One last IronMan post

My husband and I are both (surprise) a little sore.  There are blisters and rashes and achy muscles, as you'd expect.  On the drive home from Louisville yesterday, my husband would ask if I need to use a restroom, and then say, "but if we did that, we'd have to get out of the car, which would mean we'd have to STAND UP . . . " Rising from a chair is a bit ouchy.  

But we're both (as one of my friends happily described it "ridiculously proud" of each other.  I kept telling people that my main goal was to "not collapse".  And this was a meaningful goal; while I was on the run I saw ten (10) people who had collapsed, and another two who were violently and grossly nauseous.  I got to see the post-race medical auditorium that had rows and rows of cots, with people on them getting IVs because of dehydration and nausea.  As you can see, we didn't collapse, so I'm happy!

The thunderstorms that happened in Louisville the past few days really roiled the river up.  That meant for me, who has done open water swimming before, that I was on an exciting roller coaster speedway.  I had a blast dodging through other swimmers, zooming through waves, and then zipping along at incredible speed downstream.  I loved loved loved this current.  For my novice-swimmer husband, the river was more of a roller coaster/horror show, with scary waves that turned him in random directions and hordes of swimmers banging into him.  Fortunately, one of the volunteer kayakers decided to be his guide, and stayed by my guy until he finished.  He was the 4th-to-the-last person to finish the swim! 

For my husband, the effort of the swim slowed his bike way down.  But for me, biking was another fantastic adventure.  I flatted at mile 2 (my first segment was the slowest, even though that was the flattest section).   I changed the tire, but couldn't get it up to full pressure for another 15 miles, when I found a bike tech.  After that, I had lots of fun climbing and descending hills.  Louisville advertises the bike course as "challenging", but fortunately my home county is full of even more challenging hills to go up and down.  So I wound up *passing people*, which NEVER happened on my training rides.

Unfortunately, my bike shoes gave me blisters, and something about doing the bike twisted my knee, and so I had to walk the entire marathon.  That was a bummer, especially because once the sun went down I felt *great* and really wanted to jog -- but my knee wouldn't let me run.  (My buddies will understand just how significant this is when I say that I was actually *walking* down hills.  It was sad).  I've got my knee wrapped now, and the doc says I'm supposed to stay off of it for two weeks.  On the other hand, power walking instead of running means I didn't wind up like those 10 guys down on the pavement surrounded by medics.  

The run was fairly warm -- 92 degrees with a lot of sun -- almost no cloud cover at all.   It wasn't until I was on mile 10 of my walk that I saw my husband coming at me on the marathon, and that was the first time I knew he'd finished the swim.  My friends who followed the race on-line all knew it LONG before I did!  He ran/walked much of the marathon walking with a 54-year-old Black Hawk pilot.  After about 17 miles, my husband ditched the pilot and started running so he could finish on time.  

Now we've both finished!  We drove back home yesterday, and today we're going to work like normal people.   Life resumes!