What an exciting weekend. I flew into Phoenix on Saturday the 20th of November to volunteer for Ironman Arizona 2011. As I has never even witnessed a Ford Ironman event live, I had no idea how impact it would have on me emotionally. This hobby is already getting pretty expensive so I tried to minimize costs as much as possible. The plane ticket was about $250 so I used Marriott Rewards points for the room. I stayed at the Airport Marriott Fairfield Inn, just minutes away from Tempe Town beach.
A friend and I took the opportunity to take a lap on the bike course and do a short 5-mile run on the run course. I felt great coming from altitude and am a lot more confident now that I know how very flat the course is. We tried to see if there was somewhere to get in the water, but they have it locked down pretty tight and threaten automatic disqualification if you are caught in the water. Water temperature was a bone-chilling 61 degrees.
We woke up at 0600 on Sunday and drive to the volunteer parking lot on Farmer Street and walked through the race expo to the swim start. From our vantage point we couldn’t see a lot other than thousands of green swim caps bobbing up and down in the frigid water of Tempe Town lake. In hind-site, I will recommend my family gets a position on the Mill Street bridge over the river if they want to see us off.
At 0650 the gun went off for the pros and a field of 83 pros took off trying to get the 2500 Kona qualification points for being first place. Ten minutes later, 2640 age-groupers got their start 10,460 arms and legs started churning in the water. Mike Reilly said that all 50 states were represented with one triathlete each from Rhode Island and Wyoming. 29 countries were also represented. Amazingly, an age grouper exited with the chase group from the pros. The stairs exiting the lake were not nearly as ugly looking as described but that is coming from a warm spectator that didn’t swim 2.4 miles either.
After the start and watching the first age groupers come out of the water and transition, we reported to run aid station 1 to get set up. Our aid station dressed up as pirates. Set up was a lot of work. We unloaded the rented Budget box truck and divied up the supplies at our various tables. Water, Power Bar Perform, Food, Cola, Power Bar Perform, and Water again.
To run an aid station it takes 20,400 cups, 128 liters of Pepsi, 2304 Power Bar Ironman Perform drinks, 2 gallons chicken soup stock, 240 pounds of bananas, 1800 gels, 800 power bar smoothies, 3 pounds of pretzel sticks, 80 pounds of grapes, 648 cookies, and 648 gallons of water.
We were not on shift until 8 PM so we ate the volunteer breakfast and went back to recon transition. When you show up to check in they give you tickets so that your family can get your gear out of transition, another handy piece of info for me to remember. We went back to the room for a few hours and I knocked out my homework and we got back in time to see the 3rd pro women’s finisher.
The aid station was a lot of work but very rewarding work. After our shift ended at 10 PM we went to the finish line. This was a huge street party and the pro winners came back for the last hour finishers. Mike Reilly was in the chute waiving his rally towel and winding up the crowd. Finishers included a stage three cancer survivor and several over-seventy participants. The last finisher came in 2 seconds before the midnight cutoff; I would lie if I said I did not tear up. Many other finishers were also back in the bleachers cheering on those last few. Here is a link to the amazing finish. WOW!
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