September 13, 2009

Wisconsin Ironman Triathlon.

It's today. The Ironmen are right about now getting out of Lake Monona and onto their bikes. The switch to running begins around 12:30 at Monona Terrace, and the final run is around central Madison and (my neighborhood) the near West Side. If you live in Madison, are you getting the hell out of town or holing up at home, or frustrating yourself carrying on your usual activities or getting into the spirit of the day and seting out on foot to observe and cheer the athletes?

14 comments:

Bissage said...

Some friends wearing straw boaters, and several pitchers of Pimm's, and it all comes together, or so I've been told.

rhhardin said...

Roads and bike paths are pretty well painted with runner directions for various distances, around here.

Upscale neighborhoods have distance arrows labelled in km.

MadisonMan said...

Beautiful day for a swim. Might be a smidge warm for biking/running.

I'm spending the morning, at least, at a soccer tourney at Reddan. The bike race goes near there, but I'm not sure if I'm there when the bikes are.

rhhardin said...

If Triathlon (the original runner) had had Nikes, maybe he wouldn't have died at the end.

dbp said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dbp said...

Pheidippides was the original marathon runner. If he ran with modern shoes rather than barefoot then he would have been exhausted sooner--running shoes protect joints and feet, but at a cost in energy.

Bissage said...

Mrs. Bissage sometimes wears an “Ironman” wristwatch but I really don’t see any reason to get all jealous about it.

Shanna said...

I think a triathalon would be fun, but an ironman is crazy. Gives you major bragging rights, though.

William said...

How fit do you have to become before you start to think someone's trying to kill you?

Disco Prime said...

One day I am going to enter into an Ironman. I need to solve my transition from riding to running. Oh, and I have to run more than six miles.

Ann Althouse said...

We just got back from watching a good portion of it, including the winner crossing the finish line.

It really is hard to see how some of these people can do it. I saw quite a few participants who looked pretty old (and some were fat). I heard there was a participant in the 80 to 85 year old category.

Ann Althouse said...

Did anybody see me (and Meade) there?

MadisonMan said...

We were watching at the bridge on Walnut. Saw the leader go by with the police escort. Saw three people I know running in the race.

They all looked really really warm.

Expat(ish) said...

I just finished a 10K run - and in Feb I couldn't run 1M without stopping. I've done three sprint tri's (sprint refers to the distance, not my speed) since then.

I've been DUSTED by overweight guys in their 60's and had a 70 year old gal swim over me.

Respect.

-XC

PS - Can no imagine an Olympic Tri, but still not the ironman.