On the Monday before Ironman I anxiously away the barrels to come off the truck. After taking the kids to school I drive a different route just in case the barrels are starting to show up on the roads. As I drive I do not see anything. I was a bit depressed, but figured that Tuesday might be the lucky day. The entire day I dream of barrels. Tuesday comes and with the same results. This cannot be happening. Each of the last 5 years, I’ve seen the barrels come out on Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

At lunch on Tuesday, I decided to ride out on the bike route in hopes I would see the barrels. As I started my ride, I had the swim route on my left. I was dreaming of the day when I would be racing in Ironman again. I know signup is only a few days away. As I dream of racing I look up and see the barrel truck. Yeeee Haaaa!

As cars passed by I did not see the excitement in the faces of the drivers. I looked at a few more drivers and saw nothing. What is going on? How could this be? I guess people do not get excited about this as much as I do. Oh well.

I get off my bike and watch as they unload one after another. This was the start of Ironman preparation. These guys were putting barrels out that would mark the first part of the route. This was so cool. This meant that I could officially start celebrating Ironman fever. I was so jazzed up. On the way home I could see the electronic sign go up that said “Ramp Closed from 6am to 6pm, Sept 10th.? How cool is that? Another piece to up the Ironman fever. I had my fill for the day.

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to meet and Interview Andera Fisher and Jamie Cleveland. Andrea is racing while Jamie is a spectator. After the barrel sightings and meeting Jamie and Andrea, I was just about to burst! Could things get any better?

Thursday night I was able to host a “Triathlon Training with Power? clinic with the AWESOME help of Scott from BMC, and all the folks at CycleOPS. I was hoping to have 50 people in total. We had 83! Wait. It gets better. Heather Haviland, Jamie Cleveland, and Allen Lim Phd did a wickedly cool presentation. They where all just super!

OK, so I’m not about ready to just self destruct as I had so much excitement! I needed to calm down. Everyone always tells me that. I get things from my training buddies like “Come on Stu, calm down,? or “Stu, this is not a race, slow down,? or “What the heck got into Stu today.? It really never changes. This is such a darn cool sport.

So what do I do to top the last 2 days? On Friday, I meet Ironwil and a bunch of others for a swim at the official race staring line. Wrong thing for me to do this since I was trying to calm down. There had to be 400 people just out for a nice easy swim. It was so awesome. WOW.