Accenture Chicago Triathlon/Team Clydesdale World Games V
Chicago, IL, August 29, 2004
1500m swim / 24.8 mi bike / 10k run
City of broad shoulders, big, brawling, sprawling. Sweet home Chicago. The Chicago Triathlon is the largest race in the world, with 7,000 athletes plunging into Lake Michigan, riding up and around Lake Shore Drive, and running around Grant Park, dodging potholes and each other in a sweating, striving mass. This race used to be sponsored by Mrs. T's Pierogies, which, along with the motif of Bigness, would have been a great synergy with a sub-event of the triathlon, the Team Clydesdale World Triathlon Championships. Team Clydesdale, founded by the charismatic and tireless Guy East, is on a mission to promote weight-class competition in sports like triathlon, duathlon, and marathon, and who knows? Maybe more.
While a part of me wonders just how far this movement can go (shot put for featherweights? High jump for those 5'4" and under? Why not?), most of my being is consumed by the notion that I, a Slow (slower this year than last) Fat (fatter this year than last - is there a connection? Hmmm....) Triathlete, could have a chance to compete for a world title in my beloved sport. So I was disappointed to learn just five days before race day that my entry into the Chicago Triathlon did not mean I was automatically entered into the Team Clydesdale Championships, even though I had registered as a Lady Clydesdale. Apparently I had to qualify in one of a series of races that I knew nothing about - you'd think maybe Guy would email everyone who entered as a Clydesdale and explain the qualifying system to them? Especially since I registered for this race in December 2003 and marked it as the key race for my entire season.
But I hardly had time to worry about it all. I'd been gallivanting around California for a couple of weeks, first as a speaker at the Cookie Lee Fine Fashion Jewelry Fall 2004 sales convention (yes, really), and then hanging out with Will, Anne and Tim up in the Sierras, doing some high-altitude "training," close harmony singing, and consumption of modest amounts of fine dark chocolate in the evening. When we got back from the mountains, I only had three days to get ready, and my primary obstacle was that I had forgotten to buy myself a plane ticket. Oops. Thanks, Travelocity, once again.
I was also trying to coordinate with a group of women that I only knew from a Weight Watchers message board, the WW Fitness Challenge Tri-ers. The Tri-ers decided a year ago to stage a gathering in Chicago, and I was stoked to meet up with these gals from all over the country. Some are tri newbies, others are grizzled veterans; some have lost over 100 pounds while others have fought the weight battle on a smaller scale. To further thicken the plot, they have banded together as "Team Kathleen," in support of one of the group members who incurred seriously nasty injuries in a car-bike encounter last December. Kathleen herself, with her mom, her wheelchair, and the arm crutches she is using a little more all the time, was also making the trip.
Oh, and as a by-product of all that activity, I was developing a persistent and troubling pain in my lower back - the same variety of pain that has derailed at least one race per season for me each of the past two years. I frantically stretched, iced, warmed, rolled on my foam roller, and visited my talented chiropractor.
So there was a lot going on. Tim generously played the role of airport assistant yet again, helping me pack my bike into the case in the parking lot at SFO and wheel it into the terminal. Getting onto the plane was a relief, and I snoozed most of the way to O'Hare. By the time I got to the Hilton, it was well after 11 p.m., and then I had to put my bike back together in preparation for a TV news bit that Team Kathleen was doing with the local Fox channel at - gasp - 6 in the morning. As I shuffled around the room, my bare left foot discovered a sharp something in the carpet. Wow - broken glass! And then I found another piece. That's kind of not good. I called Guest Services. They were alarmed and transferred me to Security. Security was alarmed, and sent a representative up to the room with a digital camera, and a loose-limbed youth with a vacuum cleaner. It kept getting later. Sometime around 2 a.m. I fell asleep to the lullaby of the Olympics.
At 5:15 on Friday morning, I woke blearily to the alarm and called Bonnie's room to see what was going on with the 6 a.m. TV thing. "Oh," said Bonnie, "They actually interviewed some of us yesterday, and it's raining outside, so they're not doing the shoot at 6." Oops. I was mortified for calling anyone at 5:15, let alone someone I didn't know yet, and my embarrassment kept me from falling asleep again for at least 20 minutes.
The rest of Friday morning went quietly, and I made my first contact with Team Kathleen at 1 p.m. for a hearty lunch of deep dish Chicago pizza (very Weight Watchers-friendly, I know) at the Exchequer pub. Have to admit, I like other Chi-town pizza joints better, but the Giordano's we were aiming for was closed for remodeling. However, Bonnie, Wendy, Jackie, Jen, ,Jen's husband Jesse, Susan, and Carol all made terrific lunch companions. Warm, funny, enthusiastic, and easy to hang with, they made me feel instantly part of the group even though I've been only a sporadic contributor to the message board.
After lunch it was off to race registration and the massive multisport expo, conveniently located in the basement of the Hilton. The doors didn't open until 30 minutes after the scheduled 3 p.m. start, so the whole sweating mass of humanity thing was previewed for us in the stuffy corridors outside the expo hall. There were so many people in there it was hard to figure out where the line for packet pickup ended and the line for chip checking began. And then we got body marked - two days before the race! I would certainly sweat and rub off all the ink on my arms and legs before then. But OK, whatever you say.
The expo was a Triathlon-Toys-R-Us. Race belts, CoolMax shirts, cycling socks, energy drinks, massages, bikes, carbon fiber handlebars, shoes, headbands, hats, swimsuits, wetsuits - pretty much everything you could need for a triathlon and a lot of stuff you might not need but that you might lust after. I succumbed to the shopping madness and bought a stick-thing to massage my aching back, a few ridiculously cheap bits of wicking clothing, and a new race number belt with little loops into which you can stuff energy gels. Plus some nice people gave me free stuff: hats, t-shirts, powdered drink samples, Baker's Breakfast Cookies.
And then I came across the Team Clydesdale booth, where I recognized Guy East from the website. I immediately girded my loins to accost him and voice my disappointment over not getting into the World Games. But first I introduced myself as the Slow Fat Triathlete, being all positive and that. Once I had him hooked on that idea, I gave him my sad tale of woe. Why were potential Clydesdale champs not notified on how to qualify? Was there any way that a Lady Clydesdale with a sub 3-hour Olympic distance race could get in? Well, ya know, it doesn't hurt to ask... And lo! Guy told me that if I was willing to pay the extra $200 to register for the World Games ($200! Yow! Whoa!), I'd be in. I didn't even hesitate. When else will I get to compete for a world title in anything? Plus the Team Clydesdale tri-suits were pretty fancy-looking, and coordinated well with my bike. Aesthetics are everything.
So Guy and I trotted around the expo, getting me all weighed in and registered and gathering all the goodies - tri-suit, singlet, hat, backpack, high-tech water bottle, and, inexplicably, a CD of new X-Box games. I was so excited I was bouncing up and down. I even got Wendy and Bonnie from Team Kathleen to talk their way into the Team Clydesdale party. As I was chatting with Guy, a vivacious apple-cheeked Irishwoman approached us, someone I had seen coming in from a bike ride with a whole Irish contingent. She turned out to be Nuala Moore, from Dingle in Kerry, and she was so extroverted and funny she made me look like a recluse. Instant hilarity; just add Nuala.
After the expo I went back up to the room and worked on my back with the massage stick. I rolled out my muscles like pie dough, and to my amazement, I felt a great deal better after about 15 minutes of work. I could touch my toes again! A wave of optimism overcame me. I was going to race on Sunday for a world title, and I was going to feel good doing it.
At 7 p.m. we had scheduled our first Team Kathleen group dinner. Pretty much everyone who was going to be in town was going to be there by Friday night, so we reserved a big room upstairs at Bar Louie on Printer's Row. Some of us were worried about the upstairs thing, but Bonnie had ok'ed it with Kathleen, and she put on the crutches and went up like it was the Hillary Step, with us, her Sherpas, trekking behind. The menu was not particularly inspired - didn't blackened everything go out of style like 17 years ago? - but the company was excellent. I had never before met in the flesh a bunch of people that I only knew as screen names, and it was strange and fun. "Oh, YOU'RE Tinkerbell! And YOU'RE fengshway? Whoa!" Tinkerbell was tall and willowy, and fengshway was a psychiatrist from Daytona. Who knew? After dinner Bonnie induced a couple of us to go across the street to Hackney's to split a couple of the most amazing giant chocolate chip cookie sundaes in the world. Oozy, gooey, melty mess.
On Saturday morning Kate and Christine were doing the Super Sprint race, but my jet lag and the knowledge that this was my last chance to get a good night's zz's before the race prevented me from getting up to cheer them on. So I met up with another large subset of the group for - what else - another meal! Back to Hackney's for brunch, loud laughter, much hydration. Amply loaded with carbs, I ambled back to the hotel to take in a round table on Clydesdale triathlon and how to get Clydesdale athletes qualifying spots for the Ironman Hawaii World Triathlon Championships. Most Ironman races have Clydesdale divisions, but a high place as a Clydesdale or Athena doesn't get you into Kona, whereas a high age-group finish might. We agreed to write letters and do other activist sort of stuff.
Then the whole Clydesdale group came in for introductions. Nuala was there, and her friend Robbie, originally from New Zealand, now living in Ireland. There was Gerald, a former pro triathlete who fell in love with beer and became a self-proclaimed "fatboy" with spiky hair dyed Superman-black with a blue overdye. There were two father-son duos, tons of people from San Diego, and Maureen "Mo" Trainor, who has overcome a stroke, a leaky heart valve, full-body infections that almost killed her, and a host of other medical problems to come back and compete in triathlon. There were a some people who were Clydesdales pretty much by virtue of being tall rather than fat, and some guys who had a stated goal of going real fast. An amazing bunch.
I had to duck out to meet my old friend Jenny. Jenny and I were best buds during our 1983 semester at Leningrad State University, back in the days of Soviet power and curfews for foreign students. Later, we were grad students together at Berkeley, for a while, before we both abandoned academia. I hadn't seen her in ten years and was astonished at how funny and self-possessed her 11-year-old daughter was. I made them wait around for a bit while I went over to the famous Buckingham Fountain for Team Clydesdale photos. These were somewhat dampened by the wind, rain, and the intense spray blowing from the fountain itself, but we kept our spirits high.
We met up with Jenny's friend Lucinda, another veteran of Russian studies, and ate a fantastic Italian dinner. Oriechette with house-made sausage, rapini, and mildly stinky aged Fontina. Might have been a little rich for a pre-race dinner, but, you know, I just didn't care. It was soooo good. We laughed so hard and so constantly that I felt a little sorry for the other diners in our room, but I didn't care too much about that either. After a couple of mineral waters in the Hilton lounge, I bade farewell and good night and crept into my room to try to sleep.