Thursday:
We woke up early to head to Boulder for our last BAM OWS at 6 am in the Boulder Rez. I was so lucky to meet my Coeur Sports team mate Rebecca at this OWS and am super blessed that she delivered a special shirt for me to Boulder from Kebby and the gang at Coeur Sports. I am part of such an amazing team!!
After the swim, The Iron Hippie had some bike issues, so we went for an easy 20 minute shake our run. We then showered at the Rez before going to Ironman registration. It is always fun to get the Ironman wrist band and all of our race bags!!
After registration, we went to Louisville Cyclery to get the Iron Hippie’s bike fixed, checked into our host home in Boulder at about noon, grabbed a quick sandwich, went back to the Boulder High School for the the athlete meeting at 2 pm, got some ice cream to cool off and then went back to Louisville to pick up the Iron Hippie’s bike.
We then went to the house that my parents have rented for their stay in Boulder and enjoyed some time with them before going to Pearl Street for dinner. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory for dinner since we had a large party and knew that we could get basic meals there.
Friday:
We slept in and went to the Boulder Rez at about 10 am for an hour bike ride before getting groceries. We dropped off the groceries at my parents house before heading back to our home stay so we could shower and pack our gear bags.
After all was ready, we went over to my parents house and made a homemade pasta meal while we sat around chatting. It was a nice and relaxing evening, with an early to bed to end the day.
Saturday:
What a whirlwind of a day…we woke up to go swim at the Rez, but the line of traffic was too long and we couldn’t get to the gates before 8:15 (which was the time cutoff apparently, even though it was advertised until 9 am), so we weren’t allowed to swim until 9 am on the short course. We did a little swimming and then test rode our bikes to make sure everything was working well before we put our bikes and bike gear bags into T1 at the Boulder Reservoir.
We then drove to the Boulder high school where we dropped our run gear bag at T2 and then grabbed some lunch at Lyfe Kitchen before going back to our home stay for a shower.
We went to my parents house to chat for a couple of hours before going back to our home stay, eating a plain meal (plain chicken and a plain baked potato) for dinner and then EARLY to bed. With a 2:30 am alarm, 6 pm bed time it was…
Sunday:
Sunday was race day. I’ll have a completely separate post for my race day.
Monday:
We woke up early to go down to Ironman Village to get some finisher gear.
We then went back to our home stay and took a nap before loading the car and leaving Boulder by 1 pm. We made it to Kearney, Nebraska where we stayed overnight at the Holiday Inn Express and grabbed a bite to eat. All I wanted for dinner was potato skins, so we went to Applebee’s thinking they would have them. Nope. I was so tired and hungry that I started to cry. I don’t think the poor server knew what to do with me. The Iron Hippie looked online for a place that served potato skins. Did you know that if you google potato skins in Kearney, Nebraska, you won’t get any results?!?!?!?! We ended up leaving Applebee’s (I did leave the server $2 for my meltdown) and going to the Chicken Coop where I was super happy with my potato skins!!
Tuesday:
We woke up at 5:30 am, ate some breakfast and went back to bed until almost 9 am. We were obviously tired…we showered, loaded up what little we took into our hotel room and hit the road at 10 am. We finally arrived home at 3:30 pm. I was so happy to see my girls!!
I guess this means it is time to come back to reality and normal…whatever that is!! I already miss Colorado and want to go back!!
LOVE the finisher jacket! I was tired just reading about all the activity you did leading up to the race…and now I want potato skins 😉 Can’t wait for the full race recap.
I’ll hopefully have that up tomorrow or Friday 😉
YOU GOT A PUFFY COAT!!!!! I am so jelly. No puffy coats last year. I *almost* got one Sunday night, except it had 2015 and that was sure to violate some karmic law about finisher jackets being only for the year you raced.
I was so glad they still had them!! I love it!! Thank you SO much for everything on Sunday!! You made my race and day so much better!! XOXOXO 💜
LOL! I am trying to figure out how to give you crap for crying over potato skins… But I’ve been that hungry… Can’t do it.
I laugh about it now, but at the time It was so not funny. 😉
I bet!
Love the jacket!!! Super cute!!!!! OMG!! That has happened to me…just started to cry because I was so hungry and tired!!! 🙂 Can’t wait to hear about the race!!
Thanks! I’m glad I’m not the only one who cries when they are tired and hungry 😉
Glad you made it home and back with your pooches! I love your finisher jacket! Can you elaborate a bit on your homestay? I am interested to hear more.
I know you must be working on the details of blogging about race day. Looking forward to it! (No pressure;))
We rented 3 bedrooms in a home in Boulder. We had access to the rest of the home, so we could cook meals and watch television in the living room if we wanted. The lady who owned the house was there (off and on) and even volunteered to take us down to the race venue early on race morning (but we didn’t take her up on it since we would need a vehicle to bring us and all of our gear back). It was so nice 😉
Love the puffer! They better have those at IMWI, too!
It is pretty awesome! They had them at CdA…a friend of mine from Des Moines got one.
I am so excited for your race recap!!!! Eeeeekkkk, congrats!
Thanks Courtney! It was a GREAT day!!
Looking forward to your race recap. It sounds like you had a great day out there!!! I can’t wait to get my own puffy coat one day. 🙂 Do they have different jackets for different races? Or do they vary by year?
This was the first year for the puffy coats. It is usually a standard coat (sometimes 2 coat) option for all of the different Ironman races. This year they added the puffy. I was so happy to see this! I can’t wait until you get yours 😉
2nd Boulder race report read in 5mins. Lol! Good work!
My race report for IMBoulder is up next 😉