Monday, April 26, 2010

St. Anthony's Race Report - Day Before

If you are ever able to do this race, do it. The organization was amazing and the volunteers where some of the best I've ever seen! With 4000+ athletes - the race ran perfectly!

Ok - back to the race report. Karen and I headed down to St. Pete on Friday afternoon. Car packed and ready to go:

Six hours (and a time change later) we made it to the 'host' hotel. Well, we did not realize that there where two Hiltons - one on the race site and one about 10 min away. We ended up at the off site hotel..no wonder we got the room for so cheap! But it was very nice and we kind of felt like we where on vacation :)

The next morning we got up and headed down to check in. I'm not sure if you've been to downtown St. Pete, but it is the most confusing place ever. Every street is named 4th ave SN or 1st St. east west. Yeah. Confusing like that. And on top of that, we are both used to the gulf being on the south, not what ever direction is it there. Total confusion. But thankfully we made our way around.

Karen wanted to drive the bike course which is something that I have never done before. To be honest, I usually go into a race blind. I know where the start is and where my bike is racked and that is about it. But this was the best idea. The course was somewhat technical - lots of curves, turns, speed bumps and straight aways. Seeing this the day before was a huge help for both of us. And we where not the only ones doing this:

We figured this person knew where they were going (Run Swm license plate).

We walked around the expo for awhile and baught a bunch of crap what we didn't need - but that is what those are for right? As we where heading back to the car to get our bikes, someone yelled 'Chloe?' I turned around and it was Tom and his kids. He is a friend of mine who has the YOLO board Company. They had the opportunity to lead the pro male and female swim waves. Tom is new to the whole world of triathlon and was blown away. He runs with us a few days a week, but I predict in the near future he will be a triathlon junkie. This is Tom - he's not hard on the eyes at all:

And if you don't know what a YOLO board is - here is the easter bunny as a stellar example:


We got back to the car and put our bikes together to ride over to the bike party (aka transition):





And you would think that 4000 bikes would be a nighmare to rack right? Not here! They had stickers with our numbers and names on them. And our race numbers tied into our age. So everyone that was on my rack was rocking the 30-34F age group. This was very helpful the next day to scope out when you brought your bike back to T2 :)

The princess racked and ready to go:


By the time everything was said and done, Karen and I had to go out and enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner. It's happy hour? Great! Make it a good pour:



After dinner we headed back to the hotel to relax and get ready for the next morning:

Yeah yeah, I know. My toes look like I'm a champion rock kicker, but hopefully they'll look better soon.

4:00am wakeup call (which is 3am our time) came way to early.

6 comments:

KC (my 140 point 6 mile journey) said...

oh dang, i forgot you guys are an hour behind us! great job at the race...your finishtime was impressive. Congrats! St. A's is an awesome race from the inside out. I worked for St. Anthony's in the mid to late 90's and had the opportunity to work the bike course and to participate as well and it is runs like a well oiled machine thanks to all the volunteers. smart move on scouting the bike course. i rode it prior to doing the race and was glad i did. so what's next on the race agenda?

FLATOUT JIM said...

Wine with dinner before a race! Interesting. Can't wait to see how the race went.

Christi said...

I think it is funny that you use the gulf for directions. We do the same thing here in Colorado Springs but we use the mountain range. If you see the mountain range then you know it is toward the west.

So far the race report is great! I can't wait to read the rest!

Bill said...

Funny about the hotel mix up. It sounds like it all worked out well anyway. Can't wait to read your "Race Day" report. Mine is up if you are interested in a somewhat slower version of events.

Big Daddy Diesel said...

I am just impressed of the transitions, not having to fight over a spot is great, every RD needs to take a look at how that tri is done.

I am going to drop this one in my bucketlist for the future sometime.

ONEHOURIRONMAN said...

Some people are way too serious (Flatout).
Nothing like a nice glass of wine to take the edge off. Heck, I had a beer to wash down some Advil at mile 12 of the marathon at IMFL last year.... actually tasted pretty good...