Lifetime Fitness Triathlon

This weekend I volunteered at the Lifetime Fitness Triathlon. A very big event in the world of Tri’s, drawing the top of the sport athletes due to the $60K that goes to the men and women’s winner and due to it being part of a series, which the male winner of this race won on Saturday, netting him $120K total for winning Saturday and the series. It’s a huge event. They have Olympic distance for the pros and elite amateurs, along with anyone else that wants to attempt that distance (1.5K swim, 40K bike and 10K run) and there is an option of a sprint distance (.5 mile swim, 12 mile bike ride and 5K run). It drew around 3200 athletes, and 1000 volunteers. I volunteered to help out at the finish line, which was actually nice in many ways because I didn’t have to be there at 4:30 in the morning the way the body marking people did, we didn’t have to do anything at the beginning so that left for being able to go watch the start and the transition from swim to bike and again from bike to run. Our job was to collect the timing chips. Easy enough, they are velcroed onto the athletes ankle, just have to grab it and pull….pay attention to if anyone needed medical and just enjoy the day. I had good conversations with a number of people, found jealousy in looking at some of the women athletes there (and it made me regret the bagel and doughnuts I had eaten from the volunteers tent, along with some of the candy, but not enough to regret the beer I had when I was given an access pass to the hospitality tent) and just in general enjoyed being able to be part of an event. I have trouble volunteering at running races, because I always feel like I need to be there running it, so this is a good option, helping at races that aren’t something I intend on doing (although I guess I haven’t fully ruled it out, but tris are so expensive, you might need a wet suit, you need access to a pool to be able to swim, road bikes are so expensive…).

Anyway, I managed to even take some pictures…you can see it was early, with the sun rising over the crowd when I pulled up, and some had been there as early as 5 am. Pro start time was 7, the pro women 3 minutes behind, the elite amateurs were 10 minutes behind the women and then heats from there of the rest of the field. I didn’t get to see much of the swim, but I got a few snaps of athletes running up the beach, then getting to the bike area. Then again when they changed from the bike back to run…and finally of the winner. I would’ve taken more but unfortunately I hadn’t checked my camera battery before leaving home and it was dying…so this was all I managed.

I got a few runs in over the weekend…nothing fantastic, but nothing hurting either. My mileage was lower last week than I had thought I had been at, somehow I was adding wrong while I was doing some of the runs…I managed 33, I want to get back up to regularly in the 40s, but I just can’t seem to get motivated. And with things not feeling great…if it’s really a sacro problem I’m having, which is what L has been thinking, I think I need to work more on that without a chiro at least at first (partly due to my health insurance isn't so great anymore on the coverage of chiro, I have a deductible and not just co-pay, stupid health insurance), so I’m back to using my sacro wedgie to see if that helps me at all. I haven’t been using it at all lately and maybe between that, some good massages, and yoga maybe I can work it all out and start feeling better. I’m hoping to get 17 miles in this weekend…I want to go out on Friday night, Saturday night I’m going out as well, so I might be trying to force my butt out of bed really early on Friday (or running after work before going out) and see if I can get it in…maybe I can get up and run 7 and then work and then come home and run another 10 as an option too…we’ll see.