This past weekend, I went up to Wisconsin to watch my sister-in-law, Meredith Kessler, compete in the 2011 Ironman Wisconsin.  This weekend was also a celebration of my 40th birthday (which you can wish me a belated birthday by going to my fanpage at http://facebook.com/adamkesslerfanpage hint, hint) and I wanted to spend time with family and friends.  This was the perfect venue to do that.

My wife and I had never been to an Ironman and if you haven’t either then listen up and I’ll tell you how the day went.

Having followed Meredith a lot closely since she went pro, I had really grown an interest to seeing one of these races.  Still do not have the urge to ever run one, but don’t mind watching.  We were up by 4am to make sure Meredith was down at the events start by 5am.  My parents, my bro, Aaron, my wife, Rose, and a high school buddy, Zach were all around to watch, plus about a zillion other people it seemed.

The Hilton was on a lake that was going to be used for the swim portion of the Ironman.  There was a walkway along the shoreline full of people, plus people cramming on every porch and stairwell to watch the event start.  The race had about 30-35 professional Ironmen (men and women), Meredith being one of them.  There were also about 2500 amateurs all ready to get the race going.  I’d say about 95% of those amateurs were doing the race not for any medal, but just to accomplish a personal goal they had set for themselves: finish an Ironman.

The professionals started their race at 6:50am with a loud cannon blasting and they started swimming.  All the amateurs started their race 10 minutes later at 7am.  It looked like a bunch of salmon swimming upstream.  Tons of people swimming.

If you are a professional running this race, you will be racing anywhere from 8.5 – 10.5 hours.  Non-stop movement.  As a spectator, you are picking and choosing where you will see your favorite athlete for about 5 seconds as they speed by, then you move to the next destination.  Or, you could be like some fans and just park it in one spot for awhile cheering on each and every athlete.

Meredith is a strong swimmer and can usually swim the 2 mile course in about 53-56 minutes.  So around the 45 minute mark we preceded to move to a vantage point where we could watch Meredith start her bike run.  Rose and my mother had made signs to cheer on Meredith that they were holding by the road.  I was fumbling with my camera to see if I could snap some pics and my brother was going to yell what Meredith’s time was.

After two or three male pros rode by, Meredith biked on through.  We yelled, showed her the signs, she gave us a thumbs up, she sped by, and we hiked to our car to try and meet her somewhere else on the course.

After stopping at the Pancake Cafe for a bite to eat, all six of us went to another point on the bike path.  Literally, within 5 minutes of getting to our spot.  Meredith rode past.  She was leading the females and we calculated a good 10 minutes ahead of the next person.

Off to the car we went, loaded up another bike path address on the gps, and made our way to another point in the race.  We were a little early and waited about 20 minutes before Meredith rode by.  We weren’t prepared to see her sneak up on us and didn’t flash the signs quick enough.  The group behind us, who was cheering on each and every biker, shouted, “I love your blog Meredith.”

Our next destination was back to the Hilton for the start of the marathon and catch her run.  At this point, it was around 1:15pm and Meredith had swam for 2 miles and biked for 110 miles.  She was the first female off the bike and took off.  We cheered, I got some good action shots, and then waited to see how far back the next female was.  It turned out she was about 10.5 minutes behind.

What was worrisome was that the run was the second place person’s best event.  We were hoping Meredith would be able to stay strong and secure the victory.  Only 3.5 hours more to go in the race (THAT’S ALL?!).

We drove to Camp Randall Stadium where the runners would make several loops of their marathon there.  We eventually saw Meredith run by.  She was looking tired, but heck they all were.  Second place was now 6 minutes back.  Mer would take a second loop around, so we waited for her to return.  Aaron saw her and told her the gap between second and asked how she was feeling.  She responded by saying she was cramping.  That wasn’t good.

Second place now had closed the gap to 5 minutes on her second loop.  We decided to head back to the Hilton for the finish.  Ultimately, Meredith would get passed on the 18 mile mark, but hold on for second place in the Ironman.  The finish line was cool.  It was marked with a big arch that had a digital running time to indicate the athlete’s time as they crossed underneath it.  There were barricades lined up on the final stretch, so that people could cheer the runners on.  Each and everyone was given a great applause and cheer.

Couple cool things about this race.

  1. Meredith had pulled off an unbelievable double.  Meaning she had done two Ironmans back to back.  Two weeks ago, she captured third place at the Ironman Canada (she was defending champ).  She was able to recover and fine tune her training in those two weeks to get this second place.  An awesome feat.  Her breakdown was 9 hours and 50 minutes total with a 53 minute swim, 5 hours and 15 minute bike, and a 3 hour and 34 minute run (or something close to that).
  2. There was such admiration for all the athletes from the spectators.  There was no booing or hissing like at football games, just constant encouragement from the crowd, which was kind of nice to see.
  3. I really liked Madison.  It was a very friendly, clean town and I’m just glad it was in the late summer, early fall because I heard the winter is a completely different story (think lots of snow).

My wife and I enjoyed the Ironman race so much, we will probably try to attend another race of Meredith’s next year.  Once again, I will not participate, but I’m more than happy to watch.  I’ll have some pictures posted on my Fanpage at http://facebook.com/adamkesslerfanpage if you want to see some of the experiences of the Ironman.  I have a few up now and will have some others up soon.  We really had a blast and look forward to doing it again in the future.