Madison was great. Alicia and I both enjoyed it.

We got to walk around the capitol a bit on Saturday checking out the Farmers Market as the city ramped up for the Badgers game. The Badgers game was the main event of the weekend. It filled all the hotels, including mine, with fans and spectators. We stayed on the east side about 6 miles from the capitol right across Route 151 from a mall. We had to drive back and forth to Monona Terrace a few time daily. The lake was pretty nice. I did a practice swim on Friday which relaxed my gittery nerves almost as soon as I entered the water. Friday evening they had a Dinner and Mandatory Meeting where they introduce a man named Frank he was 76 and he gave a short speech about how Ironman Triathlons saved his life. Graham the main player in IM said don't let Frank beat you. I swam a 1/3 of the course in about 32 min all by myself so I figured I could do it in 1.5 hours easy. I never got a chance to ride my bike or run before the race. I just tested the bike (about 6 miles) to make sure everything was working and it did in fact work quite well.


Race day

The fire alarm in the Comfort Inn hotel went off at 12:54 AM. I grabbed my pill and went down to the parking lot jumped in the SUV I rented and tried to go back to sleep, but then the drama began. The girlfriend of the guy who pulled the fire alarm snitch on him to the cops, so he start slapping her around until the cop who came to turn off the fire alarm came out to arrest him. I went back upstairs to rest until the wake up alarms sounded at 3:30 AM.

I got out to the race start early, about 5:30, just so I could find parking about 5 blocks from the finish. Just close enough but I still had to walk around enough to cool down after the race. I put on my wet suit an headed down the spiral, I would later, after the swim, have to make my way back up. I waited until 6:50 to get in the water. I thought all I could stand was 10 minutes of treading water, but I found it to be very relaxing and a great way to start.



By 7 AM there were 2076 people in the Lake Monona and the mass start began at the sound of a cannon.

I was amazed at how open the swim was and I was still knocking into people. I got caught up with some swims I thought were going faster than they were, and behind the one guy who was about 7 feet who was doing the breast stroke almost the entire way. Every time I tried to pass him his foot would fly out of the murky water. Eventually I got past him to finish my first official 2.4 mile swim in 1:40. It was 10 minutes slower then I expected, but I was pleased.

Making up the spiral was my biggest concern about the whole race. My feet are not concrete ready like many of the other folk who made it out of the water with me. I tried to run, but I hurt so much I just walked and it still hurt. I just didn't want to have hurt feet for the run.



T1 was great and I guess I took a little more time than I needed. I changed into full cycling gear as comfort was a major issue on a 112 mile ride. When I go to my bike there were only about 100 bikes left. I rode down the other spiral and out onto the course in style. I kept saying to myself hold back until I get to Verona. I held back well averaging 16 mph. Then I picked up the pace nicely catching some triathletes along the way. I was cruising up and down the farmland into a wind from the south blowing continuously at about 20 mph. But I was doing fine until the first sign of a cramp hit me at about mile 30. It was much to soon for me to be feeling any thing like this, so I had to slow down to ward off the killer cramps so many had already started to succumb to. There were participant about every 1/2 mile forced to the side of the road. 95% by cramps. I only saw one flat fix and some ones chain popped. I had my watch set to go off every 10 minutes to drink, stand and eat GU, but I had to usually stand long before the alarm t