Wacko and Me

How many people in your life could you call up, after not seeing them for over a decade, and say, "Meet me in the middle of nowhere-Florida at 11p on a Friday, I know its your birthday, and come volunteer at a triathlon where people started exercising at 7a that morning?"  Really...how many?  Twenty?  Ten?  Zero?  I have three and only one took me up on the offer.  The nerve of the others?!

There we were, me and Wacko, standing at the end of a partially paved path in the middle of a state park, .875 miles from the center of the all the action, as we were the support crew for the run turnaround of Florida's first Double Ironman Triathlon.  Yes, a 4.8 mile pool swim, 224 mile bike on a 6.5 mile loop course and a 52.4 mile run on a 1.75 mile out-and-back path was occurring and we took the midnight shift to make sure the 17 entrants ran around the cone that was at the edge of the shadow of the one light bulb we had with us.  Clocking their splits, giving them feedback on their timing and making sure all of them knew that they were on last leg of their long journey was our directive from the race director who gave us complete autonomy to try and figure out why these people kept coming back to see us about every 20 minutes.

I couldn't help but notice the drastically different demeanors of each person within the field.  There were those who were super serious and were hours ahead of the others and there were those who were chatty and actually kind of happy.  I couldn't believe it.  Then there was Marcel Knaus, 41 years old, from Furstentum, Liechtenstein; I hope he now accepts my Facebook friend request.  Coming from a country that is smaller than Aruba but a hair larger than Jersey (the British Crown Dependency, not the armpit of America) Marcel finished the race in first place with a time of 22:40, over an hour faster then the second place finisher.  Who knew that Liechtenstein was such a powerhouse of Double Ironman Athletes.  It seems that Marcel had some foresight and controlled the domain http://www.marcelknaus.li before anyone else could get their hands on it if you want to check it out.

Wacko and I got to catch up on the last decade and it seemed that there wasn't one day that had past since we had last seen each other.  Actually, 2a came a little two fast for me and I didn't get the chance to see Marcel finish (or hang out enough with Wacko), but I knew that the family was home waiting for me as we were running a 5k together, our first as a family, in six hours and there was no where more that I'd rather be than watching my kids cross a finish line.