Jonnene and I after her race where she finished 7th in her age group. Sunday was the 30th anniversary of the River Cities Triathlon up at Cypress Lake. I've done this race about 10 times with the last one in 2004 and that was when I swore off triathlons and went directly to duathlons. I wasn't interested in learning to be a better swimmer so why not do races at what I was better at? The last couple of years I've been in charge of the bike portion of the race which means I have to come up with volunteers to man all the turns and the exit/entrance of the park gate....find motorcycles to ferry the race officials around the course...make sure the course is in reasonable shape, sweeping here and there, marking potholes to be filled, and getting the dead animals off the roads. Yep, it's a glory job alright.
We got up at 4 am that morning, had to walk the dogs and then load up the Rav4. We got to the race site around 5:15 am, off-loaded Jonnene and her gear, and I headed out to drop off vests, flags and cones to the various corners that my volunteers would arrive at a couple of hours later. I had an issue with some gear being stolen at one of the corners...it was weird and takes too long to explain but I had enough stuff left over to cover for what ended up missing. Then it was back to the park to organize things with the officials and motorcycles, send some volunteers to certain spots inside the park to direct the cyclists, and find Jonnene somewhere on the beach so I could give her a good luck kiss. Soon the first wave was coming out of the water and heading out on the bike course so I had to hope that things were okay. I talked to some of the corners by phone during the race to make sure things were fine. There were three crashes that I knew about, one of which might have been a broken collarbone. We sent the EMS crew out and we assumed that they took the victim to the hospital. One of the volunteer coordinators brought the guy's bike back to the transition area.
Jonnene takes off with her bike after a 1/2 mile swim in Cypress Lake.The word for the day was HOT. I think the heat index got up to 108 degrees by the time the last participant came across the finish line. There were about 1,100 racers signed up but I have no idea how many actually did the race. I'll bet there were over a thousand. Everyone seemed to handle the heat fairly well as long as they stayed hydrated and raced within themselves. I walked about and even rode my old cruiser bike to get around the area, monitoring the race over the walkie-talkie I had and talking to workers over the cell phone. Sometimes I had both going at once.
When nearly everyone was off the bike course I headed out to do a final clean-up of the course, pick up the volunteer gear, and just make sure things out there were fine. I came upon a racer who had gotten a ride from one of the motorcyclists to a spot on the course where she had lost her bike computer. It had just flown off the mount on her handlebars but she continued on. With her race done, she was now back out looking for that $100 piece of equipment she had bought just a few days before over in Dallas. After about 10 minutes of staring at grass on the side of the road, I started to walk down the hill, saw a glint, and found the computer! It was on the side of the road with just a tiny scratch and somehow nobody had run over it with a bike or car. She was estatic and gave me a big hug, dampening the front of my polo shirt and shorts from the race sweat on her skinsuit. Hey, I like my women sweaty, y'know? Anyway, that was my good deed for the day.
Jonnene and Lisa come back from their bike ride side-by-side. Lisa is the better runner and would finish ahead of Jonnene by 90 seconds. Lisa was 6th and Jonnene was 7th in the same age group! They were both in the top third of all the 1,000+ race finishers!Eventually, Jonnene finished her race, missing her PR by only a couple of minutes! Considering she had shoulder surgery just six months ago and the limited training time she had, I considered her effort to be phenomenal! Essentially, she went into this race with no pressure to do well, just enjoy the event, and she raced totally relaxed, mentally speaking. She did well.
We got home around 1 pm and ate ice cream. I think we deserved it.
Now I've got a bunch of flags, vests, and signs to clean up and organize so I return them to the race promoter. It's Monday and my part of the race isn't over yet.
