Ironman Cozumel Pre-race

The week before we left was uneventful, but still pretty stressful. I was worried about forgetting something and Jeff was worried all our bags would be overweight. Jeff and I made lists and packed and repacked during the week. We had triathlon gear, Scuba gear, and stuff for 10 days. We ended up with 3 bags weighing 49.5 pounds and the bike box close to 70. On Monday, Jeff called me at work and told me while packing my bike he and Adrian found that my rear wheel was completely out of true, they tried to fix it but it was too bad to be fixed, so they had already decided I was going to borrow Adrian's Easton wheels and everything would be fine. I was not happy, I wanted MY wheels, I didn't want anything new or different for the biggest longest race ever! But I knew I had no choice and was really happy that they had figured out a good solution. After a couple of hours I was able to convince myself that it would be fine. Besides as Shayla said, "all the cool kids use different wheels on race day". While I was still unhappy and freaked out about the wheel situation, I went to pick up some antibiotics just in case I had tummy issues. The pharmacist told me "there's just one side effect, it's not common, but some people have ruptured their Achilles tendon while taking this" I thought "you must be freaking kidding me!" but I said "I'm doing an Ironman on Sunday, can you change this out for something that doesn't have that as a side effect?" She was super nice, she made a few phone calls and got it switched out for me. I think that was the last of the drama before we left, we drove to Houston and hung out with Jeff's parents on Tuesday. The flight on Wednesday was no big deal, almost everyone on the plane was doing the race or going to support/spectate.

Jeff and I got to Cozumel on Wednesday before noon and I was immediately SO happy to be here!
There were Ironman signs everywhere! This was taken from our balcony

Thursday morning Sandra and I went to swim at Chankanaab, beautiful water! I swam along looking at cool fish and corals in the water!Jeff assembled my bike
We did packet pick up Thursday afternoon and ran into Ingrid, Del and Kim on our way backLove our jackets!!

Early Friday morning Sandra, Del and I rode out to Chankanaab and back about 10 miles total. Adrian's wheels were fine, except that his magnet and my Garmin weren't quite getting along. My Garmin info would look normal one minute and next thing I know I'd be riding along and it would read 0 for speed and auto pause itself. It happened about 10-15 times on our 10 mile ride. Jeff did some adjustments and we hoped it would work properly for the race.

Jeff went out on the dive boat Friday morning and saw a shark and a lot of other cool stuff diving. I went back to Chankanaab for a second practice swim. Another awesome swim and I was pretty sure that the race would be the best swim ever! The only thing I was unsure of was the mass start, but you can't really practice that.

After swimming we watched the "dolphin encounters"
and Ingrid, Kim, Del and I hung out on the beach at Chankanaab until about noon. 2 Croatian guys took this picture for us and then we realized they were staying at our hotel, right across from Jeff and I!
On the way back from Chankanaab, we stopped at the bike mechanic area, Jeff had told me to get a new magnet if I could, Del needed skewer springs, and Ingrid needed something for her aerobottle. Ingrid got her stuff, but they didn't have what Del and I needed. Our cab driver was super nice and she told us there was a bike shop a few blocks back from the water front. We had lunch and walked back toward the bike shop, it was fairly far back into the "local part of town" where I had never been. We found the bike shop and just had to laugh! They had mopeds, old mountain bikes and kid's bikes, but not a road bike and certainly not a tri bike in sight! I knew they wouldn't have a magnet, Del asked about springs, but they didn't have those either. Oh well!

Friday afternoon I started putting together my bike and run transition bags and got really nervous. Jeff tried to make me feel better but it wasn't really working, then I remembered I had printed an email Kristen sent me just before we left and I pulled it out and read it and it put me right back in my happy and excited about the race mood. Thanks Kristen!


Getting ready to go for my last run before the race!

Saturday at lunch

Saturday afternoon was bike and gear bag check in
They put all of my bike info into a computer
I went to rack my bike, turn in bags and get body marked, and I ran into Sandra and Del!
Saturday pre-race dinner was at La Mission, one of our favorite restaurants in Cozumel. They were giving 50% off to athletes and 30% off to athlete companions! My parents got to Cozumel on Saturday and came to dinner with us. Ingrid's mom showed us the "Inspiration Stick" and all of our charms on it. She got a fish necklace for me.
The racers after pre-race dinner, Del, me, Kim, Wilmer, and Ingrid

Texas Tri Series Party

I had been looking forward to the Texas Tri Series party for a long time. I knew it would be hard to beat last year's party, but I knew it would be a lot of fun! The Tri Zoners decided we all wanted to go early and have a pre-party drink, so Kendra (my date) and I got there around 6 and met everyone in the lobby. We scoped out the awards, hats, and t-shirts before anyone else got there, I love the shirts and mine fits perfectly- Yay! First thing I said when I saw them was "this shirt is totally going to Cozumel with me!" I made sure I was at the front of the line to pick up awards and stuff, then went into the party room and saved us the two best tables, right in front of the stage!
Annette, Kristen, Kendra, Julie, Eva, me, Cindy, Vanessa, Carol, and Kim. Photo by Miguel Ortiz
Tri Series finisher award and t-shirt! Photo by Julie Wolf
Eva with her award

We enjoyed lots of free beer and wine and watching the slide show, while we waited for dinner time. Of course every time a Tri Zoner came on the slide show we all cheered. did I mention there was free beer? Photo by Miguel Ortiz

I don't know if I was extra hungry or if dinner was really that good, but I really enjoyed it! But I took forever to eat, I was too busy talking to everyone to finish eating, so they started the prize giveaways before I even finished eating!

The entire party is always a blast, but the prizes are the best part, because, honestly, it's fun to win anything, even if it's just a $1 coupon or something. They give away tons of small prizes at the Tri Series party, to the point that almost everyone wins something. Then they move on to the bigger prizes, I'd say valued between $100 and $400 and there are more of those than you'd think. Then the biggest prize of the night is 4 entries into the entire Tri Series for the next year- that's 5 triathlons and worth well over $600!! So you know we were all WAY excited!!
The first big Tri Zones winners were Cindy winning a bag and Kristen winning a bookThey both ended up trading for visors. Photo by Miguel Ortiz
Then I won a visor- yeah I got pretty excited about it. Photo by Julie Wolf
Eva won a visor that matched mine. Photo by....no clue, but it was on my camera
Vanessa and Miguel won matching hatsThen Vanessa traded for the book. Photo by...ummm ME, with Miguel's awesome camera!
By the end of the small prizes, every Tri Zoner had won something, most of us had won the visors like mine, Julie won a huge bag of Shot Bloks (which is on her head in the picture). Then they moved on to the bigger prizes- we didn't all win those prizes but Kendra won a swim speedsuit worth $300! Based on last year and this year, it looks like being my date at the Tri Series party is good luck!**

They give awards for the winners in each age group over the entire series and both Julie and Kim won their age groups! Then they recognized the volunteers who had volunteered at every event, including Annette and Tom & Carolyn who didn't get to come to the party.

Then they did the Grand Prize drawings. Last year Ingrid won and put my name down (cool story here), and Julie won too. We were all on the edge of our seats hoping Logan would call our number! He called out a number that was about 8 higher than mine and I knew it was someone from the second Tri Zones table, so I immediately pointed toward them and started screaming and cheering, it was JULIE again!! What a lucky lucky girl!!
At the end of the party with all our cool Tri Series winnings! Photo by Miguel Ortiz
Julie was the BIG winner of the night! She posted this picture on FB, notice the huge pile of Shot Bloks under the plaque and the pile of money that says "2011 Texas Tri Series"

** it turns out the speedsuit doesn't fit Kendra, but it does fit me, so that's actually 2 years in a row that my "date" to the Tri Series Party has won a big prize and then given it to me! Do I have the greatest friends or what?!?

Ironman Florida Watch Party!

Shayla named my house the "Virtual Ironman Viewing Headquarters" during the Buffalo Springs 70.3 watch party and I love it! My house is officially on 4square as the VIVHQ! So she even made signs this time! So cool!
People started showing up around 6:30 am to watch Coach Jen, Red, Nicki, Tom and Peggy race Ironman Florida. I put the coverage up on tv as soon as it started! Everyone was so excited to see our Iron Tri Zoners begin their race!!!

Drew did a pre race video of Nicki and a swim start video, we loved them and watched facebook constantly for more videos, he kept them coming all day!
We thought there was a lot of food for breakfast, but this was nothing compared to what the table and really the entire kitchen looked like by dinner time!

The swim started and in no time Coach Jen was halfway, soon everyone else was halfway and I was amazed at how fast everyone was swimming! Their final swim times were crazy fast!! Once everyone was on the bike, we could watch the trackers and see their progress, way fun! The trackers worked really well and even when they switched over to the new Beta version, Shayla figured it out quickly and we realized the new version was better anyway. I think the only scare we had was when Coach Jen's tracker stopped working for awhile, we worried she got a flat or something, but after a quick text to Kristen we knew it was just a tracker issue.
Shayla brought posters so we could make a sign for each athlete and everyone could sign it.

Kendra making baked potatoes for lunch- yum!

It seemed like everyone was off the bike in really good time, I think they all rode so well that they could have crawled the marathon and still beat the cut off time!Once our racers started running more people came over and things got more exciting!
We had 4 laptops and a huge tv to track our athletes, watch the live coverage, post to facebook and the Tri Zones forum, and download pictures and video.
Coach Jen was first to finish!! I can't even imagine being that fast!!
Waiting for the rest of our Tri Zoners to finish.

Everyone else was pretty close together, Red first. Shayla decided to take a video of us cheering and going crazy as Red finished.
then I had to take a break to eat dinner while we watched for Nicki to come in. Shayla had to leave and put Jeff in charge of videoing the finishes, we had a false alarm for Nicki, and the video Jeff took is pretty funny. Then we actually got to see Nicki finish!
Next was Tom
and then Peggy! although we had a false alarm for Peggy too, it's pretty tough to recognize people coming down that dark finish chute!
All our Tri Zoners were in in less than 14:30! Wow!! I had planned to be up until midnight watching but it was only 9:30 and they were all already finished!!

They all did so amazing and made it look easy! I'm sure it wasn't easy at all and I can't wait to hear all their individual stories!

Congratulations!!! You all did awesome!!!!

My fridge FULL of leftover food! Jeff and I will be eating well all week!