Ironman Lake Stevens 70.3 Race Recap Part 1

Happy Wednesday, everyone! I hope you have had a great week so far and had a fun weekend as well!

As I am sure you've just been dying to read this, I finally have a chance to write my recap from my Ironman 70.3 on Sunday - yay! As I started to write this, I realized that I have way too much to say about the actual race, so I'll do 2 separate blog posts so I don't put you all to sleep!

Saturday
Our friend Kevin came into town for work Friday night so we packed up the car Saturday morning and headed out of town. I had decided last week that it was probably wise to get a hotel room for Saturday night instead of driving almost 1.5 hours to get up there, come back, just to turn around at like 4am Sunday to go to the race. We arrived at the Holiday Inn in Everett, about 8 miles from the start line, checked in and headed to Lake Stevens High School where packet pick up was.

The guys decided to ride the 56 mile bike course while Julia and I went to packet pick up and hoped to rest for the day. That was the plan anyway... more on that in a minute.

Here they are ready to ride:

Kevin, Rob and Dave

 I bid them adieu (I know, fancy French word to get your day started) and Julia and I made our way into the expo- we were greeted by this cute homemade sign:  

This is a fairly small Ironman event - only about 1100 registrants so the expo was tiny too.
Registration process took me all but 5 minutes to get through. The volunteers were really nice, but as I entered, they said "Athletes only beyond this point", looking at Julia. I politely explained to them that she was not even 3 and that I was by myself with her. Not sure what they were expecting me to do, but they let her through. Sheesh.

Yea, no joke, people...No. Joke.

I love that they do this - everyone's name is on the back of the shirt!

And there I am - it's even spelled right!

The shirt I got for Julia - I couldn't resist (along with a cowbell for her)

Panic much?

We were there for about 45 minutes and Julia needed to go - she was way too crabby and I had to try to get her to nap. My plan was to drive around for a bit to let her sleep, grab a bite to eat and then drop my bike off at transition starting at 2pm.

I was about 10 minutes into my drive, Julia finally fell asleep (thank God) and my phone beeped. It was Rob telling me to come find him and that he had already had 2 flat tires. So I turned around (no food yet) and headed back to find them. Thought he was all set, left them to ride and 5 minutes later...another text. Another flat. This time we put Rob's bike on the rack, he got in and we headed to the local bike shop. They discovered the problem for him thankfully. $100 later we were back out the door and dropped my bike at transition along the way. I stopped and got pretzels to snack on so I didn't pass out.

Rob wanted to find Kevin and Dave so we drove the course in reverse to try and catch them (well not really IN reverse, but rather we back tracked. I'm a good driver and all, but not quite talented enough to drive in reverse like that! Ha)! After 25 minutes or so we turned a corner and there they were. So off he went again to ride the rest of the course.

This whole ordeal took several hours and I was running on fumes. Julia fell back asleep in the car so I drove through, got a cheeseburger to tied me over (I know - good pre-race food huh?) and parked the car in a random parking lot for a few minutes while she slept. We then went back to the hotel to rest before dinner. However, I still had to organize all my stuff, put my numbers on, get my nutrition ready etc. so it wasn't very relaxing. It was a stressful day  - I think I was in the car driving around for about 5 hours that day. Not ideal.

We met up with TriGirl, her hubby and Ann Marie for dinner - thankfully they came to pick Julia and me up since the guys were still not back at 7:15pm! (although they did meet us at the restaurant a short time later) We had a fun time at Scuttlebutt Brewery (I so wanted a beer but I didn't get one), got some ice cream and headed back to the hotel. Julia apparently decided it was a good night to decide not to sleep and in turn I got very little sleep as well.

Race Day

I got up before my 4:30am alarm, got situated and met up with our friend Aaron who graciously offered to pick me up. As I was in the lobby, Mirinda Carfrae and Tim O'Donnell passed by on their way. (for those who may not know, they are 2 of the top triathletes in the world!). Pretty cool to see them. We got to the start/finish with no problem, set up all my stuff and I wandered. It was neat to be around all these great athletes and I tried to soak it all in.

transition area

checking out the finish line

my stuff all set up

Mirinda Carfrae in the blue helmet

My friend Christy was volunteering - so happy to see a familiar face!

Check back tomorrow for Part 2 of my recap - the actual race!

Thanks for reading!