Pre-race

Greyt Times and I pose for an underwater picture while previewing the swim.

The Travel

I was more nervous for the travel than I was for the race itself. Getting from Boston to Cozumel was my real Ironman. My flight left Boston at 6:00 on Thanksgiving morning, which meant a 3:30 wake-up call to get to the airport on time. I got about 4 hours' sleep and wouldn't fall asleep again for another 21 hours.

After a 1-hour flight to New York, I sat in the terminal playing solitaire during my 9-hour layover. I had fucked up loading my audiobooks couldn't get my wifi working, so there wasn't much else to do than play solitaire on the terminal floor. My next flight to Cancun was unpleasant. The Russian couple next to me promptly fell asleep, leaving me trapped in the window seat with a full bladder for hours. The woman was farting, and the man behind me kept yelling rude and snide comments at other passengers.

By the time I arrived at my fleabag room in Cancun, I was exhausted and starving. I hadn't eaten in about 11 hours, so I went to the hotel bar to grab a snack. I asked for something light and he offered me quesadillas. Quesadillas! Great! I thought. No meat and no dangerous veggies that might carry water-born pathogens. I ordered them to go and took them to my room. When I opened them they looked delicious... and full of chicken. I left my quesadillas untouched and ate a granola bar for Thanksgiving dinner.

Don't know why this one didn't come out. It was broad daylight. Anyway, this was my flag to let bloggers know I was at the swim course already.

In the morning I woke up early... too early for the continental breakfast, and got a cab back to the airport. The driver, a guy named Jose Luis (who was very excited to point out that he had two grandchildren and no grey hairs) decided to give me a Spanish lesson. "In espanish we call that a bi-ci-cle-ta."
"I know," I said.
"Bi-ci-cle-ta, it means bicycle."
"Ya lo se." I know, I told him. "Antes de esta rececion economica ganaba la vida con el espanol." Before the recession I earned a living speaking Spanish. After that the conversation came much easier, which was good because we couldn't figure out where the hell we were going. Jose Luis took me to the terminal where a sky cap took one look at the bike and told me I was going to have to go to the charter terminal. Huh? I had booked this flight through Priceline. Charter my ass.

Jose Luis dropped me off outside the private, gated charter parking lot and gave me some brochures for hotels when I came back through Cancun. Then a well-dressed airport employee came out and took my bags from me. I tried to protest (I didn't want to tip him), but he wouldn't take no for an answer. He then lead me in to the "terminal" which had 2 vending machines, about 9 chairs, and a little counter with a folding chair behind it. He stepped behind the counter and checked me in. Then he lead me nextdoor to the "comfortable" waiting room (it looked like the lobby of a plush, modern hotel) and handed me a menu for breakfast. None of this seemed right, but I was starving.

I ordered a quesadilla sin el pollo, nomas de queso (without the chicken, just cheese) this time. The guy looked at me like I was nuts, but he called in the order anyway. "Yeah, she doesn't want the chicken. Just cheese. I don't know why. She said just cheese. Can you do that? Okay, thank you, bye."

When I had finished my quesadilla, my friend the skycap/receptionist/butler came and got me and introduced me to the three rich Mexican women I'd be flying with. "She came for the race," he said.
"Oh, congratulations," the over-baked ladies in lots of jewlery told me. Then they went through the metal detector. The alarm went off for each one of them. "It must be my earrings," one said. "Oh, it's this necklace," said the next.
I started to take off my belt and the skycap/receptionist/butler held up his hand to say it wasn't necessary. He told me to put my 1.5-liter bottle through the X-ray and I stepped through the metal detector, setting it off. They waved the wand over me and let me go, even though the thing beeped like crazy around my belt and pockets. We then climbed on a tiny 12-seat cargo plane and flew 15 minutes over to Cozumel.

In Cozumel I had already made another several friends by the time I made it to my room. People were thrilled to find an American who spoke Spanish without that twangy high-school accent, I think. I wondered how many drunk American college students had actually said to these people, "Yo quiero Taco Bell!"

Registration, Etc.

I re-built my bike, unpacked, and set out for registration. Surprisingly I floated through without running into too many obnoxious Mdot dorks. Then I went to the supermarket to try to scrounge up some food. Here are some challenges at the Mexican supermarket:

• I was desperate for fresh fruits and veggies, but since I wasn't supposed to eat anything I couldn't peel, all I could find were those little finger bananas.
• Meat everywhere.
  
• I had no fridge or kitchenette in my room, so I was limited to things I could cook in the coffee pot. Luckily, unopened milk doesn't have to be refrigerated here.
• Mexicans wield shopping carts like torpedos. This was far more dangerous than riding on Cozumel's one road.

When I got home, I had a quick bite and took my bike out for a spin. I was flying at 24 mph without much effort. Wow, so this is what it feels like to be rested and ride on truly flat ground! I thought. I was already signing bike sponsorship contracts in my head. Then, after 20 minutes I turned into the 15-mph headwind. My speed dropped precipitously. The contracts and sponsorship deals blew away.

After a quick shower it was back to the expo center for the mandatory pre-race meeting. Greyt Times spotted me, and we sat together. "Because there are so many of you," the MC explained, "we won't be answering any questions at this meeting." She then went on to read us the race packet, almost word-for-word. None of it was very helpful, since I had already read the athlete's guid cover to cover in the airport in New York. Luckily, Greyt Times had been here for several days and had obviously done more homework than I had. Her information about the currents and wind was far more helpful than the mandatory meeting.

Some rules about the race that inconvenience me:

• No swim warm-up before the race.
• No pre-race bike warm-up either. Bikes must stay in transition.
• Race numbers cannot be folded or cut, and must be worn on the bike. The race number is about the size of an 8.5x11 piece of paper and is going to tear off in the wind if I don't fold it.
• Only food in the Special Needs bags, no spare tubes, socks, CO2 or pumps. I mean, I wasn't really going to use them anyway, but that's just dumb!

Meeting the Tri-Geeks
My new tri-buddies pose with me at the pasta dinner under an foreboding sign.

I shared a cab to the pasta dinner with a couple of college kids, and when we got out of the car I would have rather spent the evening talking to anyone than a couple of overexcited frat boys. So when the group in front of us in line mentioned that they had done Vineman, I piped up. These guys were masters-aged all-out, full-blown, Mdot tattooed, multiple-Ironmans-a-year, bona fide tri-geeks using Ironman for their mid-life crises. For some reason it didn't bother me until I looked over and there was a video camera pointed in my face, and Thing Two was making a muscle right next to me, showing the ring of Mdots tattooed around his bicep. With my face in the background. On camera. Still, they were very nice and not condescending as I expected the Mdot crowd to be. Actually, I'm finding that the Mdot geeks here are well behaved. Maybe it's because this is probably the one place where they can't brag about having done an Ironman and expect everyone around them to fall to their knees in admiration.

Meeting the Swim

From left to right: me, Greyhound, Coach Liz, Greyt Times, Johnny Tri.
"You're a lot shorter than you look on your blog," Greyhound told me. I get that a lot.

I woke up early and rode the 4.5 miles to the swim course to meet up with Coach Liz and Johnny Tri. We also picked up Greyt Times and all did a quick swim together. Everyone was taking a set of stairs and swimming under the dock to get in the water, but I HATE swimming under things, so I just did a cannonball into the water. It was so warm! I was also scared that we were going to see a lot of fish, but luckily we only saw very little fish and they kept their distance. I was safe... ish.

I hate seeing living things in the water almost as much as I hate swimming under things. What if the fish attacked me? As soon as I'd done my cannonball, something stung my foot, so yes these were dangerous waters. Also, there were dolphins penned up on the inside of the dock. Most people were excited by this, but I had heard stories of mistreated dolphins attacking and raping people. If there was ever a sea animal that was almost as scary as a shark, it was a dolphin. No swimming with the dolphins for me, thank you very much.

The Rest
I thought this one was pretty cool... and funny.

The remainder of D-Day Eve has gone relatively uneventfully. I've had mini dramas about which shoes to wear, whether to use lace locks, whether to put water in my running bottle and flasks now or tomorrow... but for the most part I've been getting bored in my hotel room a lot.

I was secretly pretty disappointed that they wrote my number on me, they didn't stamp it. I wanted a stamp, dammit!

At the bike check-in I was wandering around aimlessly when a teenage volunteer came up to me. "Te puedo sacar una foto?" Can I take your picture? he asked. I couldn't imagine why, but I couldn't think of a reason why not either, so we put our arms around each other and another volunteer took a picture. I thought of telling him that I wasn't a pro or anything like that, but I figured that whatever he wanted it for, I wouldn't bother to let him know I wasn't whoever he thought I might be. I just hope he doesn't use it for anything perverted.

I can't really begrudge adolescent volunteers for wanting photos. I took a picture of Yvonne Van Vlerken's tiny little bike because it'll probably be the one that rides the fastest tomorrow.

Every local I've spoken to here has been so nice. They all seem really excited for the race. Businesses everywhere have signs saying "Welcome Ironman athletes!" and whenever people ask if you came for the Ironman, they do so with a huge smile on their faces. Maybe it's because the race brings money in the offseason. Maybe it's because triathletes are better behaved than the usual drunken spring break crop. Maybe it's that they feel like something exciting is finally happening in their little town. But cars yield on the highway, everyone wishes me good luck, and one cabbie even stepped out of his car with a huge grin and waved his "OFFICIAL IRONMAN CAB" t-shirt at me as I rode by. I'm pretty excited for tomorrow...