Ironman

Driving to Boulder on Sunday, August 3, 2014, I saw a road sign blinking Ironman. It was in the construction area of Highway 36 and my first thought was that maybe equipment used in construction is called Ironman. When I saw a second sign showing Ironman I figured maybe there was a convention in Boulder with people dressed up as Ironman, the super hero of the movie where Robert Downey Jr. snaps on different parts of a body to make an Ironman. Hadn't I just read about Comic-con in San Diego where people showed up in favorite comic costumes? Maybe Boulder was having an Ironman convention.

I thought no more about Ironman until I was checking out of Trader Joe's and the clerk asked me if I was in town to see Ironman activities. I told her I had come to do my weekly shopping and asked her what was going on with Ironman.  She explained it was a triathlon with swimming, biking and running. Many people were in town to cheer the athletes as they completed each event. "From what I hear," she said, "the traffic is awful." I told her I had not encountered any traffic, or not much more as other times I have driven to  Boulder.

After I got home, I looked up the Ironman Boulder event and learned that different Ironman events are held in different parts of the United States and today happened to be in Boulder, Colorado. The first race was at the Boulder Reservoir with a 2.4 mile swim in the 65 to 70 degree water. Sounded cold to me. The bicycle ride of a 112 mile came next and then 26.2 miles of running. The Boulder Daily Camera has Danielle Kehoe as the winner in the woman's division and Justin Daerr as the winner of the First Full Ironman Triathlon. There were probably other winners, according to the age of the competitor, because there are different age brackets to the triathlon.

My only regret is that of the 3000 athletes competing for the Ironman title, I left Boulder without even getting a glimpse of one Ironman!