My Future Husband, The 64.3 Ironman.

Rob started training for the Syracuse Ironman when I started training for my full marathon back in January. It would be his second time racing the 70.3 distance. Last summer he raced in Geneva completing the Musselman race held there annually. I have no idea how he keeps up his stamina with training for three disciplines and for quite some time he was doing CrossFit as well. I'm exhausted just typing all of that.

This past weekend we packed up his car and headed to Syracuse. Since my parents are in Cicero we had a place to stay and yummy food to eat. Ironman required him to rack his bike and do packet pickup prior to race day so we jumped on the thruway and headed right to Jamesville Beach Park. My parents decided to meet us and check out the happenings. After walking, a pretty decent distance from the car we finally reached the athletes village and finish line area. But the transition area and beach were still quite a walk away. I guess flip flops for the weekend were a bad idea.

Walking into the athletes village. 

Getting the proper documents.

Signing his life away.

Even his waivers were personalized.

#1609

The finish chute. 

After completing packet pick-up and getting his shirt and bag we headed over to transition to find his spot. Even though all of the volunteers were friendly and everything seemed organized they had already run out of race shirts in some sizes and the swag that Rob got was nothing compared the the Musselman race. Plus if you take into consideration that he paid $200, which was early bird pricing, I was expecting more. While going through the process of packet pick-up the race meeting was going on in the field next to us. They mentioned a thunderstorm that would hit in the afternoon and they said that they hoped to have everyone off the bike course at that point. A little foreshadowing there if you will.

After Rob racked his bike and we scouted out some locations for parking our lazy butts the next day, we headed over to the beach to scope out the swim course, looked like your average reservoir to me. After that we left Mom and Dad and headed to the official merchandise tent. As we walked over we ran into Rob's training partners, Scott and Shelly who had just arrived. Rob got a really cool shirt with all of the participants names on the back and an Ironman 70.3 sticker. His big purchase of the day was an Ironman Syracuse finisher's jacket. More bad foreshadowing? Maybe, but it was a really cool zip up jacket. Once we got to Cicero we had a fabulous dinner of grilled chicken & veggies and rice and turned in early for our 4:15am wake up call.

Rob knew it was going to be hot on race day so he had been hydrating and taking salt tabs leading up to race day. When we left for the race it was incredibly hot and humid and it was only 4:50am. After a quick trip through the Dunkin' drive-thru we headed to Jamesville. Traffic was pretty minimal and parking was easy. Mom claimed a great picnic table under some huge trees right across from transition and I watched Rob get his spot organized.

Free water for all athletes to use

Only half of transition.

The pro's swam at 7:00am but Rob's heat wouldn't go until 8:05am. As we walked over to the beach they were playing the national anthem and we positioned ourselves at the swim finish as the cannon went off.

As we were watching the pro's swim Molly called me saying she was heading down the beach. I know she was working on something for Rob and she did not disappoint...

The pro's started coming out of the water after about 25 minutes which I was impressed with, but heard was not that great for pro's. Mmeh what do I know. After the sign went up for the silver caps, Rob headed over to the swim start to get his wetsuit on, and Molly and I headed over to my parents who were with the wetsuit strippers. Haha. What a great form of entertainment and Molly was as convinced as ever that she needed to become a wetsuit stripper in the near future.

Hold on to your swimsuit!

Prior to Rob starting we looked up his Musselman times so we would have a rough idea of when to look for him. His swim took 40 minutes plus, so we were excited to see him at 39 and change. Sub 40, nicely done babe!

Molly, Dad and I tried to run along with him to transition, which was far away in my opinion. I had to take some walk breaks. Lame. After a couple minutes Rob ran by and was off on the bike course.

Go Babe Go! 

In case you didn't know, every year Jamesville Beach is home to BalloonFest, so a nice addition to the race was the two hot air balloons on display. Never seen a sight like this before...

Part two coming soon!