Postscript

So I gestated this race for nine months, then went through almost 17 hours of labor. And what did I get? A whiny, helpless, baby Ironman who keeps waking up in the middle of the night for feedings.

That's just a joke. Well, sort of. I did the whiny and helpless thing for a few hours. And the middle-of-the-night feedings part is still absolutely true. But I'm actually doing great. I have some overall soreness, but nothing that's keeping me from walking around. The only thing that's really bothering me is the chafing on my neck, which makes it hurt to turn my head. And that was totally preventable. Darn.

When I was alone in the hotel room the day before the race, I Googled "last-minute Ironman tips" to see if I could find any other scraps of help. I ended up reading the race report of someone who had finished in about 16 hours, and he said, "One advantage to finishing that late is they let you have a whole pizza." So of course the first thing I did afterward is march up and ask for a pizza, which they were happy to give me. Score! What a great tip!

I also got a five-minute post-race massage, but I'm not sure it was such a good idea. Lying down just made me dizzy and let the soreness set in, so it was harder to walk afterward. Plus it kept the kids up five minutes later, which I could see was torture for them both. They had done the amusement park on Saturday and had then been awake for 19 hours straight by Sunday night.

I wanted to go back to the finish line to see the very last people cross, but it turned out there was no place left where you could really see anything. I heard that there was a woman who crossed the finish line two minutes after midnight. Oh, the suffering. I wonder if she at least got a T-shirt.

My body has been screaming incessantly for food and water for the past four days, and any need for sleep seems to have taken a backseat. There is no desire whatever to get on a bike or go to the gym, except that I'd like to show up at yoga to tell my friends there all about the race—and then perhaps lie on the floor for the rest of the class. (Hey, it's a pose.) That will have to wait until next week, because we're leaving town again tomorrow morning to take Michael to a swim meet. I'd love it if he "swims for the win." In fact, I think I'll go put that on a sign to surprise him.