“If you’re not living life to the fullest today, you never will.” – Wally “Famous” Amos
We were only in Vegas long enough to register for the race and go through tech inspection. There was no free time. We had used it in Bonneville by staying an extra day. On race day, we got up at 1 am to start the drive two hours north of LasVegas to the starting line in the middle of nowhere. The trouble is, we couldn’t find it. It was not in a town. There was not a building or structure of any kind for many miles of this place in the desert wilderness.
Time was ticking away. We had to be in staging in a few minutes and we weren’t really sure where it was or if we were going the right way. We had doubled back for many miles already. My heart beat faster. Finally we saw the lights of many chase vehicles pulling into the same place in the distant night.
It was pitch black and I had to get my gear on quickly. There were bikes riding up to staging which was over a mile from parking. I hoped I didn’t forget anything. They did not let the crew past a certain point, and they could not watch me start. It was very controlled, but very organized.
There were 17 bikes in my Ironman (solo) class. Most teams would switch riders many times before the race was over. Not me. It was on me to take it all the way to the finish, 514 miles away in Reno.
Some riders in line recognized me from my movie on YouTube – Into the Dust. I wound up giving advice to a young low budget rider from California on how to manage your energy in an Ironman race, something I had plenty of experience with.
They let bikes go every 30 seconds, and after a while it was my turn. I blasted into the desert with the sun just making itself known.
About a mile in, I couldn’t see a thing…