From the Beehive: Ironman: Chapter 1

This is one of those "Where do I begin?" posts. But begin I must. I'm warning you now - it's going to be long. So get some popcorn and get comfy, or plan on taking some breaks, or stop now and save yourself some time. But here goes the Ironman saga:

Derek has been doing triathalons for years now. It started years ago when my brother talked him into doing one in Burley. This was his first one, Olympic size, and a big deal. He trained hard, and did great. For several years he kept doing smaller sized tri's, and really began enjoying them. He found it to be very motivational for him to get exercising.
Four years ago he made the jump from Olympic tri's to his first half-Ironman. This was a big jump. Our first experience with the Boise Ironman was realizing that this was the big leagues. This was definitely not put on by the local YMCA, but Ironman was a brand, and very professional. He did the Boise Ironman 70.3 3 years in a row. After the half became do-able, the full became something not as far out of reach as he'd always thought. Somewhere between these half Ironmans doing the full landed on Derek's Bucket List. Both of us thought that some time down the road, a ways down the road, he would do a full Ironman. Sometime when our kids weren't so little, and training time wouldn't be so hard to come by. But 2 good friends sped that timeline up.
Derek has 2 good friends named Brady and Doug. They are also triathletes and have done the Boise half with Derek. They have enjoyed countless hours swimming, cycling, and running together. And oddly enough the 3 of them are in our ward's Elder's Quorum Presidency together.
These 2 started talking about doing the full - Ironman St. George. They talked about doing St. George, for reals. And I think as far as Derek and I were concerned, we thought they should do it, for reals. Derek, not so much. Brady and Derek decided what we needed to do was to go to St. George last year and watch the race. Drive the course, scope it out - and then we would could make an informed decisison.   So off we went, Brady and Andrea, and Derek and I. As Brady reminded Andrea and I as we were off to Tai Pan, this was a business trip - not a vacation. But don't worry, Andrea and I snuck in a vacation. We had a great weekend - watched the race from 7:00 am to midnight - and loved it. Watching an Ironman when you don't have an athlete in it is awesome! Just fun and still very inspiring. After we'd seen the course I thought that would make the decision easy - no way. This is the hardest course. Literally, it's between the St. George course and a course in Europe for which course is the hardest out of all Ironmans. The bike course is a killer, and then there's the run. Now, to our benefit, the run course had been changed this year because of road construction that made the run course considerably easier. The reason we would do St. George over an easier one is because it is one of the few in the US on a Saturday. Most Ironmans are on Sunday, so our options were smaller. So we came home from St. Georege and the talk began. Doug and Brady were in. Derek - on the fence. We came to the conclusion that if a full Ironman is on the Bucket List - you might as well do it when your 2 best training buddies are doing it too. So Derek was in. He registered for the Ironman.
Training began in November. To toot Derek's horn I have to say he was incredibly considerate of our family being involved with this. Almost all of his swims took place in the 5:00 a.m. hour. He was always out the door 2 hours before anyone else was even awake. He rode and ran during his lunch hour and was always home at night. Saturdays he would run and ride early - to be back before the day really started. He'd ride 100 miles and come home to a honey-do list, and do it. He never said (or probably dared) say, "I'm tired - I just ran 20 miles! I can't mow the lawn." He'd just mow the lawn. This impacted our family as minimumally as possible. Doing an Ironman is a family committment, but Derek really paid the bulk of the price by training when the rest of the world was still asleep.
   To be more trained for the race Derek did Ironman California in March. This is a half Ironman distance, allowing to guage how you feel, to make adjustments, and to give your body a really good training day. So Derek, Doug, and Brady all wanted to do this race. Doug's wife, Alison, and 2 more guys from our ward all did the race too. This happened to fall during our kids' spring break, so we turned it into a family vacation - with 5 families from our ward (more like a ward vacation).
   This deserves its own post, but lets be honest - that's not going to happen! So here's the highlights. We went to St. George the first day, so those who wanted to ride the bike course there could. This was great for Derek to be able to actually ride the course. It actually put his mind at ease, knowing he could do it.

The next night we were in Vegas where all of the girls went to Phantom of the Opera. Amazing. We spent 3 days at Disneyland - happiest place on earth.

Then we all headed south to Oceanside for the race. The 5 families all stayed in the same beach house - don't worry, it was quite big enough. Right on the beach - absolutely beautiful. We went to Seaworld, played at the beach and then it was race day. Oceanside was great - Derek had a great race, and his new personal best time for a 70.3.