Ironman Sherpa 1 - Pre-race & Swim

This is the first of three blogs about my Sherpa experience with my husband during his first Ironman.

My husband, Tim Runyan, trained for nearly a year and finally competed in Ironman Florida on November 3, 2012. Here is my journal of how the event unfolded.
Friday, November 2, the girls (ages 10 and 11) flew from Des Moines, IA to Fort Walton Beach, FL. We only had a 45 minute lay-over in Atlanta and I was scared that we would miss our connection and that would throw a major wrench in the whole plan, but we had no trouble at all. The Aviation spirits were on our side. Once in Florida, we loaded up the family and drove 1+ hours to Panama City. Tim wanted a pasta dinner from Carraba’s so we pulled into their lot at 4:45 p.m. The place was absolutely packed. There were 20% blue hairs and 80% athletes in various stages of pre-Ironman attire which included weird tape around joints and compression socks. We got our meal and headed to the condo. Tim ate at about 5:20 while I unpacked and took Natalie to the pool. I had 1/3 of my Pasta Carraba’s (this becomes relevant later, trust me) while the girls worked on their signs and Tim packed up his race bags.

We all went to bed around 9:30 and Tim was sound asleep by 10. He woke up at 3:30 a.m. and I followed at 4:15 a.m. We got ready and walked down to the transition area. Couple of pointers if anyone is ever going to do this – being within walking distance of the race activity is HUGE. Others that were staying farther out had to park at the Wal-Mart and take a shuttle in. Our condo was so convenient and that helped us dramatically through the day. Another point – if you are within walking distance, you don’t need to get up at 3:30. We were at transition by 5:00 and Tim went to set up his bike while I delivered the 'special needs' bags for the bike and run. What an amazing feat of organization. The bags were all color-coded and organized by racer number. Tim's race number 1930, if you are interested. By 5:10, everything was set and Tim and I had nearly 2 hours to wait until the swim start. At 5:30, our oldest daughter called to say they were up. I had asked the girls and their grandmother (Tim’s mom, GG) to be at the race site by 6:15 so if they got up at 5:45, had breakfast and started walking down at 6:00, we should connect around 6:15. As it happened, they were up at 5:30 and at the race site by 5:40. So now all 5 of us could stare at each other in a half-asleep haze while thousands of athletes milled about.


At 6:30 we headed to the beach. Panama City features an ocean swim of 1.2 miles, a brief run on the beach and then a second lap of 1.2 miles. Tim is a former marine so when we saw that the surf was pretty high, that suited him fine. He had years of training to dive into waves so we knew he would be all set. We went to the western most edge of the racers because the ocean had an eastern current. We couldn’t see Tim start but we cheered loudly for all of the racers. We had 3 signs – two in obnoxious green and one in white. We had arranged with Tim in advance that he would look for the signs. If we ever do this again, I would take a flag or inflatable balloon for the swim start. It is packed with people and it is really hard to distinguish your racer from the thousands of other racers all wearing black wetsuits and green swim caps.


GG and I led the girls back to the swim start inflatable archway so we could try and see Tim in-between lap. Sure enough, we did. He saw our green signs and we were cheering like crazy for him. I expected him to jump back in the water immediately and then another spectator said ‘is that your athlete?’ and I look over and Tim is beckoning me. Apparently his GPS watch was kicked off during the swim and now sat at the bottom of the ocean. It was an expensive watch that I had bought him for his birthday but now was not the time to mourn the loss. He asked me for another watch. I was wearing a $10 Timex from Target so I couldn’t imagine that he wanted mine, but then he said no, that Natalie (our 10 year old) had one of his old watches. So we ripped it off her wrist and back in the ocean he went.


But wait, there's more

Ironman Sherpa 2 - The bike

Ironman Sherpa 3 - The run and post-race