Sunday, June 12, 2011

I Heart Spectating

Sunday, I got to spectate the biggest hometown triathlon, Wendy's International Triathlon and Duathlon. Dave was participating (and hopefully he'll have a blog post up soon) so I was there for him, but I saw some great things while spectating.
  • Next to Dave in transition, someone had "racked" their mountain bike with the kickstand.
  • While Dave was setting up his transition, a guy standing next to me began giving Dave advice on where he should put his bike numbers. Dave just listened intently while I wanted to scream, "He's a two time ironman finisher. He knows what the eff he's doing!"
  • The swim is in the shallow area of the beach and being that it's a mixed bag of beginners, experienced triathletes, and people just trying to survive, you see a quite the combination of wetsuits short and long and people just wearing swimsuits or their tri suits. My favorite this day was a woman wearing a lycra catsuit that zipped up the front. What the what? Where do you get something like that?
  • After Dave had taken off on the bike, I took a bathroom break and began walking to the bike dismount line. I quickly reversed course when I decided I wanted to be on the other side of transition. Well, a skateboarder decided I reversed course too quickly and ran right into me. I gave him a few choice words. And a group of kids learned some new words too. :)
  • My favorite of the day: seeing a guy come in from the bike wearing his helmet backwards. Yeah, he wore it like that the entire ride.
  • Speaking of helmet, I saw a woman wearing hers to the side, like a mortar board or like girls wore hats in the '90s. I sure hope she doesn't fall on the other side of her head.
  • At the bike dismount, I saw a guy not completely unclip and went over his handlebars with the bike falling on top of him. He rebounded quickly and didn't look like he had bad road rash on him. Lucky.
  • Finally, and I'm not sure a description does this justice without seeing it in person, I loved the very large man in spandex running capris running in several buddies at the finish line. Was he competing? Nope. Just running it in. :)

5 comments:

Kristin Deaton said...

You are too funny!!

Unknown said...

Oh my gosh... sometimes I just want to people watch! A race at Alum never disappoints! :)

Hollywood said...

That was a good event to people watch. I've taught kids new words too when something like that happens. What do you say...Oops?

Betsy said...

Love it! I agree..I love spectating and seeing all the things that go on during the course of the race that you are completely oblivious to when you're racing.

Unknown said...

Oh My Gosh! Love those posts!

Ryan felt that the demographic of people in Monroe was pretty entertaining/polar....The super fit doing the event plus their spectators and people that find it entertaining to hang out between a nuclear power plant and a factory. You were there, so you know what I am saying but don't want to write?