12 Hours 54 Minutes 16 Seconds

That is the time it took Matt to swim, bike & run 140.6 miles Sunday, July 20th. It was truly an amazing day. Too bad it rained all day, and I mean ALL day, as in 7:30am till about 9pm. I'm going to try to figure out how to download some of my video of the day, especially the crazy swim start. Matt said the swim is a contact sport, a combination of swimming and wrestling. Someone swam right over him and ripped off his goggles. Luckily they float, and he was able to find them and get them back on before losing a contact lens.

We (me, his mom and aunt)were very worried when he was on the bike ride since it was raining so hard and they had a lot of hills to climb and descend. My fear was that he would crash out there and it would be over. On one section there is a 5 mile downhill ride that when he was out there for the training in June he got up to 48 MPH. He said he only went about 40MPH on race day with all the standing water and risk of hydroplaning. A crash at that speed usually translates to a ride to the hospital or worse!
We got lucky when it came to getting to the right viewing spot on time all day long. This was very new for me since, when we go to Boston, I never get to see him on the course. The supporters and volunteers were fantastic! With a town population of 2,300, Lake Placid manages to get 3,000 people to volunteer on race day. There were so many of us on the course cheering the athletes on, despite the miserable weather.

After taking a shower and going to dinner, Matt and I made it back to the finish for the final half hour leading up to midnight. Everyone has to finish by midnight, and let me tell you, that place was insane! The grand stands were filled, and everyone was pounding on their thunder sticks. Mike Reilly, who emcee's every full distance Ironman was running up and down the finish area cheering the last few people through, it was just incredible. There was this guy coming into the finish and everyone was cheering "GO, GO, GO, GO", and he was 8 seconds too late. He goes in the books as an unofficial finisher, there were 3 people who came in as unofficial. 148 people didn't finish at all, pretty good since 2,196 finished. Matt has signed up for next year; he did it just in case he didn't finish this year. The 2009 sign up was Saturday (day before this years' race) and it sold out in 15 minutes. He doesn't think he will do it, but I actually wouldn't mind if he did. It was so much fun, I might be a volunteer if he does. We would try to get a couple other people to join us should we do it again. Needless to say, it was an awesome time!