Sugar Sand, Emerald Water, and Bike Leprechauns
Abitaman Navarre Beach Triathlon
Navarre Beach, FL
600m swim / 30k bike / 5k run
April 4, 2004
It turns out to be harder than I anticipated to travel like a pro triathlete. I mean, I knew that I was going to have to get my bike into a bike case for the plane, and that that would require some disassembly of the machine and perhaps a little contretemps with the airline counter personnel, but really I had no idea what it was all going to entail. The date of departure was approaching like an army of locusts; I was crazy busy with a contract writing project, and before I knew it, I was scurrying to my LBS (Local Bike Shop) with my bike and the box and a sense of embarrassing incompetence, a mere 18 hours before flight time.
"Is someone going to put this back together for you on the other end?" asked Dave the friendly bike guy. "Because it's pretty much going to be in pieces." Fortunately I had foreseen this eventuality at about the same time I had realized that I wasn't even going to be doing the disassembly. I called Dragon Sports in Ft. Walton Beach and explained my predicament. They promised they'd have me rolling as good as new on Friday afternoon, so with a sense of relief, mingled with that lingering embarrassing incompetence, I entrusted my bicycle into the hands of professionals.
I came back for the box a couple of hours later. It seemed to have gotten a lot bigger. When the box is empty, it splits into two pieces that fold into each other like giant kevlar tacos. When it's all put together and full of bicycle, it is extremely large. I had to fold down all the back seats of my Saturn and even then we could just barely wiggle it into the trunk. This immediately necessitated a call to my traveling buddy and lovely assistant, Dana, to see if we could use her SUV for the airport run. Fortunately Dana doesn't flap easily and loves to solve thorny problems.
It was April Fools' Morning, and I was feeling perfectly suited to the occasion. My wetsuit was stuffed into my decidedly non-sporty suitcase, my bike helmet in my slightly sportier backpack, and I had twelve copies of Slow Fat Triathlete packed up in a box secured with duct tape and purple parachute cord. At the last minute I grabbed my little plush Piglet toy out of my car and promoted him to Trip Mascot, strapping him onto the backpack with corset-like firmness. I was nursing a really painful shoulder and hadnšt been able to swim for a week, so I popped an anti-inflammatory and braced myself for the long plane ride.
Just a few days earlier, a journalist had asked me if I ever felt out of place at a triathlon. You know, given my Slow Fat thing and all. I was all, "Heck no! I've done the training, I know the sport, and I never feel anything but sublimely happy at a race site." Brave words, and true. But I tell ya, as I pulled into San Jose airport with this giant bike case plastered with exotic race stickers, I felt like a bit of a poseur. I mean, here I was about to travel 2200 miles to Florida, spend hundreds of dollars of my own scant funds, just to compete in an out-of-the-way sprint triathlon? Who the hell did I think I was? What business do Slow Fat Triathletes have traveling the country with fancy bike boxes? Surely someone was going to look at the bike box and look at me and call the Triathlon Police.
But it didn't happen. Dana and I made it safely onto the plane, though my credit card got dinged eighty bucks for the bike. And I was able to sit and ponder the fact that although I am not a professional triathlete, I am now officially a published triathlon author, and as such have a perfect right to gallivant about with entirely too much luggage on the possibly spurious basis of "research for my next book."
It was late, very late, when we finally arrived in Navarre Beach, and the only thing open was a Waffle House. We fell upon our enormous waffle-egg-toast-sausage combos like there was no tomorrow, and when we were finally sated we engaged our waiter, a youth named Steven, in a surprisingly animated conversation about coins. Then we bought drinking water, as the tap water in that part of Florida smells like a combination of sulfur and wet dog, and headed back to the Holiday Inn to crash.
It took most of the next day to deal with bike logistics and chat at great length with everyone in the bike store, with a little side trip to one of the worldšs most gorgeous beaches and a huge southern-fried lunch thrown in for good measure. The beach is made of granulated sugar, and the water is startlingly clear and green. And it goes on like that for miles.
Saturday was a work day for me, as I had set myself the task of schmoozing every triathlete who came to register for the race. I poached a little table space, set up a few books and postcards, and got busy schmoozin'. Dana helped me schmooze for a while, then headed out to the beach. Some folks got the whole Slow Fat Triathlete concept right away, others, mostly rather young and fit-looking, gave a blank stare. I sold some books, I talked a lot, I had a great time. I met Susan from the race management company, who had gotten into triathlon after having gastric bypass surgery, and Debbra the Queen Athena, a 6-foot-2 blonde, tan goddess and mom of two, and Don from the bike shop one of the very few Dragon Sports staff I had not had a lengthy conversation with the day before. And I met the Smith family from New Orleans, who gave me a very great gift.
Let me back up about 14 years. I was at a conference in New Orleans, and a former Grand Canyon river guide named Conrad took a bunch of us on a wild and crazy eating and drinking tour of his native city. I remember we went to a bunch of bars, and to Tipitina's, but I couldnšt remember the name of this incredible seafood place out in Metairie, on this little side street by Lake Pontchartrain. All I could remember is that it was kind of a shack that served enormous platters of fried food: oysters, crawfish balls, catfish, shrimp, and delectable soft-shell crabs. I had never had a soft-shell crab, and I couldnšt believe how beautiful and elegant it was. You just eat the whole damn crab. It's amazing. I talked about it for years.
So I'm talking to the Smiths in the Holiday Inn, and I told them that Dana and I were thinking of road-tripping to New Orleans and needed recommendations on where to eat. They tried steering me toward the French Quarter, but I said no, I was thinking of some place where the locals go, somewhere like this little fish shack in Metairie where they served huge platters of seafood. "Oh, you mean Deanie's!" they chorused. "That place is great!" I almost wept in gratitude.
Saturday night we scoped out the transition area and ate at Cocodrie's overlooking the beach. Shrimp and crawfish pasta, mmmm. A little creamy and spicy for the ideal pre-race dinner, but hey, you know, what the heck. Back to the hotel for pre-race organizing and puttering and attaching Piglet firmly to the front of my bike, and to bed at 9:40. But it was the night of Daylight Savings, so I had to set the clock ahead to 10:40. Ow! And the race was going to start at 7 the next morning, which was really like 6, which was really like 4 in the morning California time. Yow! I didn't sleep well.
When the alarm went off at 5:15, I started to fumble around in the dark, trying not to wake Dana. I failed in this endeavor, but I did succeed in spilling Cheerios all over the hotel room and slamming my finger in a drawer. But I was out the door by about 5:50, riding out of the hotel as the full moon, enormous and orange, set over Santa Rosa Sound. Just about the first person I saw at the race site was Jim from Dragon Sports, the caustic-tongued, jello-hearted owner of the two-store empire. "C'mere, you," he ordered. "Uhhh, what'd I do?" I replied warily. Jim engulfed me in a rather surprising hug. "I've been up till 2:30 in the morning reading your damn book." I apologized demurely. Jim ordered me to ride up and down the parking lot so he could critique my position on the bike and start dreaming up adjustments and tweaks. Bike dudes are like that. Finally he gave a few knowing nods, told me his girlfriend, the English major, could read my prose without gagging, and released me to the transition area.
The sun rose in glorious brilliance, and a brisk breeze stirred out of the north. Three hundred neoprene-wrapped triathletes and a few hardy swimsuit-wearers milled around on the sugar-white sand and splashed around in the clear green water. Most, temperature-sensitive Southerners, grimaced and squealed in the 68-degree, pond-calm Gulf. Others seemed pretty comfortable with the conditions. It seemed toasty to me. I saw Debbra and Susan and Rudy Smith and Don from Dragon Sports, and I even recognized them in neoprene and swim caps. I've been known not to recognize my own picture in my wetsuit and latex.
A couple of brawny Marines held up inflatable orange buoys as a start line; and the horn sounded for the first wave. Unlike the California coast, the bottom of the Gulf slopes so gently that some swimmers were jogging across sand bars 50 yards out. When my wave all the women in the race took off, I did a little sand-bar jogging too, just for the novelty of it. When I got horizontal again and started swimming, I was delighted to see a school of fish heading at right angles to our swimming mob. They looked a lot faster than we did, and at the risk of anthropomorphizing, I'd say they seemed a little startled by all this ruckus. A few yards further on, I saw a couple of rays lounging on the bottom. The water was so clear I could see the mottling on their backs
No time to linger over the aquatic wonders, though. I was racing for the first time since November, and I had adrenaline coursing through my veins. Right-hand turns around two buoys, and I was heading for the beach, trying to recall the skills of unzipping a wetsuit and squirming out of my sleeves while stumbling through the sand. I breezed through transition and headed out onto the road whooping with exhilaration and cold. "Whoo doggie! That is COLD!" I hollered to the assembled spectators. Out of the water, soaking wet, and heading out into weather in the 50s, while creating a chilling headwind of 15-20 mph. How much fun is that?
In another novelty for me, the bike course was dead flat and totally closed to traffic. We zoomed in a long spread-out line, past the hotels and condos and west toward the Gulf Island National Seashore, a gorgeous, desolate stretch of dunes that looked like snowdrifts in the early light. We'd been warned there would be headwinds, and it kind of felt like it, but the direction kept shifting and it was hard to get a good rhythm. After the turnaround I looked forward to a tailwind, but to my chagrin it had shifted to a crosswind, and I wasnšt able to get that rush of speed I'd been looking forward to. Still, I pounded away on the pedals, shocked at how many women seemed to be passing me. There didn't seem to be too many first-timers on mountain bikes and hybrids. They were all cranking on fast-looking bikes. So I cranked too. My seat position felt slightly off from the bike having been put back together, and I had weird pain in my upper thigh, but I cranked.
I was a couple of minutes off my projected pace when I hit T2, but the bike was already in the past, and now I was going to be a runner for 30 minutes or so. The run course scooted past the deck at Cocodrie's and into the brand-new Navarre Beach State Park. I think it was scenic too, but at that point I was focusing on my pace and my posture and keeping my head high and my feet moving quickly. The run was two laps within the park, and I kept seeing people from the day before I already felt like they were my old buds. Don and his son Don Jr. were running together at a fast clip, but they paused to high-five me along the way. I was feeling pretty good, suffering just the right amount for a short race in the early season, filling my lungs up as much as I could with every breath. I may have sounded like a San Francisco foghorn, but by golly I was getting my oxygen intake.
And boom! There was the finishing chute, and the line, and I came pounding over it with a credible imitation of a finishing kick. Bill Burke, the race director, was trying to announce my name and place of origin, but I guess had a hard time with the "CA" abbreviation. "Jayne, where are you from?' he yelled. "Mountain View!" I panted back. "Mountain VIEW!" "What state?" "Oh, uh... California." Post-Race Stupidity Syndrome set in pretty quickly.
Before I could even breathe again, I was actually being interviewed by the very small local paper, the Navarre Press. Probably because I had come all the way from California. But that gave me the opening to plug Slow Fat Triathlete, and I pounced on it like a starving weasel. Then it was time to pack up my stuff and head for Cocodriešs and the jambalaya feast. But first Jim the crazed bike dude had to persuade me to leave my bike with him so he could mess with my aerobars and gears and front fork. He even made me put the bike on a stationary trainer so he could analyze my position (basically ok, thankfully). I surrendered my bike into his hands, feeling that Jim is like that guy in the fairy tale who seems like some kind of crank but who in fact has the magic beans that are going to make your story move forward in a really interesting way. Kind of like a leprechaun. And then, at last, it was jambalaya time, and fruit and cookies and Coke and lots of talking, not all of it by Jim, and awards (Don Jr., 13 years old, won the 19-and-under age group), and cheers for all. Especially for Margie Stone, the 80-year-old woman who finished the race about an hour after most everyone else. It was her first triathlon.
All this and it wasn't even noon yet. Back to the hotel for a shower and a serious nap of around three hours. We weren't sure if we were going to make it to New Orleans, but we left the final decision till after the nap. And lo! When we awoke, Dana said, "OK, let's do it,˛ and I said "Well, OK!" So we got in the van and started driving. I-10 through Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi and Slidell, and finally to New Orleans itself, and through the city to Metairie and Deanie's. Heaven on earth. We drank Abita beers and ordered the giant seafood platter to share. Our waiter steered us away from it. "You probably want the half platter," he explained gently. "The giant platter serves four-five people." "Oh," we said, and acquiesced to the embarrassingly low-priced, still fairly giant half platter. Oh. My. God. Mountains of deep-fried catfish, shrimp, oysters, crawfish balls, and a soft-shell crab for each of us. There was so much food I could barely even look at the french fries. And that's saying something.
We waddled out to the van and gazed up at the full moon. Life was good. It was time to cruise around the French Quarter, grab some cafe au lait and beignets at the Cafe du Monde, and head on home. We walked around, looked at the Mississippi, marveled at how incredibly strongly the French Quarter smelled of puke, and settled down at Cafe du Monde. It was eleven o'clock at night, and it was about 77 degrees outside. The cafe au lait was smooth and strong; the beignets were piled high with powdered sugar, and I had raced that morning, a long, long time ago.
We got back to Navarre Beach around 3:30 in the morning. We slept for a few hours, packed our stuff in a daze, drove out to pick up my magically modified bicycle and say bye to all the fun people at Dragon Sports, and drove to Pensacola.