Ironman Florida Race Report: Prerace

Ironman Florida: Prerace


Wednesday: The drive down to Panama City Beach was uneventful. No turn-arounds to go back for some crucial forgotten piece of gear, no unexpected delays to slow us down, just lots of farmland and open road the whole way.
We made it into town about 7pm local time and made a quick stop by Publix to get the basic groceries for the week. It’s amazing how quickly the basics can turn into a full cart....especially when you have a nine year old helping. We unloaded the car, put everything away, had supper and got into bed around midnight. I never sleep well the first night away from home and this night would be no different. I tossed and turned most of the night and got maybe 3 or 4 hours of sleep.

Thursday: I was up early Thursday morning. Once the sun came up I was glad to see how calm the ocean was. It was like glass. Hardly any waves at all. The weather predictions through Saturday were pretty much the same for each day. I hoped the water conditions would remain as calm as this morning. I woke DJ and KJ up about 8:30 and we headed to registration around 9:30.
There were people EVERYWHERE at the Boardwalk. It was nuts. The line for registration was at least 200 yards long. We made it to the end of the line and slowly made our way towards the registration tent.

Me and KJ waiting in line at registration.

An hour later I entered the tent. Once inside, I had to complete the form, sign the waiver, get weighed, get my race packet, verify my chip and get my backpack. In and out in about 10 minutes. After leaving the tent I tracked down D and K and we walked around the expo. We bought some stuff from the Ironman store and then toured the rest of the vendors. As we were walking through the expo, I looked over and happened to notice Heather Fuhr sitting over on the side of the throughway. Then I noticed Paula Newby-Frasier standing not far from her. How freakin cool is that!

PNF (standing), Heather Fuhr (sitting)

Then we happened up on a press conference with Bella Comeford, Nina Craft, Joe Bonness, and others. Mike Reily was out in the audiance. Man, how many other sports can you get up that close to the pros and rock stars of the sport? Not too many.

Pro press conference

Mike Reily (blue shirt)

We toured around the expo for a little longer and then headed back to the condo. We chilled around the pool and beach for a while and then rested a bit before heading out for dinner. Before heading out for the meeting, I started going through the packet trying to figure out what goes where and what to include.

Digging through the packet

We decided to skip the official pasta dinner and went to Pineapple Wiley’s instead. They have a cool pier there and we decided to eat out on the pier. The sunset was awesome that afternoon and KJ snapped a great shot as the sun was sinking into the gulf (she’s quite the budding photographer).

We made it to the Boardwalk early for the athlete’s meeting. The dinner and meeting was held in a large banquet room and it was already full by the time we got there. I had to grab a couple of chairs for us from out in the lobby. There were a couple hundred folks behind us that had to stand during the meeting. The meeting was not that different than other pre-race meetings I’ve been to, just on a much larger scale and with Mike Reily as the host. The meeting rapped up around 9pm and we headed back and made it to bed around 10:30. I slept like a rock.

Friday: I was up early again and the water was just as calm Friday morning as Thursday morning. The only thing on the agenda for Friday was to pack my T1 and T2 bags, do a short bike and run, check in my bike, drop off the bags and then rest as much as possible.
There was no line at all for bike check-in. I cruised right in and racked my bike.....at the back corner of transition. I dropped off my gear bags and we headed back to the room to rest.
I was oddly calm. I figured I’d be a wreck the day before the race, but I wasn’t. I actually took a nap when we got back to the condo. DJ made some of her awesome spaghetti and we had an early dinner. I got in bed around 7 pm...yep....7pm and was asleep by 8 or 8:30. I slept like a baby. I woke up once to use the bathroom and went right back to sleep.

Saturday: The alarm sounded at 3:30am and I got right up. No snoozing today...
My pre-race breakfast consisted of 2 scrambled eggs, two pieces of toast with a bit of butter, grits with a little butter (no self respecting Georgian would start such a big day without grits), and a Mountain Dew. Pretty much your average American breakfast. Nothing too fancy.
I was still calm and went about my routine of getting ready. 4:30am came and we headed out for the race. We decided to park at Spinnaker instead of taking the shuttle bus from Wal-Mart. We made it to transition shortly after 5am. Instead of doing bodymarking outside of transition, they had bodymarkers spread throughout transition. This is a great change. I walked right into transition and was able to get right to my bike without any delay.
When I got to my bike to start setting up, the reality of what I was about to do really started to sink in. I’m not an overly emotional kinda guy, but I found myself having to fight back the emotions as I started taking the gear out of my bag. I totally hadn’t expected to feel this way. Throughout the year of training, anytime I’d think about the race, I imagined the point that I might get emotional would be at the finish line, not alone in the predawn before the race. But as the acoustic version of Collective Soul’s Shine played over the PA system and I thought about the year and what it took to get me to this point, the weight of the moment became quite heavy. I thought about my older brother who lost his life at the age of 20 in a car accident and how proud he would be of me. I thought about my father who lost his battle with alcoholism a decade ago and how proud he would be...even though he’d have thought I was nuts. And I thought about the year of sacrifice that D and K had endured and how this day was as much theirs as mine. A tear or two managed to slip by, but I finally gave myself a Chuck Norris mental slap back to reality and pulled it together. Whew.....
After getting everything set up and double checking... five or six times....I found a nice lady to ink me up. I looked around for Lana and Michele to do the deed but didn’t see them. I made the first of several porta potty stops and then met back up with D and K. I got into my wetsuit and we headed down to the beach about 6:30. There were people everywhere. We saw one of the local Ironman guys from back home and talked to him for a few minutes. About 6:45 I gave D and K a final hug and kiss and headed into the holding area. The pros headed out at 6:50. The pro field was huge. Well over 100. Mike Reily started calling out the time remaining. Three minutes to go! The energy level was through the roof. Then Black Sabbath’s Ironman started rocking through the PA. 1 minute to GO! One of the last thoughts that ran through my mind right before the start was, somewhere out in cyberspace my countdown clock is about to hit zero.

No turning back now....