The night before the Coeur d’Alene Triathlon and Duathlon we had a weather change. The heat and humidity of the week lead the way and a system pounced in that brought
clouds and lots of lightning. It did cool thing off for the night which made it a bit easier to sleep. Linda worried because of the possibility of rain.
The morning came early and we loaded all Linda’s gear along with Kobi into the Jeep. We arrived at the parking lot and headed into the mass of participants, friends and families. Linda got settled and I ran into David and Carol Lindsay in the comglomeration of people. Carol was doing her first triathlon and David was involved in his first support roll. Just as the race began, the sky opened up and it poured, soaking everything. I could feel a tenseness come over the participants. Rain makes the bike course slick; it could make the race interesting.
With the race underway the rain stopped, Kobi and I found a corner bench located at 3rd and Lakeside.
It was a good place to watch the Coeur d’Alene duathlon as the bike leg progressed. We had our own duathlon of sorts today. We helped Linda get all her gear into position for the start of the race and then watched the swim start for the Triathlon. Swim starts are much more visual then the run starts of the duathlon. So I chose to do the visual thing then to support Linda at the start. Now don’t get the wrong idea, it was very hard to see the start of the duathlon, it’s located in the middle of mass chaos at the event finish line. If you are part of the duathlon crowd you find that there is a distinctive separation between how the duathlon and triathlon are run. Everyone pays a lot of attention to the triathletes and the duathletes basically are there. If you don’t swim, well, need I say more?
The second part of the K & D duathlon came when we walked down town and attempted to quickly get coffee. I put my bag on a chair and tied Kobi to a lamp post right next to the chair. Then I got in line behind some triathlete supporters. I have had interactions with this group several times a various events. The group consists of grand ma and grand paw, the wives and a mass of crying kids. It’s a great family thing, but they lay siege on any place they go so everyone around, look out. I got caught in the frenzy. They all ordered and fussed about, two kids cried, one wanted outside. I got my coffee and was about to reach for a lid when granddad stepped back
to control fusser one and bumped my coffee. There I was with coffee on my shirt as the pack exited the shop. I followed to get to my chair and maybe clean up a bit and found that the group had commandeered my table and somewhat pushed Kobi out of the way. I untied Kobi, untangled him from their chairs and we walked to the park bench on Lakeside.
The final part of my duathlon consisted of watching a huge life sized game of
Frogger being played out in front of this corner. Imagine sitting in an arcade and looking down on a street corner. On the left side of the screen you have a animated traffic control person standing in the middle of the street stopping cars, trucks, motorcycles and semi-trucks. Coming from the top of the screen down are speeding little triathletes and duathletes roaring down Lakeside to the park transition area. The music plays in the background, vehicles stop at the light and cyclists speed down the street.
At first when we sat at on the bench only cyclists were moving out the street to start their long fast ride. The little animated “Mario” looking control girl could stop traffic and send the various vehicles across the street with ease; they were only coming from one direction. Then as the pace quickened more bicyclists came and it was increasingly harder for the little controller to do her job. Then you add the pedestrians: moms and dads with kids, dogs, strollers, clueless humans walking all directions. The music starts getting a bit frantic. As the scene progresses the cyclists start coming back from their ride. Now you have bikes going out, bikes coming in, stupid humans and the vehicles trying to cross the road. Finally we have to add one more distraction. The people in the stopped vehicles now have to start getting out of their cars and chirping at the little Mario girl.
Which buy their actions does not in any way help the situation, because when they get out of their cars, there is invariably a larger break in the cyclists and they have to run back to their cars. Of course they are now too late to cross the street!
There were some close calls and I could not believe that no one got hurt or lost total composure. The race continued and Kobi and I returned to the park to find Linda as get lost in the confusion of the finishline.
We just looked up the race results and here is what we found. There were 85 participants in the duathlon. Linda came in 25th over all. First in her age group
of women 50 to 54. There were 37 women in the race and Linda came in 6th. She came 4th in the masters group, that is women 40 and older. Very cool don't you think?
Sunday morning was the 7th running of the Carrera Costalegre Extrema 10k. Linda has run in all of the runs since the first one. which was part of the Festival de Costalegre. The Festival has since died away but the 10k run has survived to become a fun annual event.
