as reported by Andrea Fisher on andreafisher.com

November 4th , 2006

Panama City, Florida

I'm not quite sure why I've been subjected to really cold race days lately. As my husband likes to say, "It's EL NINO! That's to blame!" Whatever the reason, my last two Ironmans have been frigid. Race morning in Panama City, Florida saw a wind chill of 38 degrees. I don't know about most people, but if I were to wake up and see that on the Weather Channel, I'd crawl back into bed and revisit my pillow for a while. Unfortunately that isn't an option on Ironman day, and I can't climb back into hibernation. Instead I layered every piece of clothing I had, ate my breakfast and headed out to the race start.

I don’t really even know where to start on this race report. My memories of last weekend are so distorted from what I normally recall with my Ironman events. When they say “Ironman Wisconsin 2006 is one for the books,” they weren’t kidding. I had seen the possible weather predictions for Sunday, but it never looked that bad. Yeh, cool and maybe a 30% chance of rain, but that was about it. When I woke up race morning and saw the radar at 4:15 a.m., I knew it was going to one heck of a day.