Windy Possibilities: 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!!!!