Trimberfest: Chapter 3...spectating not an easy sport

Spectating is not an easy sport. Sure as an athlete we all think "hey could we get some cheering going on here?", but MAN for a race like a half ironman where you are looking and looking and looking for those FEW people you know and you have been standing there for a couple of hours after a brief glance as they came out of a transition you can only say "Good job, looking great, doing great..." so many times before you want to quit on the sidelines. I've been spending hours on my bike or run or swim this season, but I haven't been training my spectating stamina and that is also an endurance sport! So help those spectators out a little bit, even if it hurts, flash them some pearly whites a little smile will help encourage those cheering too. Or you can encourage those spectators to cheer. That's always a way to get the spectators to rally.

Sunday was the 1/2 ironman that I got to watch, and watch, and watch while it rained, and stopped and rained and rained and rained. We got there about an hour late, but they started almost 45 mins late so we still were there early enough to see the first Pro get out of the water. Which he did, a full few minutes ahead of the rest of the crew. It was fascinating to watch the different waves of colored caps sorta start to mix all up into a jumbled mess of color. We cheered one of our key athletes through the beach run and started to head out to see the bike transition with the hopes of seeing the athlete we were focused on cheering for. And then I saw in transition the sign "Team Hoyt". I had heard the Hoyt's were doing the 1/2 but I didn't know if we would see them. And as 'Zilla and I were heading to the bike exit when we saw Team Hoyt exiting the swim. I had heard of them briefly before more in connection to running Boston, but somehow the week before Timberman I looked them up and read their amazing story. I knew about them racing Boston but was unaware they were triathletes too. In the back of my head I hoped that I might be able to cheer them on at a race I was at, and suddenly my wish was coming true. I was in awe of the team. In awe of the love Dick Hoyt has for his son and for Rick's smile that was an encouragement all on his own. It brought tears to my eyes. We cheered loudly as they got out of the swim and into T1. They must have gone a different way out of T1 as we didn't see them come out of the bike start. I looked forward to seeing them as the day went on.

Our athlete we saw get out of the water, was speedy in T1 so we didn't see him come out since we had stopped to cheer on Team Hoyt. We looked for some other athletes we knew would be there and screamed our heads off as they came out of T1. Then it was waiting time. We knew we had 3-3.5 hours to wait til the next transition. We cheered a little, moved the car around, ate some lunch, wandered, tried to bribe people to let us park in a better parking spot (no avail) and returned to a wet picnic bench and proceeded to stay fairly soggy the rest of the day. Our spot was great...we could see people coming in on the bike and the run course was two loops...so we could see them three times! Lots of cheering, hiding from rain, and more cheering.

Overall it was a good day of spectating, despite the nasty icky rain. I was glad to finally get in some dry clothes and stay warm on the drive home.

All in all a GREAT weekend! Trimberfest was awesome. And now my tri-season has come to a close. How fast it all goes by!

Now back to my reality shock called...err..grad school. oye...lots to do and not enough hours in the day!