My brother is a stand-up comedian and last June we went to Penticton. My job was to ride the Ironman Canada bike course, his was to pass me bananas out of the car window and make wise cracks as I rode. You do this for fun? Only four hours to go! Need another banana monkey boy? Man, it's cold for June...
Chuck had to leave Penticton two days before me in order to get to a show. It was a corporate golf event in the interior of BC. They wanted some entertainment for their evening dinner and Chuck was the man. They flew him in, gave him two nights of free accommodation, two free rounds of golf, buffet dinner with open bar and slotted him some cash - all for 30 minutes of work at the end of the night. Stand-up is a tough way to make a living, but it pays well on an hourly basis. When I spoke to him later, Chuck summed it up... "it was a good gig."
What does this story have in common with Tagaman 2000? You be the judge.
Just before I headed off to do IMOz at the beginning of April, I was invited to join the Hong Kong Tri-Squad. At the time, I thought that the key benefits were a nifty Sergio Tachini tracksuit and free masters swimming. I had a good race in Australia and a few weeks later an e-mail arrived asking me what races I wanted to do. In Hong Kong we are very lucky to have the government provide a fair amount of sports funding. If you are on the squad then sometimes you will get financial assistance to race around Asia. There was really only one race that fit with my schedule and that was Saipan - you can see the distances above. The race is wetsuit legal (more about that later) and non-drafting. As many of you know, I have yet to fully exploit my potential as a swimmer and given the distances, I thought that I might have a chance to be competitive.
A few weeks later, I found out that I had been selected - a week after that I found out the best part. Free flight, free hotel, free race. Yeah baby! My first race as an "invited athlete". This was turning out to be quite the score.
I summed up most of the key stuff in my pre-race report. Here's a couple extra bits:
- The Carbo load dinner was the night before the race. I assume that this is because a lot of people do not arrive until Friday night - the race in on Saturday. The food at the dinner easily qualified as the best pre-race food I have ever been served. Beat all of the IM races that I have attended. My buddy from HK, Cookie, commented that the race is exactly the right size (150 or so). Big enough so you feel like you are at a good event, but not so large that the logistics get impossible.
- It turns out that Steve, my Kiwi roommate, has numerous top ten finishes at IMNZ to his name, placing as high as second and going sub-9 this year. Well, I knew one guy that would be giving me a shellacking.