At 9:33:46 pm (or 14 hours 33 minutes and 46 seconds after I started the day) I raised my hands at the finish line. Those last few seconds running up the finish line shoot seeing my Dad first on the right with a huge smile and a thumbs up, then looking left and hearing my brother Steve giving me a big “YOU are an Ironman”, seeing Kirstin and Anthony with giant smiles, a few steps further on the right I see a hand shoot out of nowhere and I look up to see it was Fawn with her infectious smile as I high five’d her and saw my Mom right behind her with such excitement on her face made the previous three hours of the most physically and mentally taxing time I remember ever enduring just fade away.
My brother Vinnie was giving my Mom updates about my progress from 2300 miles away as he tracked my progress on IronmanLive.com. Don and Sandra watched the event live on the internets and taped me coming through the finish line with their camera phone. How fun is that?!
The support I got was AMAZING. I can’t express the gratitude to each and every one of them for that because a TYVM x 1000 will never be enough.
These next few posts will try to sum up my thoughts going into and completing the event and also because I signed up for next year, I will be starting at the finish line.
