A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

That’s all I can say right now. “The Main Event” unfolded a year ago with Brett, Tyler, Stacy and I exchanging e-mails about how we were going to get Brett into Ironman Wisconsin, the efforts of so many to help to do it, the untold wasted hours of work time following and participating in their smack-talk, a preliminary race at Wildflower and countless amazing efforts out there in Madison, WI from true athletes and and untold number of supporters.

Don’t get me wrong, there were thousands of other competitors out there, a number of which I have known for years and yet only got to meet for the first time, but the story of the day has to be the creation of a true rivalry between Tyler “Jetpack” Darby and Brett “Texafornia” Blankner who both rocked the course out there in Madison.

This day had it all with adversity, psychosis, celebration, penalties, flat tires, little orange cone shaped rabbits, Tour de France driving of the bike course, Kai “Gooooo JetPack” Blankner heckling riders, Cow bells, Tyler and Brett trusting their wives and baby with Coach Adam, Kelley learning that even in Wisconsin a red light means stop, model parenting in a moving vehicle, Stu with a perm, Jamba Juice and Subway, Jumpy not knowing which hill he was on, 22-miles of support running, more cow bells, The new go to “Time Out” for naughty penalized riders, extreme ADD, a run around the Wisconsin football field, another run around the football field, another errr run around the Wisconsin football field, bladder issues, sneaky false timing mats to catch cheaters, using “The Force” over police officers to let us do what we wanted, people with the name Green wearing yellow, bull horns and more cow bells, the only crack park in Madison, contact lenses popping out, 30 TriScoopers in a 4 hour chat, Moonpie and CindyJo pausing their tidal wave of margaritas long enough to run with everyone on State Street, Drew at Ironman Central in Bend Oregon, Tracey “IronWil” Korn finishing what she started, self imposed penalties, bleeding inner thighs, my USC Trojans triathlon team members representing, and an amazing bike effort from Brett and an even more amazing run effort from Tyler to make the finish of this race one for the ages.

I’ll get to all of this in the coming days along with video footage, audio and pictures to make this come alive for all of those who followed this event minute by minute on TriScoop or one of the other blogs.

Suffice it to say that Ironman as a spectator sport is a great way to spend 4 days and 20 consecutive hours. I had as much fun driving, cheering and running around on that course as I did as an Ironman competitor (although I so wanted to jump on a bike a few times during the race.) While my constant math calculations probably drove Kelley and Emily crazy, being a coach and a previous competitor and having press credentials out there on the course gave me a few observations that might prove valuable for those thinking about doing IM-Moo in the near future.

If nothing else, it will be one very bizarre race report from someone who didn’t even race.

Stay tuned…