2008 IRONMAN BRAZIL RACE/TRAVEL REPORT

Greetings to all. Thanks for all your great wishes before my trip and congratulation emails after the event. Below is a pretty detailed race and trip report for my Ironman Brazil experience. But first, an answer to the question that many people asked…why is my nickname “Cheater Wheels.” Basically, I was the first person in my training group to show up with expensive aero/carbon wheels (http://www.flash-pointracing.com/fp60). Others in the group had the wheels, but none had been training with them. My buddy Greg, decided that because I was using said wheels, I was cheating, and hence the nickname. (Don’t worry, of the 8 of us who did the race, 4 of us ended up riding with ‘cheater wheels’ but the nickname is mine!)

For those of you who don’t want to read the day by day, hour by hour description below, here’s a brief summary. Going to Brazil and competing in the Ironman, was one of the greatest experiences in my life. This experience was greatly enhanced by having 7 of my fellow co-workers who had trained the past 6 months with me. In addition to the 8 of us, my dad was there, Tracy, fellow Ironman Greg’s girlfriend, Ben’s parents and Hector’s father. The race was by far the most difficult athletic endeavor I have ever undertaken, yet it was one of the most fun things I’ve done – yes, believe it or not exercising for 12 ½ hours was fun (ok, it was painful at times too!). My official finish time 12:26:01 (although my finish picture has the time at 12:25:57 – don’t ask me to explain how they took a picture of me across the finish line, at 12:25:57, yet my official time is 12:26:01!). And believe it or not, yes, I would do another one…not saying when, but I would certainly do it again! So that’s the brief summary, for those of you who have some time, below is a much more detailed story of the trip and the event.

THE TRAVEL
I left for Brazil at the wee hour of 4:45am on Tuesday, May 20th. The car service picked me up and the bike case would not fit in the trunk of the town car. Luckily, it did fit in the back seat with me! Driving to Los Angeles airport at 4:45am is quite the pleasure – no traffic! Now, let’s digress for a moment. My airplane plans had my flying from LA to Miami on American Airlines then on TAM Airlines to Sao Paulo Brazil and then to Florianopolis on TAM. I used a sports travel company, Endurance Sports Travel, to handle the international portion of the flights, but booked the domestic portion myself (after EST wanted me to fly LA to Denver, then Denver to Miami – too many flights!). Fortunately, for the international portion of the flights, Endurance was able to secure bike waivers so there would be no additional charge for my bike case. As for American, that was a different story. And that’s where Ben, my fellow Disney Tri Team member and now Ironman, comes in. The day before, he had taken the same flight to Miami on American and called me after checking in to tell me how he talked his way out of the $100 charge bike charge. Long story short, props to Ben, as my charge was also waived! It would take about 24 hours of travel to get to Florianopolis, Brazil.

Highlights included the discovery of a Dunkin Donuts in the Miami airport – yum (yes, Ironman in training eat donuts – actually they eat pretty much anything you put in front of them!) And meeting up with Mac and Gabe, two fellow Disneyers on the way to Brazil for the Ironman. Unfortunately for Gabe, the AA people would not check his bags all the way through Brazil, so we had claim his bags and recheck them on TAM. But with a 6 hour layover, we had plenty of time to kill. After taking care of Gabe’s bags, we had dinner at Chilis – DD and Chilis, you can take the boy of New Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the boy! After a 6 hour layover, we were on our way to Brazil. I arrived in Sao Paulo with little more than 1 hour to make my connection to Florianopolis. Seems easy, right? Well, I actually had to go through customs in SP, so it was going to be close. First, we had to get our bags, which would need to be taken through customs and then I needed to re-check in at the TAM Airlines counter and get my bags rechecked. My luggage bag came out relatively quickly. As did Gabe and Mac’s. The bike boxes were a different story. After waiting about 15 minutes, I finally noticed that my bike box had been sitting on the ground for quite a while. Being the nice fellow that I am, I waited for Mac and Gabe, and their bike boxes. When they finally did come, we had about 40 minutes to make it through customs and recheck the bags. Gabe and I got on the customs line, which was pretty long, while I noticed Mac cutting the line, huh? We cleared customs in about 5 minutes and headed to the counter to check-in…uh, ooh! The line was long…but Mac who had cut the customs line was in the front of it. We had about 20 minutes to go, before our plane departed. After standing in line for about 5 minutes, at the urging of 3 nice Brazilians, we made an attempt to cut the line (actually 2 Brazilian fellows and 1 American who was from Brazil – who translated!). The line cut worked, we checked our bags and then headed to the bus to drive us over to the plane…Gabe and I just made it in time and were the last 2 to board the plane – where Mac was already comfortably seated!

After 24 hours of traveling, I was finally in Florianopolis, Brazil on Wednesday, with 5 days to go to the big event. We were met at the airport by people from ENDURANCE SPORTS TRAVEL (http://www.endurancesportstravel.com/index.asp), who was the travel company that booked our trip. And now for a little plug – if you are ever traveling to do an Ironman, ½ Ironman or any other event they plan trips for, use them. Ken Glah (53 time Ironman and 25 time Kona Ironman) and his peeps take care of everything -- shuttles to everywhere we needed to go, breakfast and dinner buffets AND massage therapists on site, and on-site mechanics available to us in our hotel. The EST took our bags, loaded them up and we were off to the hotel, Gabe, Mac, me and a busload of others who would compete in the event. Jessie, would be out tour guide on the 45 minute ride to the hotel. Jessie, was from South America, had lived in the US for 20 years, gone on a trip to Brazil, met a woman, married her, and moved to Brazil. In brief, some of the highlights he pointed out where the poor people live in Floripa – in the hills, as opposed to Los Angeles where the rich people live in the hills and parts of the bike course. Sitting on the bus next to American we started up a conversation. Her name was Adrianne, she was from DC, and this was her 5th Ironman…and was hoping to qualify for Kona (Kona – that’s the IM that everyone thinks of when you tell them you are doing an IM, the one in Hawaii, the World Championship. But in order to do it, you must qualify and qualifying involves finishing in a certain place 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc depending on how many slots are available in your age group in the qualifying race – Brazil or many of the other IM events throughout the year. There is also a lottery where you can win a slot and charity auctions where you can buy a slot.). She had done her first Ironman in 13 hours and her last in over 10 hours – quite an improvement. In her case, she had to win her age group to make Kona as their was only one slot in her age group (qualifying slots are based on the number of entries for each age group in the race. In my age group, one of the most popular, there were actually 9 slots for Kona – of which I had zero chance of getting).
We got to the hotel (Juere Beach Hotel) http://www.endurancesportstravel.com/imb_hotels_jurere.asp?prova=brasil),
checked in and headed up to our rooms. We ran into Ben and Junior, two other Disney Tri team members) in the lobby.
The rest of the group, including my father, would arrive in several hours and I wanted to get a short run in before they got there. So I quickly unpacked and headed out to the beach for a run. I ran from the hotel to the IM Expo, which was about 1.5 miles down on the beach. The expo is basically a fair, where they have merchandise and food to buy, where you go to check-in for the race, the starting and finish line and transition area for the event. Unfortunately, since I didn’t know where I was going, I could actually find the expo, so I headed back to the hotel. Went back to the room, showered and then headed down to the lobby for the rest of the group to arrive. Everyone arrive safely, I showed my dad up to our room. And we headed downstairs for dinner.

THE LEAD-UP
The next few days are a blur, and I don’t actually remember what we did on a day-to-day basis, but here’s how it basically went…wake up, eat breakfast downstairs, exercise a little, either a swim bike or run. Sit at the beach a little, out of the sun! Find somewhere to eat lunch in the little town down the street or at the hotel. Hang around a little more, eat dinner. Chat with the group. Go to sleep. Repeat.

Highlights of the days leading up to the event included putting my bike together and brought it down to the mechanics to have them tune it up and give it the once over. When I went back down to pick it up, my bike was not together, the back wheel was off and the tire and tube were off the wheel…uh, oh! Apparently my rear wheel had become a tiny bit untrued (crooked). The mechanics had the wheel on the truing stand and were trying to fix it, but they did not have the proper wrench for my cheater wheels to do it. They explained to me that they were going to try to come up with something so that they could true it, but I need to leave the bike there another day. Long story short, they couldn’t find anything to fix it with, and I ended up riding on crooked wheel. It actually was off like 1 or 2 millimeters, so it wasn’t that big of a deal (I think!).

We also went on a guided course tour, hosted by Ken Glah. We boarded a shuttle bus, with about 12 other people competing and Ken took us all, showing us where we needed to go on the day of the race in the swim, bike and race. The tour was basically to get the lay of the land, the tough parts, the hills, etc. Needless to say, most of us were more confused after the bus ride than before! Let me explain. The swim course was pretty self-explanatory… The only weird thing was the part where you had to get out of the ocean, run over a timing mat on the beach and then run back into the water. Other than that, pretty simple.

The run course, also pretty simple. Three laps of 10.5 km (6.5 miles). The first lap had an additional 10.5km miles tacked on to get us up to 42km (26.2 miles). (can’t find the map of it). The additional miles on the first lap would be the hardest, as they were up some pretty steep hills. Ken advised walking the hills, as the 10 seconds you would save by running would not compensate for the pain they caused you later in the race!

And the bike, well most of it was pretty simple. 2 x 56 miles starting at the transition area. Ride out of town, onto a freeway. The bike course would not be closed to traffic, instead one lane would be coned off for the event. There would be one major difference in Brazil. Instead of riding in the right lane, the bike lane for this race would be in the left lane. When getting onto the freeway, you had to cross across 3 or 4 lanes of auto traffic and ride in the left lane! The police would actually block the traffic in the right lanes, so that you could get over to the left lane without any hassle. Then through the city to another highway, which would be blocked off to all car traffic.

And now, the head spinning part. On this highway there were 2 tunnels. You had to ride in the left side tunnel on the inside lane, then a Ken said a “short” distance down the road, make a u-turn, go back through the right tunnel in the inside lane, make another u-turn, go back through the right tunnel in the outside lane, ride a longer distance down the road, make another u-turn and finally go back thru the left side tunnel in the outside lane. Got it? Yes, I was as confused as you are (needless to say, on the day of the race it was far less complicated!) Ok, take a beat…now back to my mid-week activities. We all headed down to the expo and officially checked-in. Checking in involves showing your id, and then getting your official race bracelet. This is how they know you are a competitor and allows access into transition, the athlete's meeting, pre-race dinner, post-race awards lunch and the AFTER PARTY. In addition, you get your 3 transition bags: Swim, Bike and Run. For those of you not in the know, you put the clothing you are going to change into in said transition bag. The swim bag is used for your wetsuit, goggles and cap after the swim. We also got two special needs bags for the bike and run. You have access to these halfway through the bike and twice on the run course. And you put whatever you think you will need in these bags – Advil, extra water bottles, special food. And then one more bag – your dry clothes bag. The clothes you want to change into after the race. In addition to the bags, we got our numbered swim caps, stickers for our helmet and bike, and our “competitor t-shirt.” Also bumped into Adrienne again. Turns out she might have a hard time winning her age group, as one of the women in her age group in Brazil had beaten her in a previous race.

We also went to the official English speaking athletes meeting where they go over the rules…No drafting (riding directly behind or next to a cycler), careful where you throw your used water bottles on the bike course (I mention this one as it will come up later!), etc. They went over the course and other important information, but I won’t bore you with the details.

Greg and I also unveiled our cheater helmets to Ben. Greg and I planned on surprising Ben with our new fancy Gyro Advantage 2 Aero helmets in Brazil. Unfortunately, we learned that Ben had already acquired one of his own. We still didn’t tell him and it surprised him, but not as much as we had hoped! Saturday was the day we dropped off our bikes and transition bags at the transition area. I had spent the previous evening packing my transition bags and checking and rechecking. Fellow IM and Disney triathlon team member suggested that before I actually pack the bags, I take a digital photo of what I was putting in the bags. This would allow me not to freak out once I handed the bags in, over thinking what I had forgotten to pack. All that I needed to do was check the photos…brilliant!
Unlike other events, you drop your bike off the day before the IM and set it up in the transition area, so you don’t have to schlep the bike with you the morning of the race. Excellent! The athletes dinner was on Saturday night and we all went together, including my dad, Tracy, and Ben’s parents. Needless to say, the food, not so good. And after 3 nights of not so good hotel buffet food, it probably seemed worse than it actually was. Brazil is know for its tasty food, but I don’t think it is know for its pasta…and I can tell you 4 night of bad sauce was wearing thin on me! After dinner we went
back up to our rooms and attempted to go to bed nice and early for the race the next day.

THE RACE
Lead-up
So the night before, the group made plans to meet downstairs in the restaurant for breakfast a 4am. I had planned on getting up around 3:50am, throwing on some clothes, taking the elevator down 2 floors and walking over to breakfast, which should have taken all of 4 minutes! At some point during the early morning hours, I heard a knock on my bedroom door. Followed by the door opening. "Steven," yes I responded. "It's 3:00, you told the guys you were going to meet them downstairs at 4am." "Yeh, so. It's 3am, it will take me all of 5 minutes to get up, get dressed and make my way downstairs...any reason you are waking me up 1 hour before." "Just thought I'd let you know," my father responded. Yes, my dad had woken me up 1 hour earlier than I had intended on getting up in the morning. Unfortunately, now I was up for good and just laid in bed until about 3:45am, when I got ready to go downstairs and get breakfast. Breakfast was pretty uneventful, same crappy food and we decided we would catch the 5am shuttle over to the race. We all went back up to our rooms, I got the rest of my gear -- wetsuit, cap, special needs bags, etc. and headed down to the lobby at 4:50am. We caught the shuttle over to the race, and it dropped us off about 1/4 mile from the transition area. First step, dropping of special needs bags....done.
Next, was body marking. This is when the write your race number (#520) on your upper arms, back of your legs and your age group letter on the back of your leg. This is so apparently you can tell how old the people are who are passing you! After that it was time to enter the official transition area and into the change tent. Here we changed out of our clothes and into our wetsuits, caps and goggles. Did a little stretching and a little drinking of water, then off to the restroom. At about 6:40am we headed down to the ocean, about a 1/4 mile walk to the start area. When we got down to the beach, I went for a little warm up swim and then headed over to the official starting pen for the swim. Upon entering the pen, you crossed a timing mat, and that is when you were officially a contestant in the 2008 Ironman Brasil.

THE SWIM There were over 1300 athletes in the pen, and the start area was quite large, so there was a lot of room for moving around. In addition, there were tons of people lining the outside of the penned-in area, who were there to watch and cheer. There was loud music and lots of announcements, most of it in Portuguese! With a few minutes to go, the Disney group all wished each other good luck and moved to the general area where we wanted to start. For me, as the strongest swimmer of the group, I moved all the way to the front of the line. This would allow me to sprint from the start and try to get ahead of most of the slower group. The rest of the Disneyers hung back in the middle to back of the pack. I think there was some sort of countdown, but the next thing I knew there was a gun shot and I was sprinting towards the ocean. Unfortunately their is not much storytelling for the swim...basically I spent one hour and 7 minutes swimming! There was a lot of crawling and swimming over people at the beginning of the race and around the buoys, and despite being out towards the front of the pack, there was not a time when I was in the clear. Although kind of odd, it was very fun getting out of the ocean in the middle, having people cheer you on, drinking some water and then heading back into the ocean for the second part of the swim. The one complication during the swim was when I was about 100 yards from the finish line of the swim. Some fellow kept trying to swim over me. In an attempt to stop this, I kicked really hard, and got a terrible calf cramp which required me to stop swimming for about 30 seconds to 1 minute to pull on my toe to stretch the cramp out. Once the cramp subsided it was a quick minute or so, until I was back on the beach and jogging towards the transition area. I pulled the top of my wetsuit down so that those there spectating for us, could easily identify my Disney tri team jersey. A quick jaunt through the shower station to rinse off, then to the wetsuit strippers. Basically, you sat down on the ground, and the volunteers pulled your wetsuit off in about 1 second, handed it back to you and you were back to running to the transition area. It was a good 1/8 to 1/4 mile jog to the transition area. Although I did not know at the time, my swim time was 1:07:44 minutes. I was actually hoping to go under an hour, but later learned that there was a pretty strong current that we were swimming against that slowed the entire swim portion of the race down. I came out of the water about 125th out of a field of 1300, and knew I would be getting past a lot on the bike!

THE BIKE Upon entering the transition area, there was a volunteer standing and holding my transition bag for easy access. So I grabbed my bag, ran into the changing room and donned my biking apparel. I already had my tri-jersey and tri-shorts on. I put on my second pair of shorts for extra padding, my knee strap (hopefully to alleviate some of the knee pain I had been experiencing!), my socks, shoes, sunglasses and helmet. And then, I quickly popped 3 Advil, to help alleviate any knee pain I might have. Then it was a quick jog to my bike, grab it and headed for the bike start and got going. It would be 2 90 km laps (56 miles laps) and I was on my way. First interesting thing that happened on the bike about 1 mile in. I was close to 2 other people, one who had just passed me. The 2nd person, a women then started yelling at the person who had just passed me "stop blocking me (i.e., not letting her pass)." Now, I understand that a lot of people are more competitive than me, but seriously you are going to start yelling at people 1 mile into a 112 mile bike ride...seriously? As I had practiced, I made sure to eat my clif bars and clif blocks and drinking my Gatorade endurance. at my practiced intervals. In addition, I had some uncrustables (pre-packaged peanut butter and jelly sandwich that are sealed closed -- check your grocer's freezer for more information) that I planned to eat during the bike ride. Uncrustables are sold frozen. And basically, you put them in your kids lunch in the morning and by the time it is lunch time, they are defrosted and yummy. Unfortunately, due to the travel, my uncrustables had been frozen and unfrozen a couple of times before the actually race. Needless to say, I ate only one that day and then decided for fear of vomiting, that I would eat no more uncrustables! And finally, I was taking salt pills every hour. Depending on the heat, I would take 1 or 2 of these pills per hour to keep my electrolytes properly balanced. Oh, and I had an ample supply of Advil with me just in case. In addition to monitoring my eating and drinking, I was also tracking my average speed, heart rate and cadence (how fast I was pedaling) during the bike ride. My heart rate was the most important thing. I was to keep it in a certain range, which would enable me to make it through the bike ride with plenty of energy for the run. Average speed is what I set my bike computer to during long rides, cause it is the least painful thing for me to watch (distance -- only 100 miles to go. speed - holy crap, I'm going 38 mph). Cadence is important as it tells me if I am spinning properly (90+ strokes per minute). Everyone who I had spoken to before the bike race made it very clear to me -- the bike ride is a warm-up for the run. DON'T GO TOO HARD. BACK-OFF and take it a little easier than you think you should. Interestingly enough, my heart rate was perfect, my cadence was great, yet my average speed was over 19 mph. Now, just a little note, on all my long training rides, the fastest pace I had done was 18.1 mph. I was now averaging about 1 mph faster than my best training ride, but I felt great and was not pushing to hard. There was actually one point on the first lap that I had a brief moment of panic. I was riding along, and there was no one in front of me. I looked behind me, and there was no one behind me. It was too early in the ride to see people coming back, so there was no one on the other side of the freeway...I was alone, and instead of taking it in, I freaked..."did I make a wrong turn?" After a moment, I surmised I had not, but instead figured out that when you take 1300 people and spread them out over 56 miles, there is bound to be areas on the road when you are riding by yourself!

I made it to the tunnels, and around mile 40 I saw Ben. He was several miles behind me -- but flying on the bike. It was at some point during the back and forth tunnel rides that he caught me. I had a moment to tell him "I think I am going to fast and I am going to pay for it on the run." As confusing as the tunnels sounded during the bus tour, they were quite easy to navigate. And the back and forth provided a great opportunity for all of us to see each other on the bike ride. I think during the two bike laps, I saw or was seen by most of the other Disney Tri team members along the course. I finished my first lap, stopped at the special needs bag area and refilled my water bottles with more Gatorade endurance and picked up some more clif bars and blocks, while leaving the uncrustables behind. While there were food/drink stops every 10 miles along the course handing out water and Gatorade, I had trained with endurance and therefore wanted to drink mostly that during the race. When I ran out of endurance, then I switched to regular Gatorade. Then it was off for my second lap. The 2nd lap was pretty uneventful, except for two things. First, about 75 miles into the bike ride, I could eat no more...I was bloated from all the cliff bars and blocks I had eaten. In addition, traveling had sort of messed up my digestive system and leading up to the race I was not emptying myself as much as I should have been (too much information?). I think this may have had some impact on my ability to keep eating. I decided that until I felt better I would stick to drinking Gatorade and water. And secondly, I realized that I was going too fast -- not too hard, but too fast. 80 miles into the ride I was still averaging over 19 mph! So the last 30 miles I made myself slow down, but the damage was already done. I ended up averaging about 18.7 mph for the 112 miles. And the water bottle story. Well we had been warned at the athletes meeting, only to throw your used water bottles/garbage in designated trash areas. Apparently, no one was listening or cared to follow that rule, as there were empty bottles scattered throughout the 56 mile course. In addition, lining the roads there were many Brazilian kids, who were cheering, but also screaming for us to give them our water bottles. Some of them had quite the collections! Being the generous fellow that I am, I figured I would donate one of mine. Not thinking about what I was doing, I hurled a fairly full bottle to one of the kids. What I failed to remember was that I was on the left lane of the highway, and there were 2 or 3 lanes of traffic to my right driving between 30-40 mph. So I basically hurled a 4 lb missile without looking to see if there were any cars passing me! Fortunately, I had thrown it at a moment when a car had just passed me, and avoided a pretty messy accident!

Upon returning into town, I passed the Endurance Sports House. This is a house the travel company had rented for those not racing to hang out during the day, eat, drink and cheer for us. It's where my dad, Ben's parents, Tracy and other's spent much of the day. I finished the bike under 6 hours - -5:59:26. Upon completing the bike, I slipped out of my shoes and dismounted the bike. When you finish the race, you hand off your bike to a volunteer and they put it back in the transition area for you. I grabbed my Advil and headed to the transition area. Let me tell you, the first few steps off the bike were quite an interesting feeling! I made it to the transition tent and the volunteers handed me my run transition bag, and then it was into the changing room for my running shoes and hat! It was a little hectic, with 3 volunteers helping me out -- one asking me if I wanted a drink, another stuffing my bike stuff into a bag and a third re-applying sun tan lotion for me. The carpet in the transition area was soaking wet and when I put my feet down, my soaks got soaked. Running the Disneyland 1/2 marathon I learned a very importantly lesson -- don’t run with wet socks. After the DS 1/2, where my feet had gotten soaked, my feet were a mess. I quickly changed my socks and put my shoes on. A quick potty break and I was off on the run...only 4+ hours to go!

THE RUN
A quick look at the elapsed time at the start of the run, and I figured, wow, I could go under 12 hours. If I did under about a 4:30 marathon. About 2 miles into the marathon, I knew I was not going under 12 hours for the day! The bike ride had taken way too much out of me. And my back was killing me. Later I found out that I was running most of the race crooked. I felt a little lopsided, but the pictures I saw after, showed just how bad it was! In addition, after running about a mile, I ended up walking about a mile! The goal now was just to finish alive! The first lap, 13+ mile was the hardest. I used it to try to recuperate from the bike. The hills that Ken told us about were KILLER! I ended up walking up and down most of the hill section, running the flats in between. Entering the hills for the first lap, Ben passed me coming the other way, came over and made sure I was alright..."yeh, yeh, I'm fine." Just walk up the hills, you'll be good! I also, discovered the most dreaded part of the run for me... basically the run was a square (the first lap was the square + 7 more miles tacked on!). About 100 yards from the last left turn, there was an earlier left turn that you had to make, and then about a two mile loop with a timing mat in the middle so you could not cheat, before you returned to the square to finish a lap. On the first lap, I hated this out and back. The 2nd lap, it sucked. On my final lap, even though it meant I only had about 4 miles to go – I ABSOLUTELY DREADED IT! After somewhat recovering on the first lap, I was able to start running a little more. And when I did run, I was keeping a pretty good pace, under 10 minute miles. I was running a mile, then walking for a few minutes. In addition, at every rest stop, I would walk, drink some Gatorade and/or some water and try to eat something, although I was still kind of stuffed. I was eating orange slices, which were quite tasty. Also available were crackers, pretzels, bananas, cake, bread and salt packets. I stuck mostly with Gatorade and water, with the occasional cracker. Each lap, we would pass the Endurance Sports house, and I made sure to run by there so it looked like I was making great progress…and usually shortly after, I would walk a little bit. About a ¼ mile from the start/ finish line, there were chutes. If you had another lap to go, you would go to the chute on the right, pass the finish area and head out for your next lap. Upon completing your first lap, you would get a wristband. Upon completing your second lap, you would get a different colored wristband (they were green and orange, I don’t recall which one was which) If you were on your 3rd and final lap, you would enter the left chute and cross the finish line. As I finished my first lap, the leader of the women’s race was finishing her third and final lap. So I had a lot of people cheering for me as I finished my first lap. Ok, they were cheering for her, but I pretended they were cheering for me!

Lap two was pretty uneventful, except for the end. I felt better, and continued my walk run. As I headed back from the dreaded out and back, I noticed Ben, now on his third lap, coming the other way. He had about 3-4 miles to go, was running and after a quick glance at my watch, had a chance to go under 11 hours! I yelled to him as we past each other going opposite ways “catch me.” On the last straight away of my final lap, I ran into Ben’s dad. Turns out he was running the last lap with Ben, but was not doing the out and back. I also ran into Gabe and Mac, on their first lap. Upon me passing Gabe, he greeted me with a “hey steve” and a smack on the ass. Not a tap on the ass. But a pretty hard crack on my ass. Ok, it might not have been that hard, but 18 miles into a marathon, it felt like Dick Cheney had just decided to unload his shot gun into my ass cheek. I looked at Gabe and said, “uh, if you ever do that to me again 18 miles into a marathon, I think I might have to kill you!” I think I scared him! Later, he told me he felt really bad and was really sorry. With about 2 miles to go, Ben caught us. I have to say, it was pretty cool that all four of us were together with Ben’s dad at this point. I ran with Ben for about 50 yds, looked at my watch, saw we were going at about 8:30/mile pace and said “screw this, I got one more lap to go!” and Ben was gone. His official finish time was 11:01:02, although in the picture of him at the finish line, his time was 11:00:58 or something. Still, a fantastic time for a first Ironman…did I mention he is only 25 years old! I had one lap to go – about 6 miles. During the last out and back, I walked a bit and started chatting with a fellow American. This was his 5th Ironman. He was on his first lap, and he was having such problems with his leg muscles that he was walking the entire marathon. Yikes! I asked him for any advice on finishing. He told me to make sure I got on IV when I was done – it would help me recover much quickly. Done, with 2 miles to go, I made an effort to run the last 2 miles. I almost did it, only walked about 2 minutes! I entered the left “finishers” chute and was almost done. I looked behind me to see if there was anyone close to me. Why did I do this, not to make sure I would beat them, but to make sure that the picture of me crossing the finish line would just be me – no one else! I was in the clear. I crossed the finish line and actually don’t remember much of what happen for about 10 seconds. Picture number 1 is me crossing the finish line. Picture #2 is actually how I felt when I crossed the finish line…”the thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat!”
The next thing I knew, there was a volunteer throwing a towel around me, holding me up asking me if I was alright. I told him I was good – although I felt a little nauseated (this was the plan to get me my IV!). He said he would take me to the medical tent to get me an IV. I took one step, and, both of my calf muscles LOCKED UP! Not only could I not walk, I couldn’t even take a step. My volunteer held me up, while I tried stretching my calves out. It too about 5 minutes for me to be able to walk, and at one point Mr. Volunteer was eyeing the EMTs and their stretcher. I told him, that was not going to happen – I was walking!

Once I regained my ability to walk, we headed over to the medical tent. The IV took about a half-hour and then it was off to the massage area, where I got a quick 15 minute rub down. Quite the interesting experience. There must have been about 50 massage tables set up, and each table had 2 masseuses. You got on the table and they each took one side of you. Once that was done, and I was almost able to walk normally, I headed back to the transition area, collected my transition bags and my bike and exited the area. Upon exiting the transition area, you were given your finishers medal and t-shirt. It as a short walk (distance-wise, but felt much longer actually doing it) to the Endurance Sports House, where everyone would be there and their would be FOOD! Met up with my dad, Tracy, Ben and his parents at the house. Had some food. Stretched out a bit. Tried to take a shower, but there was not hot water! Sat around for about 2 hours waiting for the other Disney peeps. Chatted with all the other finishers. Made some calls back to LA to talk to some people who had left me messages – apparently Wedgie and Robert had a little Ironman Brazil watching party (watching as the results came in over the internet), and head some moments of panic when our finish times did not post in a timely manner (read more about it here, http://neoprenewedgie.blogspot.com/2008/05/ironman-brazil.html, at Wedgie’s blog)! Ben informed me that Adrienne had actually won her age group and qualified for Kona – beating her nemesis on this today. Greg finally showed up after finishing in just over 13 hours. Also saw Gabe and Mac heading for the finish line. After about 2 hours it was time to go back to the hotel and sleep. On the way out, we ran into the rest of our group – Nabil, Junior, Hector (2 flats on the bike ride – bad times), Mac and Gabe.

Got back to the hotel and finally took a long hot shower. Then it was bed time. You would think that after getting up at 4am, oh sorry 3am (thanks dad) and exercising for almost 12.5 hours one would be able to sleep like a baby! And yes, I did fall asleep quite quickly. Unfortunately, I was way sore! Sore like I have never experience before. So sore, that every time I moved a little bit in bed, I would feel the soreness like someone punching me in my leg and arm muscles. So it was not a real good night of sleep.

THE AFTERMATH!
Was up at 7am and headed downstairs for breakfast at 8am, where I ran into Mac. Had some more buffet food – yuck! Mac and I decided to head down to the expo to buy some more finishers merchandise (long sleeve shirt - $95, what a bargain!) and some more t-shirts for people back home. When we got down to the expo I noticed that a lot of the “Brazil Ironman Triathlon Florianopolis 2008” banners that had lined the transition had gone missing. When I first arrived at the transition earlier in the week, I mentioned to Nabil that we should steal one of them after the race and bring back to LA with us (apparently I was not the only one who had this idea). Well, a day after my race, I had my chance. Right outside the expo there was still one left, and Mac and I ripped it down. One of the triathlon workers saw us taking it, and just sort of nodded and walked on by. Mac then found another one, possible the last one, a took that one too. By the time the rest of the guys got down to the expo a ½ hour later they were all gone.

Ok, so 10 pages into this, I will now go back to some post-race highlights…
• It was amazing to watch the change in the hotel from Saturday to Monday – on Saturday, it was a hotel full of fit athletes going out for swims, bikes and runs. On Monday it had turned into an old folks home, with people limping and no one taking the stairs. It was amusing watching those who tried to take the stiars, navigate them while leaning on the hand rails!
• Bought my finisher photos.
• Monday afternoon was the athlete lunch/award ceremony. And surprisingly the food for this lunch was the same as the athletes dinner two nights before – same bad pasta sauce. After seeing this, and paying to get in, Tracy left without eating anything. We also went on a quest for McDonalds. One of the EST people told us there was a Mickey D’s very close to the expo. We took a shuttle to the shopping mall where it was and guess what – THERE WAS NONE!
• Ben I and walked it back to the hotel to kind of stretch out, which felt pretty good. .The soreness would be worst when sitting for a while and then having to get up and move!
• Monday night was the Endurance Sports Travel hosted dinner at a Brazilian barbecue restaurant. One of those places where you sit and they bring over copious amounts of meat – chicken, beef, lamb – on spits and carve you off a piece to eat. It was good to eat something other than bad pasta finally. This dinner was great, cause it brought together all the people we had befriended over the past week from all over the world, and gave us one last chance to reminisce about the race and the lead-up. Was able to congratulate Adrianne on her qualifying for the Ironman Hawaii.
• After dinner, was the finishers party at a club. Greg and Tracy would have it the hardest. The had to be up at 4am the next morning to catch their shuttle to the airport to make their flight to the Amazon.
• So once we convinced them to go, we all headed out for the shuttles. I guess, Greg decided when he is in, he goes all in. So while waiting in the lobby of the restaurant, he had us all do shots of what can only be described and Brazilian “moonshine.”
• The club was quite big, one half was a restaurant and then the other half was a disco. We started the evening by standing around the restaurant having some drinks, then headed into the club, where there was much dancing. Unfortunately, the club was open to the general public, so around 1245am, when the dance club was way too packed, we all decided to head back.
• On Tuesday, I finally got a massage at the hotel. It was one of the most painful massages I have ever gotten. I was still pretty sore, so when the masseuse dug into my muscles, it HURT!
• Tuesday was leaving day for most everyone. Greg and Tracy left at 4am for the Amazon. Nabil was headed back to LA in the am. Junior, Ben and his parents were leaving for Iquaza Falls at 5:30pm and Mac and Gabe were on the same 5:30 shuttle for the airport to head back to LA. I met them in the lobby at 5pm to say good-bye. I told Junior and Ben that I did not know how there were doing it, but they were going on another 3 day excursion before returning for US. With that, I headed back to my room and ended up sleeping from about 7pm to 7am!
• Wednesday was just me and my dad in the morning. He was scheduled for a late morning shuttle.
• Saw him off, then headed down to the beach for a short 30 minute walk/run. It ended up being a 30 minute walk as I was still sore.
• While I was walking, I passed a fellow IM, who was running…running as if he had not just done an IM, 2 days before!!! I headed back to the hotel, finished packing, checked out and waited in the lobby for the airport shuttle.
• I won’t get into the details, but the airport experience in Florianopolis was less than joyful – although we all did end up getting on the flight to Sao Paulo (there were about 30 people from EST on the flight)…it was close for some of us!
• After Florianopolis to Sao Paulo, It was Sao Paulo To Miami then Miami to LAX (first class on this flight – hello lie flat seats!). I finally landed in LA, exactly 24 hours later than when I had left the hotel in Floripa. Needless to say I was beat. After collecting my bags and bike box, it was about an hour in traffic to get home.

I think this covers it all. 7 days in Brazil. 9 total days including a traveling. 100s of photos (still working on collecting, sorting through all of them). 14+ buffet meals (yuck!). 7 fellow Disneyers. 3 fathers (mine, Ben and Hector’s), 1 mother (Ben’s) and 1 girlfriend (Greg’s). Many bottles of Gatorade. 4+ Clif Bars. 4+ Bags of Clif Bloks. 1 Uncrustable (yuck!). 1+ hour swimming. 5:59 biking. 5+ hours of marathon running, an extremely long blog of my race and trip…

FINISHING MY FIRST IRONMAN…PRICELESS!

Memories that will last a lifetime. And yes, to answer the burning question, I would do another one. When will I do it? Not sure about that. But I do know the next one will be in the US, so it will make it much easier for all you to come out and watch. The traveling took a lot out of me – came back to the US with 4 days of stomach issues…leave it at that as to not get too graphic! The lack of food options took a lot out of me – yeh, yeh, I know I was in a different country, I should have experienced the great food in Brazil. But when you are there competing in an Ironman, one’s ability to sample the food is somewhat limited!

Thanks for reading this. I know it was pretty long, but I wanted to include all the highlights and lowlights. I hope you enjoyed reading about my experiences. I also hope it inspired you to get off your asses and do something exciting!

Steve