Ironman Wisconsin Pictures Part 1 Saturday-Swim

The sign says it all. Wahhoooo!!

This is the transition 1 room. On Saturday I helped all the athletes check in their gear. This is an important job because if the bag is put in the wrong place or misplaced altogetherit can mess up a whole year of training for these athletes.

When I was cutting through the male changing room I saw this sign and it made me laugh.

This is the room that I helped in. It is the transition 2 room. This is when the athlete's are coming in from the bike and heading out to the run. See how empty it is.

This is my friend Larry. We met through an active.com message board about 2 years ago. We have emailed off and on since. This is our first time meeting in person. He has severe asthma and had to teach himself to swim. He overcame a lot to get to the Ironman. He did awesome.

Larry here is the sign I made you. I still do not know how I ended up with the wrong number. Oops.

Here I am meeting my friend Chris aka The Clyde. We have never met in person either. We follow each other's blogs. This is our first time meeting. Check out his blog at www.theclydesdaletrot.com A Clydesdale or Athena in triathlon is a heavier triathlete. A Clydesdale is the men weighing in over 200 and the women are called Athenas who weigh over 150 I believe. We now call Chris IronClyde or at least I do.

Here's the sign I made him. Clyde, did you see it out there?

Check out this awesome volunteer. I hear she is there every year. Her son ran the race. I'm already planning what I can wear next year or how to do my hair.

Here is the T2 room after it was full and after we had checked to make sure every bag was in numerical number. We closed and locked the doors at 3pm. All the athletes knew this well in advance and I had to turn away some very mad athletes.It ends up one door didn't get locked. The room opened the next day at 5am so it wasn't like we were turning them away from the whole race. I held the door open a little bit to tell them they had to come back and one athlete put his foot in the door and was pulling to open it, but I held my own and said in a very firm voice, "SIR, YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO LET GO OF THE DOOR AND WAIT FOR MY TEAM CAPTAIN." Anoter man would not step back and was right in my face and I had to say to him, "SIR, YOU ARE GIONG TO HAVE TO STEP OUT OF THE ROOM. I WILL GET MY CAPTAIN." He sighed and obliged and in the end we won. They came back at 5am. After that the door got locked.

After volunteering I got to meet up with some of my fellow bloggers none of which I had ever met in person. The person I was eager to meet the most was Megan. Check out her blog at www.projectprocrastination.blogspot.com Her boyfriend is Kyle aka cheese His blog, when he blogs is at www.startingnextmonday.blogspot.com Just don't read his while eating. :-) Also, met Erin and her almost hubby Aaron. Her blog is at www.erinslongandwindingroad.wordpress.com and met another Erin a few weeks ago through our blogs and volunteered at two stations together. Her blog is at www.wipaddler.blogspot.com. Another lovely couple I met was Bob and Gay. His blog is www.teambrazo.blogspot.com. It was a great dinner. Make sure to check out all these awesome people's blogs. They rock!!

RACE DAY!!! WAHOOOOO!!
Here we are getting ready to mark some bodies.

Here I am marking a body. He was a good sport about it.

Here is the sunrise over the swimming area. The calm before the storm.

Here are the pros.

Here is everyone else.

There was a hot air balloon that went over the lake. You can see the swimmers too. It was pretty.

On my way to watch the atheletes get out of the water I got to see this pro heading out on his bike.

This was the most fun to watch. When the athletes get out of the water there are teams of volunteers there to rip their wetsuits off of them.
Here is Larry's family anxiously waiting for Larry to exit the swim. He had a wonderful support team. His wife is in the cowboy hat. The way I found them was when I was watching the swim someone walked by in a bright yellow shirt and it said LARRY SCHULTZ on it. I jumped down and asked her if it was the same Larry Schultz I was cheering for and it was. She took me to where his family was, so I got to meet them. They are wonderful.

Here is Larry waving to us on the way to T1. I also saw Chris exit the water, but he was way on the other side and I couln't get a pic. Way to go guys. You rocked the swim.

Here is Larry waving to us as he was heading to his bike.

I went out to the Verona Bike Loop and got to see the pros whizzzz by. There were also a couple of age groupers not far behind the first few pro bikers. Amazing.

I had an amazing weekend as you can tell. I will post pictures tomorrow from the run and my time working the finish line. I handed out medals for 6 hours. It was AMMMMAZING.