The Iron Man 2018

So,

I played in an event called The Iron Man.  It was 100 holes of par 2 disc golf inside an indoor horse arena. 

Are indoor horses like indoor cats?

Pretty much but the litter box is much bigger.

I want to thank Kolton Read, Team Utah Open, and Prodigy Discs for putting on this fun event. 

It took 6 hours to play all 100 holes.  Trey said that just lasting to the end would probably give someone a good chance at winning.  There were a lot of stairs but physically it wasn't really all that bad and they were short holes so there wasn't all that much walking, relatively speaking compared to a regular 18 hole course.  I ended the day with 25,000 steps on my pedometer which is about 9,000 steps more than an average day.  Many of those steps were up or down stairs so I won't say it wasn't fatiguing.  In our conversation, I told him the winners would probably be the people who could maintain focus for 6 hours of non-stop putting.

Good thing you don't have ADHD or anything.

Yeah, that's lucky.

People started dropping out of the tournament after the second round (5 rounds of 20 holes).  By the fifth round, the arena seemed empty.  Many of those who were left were still trying their best although it was obvious people were getting tired as discs bounced off the fronts of baskets.  Others who were still playing had either given up on the chance of winning or had just gotten bored and were doing wild or goofy shots.  They were still having fun and that was the main purpose of the event.  Short baskets in an unusual setting with music blaring over the speakers.  Very much NOT your typical disc golf.  Oh yeah, and you had to play using 2 new putters that came as part of the registration.  We were given two Prodigy putters, a PA-1 and a PA-3 in a softish plastic, neither of which I had ever thrown before.

After 6 hours, I think you can put them in your "thrown" category.

Thrown under circumstances your other putters have never seen.

So true.  We shot down tunnels, up onto a bridge, in and out of horse pens (and horse manure), and all over the bleachers which created some very interesting skips and bounces (and dings in the discs).  Up onto the bridge probably had the greatest pucker power out of all the shots.  You had to get your disc to land on a 5 foot wide bridge, throwing from about 30 foot away from the bridge on the level below the bridge.  If you threw it too soft, you hit the front guard rail and if you threw it too hard, you went over the back guard rail.  It was a very precise shot and my guess is that it had the highest shot average.  I missed the bridge on my first shot during the first round but made it up on the bridge the other four times, twice hitting the basket.  It was really hard to get the disc over the lead guard rail and somehow not bounce the disc off the top of the basket but I did see someone ace it so it was possible.  It just had to be a very precise shot.  Really, every shot had to be so precise because the goal was to get as many aces as possible and that is where the challenge was.   That and maintaining that precision for 6 hours, of course.

I got one ace in the first round, one in the second, and three in the third.  During the fourth and fifth rounds, I bounced a lot of discs off of baskets but everything seemed to be an inch or two low of going in.  Players were much quieter in those rounds too as everyone started to run out of steam.  My best ace was a blind tee shot where you throw the disc from the concession hallway through a tunnel on the second level trying to hit a basket in the middle of the arena.  

It sounds like this will be an annual event and I plan on being there again next time.  I do have a couple of suggestions for next year:

• Don't give out the "I Survived The Iron Man" badges until players turn in a full score card.  There were a lot of people who did not survive.
• On the hole where you shoot through a tunnel to a basket sitting on the balcony between two chairs: Either move the basket away from the edge a foot or two or put down some obstacle on the ground between the tee and the basket that keeps people from sliding their disc to the base of the basket.  This is a risk/reward basket where the risk outweighed the reward by so much that everyone just slid the disc up to the basket, took their 2, and tried for aces on the other baskets.

After 6 hours of hiking up and down steps and trying to ace every single shot (except the balcony shot), here were the results by division:

Women:

1. Teresa Winn - 216
2. Karen Runyan Anderson - 220

Open:

1. Kesler Martin - 195
2. Jake LaPutka - 197

Advanced:

1. Alan Rowley (aka SuccessWarrior for those of you who don't know who writes this blog) - 202
2. Kevin Cook - 205

Intermediate:

1. Cody Flanders - 210
2. Jeremy Kopp - 214