Waterloo, Iowa United States USA Triathlon/Perigrine Charities 65F / 18C Sunny

Total Time = 2h 40m 26s Overall Rank = 53/106 Age Group = M 40-44 Age Group Rank = 8/12

With stops, it's a 5+ hour drive to Waterloo, IA, from Milwaukee... and I had to make the drive with djdavey. Luckily, I was able to keep him mostly occupied with shiny objects and by pointing at the cows along the way. When that failed, I was forced into conversation, which centered mainly on why Earl from Earlville couldn't get along with with Gilbert from Gilbertville or Walter of Walter's Residence and made them form their own towns.

We got into Waterloo on Saturday and set up the booth to show and promote "The Distance" at the race expo, and the time passed relatively uneventfully except for the fact the weather grew progressively colder and rain-ier as the day went on. Temps were in the 50's at best and the water temp in the lake was posted at 64 degrees. We weren't sure at all what race day would bring.

During the Expo, a guy came up and introduced himself as none other than jdwright from BT and Dave and I had the chance to have a nice long chat with him-- it's always great to meet another BT'er, especially when you're far from home! The next day, while waiting for the swim start, we'd also get to meet Noz, who proceeded to be first out of the water in his Sprint wave by about 50m.

After the Expo, we headed to the local Italian restaurant (there aren't may to choose from in Waterloo) and had pasta. We recognized a young solo racer from the Expo, so we invited him to join us for dinner. He turned out to be a great college kid from Des Moines doing his first tri, so we took him under our wing, filled his head with nonsense (along with perhaps one or two actually useful tips) and had a strange conversation involving vampires. You know, typical kind of stuff.

Then it was time to stop at the "Kum & Go", which oddly was not the name of the local gay bar, and head to our hotel, where no cuddling or spooning took place, much to Dave's undoubted disappointment.

Thanks to crack directions provided by the GPS function of my not-so smart phone, which wanted us to cross several lakes and forests, we got to the race venue a little later than expected. Luckily, my plan of lying to Dave and telling him the race started at 7am instead of the actual 7:30am start left us enough padding to negate the difference.

Because it's so late in the season, we arrived in near total darkness although we could still make out the steam rising from the lake which seemed eerily reminiscent of the closing scene in "Friday the 13th" when Jason rises from the water to machete the female lead. Little did I know at that time, that scene would be appropriate foreshadowing of my own swim experience in the race.

The race venue and organization throughout the race experience were absolutely top shelf. The RD had thought of everything-- right down to providing mini-flashlights to racers to help make their setup easier in the morning darkness. The entire transition was also lit up just like Ironman and there were plenty of volunteers on hand to personally check-in racers and direct them to their transition spot.

The only downside of the small transition area (the entire race only had 330 participants, split between Oly and Sprint distances) was that because of its situation on a boat ramp it really wasn't possible for racers to get in a warm-up swim after the race had begun. That kinda sucked for us in the Oly waves who would start a half-hour after the first wave, especially with water temps in the low 60's.