Volunteer Weekend

I'm going to start at the end of the weekend because I am a pretty sappy person and wanted to share this. Driving home from St. George yesterday, I saw many vehicles with bikes from the Ironman 70.3 race. I too had my bike on my rack as well as a friend's bike who had competed in the race. Even though I didn't compete Saturday, I felt this bonding experience whenever I passed one of these cars. I thought, yes, I am apart of this crowd! I am SO GRATEFUL for that and for the entire tri community for all that I've gained in the past few years. Okay, done being emotional!

It was great fun to volunteer again this year. I did body marking and was excited to see everyone first thing in the morning when the adrenaline is working hard. The day was beautiful - even at 4:30 am.

The buses were all unloaded and the swim start was going to begin. The pro men started it off, followed by the pro women and then the relay teams and age groupers.

I had a perfect viewpoint for the exit from T1 towards the bike mount line. I hope everyone could hear me screaming their names!

When we could leave the lake, I went home for a bit until the road opened up and I could make it into town to see the run portion. It was a very hot day and the Salt Lake and Southern Utah Tri Clubs had an aid station where they were handing out ice, water and otter pops. It was the perfect location to cheer on the runners!

Coach Jen was having a blast with the megaphone!

I stayed until I saw most of my friends come through the run area but had to head out to meet my mother-in-law for dinner. We also had an appointment for facials at the Red Mountain Spa. If you've never gone there and want to splurge sometime, check it out! We arrived early enough to sit and relax before our scheduled time. I had to laugh a little because I can never still my mind and I remembered this funny pic.

Yep, that's me!

It was an early to bed night because I was set to ride 100 miles on Sunday. This was it, my final big workout prior to IMTX taper. I am grateful to Carmen and James for riding the first 30 with me. It was a beautiful morning again. No wind, perfect temperature. For the first 3 hours anyway. :-) James and Carmen headed back to Sand Hollow after the first loop and off I continued. Besides the time and mileage, I was fine tuning my nutrition. As the day went on, the wind picked up and the heat was rising. I was able to use my mom-in-law's house as a pit stop but soon realized I was going to run out of nutrition. I stopped to take a drink by the cows in the picture above. They didn't like it and started talking to me! I finished up at 6 hours and a little over 80 miles, with 4700 feet of climbing.

I learned a lot yesterday, like that I need to reapply sunscreen on my face since I wipe my nose and rub it all off. I learned how much nutrition I need to plan on and what I can carry. And most of all, I learned that I can do this!

13 days.