2007 Vineman Ironman 70.3

The last time I participated in the Vineman Half Ironman was 2004 before it became an officially sanctioned and branded Ironman 70.3 event. I observed many changes with the newly branded event as the marketing gurus at Ironman placed their indelible mark on the venerable wine country triathlon. Gone were the quirky Merlot and Zinfandel aid stations, the Topless Dancing Grapes Revue at mile 6 of the run, and the Champagne-o-rama at the swim start. In place of those memorable icons of Vineman past, Ironman USA offered free M-dot permanent tattoos and the ever popular hot iron M-dot brand on the buttocks. I queued up for the buttock brand thinking it would nicely compliment my fading Bud Light USTS tramp stamp, but unfortunately, I did not allow enough time and I had to rush off to my wave start.

Part of the adventure of Vineman is actually making it the venue with your sanity intact. I left home in Pleasanton around 1PM on Saturday afternoon expecting a 2 hour drive to Windsor. All forward progress came to a screeching halt (literally, the driver behind me locked up his brakes and screeched to a halt mere inches from my bumper) when traffic from 580 tried to merge onto northbound 101. From San Rafael to Santa Rosa, there was bumper to bumper traffic. I’m still wondering where all this traffic was going, it’s not like there is much to do in Santa Rosa and points north. I suppose the Charles M. Schultz Peanuts Cartoon Museum is a good draw and maybe the Boonville Brewery would pull in a car load or two, but there were literally thousands of cars littering the highway for 40 to 50 miles. Interspersed with the urban dwellers seeking solace among the redwoods up north were many high strung and well tanned triathletes trying to get to registration before all the Chris Leito Souvenir Nipple Guards were handed out.

Registration went surprisingly smoothly. I was checked, banded, bagged, t-shirted, and chipped in under 10 minutes. For those of you Vineman virgins, the course requires two transition areas. One is at Johnson’s Beach on the Russian River for the swim to bike transition and one is at Windsor High School for the bike to run transition. Due to this splitting of the transitions, the race requires participants to prepare their T2 gear the night before the event. This poses a bit of a dilemma for those of us who over think what to have available for each segment of the race. I spent a good 20 minutes going through a mental inventory of things I would need for the run. Should I carry 1 or 2 Gu packets, hat or visor, extra sunscreen and what SPF, white or black socks, hair gel or hair spray, race flats or lightweight trainers, and the most crucial decision of all…should I change my blue sunglasses I use for the bike leg to a pair with a more neutral colored frame for the run because the blue frames may clash with the red FMRC logo on my hat?

After completing my complicated T2 tasks, I checked into the official Forward Motion Motel, the Windsor Holiday Inn Express. I’m not sure why it is labeled as Express, I did not think they were exceedingly speedy at anything, it was not located near any “expressways”, nor did they serve “expresso”. I suppose the quick way they separated $152 from my wallet would qualify them as “expressive” or would that be “excessive”. It is good to see that capitalism is alive and well in the wine country where a room that normally goes for $49.95 including clean sheets sets you back race weekend over $150 and I’m not so sure the sheets were clean if the dark curlies I found were any evidence.

After unloading my triathlete’s detritus into my room, I drove to Santa Rosa for the team dinner. Larry Feigenbaum graciously organized a wonderful pre-race pasta dinner at a local Italian eatery. He had corralled over 25 folks from the team including the lonely singles contingent of me, Russ, Jacque, Sue, and Dana, plus a gaggle of Glynns, a coterie of Chavez’s, and a whole collection of Cramers. I think most of the folks in the restaurant at the time were somehow related to Steve and Amy. Many other FoMos dined with us that evening, but I failed to get all their names. The pasta was plentiful and the case of Chianti we polished off was quite tasty.

Because of the narrowness of the Russian River, the 1300 participants have to be divided into about 50 swim wave starts. Each age group has their own start time plus age groups with large representation were divided even further. For example, the 37 year olds had their own wave start and my age group 40-44 was divided into three groups, the young’uns 40-41, the mid-lifers 42-43, and the 44 year old geezers. Some age groups had even further definition with a separate start time for men born East of the Mason Dixon line between the hours of 4:31PM and 5:02PM on March 28th, 1952. Believe it or not, this wave had over 100 participants in it.

Swimming in the Russian River is always an interesting experience. The race director always points out one of the unique aspects of the Vineman swim course. The swim is probably one of the safest swims in triathlon. The director always says at the pre-race briefing “if you get into trouble during the swim…stand up!”. Actually, the swim start is about 6 feet deep, but then gets shallower as you crawl upriver. Ed Meyer commented to me this morning that when he finished the race he looked down at his fingernails and realized they were caked with black gunk. Either he was doing oil changes on the bike or he was scooping out river mud with each swim stroke. Larry felt he could run faster than he could swim, so he did a slow jog downstream after the turn around. Typically a triathlon swim course is a triangular or rectangular affair. The Vineman swim course is more of a spastic snake shape twisting and turning every which way for 1.2 miles. Not that I swim a perfect straight line, but trying to keep to the right of the buoys was quite the challenge

I exited the water onto the “beach” although I’ve always thought for a place to qualify as a beach there were certain requirements like sand, waves, seaweed, bikini babes, and those little flies that always seem to be buzzing around your head. And no, Chris McCrary in his cropped race top does not qualify as a bikini babe. I found my bike amid the other 1299 bikes and performed my T1 ritual of wetsuit stripping, bike shoes on, refastening my timing chip which was dangling from my ankle, putting my sunglasses and race number belt on, and then strapping on the brain bucket. I remembered to stuff my wetsuit, goggles, and swim cap into the official Vineman Ironman 70.3 approved T1 swim gear transition plastic bag otherwise my wetsuit would have been relegated to the heap-o-crap at the end of the race.

The bike leg was fairly uneventful except for the flash of red and the vortex of wind as Pete Zucker blew by me at mile 10. Being in the 12th of 50 swim wave starts, there was much evidence of previous racers littering the course. Not only did I see the usual flotsam and jetsam associated with the bike leg like water bottles, spare tubes, spare tires, Gu packs, and a bike shoe or two, I also spied one helmet (where was the owner?), a floor pump, a disk wheel, and one of those mini kegs Heineken is making now. I’m not sure if the keg fell off a bike or out of a race officials car, but it was empty, so someone was having a better time on the bike course than I was.

T2 arrived very quickly, so fast that I thought maybe I had missed 15 or so miles of the course. I caught a glimpse of Speedy Zuckerman entering transition so I set my sights on pulling back some of the time he had taken out of me on the bike leg. I racked my bike and ran out of transition thinking I was in hot pursuit of Pete. The FoMo Pep Squad was in full cheer mode with Steve Chavez sporting a nice red mini skirt, white pom poms, and what looked like one of his wife Carrie’s sports bras. Steve Cramer was attired similarly but opted for the red leather hot pants instead of the skirt. If the site of the two of them doing a cheer to “Eye of the Tiger” wasn’t enough to get you to run fast…in the opposite direction, then I don’t know what is. My awesome coach Patricia LaSalle was on hand to remind me to slow down a bit since I still had 13 miles to go and a sub 7 min pace was not in my race plan. Ignoring her sage advice, I proceeded to hunt down Mr. Pete. After about 3 miles of red-lining it, I began to realize that I must have passed Pete in transition. Even after consulting with Pete’s wife Monica, we still do not know what he was doing all that time in T2. Her guess was a shower, while I thought more along the lines of a six pack and a Lazy Boy. I encountered a long procession of Forward Motion racers making their way to the finish line, a place I would not see for over an hour. Carrie skipped by looking fresh as a daisy albeit one dipped in salt crusties and showered in Gatorade Endurance. Many fit bodies proudly wearing red and orange FMRC jerseys waved as they passed by offering much needed words of encouragement. I hit a low point around mile 8 when the sun was bearing down and I began to feel like one of those ants I used to torture with a magnifying glass back when I was growing up in Phoenix. I thought maybe all those little ant souls were up there in heaven seeking revenge for my childish antics.

Sensing I was close to breaking 5 hours and a new PR, I dug deep and pushed hard the last few miles to the finish. I kept doing the math in my heat addled brain and thought I had a minute or two cushion to break 5 hours. Math was never my strong suit hence my career in marketing, so I was alarmed to see I only had 60 seconds to cover the last few hundred yards. I sprinted down the finish chute elbowing a few young ladies out of the way and crossed the line in 4:59:25…35 seconds to spare.

I looked around for the traditional white wine dunk tank, but alas, Ironman had eliminated that post race activity due to safety and health concerns. Allegedly, a few years back two athletes after soaking in the tank for an unspecified amount of time, became overly amorous and the tank had to be drained.

Thanks to all the support squads, to Larry for pulling together the pre-race dinner, to Amy Cramer for coordinating the hotel, and to everyone else who made Vineman a memorable experience. Congrats to all the FoMo racers and especially to all the first timers completing the distance.

Being "The Woman"

I would have to agree with my friend Joanie. My wife Janine is definitely "The Woman". When we first met she was competing in in-line speed skating. This is where you strap on rollerblades with 5 wheels and no brakes and skate very fast out on nice rough asphalt up to speeds of 30 MPH. Just before moving out to CA, she was in a race in Arlington, TX. It was a sprint finish so she was flying down this road, broke the tape in first place, but then realized the race organizers had not figured on a high speed sprint finish and had not provided enough room for the racers to roll out to a stop. Janine had a choice of going over an embankment and down a hill into a lake, crashing head on into parked cars, or laying down and letting the asphalt bring her to an abrupt stop. She chose the asphalt route and mangled her entire left leg. It looked like something out of a horror movie or maybe a hamburger factory. The next day we drove out to CA in a U-Haul. She could not bend her leg since everytime she tried the scabs would break open and start to bleed. Needless to say it was a long trip.

To further support Janine's nomination as "The Woman", I offer the story of our 7 day Colorado Mt. Biking adventure. We took an exteme Mt. Bike tour one summer riding from Vail to Crested Butte and back. The entire trip was above 10,000 feet on some very technical single track. We had a great time and managed to survive, but both of us fell numerous times. Janine managed to fall and scrape both elbows and both knees (all in separate falls). Even though she was bloodied and bruised, I have a picture of her showing off her battle wounds while laughing her head off.

And then there is the story of her dragging me to a day of "street luging".

And the story of her learning to ride a motorcycle and maiming herself on the kick start.

And the story of her crashing on her road bike after only 5 miles, but finishing the 60 mile ride.

And list goes on...

2007 Uvas South Bay Triathlon

Top Ten Things I will Remember about Uvas South Bay Triathlon 2007

10. Why are we parking in this cow pasture and why is that guy directing traffic wearing only boxers and cowboy boots?
9. Wow, I get to rack next to Monica Zucker. She’s much easier on the eyes than my last rack mate; I think his name rhymed with lark.
8. You know the water level is low at Uvas when you have to take a chair lift down to the swim start.
7. The swim was more of a mud crawl rather than a swim while avoiding submerged trees, last year’s competitors, and two very lost humpback whales (heh, heh – he said “hump”).
6. If you draft on the bike, but there are no course marshals to catch you, is it still illegal…just asking.
5. For the sake of people with very wimpy feet, would someone please SWEEP the transition area? I’m bringing a broom next year.
4. Pete Zucker had a good idea to try to slow Steve Chavez down on the run, but it was hard to convince Steve to take a wrong turn on an out and back run course.
3. Being passed like I was running in reverse by the 50+ y.o. Steve who started 5 minutes later in the wave behind me, is a definite shot to the ego, but a good reminder to never miss a track workout.
2. Hey J&A, triathletes appreciate the food after an event, but could we re-think the BBQ chicken with extra sauce and the lack of utensils and plates for next year’s race. How about something easy like pizza or burritos.
1. Beer tastes good; no matter what time of day or night it is drunk, especially after a race.