How a Race Weekend = Party Weekend

First, I will admit that I was DREADING participating in the San Francisco Treasure Island Triathlon last weekend. After I discovered how hard it was to start a race and not to finish it (like I did in Cancun at the World Cup), I wasn't too keen on getting back on the starting line six days later.
Then, I was packing my bag and bike for the race weekend and the emails started coming in regarding the San Fran. oil spill. They claimed that the race would still go on as planned. So I continued on my trip as planned...starting with a 4am wake-up call for the shuttle to the COS airport on Friday morning.
I traveled with some other local triathletes on the early non-stop flight between COS and SFO. Since I arrived a few minutes before my roommate, Jasmine, I headed over to the rental-car counter and picked up our stylish mini-van.
Thanks to the combination of my stressed-out driving skills and Jasmine's calm map-reading skills, we made it, unharmed, across the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island to check out the race course. We drove once around the incredibly sketchy bike course before heading back into SF for some breakfast and a short tour of the city.
I didn't think we would be able to check into our hotel...it was still before noon...but they had a room available so we lugged our stuff upstairs and went to work building bikes. The trusty mini-van was so roomy that we were able to fit our bikes in the back without removing any wheels!
Here is a shocking statement: The triathlon community is small and close-knit. This means that if someone has BIG news, it doesn't take long to spread to everyone...and the big news that was coming in through the cell phones and the hotel phone was that the SWIM was CANCELED! (Thanks to the stupid pilot driving the boat in the Bay, the 58,000 gallons of crude oil/gas that poured into the Bay were washing up onto beach all over the area and contaminating the water that we were going to swim in!)
The second thing I'm admitting in this post: that news made me VERY happy! (No, not because there was oil in the water...of course, that made me VERY sad!) I was happy because I could no longer even start the race on Saturday! The dread that I had been carrying completely disappeared and I finally started to enjoy my trip to SF!
The race meeting was back on the island at 5pm and all the triathletes were arriving around 3pm to ride and run on the course. I joined my friends for a few laps of the bike course before riding around on my own while they ran. We were all anxious for the official decision about the race...to be announced at the meeting...and the murmurs of outrage and shock from the participants were well worth the wait!
I was at the meeting just because I could be...and because that's were all my friends were. When the PowerPoint slide with the new race distances flashed up on the screen, I can't imagine missing the five minutes of chaos that followed. Instead of a 1.5K swim, 40K bike, and 10K run...now the race was a 6.5K run, 40K bike, 10K run! Even the strong runner in the room were shocked...that is a LOT of running for a group of people who train for a race with SWIMMING first and for a race that ONLY has a total of 10K running! Well, the race director was not going to budge on his decision and the race was now a duathlon. (Oh yeah, and it was official, I wasn't going to be on the starting line!)
On Saturday, the race went off as planned, and the people I thought would win, Julie and Hunter, both crossed the line in first place. The weather mirrored our feelings about the race and proceeded to be overcast with a light rain all day. I had fun watching from the sidelines and I was looking forward to the post-race, end-of-the-season celebration. When everyone was finished racing, fed, warmed up, and changed, we all met at one of the many famous eateries in SF for a fun group dinner...followed by more excursions around town before finally crashing back in the hotel room. Jasmine and I actually picked up two stray athletes with no place to stay for the night and had a full floor of snoring friends!
Sunday morning dawned bright, sunny, and dry. We loaded up the mini-van for another short sightseeing trip around the city before getting back to the airport for our flight back to reality!