I am thinking of driving to Madison WI (2 hours from chicago) Sunday September 9th as a fan with my camera to photograph athletes pursuit their dreams. Is the race set up so spectators can see the bike and the run with minimal moving around?

I can say the Placid was kind for photographers but that is probably the most remote
most of the serious folks picked a single good location (perhaps 30-40 feet from a turn) and used long
if you have zoom you should have no problems finding a spot

when I did it in 2002, they had a shuttle to take folks out to the bike course to watch, which was really cool. So you should be able to see a lot of it.

Best place to see the bike portion is in Verona (about 8-10 miles from the swim/bike transition point), a small town southwest of Madison. There is a nice turn where the bikers emerge from a hill and then turn right onto the Main St of town. There are lots of spectators there and a nice "professional" race feel to it. The bike portion is two 40 mile loops with a "tail" to get out of town. However, the run portion is pretty compact in the downtown Madison area. You can get the route map at ironmanwisconsin.com. I suppose if you don't want to move around much you will want to set up for the bike portion a little southeast of the city (where the loop portion starts) and then head back to the campus/capital/Monona Terrace area for the running. That would probably be about a 5-6 mile ride to each location.