Jen Boespflug is an energetic, enthusiastic RTB'er who traveled over to Coeur d'Alene with her equally enthusiastic friend, Julie Guillian. They were a crack-up on the course. One IM emailed me later asking who the crazy RTB chicks were on the course?! Jen writes a fun spectator report below and is pictured here having a great race at the 5-mile Lake Triathlon a week later. "Go Jen Jen Jen!!!"I had a great time this last weekend watching the Ironman. I was so inspired and thought that I might like to give my spectator race report.
So Julie (Guillian) and I drove over to stay with friends on Friday so that we could get in a little activity on Saturday. Julie had the great idea to do "something cool" so that we didn't feel like such slouches by just watching the Ironman. We did go for a 15 mile hike and I was definately sore the next day while watching, which made me feel better.
We woke up at 5:30 and got to the beach and our viewing spot around 6:00. I do believe we had one of the best spots to view as we could see the entire swim course and were on the retaining wall right were the sand meets the pavement on the path out of the water. We got great views of all of the athletes literally a couple of feet away. In fact we were swore at by other spectators who tried to steal our location, but we held strong and didn't give it up.
My first impression of the swim course was "holy cow look how long that is" then we found out that it was 2 laps. How humbling. To boot the water was super choppy and we could see white caps. I was nervous for the athletes, let alone couldn't imagine swimming any distance in water so rough. The swim began and it was a sea of caps flooding into the water for several minutes. Wow, what a sight to see! Truly Beautiful!
Then the first swimmers emerged from the second lap and came running up the beach. We were so excited and began cheering crazily and thus began our clapping and shouting that lasted for the rest of the day. I felt like paparazzi with my camera as I was snapping pirctures like mad!
And look at that "RTB Thriftway" "Go Raise the Bar" here comes one of our guys out of the water, then another and so on. It may well have been the President or Paris Hilton, we were totally STARSTRUCK by the RTB athletes. Then came the final swimmer after over 2 hours in the water. She emerged from the water and was trying to run up the beach, when I think it dawned on her that the thousands of screams and cheers were soley for her. When she reached about where we were she covered her face to keep from crying, thus opening the faucet from my own eyes and everyone around me. I am a little teary eyed thinking about it now. How inspiring so see someone working so hard and to see so many supporters. I couldn't even imagine how she felt.
On to the bike course! We found a great location right at a round about. We could cheer the riders coming and going. Again, whenever we could see an RTB member coming you would think it was Lance Armstrong or something. We tried to be encouraging, but most of the time we would just scream and yell nonsense or the persons name "Jim! Jim! Jim!" then they would pass like a bullet and we would talk about what encouraging words we could us the next time they came by. Pointless conversations though, because we would have the same celebrity sighting reaction the next time.
We went to grab some quick eats and sit on the curb a few blocks up from the finish. It was so amazing to see the athletes coming down the road. I could not believe the athletes had the energy to smile, wave, or even still be able to run at that point. It was so inspiring, I wanted to be that person who had accompished such an amazing thing. I can't even imagine what they must have felt after finishing the race. I'm sure it is one of those things that you cannot understand until you have done it. We joked about how "sore our clapping hands" were, but knew how silly that was compared to these ironmen and ironwomen.
I would like to think that somewhere, sometime I will find that I too have an Ironwoman somewhere in me. In the mean time I am already making plans to watch/volunteer in 2008. What and inspiring weekend, I drove home Sunday night so pumped on adrenaline from such and amazing event. Julie and I did agree that it was made especially cool and exciting knowing that we had a small connection to so many inspiring people on the RTB/thriftway team who competed, even if they had no idea who the crazy chics were on the side of the road shouting jibberish at them. So THANK YOU to all of the athletes who competed in Ironman Coeur D'Alene.
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