First of all - thank you so much for watching out for me yesterday. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Tracy sent me a message so I knew you were there with me in spirit and truly - everyone's good wishes helped me to have a wonderful race.

Oh.my.God what a BEAUTIFUL place for an Ironman. I can't even begin to tell you how wonderful the location is, how great the people are here and how amazing the volunteers are!

I will write a longer race report soon, but I wanted to give you the recap real quick. It was crazy at first. The water was so choppy the race director gave us the option of doing a duathlon instead of the IM. Hmmmm, NOPE, I figured I'd swum in that chopfest in Florida, I could do this. Well, it was crazy. The only thing that made it better than FL was that it was fresh water and when you got a mouthful of it, it tasted ok. :-)

Onto the bike and those hills - WOW. Just when you think there couldn't possibly be another hill, there was! And it was big. I tried to ride conservatively the first loop, and by the second loop I was feeling good and I could see a lot of people who'd gone all out on the first loop started to fade. I passed lots of people! I think I averaged just over 17 for the course and I'm SO happy with that. The best thing about the course was that there were people everywhere - truly - everyone came out from there houses, but not just for a few minutes - for hours! I saw the same people on the second loop of the bike as I did on the first!

The run was good. I pretty much ran the first loop (its an out an back like FL along the same course, so you see people a lot) and walked the aid stations. By the second loop, a friend of mine had realized his hernia had popped out and so I walked a bit with him. Then, the girl that I have done all my long runs/long rides with this time was about a mile behind me (she left transition 6 minutes before me and I caught and passed her on the first loop), so I dawdled a bit. We had talked about finishing together if we were ever close enough to do that, so I let her catch me and we ran/walked the last 6 miles together. We got to cross together - I let her go just before me so that my kids could run in with me. It was really great.

My hubby said, you slowed up a bit on the run. And I told him, for me, its all about the experience and making it fun, and running in with Krista made it a once-in-a-lifetime for me.

If you're thinking about signing up for an IM, DO CDA. Really. It is a fantastically managed, setup, held and run race. I can't say enough about good about.

RM - regarding the hills. I trained out in Fountain Hills. NOTHING was harder than that, I promise. They were unrelenting and the wind was pretty bad on the bike, but nothing that you couldn't do. Do it, you will LOVE it, I just know it!!