The Biggest Loser…Friday Night

As the rest of the Kraft gang had made alternate arrangements for dinner Friday, I sat with Vardo and the Des Moines crew at the dinner (or, at least, that’s how I referred to them—it was the group of folks that Vardo had trained with over the summer who mostly hail from central Iowa). Not surprisingly, the buffet featured pasta, but surprisingly, the food was pretty good—it was pretty apparent the Monona Terrace folks knew who they were dealing with as the vegetables were steamed and without butter, and they offered both normal and whole wheat pasta and non-meat and meat sauces. Funny thing about triathletes—we’re pretty darn picky about healthy eating. Conversation at dinner stuck pretty much to training tales from the summer—it was fun to meet and talk with Terri, her dad Jerry (and her mom, too), Jess, Rich, and others from the DSM crew. I had met a few of them at the Pella tri in June, but I was glad I got to talk with them at dinner.

After we ate, the program started—Mike Reilly (the voice of Ironman) was the emcee for the evening. We saw videos from several sponsors (gee, could it be that Ford was a sponsor???) and a pretty cool motivational-type video about IM—that one gave me chills as I watched it. After most of the sponsors had their say, Mike paused and said something to the effect of “Now, we’re going to take a break and talk about losers.” Not exactly the type of thing you’d expect to hear at an IM banquet, but we were pretty much a captive audience, so we played along. He then asked anyone who had lost more than 20 pounds leading up to IM to stand up—a ton of people in the room stood (keep in mind we were in the Monona Terrace ballroom—my best guess is there were at least 1500 people in the room). He then bumped it up to 30 pounds, then 40, etc.—people started sitting down as the weight increments increased. By the time he got to 90 lbs, there were two of us left standing—me on one end of the room, and another guy clear on the other side of the room. Mike went up to 100 lbs, and the other guy sat down, leaving me as the only one standing.

I got called up on stage to a standing ovation from the room (again, it was packed)—saw some people from IM Mondays on my way, and Vardo thankfully was manning her camera at that point, so I have a lot of the experience captured on film. Mike shook my hand and asked if I minded if he asked how much I’d lost—of course I said no—and then the whole room found out that I lost 111 lb on my way to IM. I also mentioned that I had hit my goal weight on Tuesday—sort of under my breath to just Mike, but then he conveyed that to the room and there was more applause. He also asked if I’d decided to do IM along the way or if I had known all along that I was going to do this—I said it just sort of happened and that I really wasn’t one to do anything halfway. He asked me what my goal for the race was—I said it was to finish…which brought chuckles and more applause from the room (at least that’s what I remember). After that, he called a rep from Tanita (another IM sponsor) on stage, who presented me with a very nice body composition monitor (basically a scale that also monitors body fat, % water, bone mass, muscle mass, etc., etc.)—a very very cool gift.

The whole experience was simply amazing—to be in front of that many people for losing the weight that started this whole thing off in the first place was about the coolest possible way to start the weekend! I had a tough time not tearing up…especially with the applause and walking up on stage with the room standing—apparently Vardo did as well…but I managed to get through it OK. There are many many things about the weekend that I won’t soon forget—I certainly hope that experience is one that will stick with me for a long, long time. I’m also very glad that Vardo was there to share in it—God knows she’s been with me every step of the way, and it was awesome that she was there for this, too.

Several times throughout the weekend, people stopped me to congratulate me, ask about the weight loss, etc.—and as I saw other people from IM Mondays, I got high fives and handshakes from them, too. I also ended up getting mentioned in the race day recap on the IM website—they had a paragraph about how the IM lifestyle and experience is life-changing, and I was listed as one of the examples. All in all—very very cool…I know I’m not describing it fully—frankly, I really can’t because the pride and happiness that came along with it are not things I know how to verbalize…but it was awesome!