More Danskin pictures

By request, here's a few more pictures of the Tri. To one requestor's point, "if eight pictures of a pile of dirt are posted and found interesting, three pictures of the tri are not enough!"

Kelsey went to the site twice before the event. Once with me on Friday and once with a bike coach (co-worker) on Saturday. Here's what the water looked like on Friday.

The transition area looked equally desolate and lonely two days before the event.

Kelsey slipped into her post a bit about her flat tire just before the event. She neglects to say how difficult it was to navigate from her staging area on one side of the field to the repair corner on the other side.

She also left out how at least two women pushed their way in front of her, all while the deadline to exit the transition area had passed (prep time was over and all participants had to leave because the race was starting in mere moments). In my mind, getting the flat fixed ten minutes before the first wave started was the most stressful part of the entire event.

Now that her bike was fixed and she had snuck out of the transition area, Kelsey had an hour and a half to wait before her heat took off. She decided to stretch and try to stay loose.

But soon the time came to file into the water!

Sally Edwards, semi-founder of the Danskin, member of the Triathlon Hall of Fame who has completed over 160 triathlons (including 16 Ironman events) was there to cheer on every wave. She competed herself, she said she would be the last person to finish Austin's Danskin.

Sally did a great job getting everyone excited and pumped to begin. "Raise your hands if you're ready for me to shut up and ready to actually get started on YOUR DANSKIN TRIATHLON?! GOOOOOOOOOOOO PINK!!! (the color of caps in Kelsey's wave of course)"

And just like that, there was no more time to be worried about flats, eating enough the night before, getting enough water before the start, having enough fluids stationed in various water bottles, can I finish this, am I crazy to even try, do I know how to shift, do I know how to *bike*, have I trained enough, to be worried if goggles would get fogged, kicked off, pushed into eyeballs or otherwise detrimental to the ultimate goal of finishing the tri.

Kelsey had practiced open water swimming twice before the event. She had concentrated on picking her head up to sight on the next buoy so she wouldn't swim too far. Unfortunately for everyone involved, I believe she was the *only* person who practiced this. I couldn't get a shot of it, but almost all participants swam at least an extra 20% due to a current which kept pushing them off course. Instead of swimming in straight lines, everyone was swimming in huge curves. Kelsey said she noticed this, and thought it might be cheating for her to go straight for the buoys and shore because no one else was!

Here's a video of Kelsey's move from the water to the land!

Kelsey noticed that her transition time (water to bike) was ~4minutes. The top two girls had transition times of ~1minute. I can't tell you how amazing that is considering there was a 200yard run from the water to the bikes, you had to put shoes/socks/clothes and then run your bike at least another 100yards to exit the area. Everyone should attempt to, when wet, put on shoes and sock, get 'em tied up and ready for a race in under 60 seconds (forget about the running around). There's no way I can do it. I'd be interesting in hearing if anyone thinks they can. Take care however, 'cause if you say something, I might want to see it in action in Topsail!

Here's a couple shots of Kelsey after she'd run up to her bike.

I've never spectated at a biking event and didn't realize the difficulty of identifying your biker. It would really be best to have at least a couple people in a row, that way the person with the camera could be notified to prepare. By the time I realized Kelsey was there, she was way past me. I managed to get two shots of her back. One with her a little past me, and one with her way past me. She posted one of the shots, I won't put the other here.

I also (again) had some technical difficulties with the camera. The one time I saw Kelsey running, I tried to take a photo. Would have been great, if I had been in photo mode. Unfortunately I wasn't, and got some sweet video of my legs. I'm putting it here anyway, because after I realized what was going on, I pulled the camera back up, and you can see Kelsey give me a wave when I cheer for her.

And then the finish....

I put as many pictures up here as I could, check out the shutterfly account for more photos!

Great job Kelsey! What's next?!