Apologies for the delay in writing this report Guys � took me a while to get around to it, with jet leg from Chicago and Dublin City in between. Anyway here goes on my account to recapture the event.
I know a few of the club members have already done the race, so certain aspects of the report will be familiar but I will try not to go on too much and I hope it makes for some interesting reading.

As some of you already know, I travelled to Chicago with a team of 48 members from the Children�s Medical Research Foundation of Our Ladies Hospital in Crumlin. The team was headed up, as it is each year, by a Bobby Hawkshaw and even Eamonn Coughlan came along this year to support!
Eamonn helped out with fundraising for the Accenture Dublin Team at two events we hosted in Dublin during August and as recently appointed Director for the CMRF in Crumlin, he was involved in organising future fundraising events for the hospital in Chicago that week. He didn�t actually do the triathlon but came along to support and even gave us some running tips for the day!

There were 9 of us in total from the Accenture Dublin office out of the 48 members, although unfortunately one due to illness could not participate in the event. This was the first year that a team from the Accenture Dublin Office went to the event, and it certainly helped with the fundraising side of things as we were able to obtain some donations from the business, and by doing a group fundraising effort via the aforementioned Dublin events and setting up an online donation webpage (www.accenturedublintriteam.com) etc, it shared the fundraising burden among us! Our fundraising target was 4,500 euro, and after a good deal of hard work and much generosity, we are nearly there!!

Anyway back to the triathlon: - we left for Chicago on Thursday 24th August (the event was Sunday 28th) and arrived 8 hours later, a little jet lagged but in one piece. We all had the CMRF tracksuits on during the flight over and I have to say it felt a little like a school tour! There was a good atmosphere though, with everyone recognising each other as part of the team, and it was a good starting point for getting to know the other members. The captain even wished us well in the triathlon when we arrived at O� Hare!

We stayed in the Hilton Chicago on South Michigan which was absolutely fantastic. It is just off Lake Shore drive and right across the way from race start so we could literally walk to the race start on the morning of the race. (This helped as we were the second last wave out of 50 to go out and started some 3 and a half hours after the race actually started!! We could literally drop our gear in transition and head back to the hotel for breakfast and a few zzzs. The hotel is also the official race hotel each year and for this reason a large number of people staying in the hotel were doing the triathlon. All you could see the weekend of the triathlon were triathletes in tri gear with race markings wheeling bikes around the hotel.

As well as giving R&R to trillions of tri-ers, the hotel also houses the race expo on Friday and Saturday before the race. Now I had heard reports on how cool this expo was before I went, and indeed I was not disappointed, so be warned! It has all the stuff you see on the net but can�t get in Ireland - great gear at great prices. Just make sure you have a clean credit card!! All racers need to attend the expo though (they just don�t need to max out their credit card!) to pick up their race packet, goody bag and get their race number marked. There were also course talks on Friday and Saturday all day, which give a lot of good information about the race rules and answer any questions athletes have re the race. So having arrived in Chicago, gotten to the hotel, gotten the race packet, had our numbers marked, and done the shopping thing, we were ready to race!!

The night before the hotel had an all you can eat pasta buffet (coincidence�.I think not) so there was not much argument over where we should eat. It was OK too for �US-style� Italian so we all had our fill and then it was off to bed, to pack the gear and sort out the logistics for the following morning.

For those who have not done the Chicago Triathlon (hereafter called Tri-Chi-05) starts at 6.15 and transition opens form 4.30 to 6 am! With fears that we wouldn�t sleep the night before, we awoke to our alarm clocks at 3.45. We all convened outside the hotel at 4.15 to join the procession of bikes that made their way to transition in the dark otherwise deserted early morning streets of Chicago.
Transition was lit up with small flood lamps and heads scurried in the dark setting up their gear on their towels and attending to their bikes. 7,800 bikes in one transition is a lot of bikes (apparently 12 million dollars worth!!) � put it this way you can�t see from one side of transition to the other!!

To date they allowed racers to use helium balloons to help find their spot but that was disallowed as of this year. (They didn�t seem to enforce it too strictly though as I definitely saw a few!) The racks were marked per wave but spots were not assigned to individual numbers so you could find your slot along the rack. Our rack was half way between swim in and bike out, so we had a decent enough spot.

With our bikes and gear set up in transition, and our positions mentally noted, we headed back to the hotel for yet more carbs and another hour or two of sleep before we got up again for our wave start at 09.48.

As there was 48 of us in Team CMRF we were all in the one race start! That means we all started the swim together and finished within approximate times of each other. The race officials were doing a great job relaxing the racers, chatting and joking, as we lined up at the water start per hat colour. As each wave dived in, the next wave moved up. The race officials had been prompted that there was a big team from Ireland in our wave with an Olympic swimmer (Nick O Hare), supported by Eamonn Coughlan, famous Irish runner, and even a team from the Accenture Dublin Office! This went down with the Americans well and so to bellows of Ole, Ole, Ole we jumped into the water, and continued to sing, until the horn went off, we all flattened out and all hell broke lose!

Well it wasn�t actually that bad, but it was certainly one of the more rougher swim starts I have been in. Until we hit the first buoy at 380 yards, it was pretty cramped with people swimming over you, grabbing your legs and elbowing you in the head! My swim could definitely have been better, the fact that I had to stop to empty water out of my goggles about 7 times didn�t help, and while not making excuses, a side injury meant I really could reach very far and could only use my left arm to pull. The water was nice and warm though, and the blue colour was a nice contrast to the black water we normally swim in in Ireland! Some 38 (!) mins later I got out of the water and headed to T1.

The run to T1 from swim exit in Chicago is long enough (about 500m) and mostly pavement.
I thought it was very painful and slows you down a good bit so for anyone doing it next year I would advise bringing an old pair of runners to leave by the swim exit to run in to T1! Once in transition, I found my bike ok, the wetsuit came off ok, and after changing head and foot gear I headed out the bike exit onto Lake Shore Drive for the Bike Leg.

The Bike was 2 laps up and back Lake Shore Drive. It was a pretty flat course with a mild gradient in places. I thought the road was very patchy and bumpy in places though (apparently to do with the fact that Chicago gets really cold winters and hot summers which causes the pavement to crack) and I felt I was playing bumper cars at times rather than cycling in a race.

I finished the bike in 1.23 and had a smooth enough T2 and straight out onto the run start. The heat at this stage was very strong, as it was about 12PM and as it was my first Olympic I felt the difference of an extra 20k on the bike in the legs. My legs felt pretty heavy and the heat didn�t help � it seemed to drain all our energy.

I got through the first two mile OK, but starting to feel really tired I slowed to a walk to catch my breath.
All of a sudden from behind, I hear this American accent � �heh you can�t stop, you�re my pacer!!�
Somehow this gave me a little more energy to go on and I managed to pick up the pace again. Once more at about mile 6 I slowed to a gentle walk for a few seconds. But with my �pacer� right behind and giving each other word of encouragement, we again took the pace back up and managed to keep going to the very end. Coming around the last couple of hundred meters and hearing the crowd cheer was a great feeling and really gives you the boost to keep going strong. I can only imagine what the final run in an ironman must be like!!

All in all it was very enjoyable experience. It must be said, the whole trip was very well organised by the CMRF team, with dinners, lunches, hotel accommodation, race logistics and transport to and from the airport etc all arranged for us. There really was very little for us to do apart form participate in the event!

Finally this year was the first year that Accenture introduced technology to track your athlete during the race. Once signed up you got updates when your racer finished each event. It also allowed you to see your race results straight after as well as get a break down as to where you came overall, according to your gender and in your age category.

For more details see
http://triathlons.accenture.com/Chicago/