Stardate: 3/6/2011 0640hrs.
Captains log…..my trusty second mate, confidante, fellow athlete and I are finally on the red eye leaving from Brisvegas after getting up at 0300hrs, a quick manscape, some chaff, a handful of nutrients and a travel coffee and we are en route to Cairns. This is it folks over the top!
After eight months in the planning – the ‘RustyIronman’ is flying out a cool calm, focused, hairless, lean, mean triathlon machine – ooh-rah as the USMC say.
Of course, my omnipresent wife and observer of all things meaningful is always at hand to point out the things that really mean something just so I don’t miss anything that later on she can say “I told you so” about. A couple of minutes inside the terminal and the oracle has picked up on a few things that seem to alert her that we are not in some paddock in the middle of a god-forsaken dot on the behind QLD town getting pumped over a horse event – we are definitely not in Kansas Dorothy. Note: If you look in the oxford dictionary/thesaurus under ‘friends of Dorothy’ you will see a reference to leather clad middle aged men with handlebar moustaches with a penchants for show tunes – apparently the Wiz of Oz is a big fav’ darling!
Not wanting to miss any of these pearls I quickly pull out my 36 page Challenge Cairns competitor booklet which I’d printed out to help me on my way to true enlightenment – turns out I inadvertently stoked the oracles fire by merely acknowledging I needed one. Anyway, I start scribbling on the back of it some of the keynotes so I could later enter them in this blog.
I should point out that her holiness is an ultra-marathoner of some repute (well recently) and likes to smirk derisively at distances below warm up level (100k) and anyone who dares to better themselves through self promotion and the use of performance enhancing compression gear.
The first target – a 36 page competitor’s book. “WTF is that for” – we just turn up and get told to run off in that direction. What could possibly be in that tome that anyone would be interested in reading. I should point out that only a couple of nights before she was lecturing from the pulpit of www.challengecairns and making sure that I knew where and when I should put my bike in transition and what constitutes a breach of the triathlete code of conduct (I later find out that no hands on the handlebars doing 30kph on the Captain Cook Highway whilst mimicking Chipolini le tour legend i.e. hand on heart pointing at event camera smiling – is in fact a hanging offence. I copped a muffled warning from frauline race marshall through her stormtrooper helmet but the photo was worth it).
“You’re kidding aren’t you – a flow chart”. Page 12 – how to enter and exit the aid stations most effectively. Who’d a thought a flow chart just in case you can’t work it out that each aid station has people pushing a steady flow of liquid goodies and sugary snacks onto you – and they get pushed in the same order each station. Discard – toilets – water – energy drink – food – energy drink – water – discard. On she went, laughing at the high level confabulating that would have finally decided after a few government grants that this will be the order of things and any other way was not on.
I should point out at this stage great mate Huey is in fact the CEO of tri-town and actually does this for a living and if he puts a flow chart in his tri-ble of proceedings then you can bet you need one.
Not to restrict her targets to the written word thou eminence then sees some of the other mere mortals beginning to line up at check in. OMG – its 0530 in the morning, how come that guy only has a singlet on – the one with the massive bike box thingy! Offence: be lean, tanned and in possession of a bike box that looks like it dropped out of the Challengers cargo hold just before that spacechick pushed that red button (“OMG captain, what does that button do……). It is a strange quirk of triathlete behaviour only mirrored in the body building world and that is the most flesh must be shown at all times, minimal clothing, it must preferably have a triathlon motif somewhere on it but if you are a god then IRONMAN rules all. Accessories – water bottle, Ipod, compression clothing, ego – tick!
Important reminder – monte carlo (hair colour) and I met in 1993 in my first IRONMAN year and the nineties were all about lycra, pastels and mesh running singlets – oh yeh! Walkman, water bottle and tight pants – sound familiar homies.
Considering the burgeoning Australian liking of all things caffeine I can’t really drag up what she said about ‘coffee for skinny people' but I can précis – skinny milk, double shot, latte, mochachino, cold milk on the side waste of space was mentioned through her ultramarathoner long black (milk on the siiiiiidddde!).
The other thing that appears to have changed since the nineties apart from no more shoulder pads, mullets, earings and Phil Collins is the bikes. 1993 I raced on an aluminium SOFTRIDE which for the uninitiated reader who has no bike and therefore no life – the Softride was what you rode if you wanted to be out there, could actually ride but had no money. It had all the hallmarks of something really cool and different but really it was probably a backward step in bike tech. The only ones who had carbon anything were the pros and even then it was the euros and yanks – any ozzie with carbon probably stole it.
Fartlek forward to 2011 – if you don’t have carbon everything then you should probably keep it in the box. ZIPP wheels are the norm, ultegra and dura ace are the only spec worth having and if you show up on steel you may as well shower in zippo lighter fluid, start smoking and light up on the start line.
Point to note – Rusty has a firm and often warm desire to ride steel bikes and in fact has restored several vintage bewties later to be sold on the bay which coincidentally permitted the purchase of this year’s carbon princess. Just remember Lance’s first book, “It’s not about the bike”. If you recall, Lance was a triathlete first!
I digress – my point, since when did the punter become the pseudo pro who looks down his Profile T2’s at anyone who just scrapes together to get to the start line? Maybe it’s always been that way and I’ve awoken from my seventeen year deep space sleep with a new found derision of what is termed in common parlance – ‘the wanker’.
Whilst on my revisit to the nineties I can unashamedly say that I like everyone else raced and ran in the smugglers. There were no race suits (well no compression ones) in the early nineties. However, the same ludicrous grasp of seconds saving is still alive today when you consider that the race suit does not have a chamois as such and only a micro fibre gusset. Similarly the budgies provided the same prostate saving level as the race suit – but it did save seconds from swim to bike to run and therefore worth it. Go figure?
And what’s this go big or go home thing with triathletes and chain rings. Any triathlete I have spoken to will not back down from the big dog when out training or racing but at the end of the race will stare in amazement at the training log and wonder, “why were my legs like rubber?”. What does Rusty use? – the little ring of course. Not many people know but Frodo and Bilbo were cyclists of some repute. Just read the books again and see how many references to ‘one ring to bind them all’ is in there.
Anyway, I’m on the plane now so I must start to focus my energy on the time travel from 1993 to 2011 if I’m ever going to make it.
“Has anyone seen my compression socks?”.
