Hawaii - Ironman

"Swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, run 26.2 miles,

brag for the rest of your life!"

- John Collins, Ironman founder

Our purpose for going to the Kona side of the island was to go and see the annual Ironman Triathlon World Championship. The Ironman Triathlon World Championship began in 1978 and has since been held each year in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. It was created to solve an ongoing debate about which athletes were more fit, runners or swimmers (and has since included biking). We got a cheap hotel room the night before and then spent the day at the race. The cannon went off at 6:45 in the morning and the race was on. Just imagine... 1800 people competing in a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, and finally a 26.2 mile run.

We found a little cafe to eat breakfast at before the first swimmers came back because we wanted to watch them transition from the swim to the bike. We had just barely placed our order and sat down when we saw the first swimmer returning! It was only 7:30! That means that the first swimmer swam 2.4 miles in about 45 minutes. Instead of waiting for our food, Tiffany and I told the boys that we were going to run down to the transition point and they could bring our breakfast to us when they were ready!

There are several qualifying Ironman races held throughout the world previous to the World Championship in Hawaii. In order to come to this race, you have to be the best of the best (in your division). You can see that many of the athletes are on par with one another at this point in the race. However, there are different cutoffs for each section of the race; if you don't make the cutoff, you don't go on. The race is officially over at midnight.

The Ironman race is truly inspiring. This man was paralyzed from the waist down. I can't even begin to imagine being part of such an intense triathlon, let alone doing it without the use of my legs?! It was fun to watch for the yellow caps to come in (yellow caps were disabled) because we would get so excited for them! The crowd would roar when they would come out of the water, or get on their bike, or make it to a certain checkpoint during the marathon. We saw participants who were deaf, who were blind, who had no arms, who had only one arm, who had no legs, or who were paralyzed.

The home stretch of the race.Because the race is rather long, we decided we would go snorkeling over in City of Refuge between the swimming and the running portions. On our way out to the parking lot, we found this cutout to take pictures in. My favorite one is of Chris and Andy. The funny part was the way we had to position ourselves in the back in order to make the picture look normal in the front!

Unfortunately we don't have pictures, but while we were at City of Refuge, we were able to snorkel with wild spinner dolphins! It was awesome. It has always been my dream to swim with dolphins but I'm too cheap to pay to swim with them in a cage. There were probably about oh 75 or so in the pod just swimming around us? It was marvelous.

Hanging out at the finish line.
The 1st place winner was Craig Alexander with a time of 08:17:45 and the first girl to come in was Chrissie Wellington with a time of 09:06:23.
I apologize that this is so long, but it really was an experience to remember. After we hung out at the finish line watching the first 40 or so people come in, we walked to one of the marathon checkpoints and asked if we could volunteer. We were received with very open arms. We were each assigned a different duty (handing out water, cola, gatorade, bananas, oranges, pretzels, power bars, sponges). It was so much fun aaaaaaaaaaannndd we got a free shirt!

After the race we stopped by the Kona Temple.

The result of a very fun day!

Lesson learned: REAPPLY SUNSCREEN OFTEN.