Ironman Wisconsin. September 9th, 2007

Transition on High at the Hilton. All photos by J.Korn unless otherwise noted.

"There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." ~ Victor Hugo

As profound as it may seem otherwise, remember that's all it was - time for it to happen. We can't forever go in the direction of something without arriving, after all. I'm also neither so much stronger nor more courageous than any others out there who struggle to shed their fears and doubts and baggage and then simply begin fighting more efficiently in the endeavor of being free. I believed, people loved me, and that's all it was, really.

The Swim


So this is Ironman sunrise... I'd wondered for three years what it might look like, and finally there it was saturating the sky and pouring over everything floating on the water - rich and warm like honey over the raw - and when I saw it I knew I'd have no storms that day. It promised me in this moment, and I believed. In fact it's fair to say there have been precious few things I've believed with quite this much certainty, and surprisingly, for once I hadn't the need to speculate why. I was only grateful I did because it meant the only thing left to conquer was the distance.

From l-r, friends Michelle, Erin, Bolder, me, Ryan and Stu.

Hundreds filtered into the water ahead of and behind me.

A bit later on the ramp people found me and hugged me, wished me luck and held my shoulders as we all shuffled side by side to the shore. The Anthem played simple and clear, and when it finished the sun came up over everyone as if in approval.

A fraction of the would-be Ironmen, shoreline.

"2.4 TO GET IT STARTED!! LET'S GET WET - GET IN THE WATER!!! DO YOU WANT TO BE AN IRONMAN TODAY!!!"

Before floating out I took a deep breath, then looked up at the Monona Terrace rooftop layered with people, and remembered my earlier view from there. To me the buoys were pebble chips and the solitary swimmers, fine feather trails in the sand. Strange perhaps, but I couldn't process the vastness and suppose my mind just referenced the closest in context memory: being six and at the beach, looking down all around my crossed little legs at the details of an eternity.

The view from atop the Monona Terrace a few days before the race.

As I smiled to myself just then I heard my name shouted from across the water, and turned to see Bob, someone who was turning out to be quite the inspiration for me. We'd corresponded via email now and then and even met once or twice that weekend, as well as at WIBA, but he stayed with me because throughout the course of the year I'd come to recognize in him some very familiar things: the same fear and self-doubt with which I, myself, began this journey, not to mention the coexisting drive to define himself based not on the terms of what he had been, but what he would dare be. I gave him the biggest hug I could muster when he asked me lightheartedly if he could really do this, there, waist high in the water, then told him with an uncontrollable smile, you totally will!

"TWO MINUTES!!! I KNOW YOU WILL ALL BE IRONMEN TODAY!!!"

Swimming out I never stopped smiling, and upon hearing these words float down to us my first thought was a matter-of-fact, yes, I will, followed instantly by what seemed to be the corroborating punctuation of the cannon.

I'd positioned myself back and inside, in line with the buoys, but out of the path of those who would wind up in front of me sooner than later anyway, and better for us all if getting there over top of me wasn't part of the process. I guess I've finally just learned that being successful isn't so much about starting out in front, especially if doing so compromises my chances of getting to the end in one piece. Yes. This time, I will be smarter.

The infamous Ironman "washing machine."

There was then only a bit of polite and expected bumping, and one good elbow to the head, which was immediately followed by, "Oh! Sorry, are you OK?" I was, and appreciated the inquiry, especially since I all but asked to be hit by stopping there in the water to adjust my chip, which had slipped out from underneath the leg of my wetsuit.

I checked my watch at the end of the first loop and noticed I was 15 minutes slower than last year! My shoulder was hurting, but not 15 minutes hurting, so after the initial shock I chalked it up to swimming wide entirely too often and adding unnecessary distance. I will definitely fix that for the second loop, man... and though I still swam wide a few more times, I managed to get back 12 of the 15 minutes, making me just six minutes slower than last year as opposed to what could have been 30. Eeesh, not the best swim of my life, but a swim that let me start the bike all the same. 1:55:36, nearly two hours into the warm up for the race I'd come to run.

The Bike

Several weeks prior to Ironman I'd teased my friend Stu for changing, replacing, and/or updating every possible iota of his race-related equipment and gear. I specifically remember giving him a healthy dose of hell for changing even the battery in his PowerTap CPU. In fact, I believe my exact words were, ...wow, talk about some paranoid OCD there buddy! , to which he laughed and said unabashedly, hey, three bucks for some peace of mind is fair price if you ask me.

I shook my head and exhaled all-too-amused, then never thought about it again. That is until I got on my bike on September 9th, 2007, and read the flashing "Low Battery" message scroll across my screen. Aghhhhhhh, man.... I knew, I knew, I knew in that moment the fates were somewhere at a celestial Starbucks really laughing it up... and honestly, I guess I had to laugh a little too. Well, I thought, I guess we wing this one.

Heading out of transition for a windy 112 miles.

Now, winging it works when you have a five-minute presentation to give on the new Xanadu Fridays office dress-code, but when you're about to head out into the wind on a technical course riddled with tumultuous hills for 112-miles and the better part of your day, winging it better involve some actual wings. This was especially true since I'd relied heavily on my PowerTap in the last of my long training rides, the idea being to get the cadence up and power down during the first 56 miles, and thus prevent the otherwise inevitable blow up during the second half. But see, without that power meter I was riding blind.

Needless to say my amusement at the situation quickly wore off as I felt my heart pounding in my chest while heading down the helix and in the general direction of Verona. My HR monitor (that I luckily still had on from the swim) read 163 bpm, and I tried to quickly inventory everything I could - Legs? OK, fine, gears? OK, no grinding, cadence is... I don't know, 80, 85 ish? No hills, crazy unwind there though... holy crap... OK it's gotta be adrenaline...just spin, breathe breathe breathe... So breathe, and spin, I did.

Then, after about five miles of this my HR came down significantly and I began to realize I'd be fine, though I think this had more to do with the oddly spontaneous, and no doubt purposely resurrected by the guilt-ridden fates memory of a blind woman who once came to speak to my fourth grade class. I remembered asking her how she got around her house, how she cooked!? And she told me with a smile, "Close your eyes and don't open them when you get home this afternoon. It will be scary at first and you might panic, but soon your body will figure it all out based on what you don't know you already know. That's how I do it."

I went home and closed my eyes that afternoon and promptly ran into walls, bumped my head, and fell countless times, but then I listened and felt and knew, exactly the way she described. And at mile five in Madison, having ridden at X amount of watts so many times and having pedaled everything from 50 to 100-odd cadence so many times, I knew what 230 watts felt like grinding up a hill, and I knew how to bring it down to 150 - exactly where I was supposed to ride. I could feel it, I could tell, and I could ride blind because I'll be damned, that little screen had been teaching me how all these months. OMG I know this!? Hey I know this!

So it's part of me now; an ability I've gained, and maybe it's such an epiphany because I've just never let myself have the credit for learning these seemingly basic things along the way - how to handle a stitch in the side when running, how to time bilateral breathing and pull, climbing a hill sitting, standing and the difference between the two, salt levels, GI fixes, blood sugar levels, blister prevention and treatment, lactic acid threshold and flushing, oh my God all these things that athletes know. All these things that I know. And it's damn empowering a thing to see it all like this, to look at what you've learned and done and thus what you've become, and to realize that knowing means not having to constantly depend upon or fear or doubt. That it's independence and freedom and the feeling that yes, definitely yes you can and you will.

This is how I felt at the mile 40 Verona threshold, just before the first of the infamous hills.

(Right: Curt Chesney in the heat of battle)

Then it started as a hum, low and distant, reverberating off the inside of my helmet and skull and teeth. I was alone and had been for a while, riding between the packs there in the wide and the open, in the countryside scattered with farms and cattle and blankets of grass at the base of the sky. Until that hum. It provoked a primal instinct to flee in me, and at the foot of the roller ahead I stood up in the saddle and tried.

But it wasped too quickly closer and harder and louder, metallic and vein-filling. A sound so dense it could be measured in mass and I heard only this. It grew stronger with each revolution, and my heart raced with a mortal terror and an equally stupifying curiosity, but I couldn't look. I couldn't bring myself to turn or to even break my line, and I wonder now if this is the feeling we have before we know, somehow, what's about to happen to us the instant before we die. A protective shock of some kind. Then the headwinds collapsed, and as he rode past he erased me.

I'd venture to say this man on his bike was one of the ten most beautiful things I've ever seen. I couldn't tell where he stopped and where the machine began as there was only this force, and in his wake it was 10 minutes before I was the same. Soon his bib, hovering behind him as the hum of him rode on, read, "Maik", the soon to be overall winner of this race. The sound was his back wheel rotating as he levitated up the hill and into thin air.

(Left: Gina Ferguson, the eventual women's winner, flying in Verona)

Soon thereafter a series of superheroes lapped me, Dave Harju, Gina Ferguson, Lauren Jenson (whom I almost made crash as she rode up behind me while I was passing someone else), it was amazing to see them in action. I watched them while I could, studied in the seconds I had their form and positioning as they powered up the hills. None of them rode up seated, none of them changed gears, they just dug in and floated up and it was awe-inspiring.

Equally awe-inspiring were the crowds on the hills in Verona, the first of which made me a little nervous initially in their absence. You see the first hill winds a bit as it steepens, and I'd seen no one around the first two bends. But then crowds of people in all manner of costume lined the road, cow bells and pom poms and blasting rock and roll all under a booming loudspeaker voice. I turned to a spectator as I started to climb and said, "Oh so the party's up here! I was getting a little nervous!" He laughed and confirmed that everyone was at the top of the hill ...this is the top??

"TRACY! GREAT CADENCE! OH MY GOD YOU'RE MAKING THIS COURSE LOOK EASY!" He said loud enough for the world to hear, igniting the crowd. The echo from the speaker hit me in the chest against the backdrop of cheers as I climbed, and when I saw the announcer was my friend Luke, I knew what it was like to float like Maik; to pass rider after rider and to fly.

The second hill came quickly and was lined from bottom to top. I could see people flooding the road in the distance and wasn't exactly sure how I'd ride through, but as I approached they parted just enough. Climbing, I heard the conversations in layers and the bits and pieces as they applied to me, "There's that BMC...go BMC smiley girl!" "NICE cadence, come on WIL!" And then, once again, the top.

Two down, one to go.

"All right, Tracy..." at the base of the third hill, the steepest and longest and hardest, I heard and then saw the first of my teammates. Chris Sweet was on his second lap riding strong, and in that moment I felt a strange sense of pride both because of and for him. He hummed upwards like his Justice League cohorts, intangible and iconic, yet had been there with us before the race, months and months before, there with us giving advice when needed, contributing ideas, laughing and eating and talking and dreaming, and in that culminating moment it all flashed before me. We were all out there together, we were friends. And we were a team.

I finished the first loop strong, and now we'd see if my blind pacing was on, or not.

At the water stop in Verona.

Things went well for another ten miles, my legs and stomach felt fine, and hearing Tyler Stewart cheering me while riding by on the back of Wil Smith's motorcycle was invigorating. "YEAH TRACY!!!!!" She'd come out with our sponsor Scott from BMC to support the team, and we joked at dinner about how she was likely making all the pro women nervous. Days before the race she talked to Chris and Bolder about riding hills, and having forgotten my cap at the Gatorade swim, she pulled from her bag her own from Lake Placid where she placed second, and gave it to me. "Oh here ya go."

Laughing with Tyler and the gang just before the Gatorade swim.

It might as well have been her medal as far as I was concerned, but she laughed and said, "Ahh, no no, I don't care." She was just as much a force as any and much more than many, yet she was there for us as she'd been all year giving advice when needed, contributing ideas, laughing and eating and talking and dreaming, and seeing her on the back of that bike I felt the same sense of pride I did when I saw Chris Sweet disappear over a Verona climb.

My adrenaline kicked up as I thought then about how I knew she'd eventually win Kona as a pro just the way she had as an age-grouper, and I felt excited thinking of cheering her all the way there. I rode faster, and looking back, I realize hoping so hard for someone else's success that it winds up fueling your own is like nothing else I've ever experienced.

After 60 miles I was alone again, my watch said I had just over 4 hours before the cutoff and I let it leak in. If I don't...

It clouded over then, I swear to God it clouded over and the temperature dropped as the wind picked up, whistling again through the slots in my helmet.

Please I have to. I have to because I can't come back. Please, please let me just get to the run because I can't come back...

I'm not one to pray too often, but I don't care who you are, at some point out there we all pray. I swallowed hard because I didn't want to cry, and it was coming because the thought of not finishing again was paralyzing. I didn't want to give in or be afraid or doubt, not now, there wasn't enough time for it all, so out loud I insisted instead and I prayed.

Please let me just get to the run, please... I will. I will. I will, I will, ...I will, I will, I will...I will! I'd beat it down and when I felt it again, choking me up and cutting me off, I just said it louder, I WILL. I WILL, I WILL... I WILL, I WILL... I WILL!!!

My knees started to ache, my chest felt as if it would explode with the pounding of adrenaline and want, and the next 10 miles were silent and cold except for when I saw Rachel from CycleOps riding with her team. She was in pink against the muddy gray of what things were trying to become, and when she shouted, "Come on, Tracy! Stay in your zone!" she spoke much more to me than she knew.

As she passed I decided I could only believe. There was only this and there was only finishing because I couldn't come back and I couldn't fathom the aftermath otherwise.

Just let me get to the run, let me get to my own two feet. I need to stop being on the verge of tears, I need my knees to stop hurting and I need to stop worrying about the time. Just let me get through, let me get through to the run...

And then, "I will."

As clear as, "All right, Tracy..." I will.

The Verona Festival banner - almost to transition.

Mile 90, my knees were fine. The emotion dissipated. I knew I was going about 20 mph at a cadence of 80, and that I would make it even though the world was at the finish line. The hills, Verona, it was all abandoned the second loop but I remembered and pedaled and climbed until I saw transition in the distance with not two minutes, but over half-an-hour before the cutoff this time.

The Run

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." ~ Sun Tzu

When I got off my bike, I didn't fall to my knees. I didn't stumble into transition, and once inside didn't discover a triage unit. Volunteers weren't crying and dozens of women weren't shivering, crouched against the walls shoulder to shoulder for body heat in foil blankets with purple lips. I could move my fingers and I could speak without stuttering. I could see clearly in front of me, and I could run. I couldn't, however, wait. My T2 time was four minutes even.

Often when I'd let my mind wander about Ironman, driving to work or while falling asleep, I imagined meeting up with my friend Sarah somewhere on the course. Our split times in other races had almost always been the same give or take ten minutes here or there, and when I'd begin to get upset because of comparing myself to sub half-iron sixers, I'd remember her - fit and busy and normal, as was I. She always reset me and gave me better perspective even though she likely never knew.

That day I still secretly hoped to find her out there somewhere if only to say hi, so when I realized she was three steps ahead of me in T2 I almost couldn't believe my eyes.

"Sarah!!"

"Tracy!!"

She gave me a big hug and smiled, then looked me right in the eyes and said, "Let's go do this. We're gonna do this!"

Sarah and I on the run just leaving transition - what a high.

We ran together for a good portion of the marathon, stopping here and there at water stops and catching up again with one another. I lost track of how many times I told her I couldn't believe the uncanny luck of running into each other the way we did. It certainly seemed my race was shaping up to be everything I ever wanted it to be, and everything it should have been.

Near mile nine I saw my second teammate of the day, Stu, running as if he were programmed, solid and steady. "Yeah, Trace... " he said with a resolute conviction in his voice, as if he knew and believed I'd finish just fine. I was happy to see him running so strong, finishing something he started without ever needing to look back again. This race meant more to him especially than miles in, and I only wished I were faster so I could see him carry his daughter over the line.

Within half-an-hour or so I saw another good friend and teammate, Bolder. He was on his second lap and looking well as he shook his head and told me with a smile that he was never coming back to this course again. We laughed about this as friends do, and talked the way we had many times before, when suddenly he told me he was proud of me. Proud of me for coming back knowing what was in store with the unrelenting hills and wind and God only knows what kind of weather, and I didn't know what to say at that point, my mind now alive with wondering why I hadn't thought about it like this.

I wish I would have realized then what I do now - that I suddenly felt ridiculously proud of myself because of what he said - and I wish I could have relayed to him the effects of what he'd done in making me see like this. But instead I could only tell him to save me a seat at the finish line as he wished me well and eventually ran on, disappearing into the night.

For a while thereafter I wondered if selectively focusing is simply what we learn to do after we fall - whether initially intending to or not, perhaps we pick our battles based on the least common denominator of our collapse. For me last year this wasn't the hills or the cold, and it wasn't the rain. It wasn't even the nausea, the loss of fluids or the cramps. After all, I'd gone six more miles after the 13.1, after it didn't even count, and there were only seven more.

No, it was the self-doubt that broke me that day because I've made it to the other side of mountains in much greater physical pain and with much more at stake throughout the course of my life than this. Hunting down within myself and killing the cause of such self-doubt, that which would have me on the alter again at the foot of this race, any race - High Cliff, Racine - was my only chance.

I knew I was victorious before I rode on to the field this year for Ironman, so for me there was no more war. I came instead for peace, freed my grudges and let them run, and in the absence of them there collected called them none. This diffused any would-be battles or causes of anxiety, for I saw only my friends and teammates, my family; the people who loved me. How could I not succeed...

At the halfway point of the marathon - 13.1 miles.

I wish I could remember more of the details of the first 13 miles, but I imagine I can't because they were simply a means to an end, and perhaps the entire day was somewhat this. I'd been traveling since 7:00 that morning just to get to that 13.1 checkpoint (which turned out quite possibly to have never existed) by 9:00, and when I approached it things around me suddenly slowed down. I hadn't expected this, though I expected something - elation, a sense of vindication, a rush of adrenaline? But instead things just slowed down as if overwriting the nausea and cramping and wrung out wet; replacing the devastation of a year seemingly for not.

As I approached the "checkpoint" I saw the finisher chute veer off to the right and the second loop turnaround veer to the left. I saw people finishing and heard their names being called against a backdrop of screaming spectators and the underlying bass-rich buzz of the giant television screen. I saw my husband there like he was that frigid day last year, and instead of my mouth agape in shock and my chip strap in my hand, I know I was smiling. Instead of tears when he put his arms around me on that spot, I know I was happy, and I hugged him hard after stomping on the mat when I crossed it.

bbeeeeeeeeeeeeeep......beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

I discovered the high-pitched beep that resulted was one of my favorite sounds, validating and concrete after so many hours and days and weeks of sorting through myself just to get to it before 9:00. And when I did, I knew I counted, but I also discovered it wasn't the beep that told me this. I already knew and already felt satisfied the way one does after all the bills are paid and sealed and sent away, leaving only checking off the list of dues as paid in full. And this final step, for me, was setting off that tone in the street.

Sarah and I had been separated on and off, and were separated again somewhere around mile 15 at a water stop. We'd always been good about finding each other, so I knew it was just a matter of time before I'd see her again. I wasn't alone long, however, soon my friends Tom and Adam who weren';;t racing, but were out supporting friends who were appeared from the crowd. They'd run alongside several others before me throughout the day, genetically engineered the way they were to literally run all day long like that, and I appreciated the company.

"Hey but no getting me disqualified here, OK?" I said to Tom laughing, half-kidding and half not. He assured me they weren't pacing me but were just along for the ride, and this put me at ease. They asked how I was feeling, told me I looked strong, and then began to relay to me the details of my teammates' races. I learned Chris had finished in a blur, and that the others were at various points in their marathon, Michelle leading the way, as I hit tracking mat after tracking mat.

"I love the sound of that mat!" I told them with the excitement of a preschooler having just made a toy buzz and squeal.

"Legs good? Stomach good?" Adam asked me.

"All good, but the cones up there look a little like rabbits."

"Ha, OK, well if you're physically good we can deal with delirium!"

We laughed, and he told me to stop eating grapes and oranges at the water stops if I wanted my stomach to keep feeling 'all good' as we hit motivation mile, where hundreds and hundreds of signs lined the street and a huge teleprompter scrolled your name and a message from your friends as you passed: "#2169: Tracy Korn - Mustard Seed Growing." I saw a sign made with the 'iron wil' logo, and I pointed it out for the guys to see. You. Wil. I smiled ... yep, I will.

The motivation mile sign my husband made for me IM weekend - when, I have no idea!

Just then I saw Sarah on the other side of the path. She was a few miles ahead of me I gauged, and I was glad she was looking so strong.

"Sarah!!! Hey that's my friend! She crashed her bike and had to get a new wheel and still rode 112-miles and still looks awesome and we're almost the same time on everything and she's awesome and her husband is racing and he's probably done by now because I saw him a way long time ago and they're both fr-"

Adam laughed, "Trace, you know what, you're gonna catch her. And you see all these people after her? You're gonna pick all of them off this last 10K."

I stopped rambling and started processing. Looking back it's clear that Adam likely realized Ironman was sinking into me, and tried to give me some focus.

"Catch them? Like catch up to them?"

"Yep, change up your schedule - run four minutes walk two, pull ropes up hills and stay steady."

Stay steady... OK...

"There's one. Up ahead, you see?"

"Yep, I see."

"Well, go get 'em."

Suddenly I was aware of the blister forming on my little toe. Suddenly my knees began to ache again, and I missed the delirium, but I was glad to have been focused because I wanted to cross the finish line, not some suggestion of me held up by endorphins and shock.

"Two... Three. See them?"

I nodded.

"Orale amigo, casí estámos allí..." I said, and smiled as I passed the first man. He was dressed in red, white and green technicals and one of 350 strong from the Mexican team on the course that day.

"Legs good?"

"Legs good. Nothing hurts, I'm going to finish."

"Well all right then..." I heard Adam smile.

"Three... Four." I counted aloud, under my breath just before I passed them. "Nothing hurts. I'm going to finish. I will..."

It became a game, the more it hurt the more I counted, the more I needed to count, and therefore needed to seek them out. I ran up that last big hill looking for more, and then in disbelief realized what I'd done and asked Adam if it really happened.

"Yep you did, ran right on up."

"Five. Six... seven."

By the time I saw another friend, Mark, on State Street my count was up to 25. He jumped into the street when he saw me, beer in hand, and started congratulating me as I took a sip.

"HA! Don't spill it!!"

I heard it in the distance then and stopped any resemblance of walk breaks. It was close. It was really close.

"THOMAS SHEAR, YES YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!!!"

"26... 27 and 28..."

"Running huh?"

"I'm running." I looked over and smiled at Adam.

"Yeah somehow I thought so." He laughed. "I think it's all you from here."

I thanked him for everything, for being there, he just smiled and waved me on. Tom had run ahead to tell everyone waiting I was coming, and as I returned to that same turnaround nothing was slow this time. A fraction of a second later I heard my name shouted across the street.

"TRACY!! I'TS RIGHT THERE! I'M GONNA DO IT!!"

It was Bob. For the life of me he was right there and I hugged him again like I did that morning.

"Yeah you are Bob! Yeah you are!!!!"

"Oh my God I can't believe it. This is awesome. Hey go on! Go on, Ironman!"

I passed the turnaround, veered right. There were bleachers. Full bleachers. Everything still set up. People weren't going home, they were standing and screaming and crying and cheering, patting me on the back and giving me high fives. This is happening, finally. It's happening...

"MEGAN WHITE! WELCOME HOME IRONMAN!"

It's over. I made it... it's over...it's over, it's over...

"Tracy!! WIL! Hey there's Wil! GO IRON WIL! You did!! You did it!!!"

"TRACY!!!!!!"

The lights were surreal. Flash bulbs were everywhere. I saw the arch and heard my name above the music and buzz and cheer.

"TRACY KORN! YOU ... ARE ... AN .... IRONMAN!!!!"

Photo by my friend Luke Witkowski, who always seemed to be in the right place at exactly the right time.

"Are you OK? How do you feel?" The volunteers on either side of me handed me a t-shirt and a hat, hung a medal around my neck and wrapped me in a foil blanket.

I only had one word in me, "Awesome. I feel awesome."

I looked around for my husband and friends and immediately saw Sarah. She came in just under a minute before me and the sight of her tripped a wire. I'd told myself on that Prozac patch at mile 60 not to cry, to save it for the finish line, and now it was time.

"Sarah!"

"TRACE! I'm so proud of you!"

I hugged her and felt everything rush into and out of me at the same time. It was over and I was there with people who knew exactly what that meant.

"Feels kind of like you left an 800-lb gorilla out there huh?" My friend Rob said to me as I sobbed on his shoulder. I could only nod and cry some more.

"It's done. It's really done."

I hugged my friends Chris and Jeff, who had been there from the beginning, then Siren next, the girl who put me back together in T2 last year and who had been there at the finish line of Racine - the first race in which I finally found the fix for all the issues that had broken me down for so long. I thought of Sister Sara, my amazing friend who had been with me in this all day and since the cannon went off...last year. My mom, so many people...

And then I found my husband. He'd been following me around the entire day and I barely saw him. I didn't know how that could happen, someone always being so close and yet so far, but it apparently does. He walked up to me and slid off his 25-lb camera backpack.

"Hey Ironman..." He smiled quietly, like everything he does. Always in the background and never asking for any acknowledgment, just keeping things together even when I fall apart. He hugged me tight as everything around us exploded in cheers for each of the finishers who came in after me.

"I knew you would do it. Hey, now all that's left is to write it down."

I nodded, and in between sobs, "I will..."