Race week

Crashie and Squishy were first to land on Klaggy beach. They quickly setup an intelligence gathering system and though careful use of pigeons, coded messages and <bouncing> started to generate the excitement for the week to come – thanks team hamster!

Shiraz dropped me off at the airport at 4:30am on Thursday. 6 hours later I was in Klaggy checking into the YHA and getting a pirate warm welcome from the Melliferas. That afternoon I got my “athlete” wristband, then I wandered around the expo to scared to tempt fate by buying any clothing with Ironman written on it, and then pirate peer pressure forced me to drink beer!

One funny thing that did happen at registration, though, was that somewhere the Ironman organisation dug up a bit of my past… on their registration forms for “beruf/occupation” they listed “one length without stopping, 1982″ – I think my mum might still have the certificate somewhere – maybe she told them about this?

Friday came and first we got a swim in – the water was really gorgeous and it was good to be doing some exercise. Then we got accosted by an old man – basically he wanted to tell us how much he liked our t-shirts. His message was something to do with the skull and crossbones – he explained that his dad had been in the SS and that he had worn the same type of shirt; he told us that it was a sign that his dad was among the greatest of the nazis… it wasn’t exactly a warm welcome so we wished him a good day and walked away.

The rest of Friday was then spent hanging around, expo shopping, and relaxing. Foolishly I read some IMCH race reports that Becky from Thames Turbo had emailed to me. I think these race reports were supposed to inspire, but instead they terrified me. With 48 hours to go and a weather forecast for hot sunshine, the last thing I wanted to do was read about the pain that these guys had lived through, even if they did all have happy endings… To help me recover, I tried attaching the race stickers to my bike. As I did so, the nerves started to pick up…

That night Shiraz arrived – yippee – my Sherpa, partner and best friend had made it

Saturday I learnt that Mrs Foggy isn’t necessarily the best person to get to do a quiet job, then we had a little swim (which included watching Shiraz swimming up to the wrong pier and then looking very lost), then we went to the comedy race briefing (for your first offence you’ll get a purple card, then two oranges and finally a pink???), and then it was time to rack. Really racking was easy – all I had to do was park a bike – but still somehow I managed to faff for almost an hour! Then it was off to town for a nice meal (pizza for me) and then into bed by around 9:30.