Just got back from a 2-day trip up to Penticton, BC to watch yesterday's 2006 Ironman Canada. Some friends of mine, Todd and Karolina have been training like crazy for their first IM and it's been inspirational/educational to train with them and watch their journey. They'd rented a house in Penticton and were kind enough to offer Deb and I a place to bunk out, so we headed up there for the weekend. The original plan was to sign up for IMC 2007, but since we're doing IMAZ, that wasn't really a factor. It was a great experience to see the race.
Penticton is a great race venue. It's about a 6-hour drive from the Seattle area. We made it up there without too much trouble. We checked out the area and offered any help we could to Todd & Karolina since they were just hours from race start. They had things pretty well under control so we went into town, walked around a bit, found a Sharpie to mark wetsuits with, then had a drink and headed home. The town was buzzing getting ready for the race.
We got up with them at 4am and then went down to the race around 6:20 to catch the 6:45 Pro start, followed by the 7am general start. It's a long day out there. We watched the beginning of the bike, took a 4 hour break, then drove out to see the end of the last large climb on the bike. We came back into town and caught the beginning of the run, then had some more time to wander around. We saw the men's and women's overall winners come through and then watched lots of people finishing. Todd and Karolina both deserve a ton of respect for their efforts. Todd for battling through some physical issues that would have made most people quit, and Karolina for simply having an amazing race day at her very first IM. Todd's bad luck was very frustrating but he's trained his arse off and clearly has the potential for an equally amazing performance (time-wise) so I'm lookin forward to that. It was totally a privledge to be there and experience it with them. I had walked away from the finish aways so I could jog in with Todd a bit. I waited and waited and waited, and started to get worried (it's an IM, so seeing ambulences going by isn't, unfortunately, uncommon, esp on a hot day like yesterday). Finally my phone rang and Deb says "Todd finished, where are you?" Somehow I missed him which I'm really bummed about but oh well.
Seeing an IM up close really is an amazing thing. I had some stupid idea that only the hard-core people showed up at an IM but it was more like other races than I expected. There was definitely a wide variety of shapes and sizes there. But Ironman is more than a race to most people - it's a dream and a sacrifice and a statement that anyone can do something "impossible" if they decide to. It was great to see the pros finish in 9 hours but it really doesn't compare to watching the Age-Groupers finish in 10:38 or 12:15 or 14:30 or longer. Being in the finishing chute to see some of those folks come through, many with their families in tow, is really something amazing and hard to describe. Watching some of them physically wrecked but absolutely on top of the world in the atheletes area after the race is great too. Looking forward to being on the other side of the fence. T-Minus: 8 Months. What a great way to start thinking about training again.
Oh, and because sign-up was such as snap and was non-committal (keep the jokes to yourselves, please), I grabbed a spot. I wasn't really planning on doing the race but I've got until September 15th to decide. There's lots of things that can go wrong at an IM. And unlike a sprint (or even a half), you can't just sign up for another one. It could be a year's wait. So I'm trying to figure out if having a "back up" race is worth it and if I can stomach solid year of training. Yikes.