I was offered an amazing opportunity to be a run escort at IMLOU that I could not pass up. All I knew was that I was going to get to ride my mountain bike around the marathon course with one of the top five finishers. I have never done an IM race, nor have I ever even been to one, but this seem like a very cool opportunity - something I would not want to miss. I met up with the rest of the escort team around 11am - about four hours after the race had started. We drew our assignments from a bag, I picked thrid place female. I must admit, I was slightly apprehensive about the whole thing. The last thing you want to do is ruin someone else race, esp. if they are in one of the top five spots.
I waited near the beginning of the run course watching some of the early men go by. I picked up Carole Sharpless and off we went. We hit a turn around point, I sped up and gave her a thumbs up as I came around. She was all business and she looked incredibly strong at this point.
As we moved along the course, it was really quiet - a lot of the spectators would probably show up later - this may sound stupid, but I tried to keep my bike as quiet as possible so as not to spoil the silence - really stupid, I know. Some of the top runners passed us coming back from the turn around, some shouting out encouragement - It was great to see. When we got down to the end of the first loop, the crowd reaction for Sharpless was incredible.
The second lap was harder.
It was much hotter and a lot of the age groupers had started their first lap so there was a lot of traffic to deal with especially in the aid stations where a lot of people were stopping.
She was slowing down, then walked for a while. I tried my “get your ass moving” look to no avail (come to think of it, it doesn’t work with my kids either). She picked it up again, a bit slower - then some jerk did the absolute most uncoolest, unclassiest thing I have ever seen. He was on his first lap, but on the other side of the road - saw the sign on my bike and decided to come across the center line in front of Carole to try to give her a high five and kind of get in her face a bit - like “Hey baby, look at you, you’re in third place”. It’s like something you might see a drunk guy do at the end of a long night in a bar. I mean seriously - you should get a DQ for that kind of crap. A ‘looking good’ or ‘good job’ or whatever is all that’s required. She didn’t react to him somehow, but man if you are out there - you seriously need to get a life.
Further along, everything started to fall apart. Her coach kept giving her the times back to 4th place and they were getting smaller and smaller. At about mile 20 she said “It sucks to get passed in the end” - all I could offer was “Let’s go, it’s all down hill from here” - which it wasn’t. I peeked back over my other shoulder and I saw the 4th place bike. After a few minutes, and with about three miles to go, I picked up new runner and headed for the finish.
After I put my bike away, I hung out at the finish line for a few hours. It was amazing thing to watch - very inspiring - a little hard to put into words.
Andrew
She got it done though!