I'll write more later when I've got more time and energy. I figure most of you reading this saw the results from Sunday, I'm 10 minutes closer and that's nothing to sneeze at. But just a quick thought that came across when I was writing to another friend about the race...
This race seemed much harder than my first two. I think part of it is because the "Wow!" factor wears off and you're out there trying to compete for minutes and seconds against very capable competition. Because you're actually racing - against yourself and your limits and your fellow athletes - it's a bit more stressful. For some reason, the full enormity of the difficulty of an Ironman struck me in a way it hadn't in races prior. I crossed the finish line and said "I'm not sure I want to do that again."
But all relationships have their ups and downs, right? Ironman is much more than race day. It's just race day that holds the whole thing together.
I realized the best part of Ironman is the day after. Yesterday morning, a group of us had breakfast at a local Coeur d'Alene greasy spoon and told war stories as we limped back and forth to the car. Regardless of how each person's day turns out, there's a special bond that's formed between the folks that just went through the experience. It takes a few days for most people to get their head around their race and their perspective on it, and sharing it with friends is an important part of that process. Everyone fights their own private battles out there.
Then we went back to the house and cleaned up a bit - I had to go up and down the stairs on all fours - then took a slow walk to the expo hall to look at Kona qualifiers and race pictures. We had a nice snack in Coeur d'Alene and joined all the other stiff-legged Iron-geeks in their finisher hats and T-Shirts. Then we went to A & W on the way out of town and got a root beer float, a large fries, and some burgers. All of which I ate in about 5 minutes. That served as a good reminder of how my stomach felt all day on Sunday, but that's another story. The day after is this time warp when nothing else really matters - the exact opposite of the race day time warp where nothing else matters.
It all balances out in the end.