I cannot say enough about how wonderful the support from family and friends was. Undoubtedly, Elisabeth has been stuck with providing the most support. Obviously, this wasn’t just on race day but throughout the year as I trained for the race. Some training days were as many as 8 or 9 hours. Time was not just in training but researching/purchasing equipment, reading and learning, logging my training, and an endless myriad of other time consuming items. Elisabeth even put together a document of information on various topics relating to the Ironman. Thanks so much Sweetie! Several weeks before the race I asked Bryan McLelland to help coordinate where people should be when. Towards this effort, I printed out the bike and run maps and combined these with my locator spreadsheet , which the two of us reviewed a couple weeks before. Thanks Bryan!!! The day before the race, my mom, dad, and brother came down with me and I pointed out to them where I was going to be passing through the transition area. (This not only communicated to them what I would be doing, but it also helped solidify it in my mind.) Note: Give map of transition and finish area to family and friends and walk it through with them. On race morning, Bryan drove me down to the race and helped with dropping off special needs bags and other miscellaneous items. This was a huge help in reducing stress. He also took pictures and adopted Elisabeth, Benjamin, and Hanna when they arrived at the race. Unfortunately, I didn’t see them before heading to the beach. Thanks to Elisabeth and Neely, each of my kids had handmade shirts and they were awesome! My kids were very excited about having them (they still wear them after the race), and I was proud of them too. If that wasn’t enough, Elisabeth made me a shirt for the run as shown below. Wow!!! Everyone I saw in the run seemed to have one of those fancy tri-shirts. Really, it was rare I didn’t see one. Even when it wasn’t a tri-shirt, there were no other shirts I noticed that were “homemade.” I got tons of comments both from other runners and from the spectators. I love the shirt and it made me feel loved and cared for. Next time I want to find a white bike shirt so that I can have something similar for the bike. Also, it was mentioned that I needed something distinguishable on my helmet. Consider painting it perhaps? By the way, use your first name on your run number and your last name on your bike number (use only your first name if you are not switching numbers).
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