Ironman Outside Our Door

On Sunday, the Asia-Pacific Ironman Championship race was held, and it finished out on St Kilda Beach. We could see it from our balcony, but we went downstairs to get a closer look at the action.

We got down to the beach in time to see the third place guy go past us. Then we hung out near the finish line for a little while, cheering for all of the athletes running by.

Caroline Steffen (pictured below) was the female winner. She's from Switzerland but trains in Australia for half the year. Her partner got 5th place among the men; can you imagine what that household is like? "Hey honey, did you run your fifteen miles yet today?"

It was pretty inspiring and emotional to watch these athletes come across the finish line. I also felt like a lazy bum when I thought about what I had been doing for the last eight hours (sleeping, eating, playing on my computer, etc.) while these people had swam over two miles, biked over 100 miles, and ran a marathon! It sort of made me want to do an Ironman, until I remembered the torture of training for "just" marathons and that this would be three times as bad. No thanks for now.

Finish Line

Later on Sunday night, I went back out to the beach to watch some of the people who were still finishing (in the dark). This lady is over 65 years old! Now I really feel like a slacker. People were still finishing up when we went to bed that night. Quite an accomplishment!