Arizona IronMan 2010

A couple of friends told me they wanted to do the Arizona IronMan as part of their bucket list in their life a few months ago. I’ve been spending the past few months thinking “should I, could I” questions.

In case you don’t know what an IronMan is: It’s a really long triathlon where you swim for 2.4 miles, then road bike for 112 miles, then finish it off with a 26.2 marathon run. Even when I type this down, I go “Oh My!” at the thought of it. The cutoff to finish is 17 hours but the best people do it in 8-9 hours. Amazing, truly amazing what the human body is capable of.

People are likely crazy to do this, but the event seems to be gaining in popularity as most of the IronMan events sell out on the day they open. In fact the Arizona IronMan race (that the friends had chosen as the race they wanted to do) suggested that you volunteer to help out at the race 1 year prior so that you got in the priority line to sign up and register.

So off the group of us went to Tempe Arizona to watch the race, volunteer, and sign up for 2011.
I caught moments of the day on video and put in lots of interesting statistics form the event – like how many people were part of the race, how many finished, the oldest competitor, the winners, and event the last person through (at 16:56 hours). We heard and met about the great Chrissie Wellington, a british gal (love her already) that responds to your tweets, eats burgers, breaks world records, AND stays to the end of the race to meet the last finishers. An amazing kind hearted woman bringing a great face to this sport.

It’s a healthy video length at 6 minutes, but had to give the 17 hour race it’s justice.

Yes, I have indeed signed up for 2011! That means I’m now going to have to do things like swim in a pool, buy a road bike, and learn how to run. It’s both an exciting feeling and also a “what the hell did I do” feeling at the same time.
358 days to go….Nov 20th 2011

Tags: arizona ironman, ironman