yesterday morning, mr. h-s and i woke up early and biked over to the lake to watch the beginning of an ironman triathalon (2+ mile swim, 112 mile bike, marathon). we got there a little too late to actually see the people before they got into the lake, but we were there to see the first few get out (in under an hour!) and we cheered them through the first bit of their bike ride, then we went back to watch the last few people out of the water. they have time limits for each leg of the race and if you don’t make it in before the cut-off, you can’t complete the race. the cut-off for the swim is two hours and twenty minutes. we saw (and screamed our heads off for) a woman who came out of the water at two hours, nineteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds–wow! (because this is a happy blog, i won’t spend too much time on the woman who came out thirty seconds later.)
at about two hours, seventeen minutes, everyone’s favorite ironman–the one who, at 77 years old is the oldest competitor and who races every year–came out of the water. mr. happy stuff was watching the race at a different vantage point and told me later that when he came out, he looked sort of disoriented and the volunteers were trying to herd him over to the bike area when finally his wife called his name from the crowd and he went over to her and gave her a kiss before he went on to the next round. i heard rumor later that he gives her a kiss between each leg of the race each year.
then, last night, we went up to the finish line around 10:30 to watch the last finishers. it’s very exciting! the cut-off for the whole race is 17 hours (midnight). the 77 year old competitor came in two minutes after that. we all stayed to cheer him on.
afterwards, mr. h-s and i were talking about another friend of his that likes to run. a lot. one of the types of races he does are time-based instead of distance based. as in, “how far can you run in 24 hours? 48 hours?” mr. h-s says they have a short course (maybe 5 miles?) that they just run laps around. as i tried to wrap my mind around the concept of running in a “circle” for 48 hours (they take naps, apparently) i decided that i’d almost rather sign up for an ironman race. mr. happy stuff agreed that it takes a “special kind of crazy person” to sign up for endurance races like that. i think i’ll stick with shorter competitions for now. at least until the ironman competition decides to allow swimmers to carry a pool noodle along with them in the lake.
