Marino Vanhoenacker spent the past few weeks cycling around Chattanooga, running along the Tennessee River, swimming at the Baylor School and eating at the Waffle House at the intersection of Dayton Boulevard and Signal Mountain Road.
After all, Vanhoenacker is from Belgium, where a good waffle is appreciated.
The 40-year-old veteran triathlete made himself at home in Chattanooga for the better part of September, then capped off his stay with a convincing win over a field of younger challengers in Sunday's scorching Little Debbie Ironman Chattanooga.
Vanhoenacker finished the 144.6-mile triathlon in 8 hours, 12 minutes, 22 seconds, earning his 14th career Ironman victory and the last laugh in a round of prerace banter within the field of 25 male professionals.
"There were four guys, you heard them say it at a press conference, that they planned to run me down," Vanhoenacker said. "On paper, that's what was going to happen. So I needed some space."
He got it.
After finishing the 2.4-mile swim in fifth place, Vanhoenacker posted the field's fastest bike ride with a time of 4:27:28 in the 116-mile second leg.
That gave him a three-and-a-half minute lead entering the race's final leg, a 26.2-mile run. Despite the pre-race smack talk, nobody ran him down in the marathon.
Canada's Jeff Symonds, 30, finished about seven minutes after Vanhoenacker, and Colorado resident Matt Russell, 33, earned third place by edging 2014 Ironman Chattanooga champion and Iowa resident Matt Hanson, 31, by less than a minute.
There was not a women's professional division in Sunday's race, but Canada's Richele Frank took top honors among female athletes with a time of 10:23:43.
Germany's Brigitte Paulick was second in 10:26:53 and Lori Sherlock of West Virginia was third in 10:31:02.
Vanhoenacker spent about 20 minutes in a shaded medical tent before emerging to join a public address announcer back at the finish line to cheers from an assembled crowd.
While introducing him as the champion, the announcer offered the crowd some background information about significance of Vanhoenacker's win.
"The young guys in the press conference, it wasn't that they were talking smack or anything, but they were going to run him down" the public address announcer said, as he turned to ask the winner a question. "And you just brought your game stronger and stronger. How do you do it?"
Vanhoenacker said he trained hard and stayed focused.
"But everybody trains hard," he said. "I think with age comes a little bit of intelligence. I slipped a few times today, as some people know. I think the experience comes into play out there."
Since winning Ironman Florida in 2005, all of Vanhoenacker's titles had come somewhere other than U.S. soil until Sunday. And he has an answer for those who criticize his Ironman résumé.
"Some people say there aren't a lot of big ones," Vanhoenacker said. "There's no easy Ironman to win out there. If you win an Ironman, you've done something special. I'm one of the guys who notices that.
"And it's not only just this race, it's what you put into it in the months before."
For Russell, who was second in May's 2016 North American Championship in Texas, Sunday's race was part of his preparation for the Ironman World Championship on Oct. 8 in Hawaii.
He said his third-place finish served as a good tune-up, because he started the day with a potential career-best swim of 45:06 and kept pace with Vanhoenacker for much of the bike portion.
"The bike, I probably pushed harder than I should have, because I went with Marino for the first 70 miles," Russell said. "I was pushing a lot of power, but I knew there were some fast runners, so I knew that was probably my best chance."
Symonds, who finished second, passed Russell about halfway through the run.
"Just the thought of walking down the street is painful," Symonds said after finishing.
Vanhoenacker said that halfway through the bike portion, all he could think about was getting to the white medical tent and draping himself in ice towels.
He fulfilled that fantasy as a champion after his stay in Chattanooga.
"It was a great buildup and a great race area," he said. "I was surprised, because of how they treat cyclists on the road. I've been to the States a few times, and I think this was the place where the fewest cars blew their horns at me."
Contact staff writer David Cobb at dcobb@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249.