Ironman Sherpa 2 - The Bike

This is the second of three blogs about my Sherpa experience with my husband during his first Ironman. Be sure to read the first part of the story.

Ironman Sherpa 1 - Pre-race and Swim.

The Bike:

I split up with GG and the girls as they headed back towards the condo to cheer Tim on as he started biking. I decided to try and see him through transition. Thousands of spectators were 5 people deep along the transition fencing so I quickly gave up that idea. I met up with GG and the girls and we waited for Tim to come by. At 8:24, he passed us and we were able to wish him well and show our support. We then went up to the condo, figuring we had about 6 hours before we would see him again.

At 9:20, I was so tired; I decided to lay down for a nap. Panama City is in the central time zone, which is very odd to me because I assumed all of Florida was in the eastern time zone. Saturday night, when Tim would be done with his race, marked the end of daylight savings time so we were going to ‘fall back’ that night and gain an hour. When I went to sleep at 9:20 a.m., I set my blackberry on the night stand. I was trying to search for Tim’s latest stats via the browser but it was taking forever to load. I fell sound asleep and it seemed like 10 seconds later I was awakened by an incoming text message that beeped on my phone. I looked at the time at it was 11:00. I couldn’t fathom that I had slept for 1.5 hours because I felt terrible. I rolled over and fell right back asleep. I woke up at 11:45 and decided I had to get up. A nap of over 2 hours should have fully refreshed me, but I still felt exhausted. I went and checked on the girls, who were glued to the Disney channel and I asked if anyone wanted lunch. They weren’t hungry so I turned on the TV in the living room. The channel guide on the TV said it was 10:55. What?!? I checked every clock in the condo and sure enough, it wasn’t even 11:00 yet. I checked my blackberry that clearly said it was approaching noon and I couldn’t be bothered to mess with it. Sometime during my nap, my blackberry had either switched to eastern time (most likely) or ended daylight savings time. Either way, it was wrong so I manually reset it. I get tons of grief for continuing to use a blackberry in the age of the iPhone and this snafu certainly wasn’t helping my cause.

I took the girls to the swimming pool (heated) and I laid out in the sun for a bit. It is a weird feeling to lay by a pool reading an Oprah magazine while you know that your spouse is busting his tail in an Ironman race. I was keeping family and friends posted on Tim’s progress via Facebook. Two of my neighbors started the funniest dialogue. One said “So my awesome neighbor Tim Runyan is completing a full blown triathlon today! In his honor I decided to get some exercise and mow the lawn. Almost finished, but had to stop so that my daughter could go to dance/gymnastics class.” I responded by reminding him to hydrate and a second very funny neighbor asked if there was a website where we could track his lawn mowing progress. The whole exchange just warmed my heart.

At 1:00, I went back inside and heated up 1/3 of my Pasta Carraba’s for lunch. The girls ate leftover pizza and I debated on what to do next. At 1:15, I was contemplating a shower when my phone beeped with an incoming text message. It was a fellow Sherpa who was back in Iowa (Bridgit) who was tracking Tim’s progress on the website. Tim had passed his final bike split and was looking really strong. He only had 17 miles to go on the bike and the website was averaging a 30 minute delay. Holy crap! Tim could come by at any minute and we couldn’t miss it! I rallied the girls and grabbed our Sherpa bag and the signs and we headed down to the street to watch him come by. This is positively the hardest part of being a Sherpa because you don’t really know when they are coming but you know darn well that you better be there. We split up, with Anna and GG close to the condo, and Natalie and I closer to transition. I told Anna to call or text me if she saw him. At about 2:00 Anna called and he was on his way. Natalie and I cheered like crazy. When he passed, he said that the second watch had died during the bike race. I asked how he felt and he gave me a thumbs up. Tim was anticipating a 6 hour bike ride for the 112 miles. Because he had no watch, he had no way to easily pace himself. He finished the bike in 5:37. Pretty incredible.

Natalie and I ran down to transition but there was no way we could see him. The racers go into the east side of transition, handoff their bike to a volunteer and enter a transition room. Then they exit the west side of transition for the run start. Natalie and I couldn’t traverse the crowds quick enough to see him take off on the run.

But wait, there's more:
Ironman Sherpa 3 - The Run and Post-race