in Madison last month will say -- rightfully so -- that conditions factor into all races). The heat, winds, surf, and Madame Pele are unmatched in potential for ferocity. We swam the course after the Underpants Run on Thursday and there were times I simply moved from left to right 3-4 feet over my spot on the coral.

I never thought I'd be here to witness the race. Now that I am, I really want to finish this race.

Damn it.

Go Chuck -- have a safe and fun race :-)

Short update

A quick note while Naira is making dinner and Chuck is relaxing. Today was supposed to be the "quiet" day. Well, we swam in the bay this morning and Chuck came down to tell us we were on CNN Headline news for the underpants run! Lovely! We ran the bike down this afternoon and didn't have much of a wait. Picked up some M-dot merchandise and made our way back to the house. Bill, Naira and I went for a run to experience the heat then came back to jump in the pool. We eat early and Chuck is off to bed.

I hope to post more later today. There have been many surprises and I am very happy to be here as a spectator . . . before I come to race :-) Yeah, yeah we'll see!

We found a bigger crack!

It takes a lot of kahunas to run through the streets like this!! Go, butt boy, go!

Just before the Underpants Run on Thursday morning! Boy was it hot --even at 8:00 AM. The best comment may have been as we ran from the car to the start -- someone asked, "Is that today?" . We all replied, "I sure hope so!".

Karen Smyers

Karen Smyers was absolutely delightful. She had a great story about the earthquake. She also mentioned that she loved the Cleveland race. What a gem!