Originally Posted by cjbruin
A good friend of mine, Mark Moses, is doing it. It will be his first full IM. He dedicated his race to Children's Hospital of Orange County and raised over $100,000!
He is #998, cheer him on for me if you see him.
I would love to sign up for next year but there's no way I'm flying up there to enter.
CJ,
I saw him on the bike course and again at the finish - 12:55 and a few seconds. I don't know what his goal was, but that was in the top half of the finishers, which strikes me as a really good time given the hot and windy weather.
Going to watch,volunteer, and bike / run the course pre-race was a highly educational experience. H2OChick and I did meet up on Saturday afternoon but arranging it was unexpectedly difficult - due to some peculiar quirk with cell phone networks, we both could make and receive calls to others but I could never successfully call her cell phone (even from a land line), while she could call mine. We went shopping in the expo area and made our contributions to the local economy.
My friends (Kathy and Cheryl) and I rode the bike course on Friday and it's a tough one - I had about 5200 feet of total climbing on my bike computer at the end, but strict limits on power output on the many uphills saved my legs. Even so, the long descent from Yellow Lake was a welcome event.
The music they played at the swim start was loud enough to rouse the dead. The pros started 15 minutes before the age groupers and the first emerged from the water in under 50 minutes. We left to look and cheer for friends on the bike course, and parked at the top of the 2nd roller after Richter Pass. It was clearly not about the bike here for the bulk of the participants, as we saw both regular road bikes and P3 Carbons w/disc wheels (for example) all the way to the last riders. We stayed and cheered until 1 PM when we thought that all the riders had gone by, but on our way down Richter Pass we saw a few riders still on their way up. By this point it was hot and the first half of the run course was into a headwind; many athletes I talked with after the race said how difficult the run course was as a result.
We volunteered to be `catchers' at the finish line from 7 to midnight, which meant we supported the athletes (often physically) as they made their way through the finish area, getting them water, blankets, finisher t-shirts, having their timing chips removed, and leading some over to the food, massage, and medical tents. It was both intimidating and inspiring. Many had huge grins on their faces as they crossed the finish line (some with their kids, spouses, etc.), a few collapsed and were taken to medical by the paramedics at the finish line, and a few were in the middle and clearly pushed themselves to where their bodies were in open revolt but not yet collapse. We all wore gloves, and I had reason to change mine several times. While most competitors were quite slim, there were also plenty of folks that weren't, so an unbreakable will to finish mattered more than body type. The finish line was crowded until midnight and the last few competitors got as much cheering from the crowd as the 10 hour finishers.
We helped a friend of Kathy's who had done the race to collect her stuff, get her back to her hotel and get settled and then finally got to bed around 2 AM. We got up around 6 Monday morning and stood in a very long line to sign up for the 25th anniversary race in 2007. It looks like it will be a bigger race (probably 3000+ instead of the 2500 person limit), as were told that everybody in line would get in the race. All we have to do now is pay the $490 to active.com, punch in our registration number, and train like hell for the next year.