By the time I arrived at the race at about 8:45 and the bike was well under way. I saw Michellie Jones speed by to a big cheer from the crowd. A few members of the L.A. Tri Club I don't know also went by, but I dutifully shouted out, "go, L.A. Tri!"
By 9:00 It was starting to get hot.
Near the transition area in Tempe is the Hayden Butte. It overlooks all of Tempe and it seemed to me it would be a good place to watch the event. I decided to hike up there before it got too hot. The view is fantastic. You can see all of Tempe, including ASU's Sun Devil Stadium, and it was a good way to see a lot more of the bike course. However, there were a few hikers up there, but not a lot of triathlon fans, so after about a half an hour, I went back down to be amongst the cheering throngs.
I wondered around for a while getting different views and finally settled on a spot on one of the bridges over Tempe Town Lake where a could view the end of the bike course and also look down into the transition area and also view part of the run when it started. I stayed there until the first pros came into transition and then ran by.
I still needed to get my planned training run in and so I took off for about an hour. While I was running, I really got an appreciation for how hard it was out there. I was only going to run for five to six mile, but it was brutal. Hot, windy, dry! I went through all the water in my fuel belt by about 3.5 miles in. I was sweating because of the heat, but because of the lack of humidity and wind, there was almost no sweat on my body. I had been slathering sunscreen on myself about every half an hour and whatever sweat I did have seemed to make the sunscreen drip into my eyes. I just kept telling myself, "you have it easy. If you want to be an Ironman you have to keep on going." I did and I got in about 5.5 miles. I was glad it was over and I was glad I was not competing that day. I sure hope it is cooler and less windy next November.
After my run I went down to the transition area. The Ironman races are incredibly well organized. Competitors don't have to worry about finding their rack space and parking their bikes. As soon as each athlete dismounts, a volunteer takes the bike, another volunteer announces the competitor's number, another volunteer grabs the bike to run transition bag and the athlete goes off into a changing tent. As nice as that is, there was no doubt that many of there athletes looked wasted. The winds and heat had brutalized them. It seemed to me that an unusually large number were dropping out. When I later looked at the results, there were over 300 DNFs, that's over 18% of the participants, the 3rd highest rate in Ironman history. Wow! On most Ironman races there are about 50.
The men's pro race was quite exciting. I was very happy when, as the winner was less than a minute from the finish, suddenly over the PA system Black Sabbath's Ironman came blaring out. That was totally rockin' hot! Jozsef Major came from 4th place with about three miles to go to first. It wasn't quite a sprint to the finish line, but he beat TJ Tollakson by a mere 17 seconds. The first four finishers athletes finished with 1:13 of each other. The fifth place finisher Rene Goehler collapsed at the finish, always quite dramatic. I spent a few more hours there and then finally went back to my cousin's house. I ended up watching the quite a number of finishers on the coverage at Ironman.com.
All photos were taken from Ironman.com and were taken by Lee Gruenfeld.
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