Transition Police

It was a great weekend for riding around here, and ordinarily I would definitely have racked up a couple of long hard training rides. What I actually ended up doing was, in manner of speaking, equally hard even though most of Sunday was spent on foot instead of on bike.

Saturday morning at 6:10 am Jon and I met up to ride out to the Starbucks on Harrison for what has now become the traditional pre-Giro coffee stop. The number of people showing up there has grown slowly but steadily for months and for all practical purposes has become the de facto starting point for the Giro Ride now that Lakeshore Drive has been rendered uninhabitable for the summer.

It was comfortably cool and not very windy as we rode out there, our route skirting around the treacherous ongoing road construction on Carrollton. I was trying out an old wheel that I had recently put back into action. The alloy nipples on this wheel were pretty much frozen to the spokes and the hub bearings are rough, but it still rolls without hitting the brake shoes, so I think it will do for training for a little while. Since a number of the stronger local Cat. 1/2/3s were up in Alabama for the Sunny King criterium where Frank Moak kicked some barely post-adolescent butt, I was thinking that we'd have a pretty tame ride. Not quite. In fact, Saturday's ride turned out to be consistently fast. Since I knew I wouldn't be doing a big training ride the next day, I figured I may as well take advantage of the situation and get in a hard workout even if it might mean some leg soreness the next day.

So I did a fair amount of work during the ride, pushed it a bit for the usual sprints, and went hard for the overpasses and bridges. Damn, that felt good.

Sunday was an even earlier wake-up call in order to get out to the Lakefront at 6:30 am to help with the Ochsner 70.3 Ironman Triathlon. Robin had Brian, Laura and me lined up to work the transition, in particular the dreaded "blue line." We were, in effect, the Transition Police. I assume there was somebody somewhere nearby sitting in the shade assigning penalties to the riders who violated the blue line rule by jumping on their bikes too early or getting off too late. Although it was a very long day of standing in the sun, it was not entirely devoid of entertainment value. With numerous waves triathletes, all the way from professionals to people who get the senior discounts at Denny's without asking, we saw our share of the unbelievable. There were people heading out for 50+ mile bike legs on mountain bikes, 30-year-old steel bikes with racks and reflectors. The really depressing ones were the dramatically overweight ones on $8,000 tri bikes to which had been attached half a gallon of water, eight gel packs, mysterious black bags and bouncing seat-mounted bottle-launchers sprouting Co₂ cartridges like teats on a cow's udder.

Anyway, aside from the obvious superhuman abilities of the professional triathletes, I was impressed to see Matt R. come flying in at the end of the bike leg (he was on a relay team) on his color-coordinated Campi water-bottled TT bike well before some of the Professionals despite his team's wave having started a good ten minutes behind them. Right on his heels were Mark G., Todd H. and Jorge P., too. We even had an all-NOBC women's team of Vivian, Mignon and Judith. All I know about that is that Mignon came in looking like she had put in a pretty hard effort. I have no idea how any of the relay teams finished, but I'd love to see the bike splits. The overall winner of the event had a bike split that worked out to about 27 mph for 50.2 miles. I'm impressed. I also heard that they set a new swim split record for 70.3 Ironmans (Ironmen??). Mark had apparently crashed like a ton of bricks shortly before the finish and came across the line with one elbow covered in blood and significant chunks of his skinsuit unaccounted for. He looked to be fine after getting cleaned up, though.

There were still people coming out of the water when the leaders started coming in at the end of the bike leg, so things got pretty busy where we were. There were quite a few triathletes who had trouble unclipping and ended up toppling over at the end of the ride. Others tried for a fast cyclocross style dismount. Some executed it beautifully, others flubbed it completely, and a number of them lost their left shoes (there were still three of them sitting in the transition area when we left. The last couple of hours were really long. It was getting pretty hot, I was getting pretty sunburned, and the riders were getting fewer and farther between. I was simply amazed that the last few riders (a) would have ever even considered doing a half-ironman, (b) actually made it to the end of the ride, and (c) continued. It was around 2:00 pm by the time the last riders came in and started the 10+ mile run. By then a number of the Professionals had finished, partied in the Quarter, gotten their awards, come back to the transition area, and picked up their bikes and gear to go home.

Regardless, it was a fun and satisfying day, the weather was great, and I think everybody had a good time. The event seemed to be extremely well organized, thanks to Premier Event Management, and there were lots of volunteers when needed. By the end, though, the transition area crew had dwindled down to just Laura, Brian and me. It felt kind of like the end of the Tour de Louisiane as we walked around picking up traffic cones. As I rode back home around 2:30 I realized I'd had only a Powerbar to eat and a few sips of water to drink. I rode home sunburned and dehydrated with aching feet and tired legs wondering if I was more wiped out than some of the triathletes.