Ironman Chattanooga 2017 - I was the best damned athlete I could be

My apologies, but this is going to be long because its more than just the day of the race, its the entire experience.

Gwen and I flew out of Boston early in the morning , Wednesday, September 20th and we arrived in Nashville, TN long before lunch time.  After we got our rental, we had the opportunity to explore the Nashville area.  We found a great little place for lunch and got some suggestions of places to see before we headed to Chattanooga.  We poked around a bit, went in some truly touristy shops, looked at some leather boots (nope - didn't buy any - no place to put cleats).  We weren't sure of 'rush' hour traffic so we headed off to Chattanooga - which is in a different time zone than Nashville - who knew.

Its about a 2 hour drive between the two cities but its all highway and there are some incredible views along the way.  Once we arrived in Chattanooga our first 'challenge' was how to get into the condo we rented.  It was rather comical but once we figured it out the inside was a lovely surprise.  We were only about 2 miles from Athletes Village and the Tennessee River.

God bless Gwen, I had my first meltdown when we drove to the river and went to check it out.  I started to cry and could barely breathe ( I was assured afterwards that this is normal).  The river looked enormous, far bigger than the Merrimack River, and I think I told Gwen I didn't want to do the race any more, that it was far beyond my abilities and what the hell was I thinking.  We met a couple of girls from Canada that had just gotten out of the water and talked to them for a bit.

Breakfast of Champions

Thursday morning Gwen and & hung out on the deck of our condo - note Little Debbie was part of every breakfast -  before heading to Athlete's Village.  I'm going to blame taper because I was 'wearing' my emotions on my cuff all weekend.  I cried at every table I went to.  The enormity of all of it was overwhelming.  I can't say enough about how wonderful all of the volunteers were.

For my non-triathlon friends, Athlete's Village is more like an expo - but on a much smaller scale.  And check-in - for this race anyway consisted of:
Table 1 - Show your ID & USAT card... tears
Table 2 - Get your wristband - this must stay on until after the event is over... more tears
Table 3 - Pick up backpack containing 5 bags that will be used to prepare for race day.... more tears
Table 4 - Pick up timing chip and have it activated... and more tears

 After we got all my 'stuff' we headed off to pick up Oz from Tri-Bike Transport.  I was really happy to get my bike back.  We brought her back to the condo and then headed out to drive the bike and run course.  It was pretty cool driving thru Georgia knowing that I was going to be spending about 6 hours there on Sunday with Oz.

On Friday I needed to do my shake out ride, make sure nothing needed adjusting.  I had the opportunity to ride with Charlie Catalano, one of Peej's athletes who was also doing the race. It was great to meet him and he's such an
inspiration.  After our ride, I headed back to the condo and Gwen and I headed out to take in Rock City/Lookout Mtn.  We had a great time and it was beautiful.... breathtaking.  Then we headed back to Nashville to pick up Peej from the airport.

Saturday was 'Pancake Day'.  Charlie and I went for a quick swim, just to get a feel for the water and then it was time for pancakes.  It was great to have breakfast with Charlie, his wife Chas, Gwen and Peej.  It was so enlightening to listen to Charlie and Peej talk about what the kept them alive - insulin and how to manage it and still have an active life.  After breakfast things started getting very real - time to pack all those bags and bring them and Oz back to Athletes Village.

Not sure why but I slept pretty good and felt pretty good, nervous, but good.  As I had my breakfast I finished get all my stuff together and we headed off to Athletes Village.  Once there I took care of making sure Oz was ready to go, dropped off the rest of the bags and then we got on the bus and headed to the swim start.

 The Swim - 1:15:19 1:48/100 yds.
I am always so anxious about swim starts, once I get in the water and get knocked about a couple of times I'm ok.  When I signed up for this race I didn't realize until after I hit enter that A-the start is a jump into the water and B-last year was not wetsuit legal. But this swim.... OMG .... it was awesome.  The way this start is set up you can't really see the swim start until you're almost on top of it. Once you see it the volunteers are yelling at you to go .... so no sitting down to pop in -you just go!!! And my race was underway.  Another nice thing about this start was that they had a floating "lily pad" - for lack of a better term an inflatable min-dock- maybe 100ish yards from the where you jumped in  This little dock made my race, it gave me the opportunity to get my heart rate down, get the water out and adjust my goggles and find the first buoy and I was off.  When we jumped in, the sun was to our backs and you could see the fog and haze just above the water it was so pretty so I didn't mind that one of the things that was in my race plan was to stop and take in the moment,  and I did just that.  I stopped and took in my surroundings - holy crap I'm in the middle of the Tennessee River - its beautiful. was beautiful.    and the next thought - I'm swimming a friggin' Ironman!!! I got here!!!! Ok - time to get moving.  It what seemed like a very short amount of time I saw the red buoys.... the way out of the river was just beyond that.  As I got closer the buoys - maybe 100 yds - there was a female athlete holding on to a kayak and the kayaker was trying hard to encourage her to finish her swim. As I got close to her I tried to talk to her, I told her we were almost done that the stairs were just beyond the red buoys.... I did manage to get her to start swimming again.  I hope she finished!

I'm ready to go back to Chattanooga because I loved this swim start so much.

The Bike - 102.5 miles 8:06

It never occurred to me that I wouldn't finish the bike portion of this race.  The course was so manageable - not easy - but manageable. During training I had purposely done a lot of hills so that I'd be prepared.  I thought this course, for the most part, was really pretty.  When you cross the state line from Tennessee into Georgia, the Georgia State Troopers are out of their cruisers welcoming you to Georgia - pretty cool. 

Here are a couple of things from the bike that I'm really pleased about

• Grabbing water bottles at aid stations - pouring the water over me, drinking, throwing the bottle away and not falling over or hitting anything
• Watching and following the fast age groupers down a descent - taking the same fault-line and remembering that fault-line the second time around
• Keep my head in the game on the second loop - even though it was very, very lonely.  Said good bye to each hill and the various baby cows and the steer with the humongous horns.

Leaving Special Needs

'Special Needs'  - I finally understand how the heck that works.  I had read a post about freezing your extra water/nutrition bottles the night before and putting them in a throw away cooler.  Boy did that work great!!!! I also put a can of the sparkling cranberry juice in the bag.  That juice never tasted so good and my bottles were slushy -  a win-win. 

This is also where I yelled at my coach for the first time!!!! Sorry Peej! My feet were absolutely on fire - major hot spots on the balls of both of feet.  I was trying to adjust my socks hoping to fix the problem and Peej was trying to be helpful, and was 'strongly' reminding me that I needed to get moving to make the cutoff - my response 'I KNOW - I'M GOING!. 

The hot spot problem continued the remainder of the day unfortunately and it's hard to pedal effectively when you're curling your toes.

In the end, I just ran out of time.  It was hard to accept but I wasn't going to argue with the volunteer when I was told I needed to get in the van (unlike another woman on the course) but I will admit that I ugly cried.  Not a sob but a full out ugly cry.

It took a couple of days to put my day in perspective and I'll readily admit that it was very difficult to see everyone walking around on Monday with their much deserved finishers shirts and medals.  I thought it was going to be tough facing everyone when I came home - I could not have been more wrong about that.  I have wonderful friends and teammates who made sure I understood what I had accomplished - even though I didn't finish I did do all the work to belong at the start line.

So I walk away from race day knowing that I was the best athlete that I could be on that day - no more, no less. 

I also gained more insight to what my 'why' was for doing the race and it wasn't what I thought.  As I headed to the start line my 'why' was to let Walter and Melissa know that I was healing and that I had found a way to move forward.  The reality is,  Walter and Melissa already knew that, I'm the one that needed to know that I'm healing and that I've found a way to move forward without leaving Walter behind.

Ironman Chattanooga - I will be back - and watch out, next time will be for me!!!