Professor Boz: 70.3

Boz: I regained consciousness after my encounter with the porta potty’s and made my way to the water where the lead athletes were emerging. Many of them would run out of the water and head straight to the strippers - wetsuit strippers, that is. A wetsuit stripper is a volunteer who will help you pull the top part of your wetsuit down and then yell at you to lie down so they can yank off the bottom half. It is really a fascinating system to watch, and if you do a You Tube search for “wetsuit strippers,” you can see if you have what it takes to become one.

One improvement I noticed is that many athletes would lie down on their front and the strippers would have to yell at them to roll over onto their backs. I wanted to call out and have them the strippers yell, “Lie on your backs,” instead of simply “lie down”. But, I figured they may then tell me to lie on my back and try to strip me, so I kept my mouth shut. A highlight of this process was watching a gentleman emerge from the water wearing only bicycle shorts and yelling toward the strippers “I think I’ll just leave mine on.” A collective sigh of relief emerged from the crowd.

When the female leader emerged to a rousing cheer, she said that at 78 degrees, it was “hot” in the water. Wow, when my swimming pool is at 78, my kids refer to it as “cold” and refuse to enter. And when my swimming pool is at 78, my wife takes our winter clothes out of storage and turns on the furnace in our house.

Nick thought he’d be coming out of the water at the 40 minute mark, and he was right on time. I snapped a quick picture and then sprinted up the hill to join Jodi at her perch. “You just missed him!” she yelled, and I felt a bit deflated knowing that someone who had just swum 1.2 miles was able to run up a hill faster than me – it must have been my drag in my cargo shorts that was slowing me down.

Nick: As I drew closer to the shore, I started to see seaweed at the bottom of the lake, and it appeared as if it were reaching up toward my face. Soon, I was swimming through the seaweed, and removing it from my face had become a regular occurrence. Finally, I saw the bottom, and it wasn’t more than a few feet deep, but I continued to swim until I was sure it was about waist deep. Finally, 1.2 miles after I began, my feet touched the ground again and I started walking/shuffling up to the beach.

I pushed my goggles up on my forehead and saw people cheering everywhere. There was music playing, and I began to jog up the beach. I skipped the wetsuit pullers as there was a line forming and I did not want to wait. I started to unzip my wetsuit when I spotted Boz and shortly thereafter saw Jodi. I was feeling great and smiled and waved at them, or at least I tried to.

I ran through the kiddie pools of water to rinse the sand off my feet and then began jogging through the grass. As I chugged up the grassy hill back to the transition area, I got out of breath and slowed my pace.

Boz: Jodi and I dashed (figuratively speaking) to the transition area, where Nick was already removing his wetsuit. From a distance of about 20 feet, we watched the process. I have heard that certain triathletes go commando under their wetsuit, but I was relieved (especially for Jodi’s sake), that Nick exposed nothing other than his cycling shorts.

How did the swim feel, I inquired? “Good, better than expected!” he called back. There was unfortunately no discussion on whether he went number one in his wetsuit.

Jodi called out, “We love you Nick” and for a moment, I wondered who she was including in “we.” Sure, he’s my buddy and all, but I don’t know him that well. I mentally changed the subject by noticing that the 100 yard run from the beach to the transition area had caused me to start sweating fairly heavily - more on that later.

Nick obeyed course etiquette by walking his bike to the “mounting” line, e.g., the place where you are allowed to get on your bike. Athletes who did not obey this rule were met with the wrath of the course official. Within seconds, Nick was off and disappeared around the corner.

Jodi needed to leave at this point, as coincidentally enough, she was driving her son up to a camp at Saint John’s. She lamented that she could not follow Nick around all day with me, but was relieved when I promised to text her regularly with updates. Nick has a cool aunt-in-law.

I left the transition area and made my way to my car, preparing to chase Nick around the cycling course for the next few hours. But watching all the athletes had made me hungry, and it just so happened that there was a McDonald’s two blocks from the park. I ordered a #2 breakfast, but perhaps due to being inspired by the fitness of the competitors I had been observing, I skipped the coffee and had an orange juice instead. And it tasted great with my Sausage McMuffin and hash browns.

Nick: When I reached my bike, I tried to take off my wetsuit while standing, but immediately realized that was not going to happen, so I sat down. The difficulty I had getting my wetsuit on over the ankle bracelet was ten times worse while getting it off. A wet wetsuit sticks to everything and it was suctioned onto my leg. I couldn’t stretch it over the bracelet and by this point I had the wetsuit on inside out, meaning that I was trying to stretch TWO layers over the bracelet. I panicked more while trying to get out of the stupid thing than I did during the entire swim.

I got frustrated, lay on my back, and just pulled as hard as I could. Finally, my wetsuit came off, but not without the bracelet scraping-up my ankle up in the process. It didn’t seem that bad, but as I pulled my sock on I could feel it rub against the scrape. I quickly put on my helmet and glasses, strapped-up my bike shoes, and briskly walked out of the transition area.

I made it to the bike mounting area while passing several people who stopped early to mount their bikes, only to get yelled at by the official telling them to wait until the designated area. Noobs.

With that, I was off on a 56 mile trek, hoping to return in a bit less than three hours.

Up Next: The Bike

Part IV is at: http://professorboz.blogspot.com/2012/08/703-part-iv.html

Waiting for the first finishers to arrive.

The leader

The female leader

"At 78 degrees in the water, it was way too hot!" she snarled, "We should be doing this race in mid-January!"

Early finishers exiting the water...

Stippers in action.

There is Nick!!!

Battling to get his wetsuit over his ankle bracelet.

If you look closely (or zoom in), you can see just how bulky that ankle bracelet is and how much of a pain that must have been to deal with while taking the wetsuit off.