My job as a stripper...

An interesting thing about Ironman that may come as a surprise to some; A LOT of people are doing these! Meaning they are not the easiest things to register for. Each Ironman allows approx. 2500 competitors and those slots fill up immediately when registration opens a year prior to the race, the day after the current year's event. One way to guarantee a spot in the registration line is to volunteer at the event. That way you are actually onsite the day following the race when on site registration opens up. The volunteers get in the first line, and are guaranteed they'll get to register for the following year's race.

I signed up to volunteer at the 2009 race in order to be first in line to get registered for 2010. I signed up to volunteer as a wetsuit 'stripper' or 'peeler' which means I got to take the wetsuits off of the athletes after they were done with the swim portion of the race. What a blast!

A fellow 'stripper' took some video that day which included the start of the swim, some of the athletes exiting the water, and also all of us volunteers:



It was also neat that the morning after the race, we were looking at the local Madison paper and low and behold, my 'stripping' partner and I were on the front page!

This is us on the right side of the picture taking the wetsuit off of this athlete. You can tell it's me because that is my leg in the bottom right corner of the picture! I will autograph this picture and send it out for any interested. :)

I was thrilled to be able to partake in the event the year before doing it so I could get a feel of what it was like. Needless to say, it was amazing. The whole time I was standing in the swim exit area, I had a hard time holding back tears. In those few shorts hours I got to see the start of the Ironman swim. I got to see the athletes finish the first leg of the race and be able to help them out of their wetsuits. I was able to be there for at the cut off time (Ironman rules, you have to finish the swim portion of the race within 2 hours and 20 minutes) which ended up being exhilarating then heartbreaking as I witnessed a few people who did not make the cutoff and could not continue on with the day. The Ironman officials actually take their timing chip off and walk them away. I only hope I can train hard enough this season to make all the cutoffs and finish with a big/very tired smile on my face! The picture above is me with my registration form once I finally got officially registered.

More posts coming soon about my first month of training!