Just for the Priviledge

So the first order of business to do an Ironman is to get registered. Not as easy as you would think. Best way to do it is to go and volunteer at the Ironman you want to do the year before! Lucky for me, I live in La Crosse so Madison is not that far away and I had lots of friends competing so volunteering was fun. We volunteered in the Bike Transition. Initially we volunteered for T1 (swim to bike) transition. Not a difficult job – you stand at the end of a few racks of bikes and help your people get their bike and make sure their helmet is secured and send them on their way. Paul, one of my training partners, was a captain for Bike Transition so when we saw him at T2 (Bike to Run) he said they needed help so Angie and I piled into help catch bikes as the athletes were finishing their 112 miles. Needless to say that is a interesting task. Many athletes are quite humorous as they relinquish their bike to you. Many give you a few choice words on what you can do with said bike! So after 5 hours in Bike Transition, we earned the priviledge to sign up for Ironman Wisconsin 2011.

People lined up waiting to register for Ironman Wisconsin 2011 at 7am

Now no one quite prepared me for the registration process on Monday morning. It started for our group at 7am and the line was already hundreds of people long! Two and half hours later we had thoroughly exhausted all conversation, were starving, and had forfeited a good chunk of money to the organization and had nothing to show for it but a piece of paper with a bunch of instructions and a handwritten confirmation number (which you wrote yourself so no one to blame but you if you got the numbers out of order).

I won’t even talk about my personal escort to the registration table to make sure I turned over my credit card, my cold clammy hands and my queasy tummy. All of this for the Priviledge of 13+ hours of physical and mental torture. Hmmm I think I am nuts!