Ironman FL 2008, Panama City Beach, FL

Well here we are again. Back on the Ironman thing. It was a rough start for most all of us getting here to Panama City Beach. We all had flight problems. The Raleigh gang even had a plane turn around on them and come back to Atlanta as soon as it took off. Some thing about the pilot and co pilot instrument panels not matching.
Getting a late start in getting here meant a late start in setting up. We worked until midnight setting up. My flight was one of the last in so I missed unloading the truck. Les, Lawrence and Wayne had started unloading the truck by themsleves while the rest of us were trying to get there. Don't forget we have a double tractor trailer!

Day 2
The day started out sunny and bright even though it didn't feel that way. It was really chilly all day. This is the veiw for our condo a couple of blocks from the IM village and expo.

The expo opened at 8am.

The sales side seemed pretty busy for it being the first day. The service side was definitely busy with 21 bikes needing to be put together before we could start working on walk in repairs.


Working into the night required some additional lighting because the overhead lighting is not so great.

The big news of the day? Tractor signed up for Ironman Cozumel in Nov. 2009. Edde from Insideout and I are already signed up and have been working on Lawrence. He caved today. Here he is doing the dirty deed.

I'm pretty stoked about this! Now I have two buddies going with me! For Lawrence and I it will be our first Ironman. For Edde it will be his fourth.

Thursday. Two more days until the Saturday race. (Most are on Sundays.) Everyone is getting into a rhythm. We get to see all the sunrise an sunsets.

At least the sunrise and sunsets are awesome.
This place we are working in a is like a pavilion on a boardwalk. Cool until you drop something small enough to go through the cracks. Tractor figured out how to get everything back though. A computer mangnet on a shift cable.


He saved the day on three different drops!

D-day for the athletes. The day they have to get their bikes into transition and not touch them until in the morning right before the race. That means crunch time for the techs and sales people.


Lena was kept very busy repairing wet suits. She said that she had done enough repairs to equal sewing a whole new wet suit by hand!

Curtis stayed busy out in the Cervelo tent. He was there to sell bikes but he also did quite a bit of small quick fixes for our Cervelo customers.


Finally crunch day was over and we definitely toasted to that with one of our tips.

Then it was time to get back to getting ready for the race. Pack the bins for race support day and get the transition tools ready.

Now, on this morning Les got up with me to take a short spin.

I kind of think it got the best of him though, but then most of us look something like this at the end of our 4th day anyway.

Alrighty then! Race day! Transition was pretty dark at 4:30am.


The techs made their way around before the athletes were allowed in to our "special" customers and then set ourselves up for the flood. %am they let the athletes in. We pumped tires for 1 1/2 hours non stop. My line stretched for 50 yds at points. They all had their valves ready to pump when they got to me. That meant steady pumping. Whew! As the competitors made their way down to the water for the swim start and things thinned out in our area some more excitement came to be. A woman ran up to us pretty much in tears with wet suit in hand.

A broken zipper! She thought her race was over. Les and Lawrence went to work on her suit while David Greenfield from Elite Bicycles was talking to her trying to keep her calm.

The Elite boys were also on hand to help with tire pumping.


The repair was looking iffy

so I ran her over to our tent, also trying to keep her calm, to see if we had a rental that would work for her. She had one foot in the rental suit when Les call and said they got the suit fixed and Dennis was running it over too us. Once she was in it she was calm again. She still had 10 mins to get back down to the swim.

The swim start is always amazing to watch. Not only is there a spectacular sunrise to watch but 2600 people going out to swim all at once is something to see as well.

Then we hit the road in our support vehicles. Curtis was my driver and being a road racer himself really showed in his ability to get around the course.

The workload was fairly light for most of us. Mostly flat tire repairs. Lawrence had one repair to a set of aero bars that was interesting. He used a block of wood to rebuild an arm rest.
On pack up day a lot of the iron crew (other than us at IOS) participated in the Beer Mile out on the beach. A drinking/running game. Drink a beer, run a 1/4 mile, drink a beer, run a 1/4 mi and so on for a mile. If you spew you have to drink another and keep it down. Lawrence and I went out to the beach to witness some of the event but could not join in cause we were still loading up the truck. The loading took until way into the night. We decided that we are going to do our own version of this with Jaiger at the AZ race later in Nov.



Also on pack up day Less came down with a virus that wiped him out. we would not find out until later how bad he really was. You'll hear more about that in the Clearwater write up coming soon.