The day before the Danskin

The actual swimming, biking and running (walking) of the Danskin Triathlon will take a few hours, but the complete event actually takes a full weekend.

For the past six months or so I’ve been training in isolation or, when I do train with someone, it’s been ONE other someone -- like Elisabeth, when we did a complete (all-three-sports, all-three- distances) dry run last week.

So imagine my surprise when we parked at Seattle Center today to pick up race materials and we were greeted by this!

It turns out that the portion of the line that you can see here was maybe one-tenth of the actual length of the line. It went on…

…and on…

…and on…

 

…and on! 

It wound down the street and around blocks for maybe a third of a mile.  “Insanity!” Elisabeth kept saying, comparing this to the Rock and Roll Marathon that she just ran, which apparently had three time the participants and no lines.  But hey, it is what it is.  We found ways to pass the time in line…

  This is no time to get impatient because I had a feeling the line was just the beginning of a day of crowds.

I was, um… RIGHT!

Once we entered the Exposition Hall where we were to pick up our race materials, we were greeted by more crowds.

 

And I just kept thinking, ‘They’re all gonna be kicking me in the face in Lake Washington!’ 

I really liked this woman’s shirt, because it’s exactly how I feel:

(It says, “The miracle is not that I finished.  The miracle is that I began.”  Amen, sista!)

After we had out numbers permanently emblazoned on pour skin…

OK, that’s number 4-7-3-0, and…

My number is 3742, but you’ll probably more easily recognize me by my shirt:

 

(You will say HI if you see me, riiiiight?!  Please DO!)

After we picked up all our materials, Tom and I went to REI to kill some time so we wouldn’t run into such big crowds when it was time to rack our bikes. We bought a bike rack for the car and then I remembered that Feierabend, a German restaurant that we’ve wanted to try for months now, is just two blocks from the downtown REI store, so you better believe that we made a bee-line for a beer the restaurant!

The beer was fabulous!

The “Vorespeise” were good (and tasted like my childhood!)…

But honestly, the käsespätzle, “pretty” as it was, was nowhere as good as our own!

All carb-loaded up, we headed to Genesse Park to rack our bikes.  Of course, we were greeted by a sea of bikes – about, oh… 5000 of them!

Then we walked to the water for a preview of the swim course…

…and I had a teensey-winsey freak out…

And then I took a video to show the lay of the – er, water and the general triathlon course.

By this time, the 97-degree was getting the best of us and it was time to head home over the same bridge we’ll be riding on tomorrow…

We might even be treated to the same view tomorrow that we were treated to today…

So now it’s time for a nap, some more carbs (I’m in a one-day pasta heaven!), and ice and heat on my poor ankle that is whining and fussing and insisting that this is really a very bad idea.

Shut up, ankle!