L'Orient, France ITU 68F / 20C Overcast

Total Time = 5h 35m 57s Overall Rank = 120/169 Age Group = 45-49 Age Group Rank = 19/27

The whole experience of worlds is an amazing one. I arrived in L'Orient via train from the airport in Paris with about 30 or so teammates who also arrived that morning. By the time the 4-hour train ride was complete I already knew most of them.

Our first training swim the next day was hilarious. The swim course started on a pontoon jutting out from the beach. We had to start in the water wtih one hand on the pontoon, swim around the lake, run up a ramp on the other side of the pontoon and jump or dive back in for another loop. We practiced the dive back in for the second loop and were jumping, belly flopping, cannonballing, etc. We just had the best time!

The next morning almost the whole team as well as members of other country's teams biked down to the race site to do one loop of the 2-loop bike course. It was foggy, with a misty rain coming down so visibility was poor. I eventually was dropped from the group far enough back that I was totally alone. At one point I thought I had turned on a wrong road, so I had to ask a local worker for directions. An interesting exercise to be sure, considering I don't speak French and he doesn't speak English! I finally was able to see that not only was I still on the right road, but there were other riders dropped even further behind me that caught up when I stopped for directions. So, we made it back okay. As soon as we got back to the race site, a New Zealander walked up to me and said she liked the tri outfit I was wearing (my Gold Coast Triathletes uniform) and she wanted to do a trade at the closing ceremonies on the last night. COOL!

Later that day I went with a group to the registration area downtown to pick up my packet. The only trouble was that my name wasn't on the liast! OMG! In talking with other teammates who had the same problem, we discovered that no American aged 45-49 (male or female) was processed into the official list of entrants! We had to talk to officials, then go back to the hotel to let the team manager know. By the next day it was fixed. PHEW! Just what we need after spending this much time and money coming over to France was to not even be entered!

Friday evening was really the most exciting part of worlds for me. The Parade of Nations. As we lined up before the parade, that's a great opportunity to take lots of pix with athletes from other countries. Since USA is towards the back, I had a great opportunity to have my picture taken with the whole French team (host country is always last in line). How fun was that to try to communicate THAT to the french athletes!!! At the end of the parade, all the athletes line up in the square and are introduced. It's so exciting to hear Etat Unid and hear such loud applause. It gives me goosebumps every time I think of it! Then they have dancers, a band, even a bagpipe group! The last dance is a line dance and the dancers invite the athletes to join in. Of COURSE I went! I loved it!

Although every day was filled with laughter and camraderie, Saturday was much quieter. Everyone was taking it easy, making sure to hydrate well, etc. Saturday afternoon we all went down to the race site for bike checkin. This transition area was like an airport runway! I couldn't believe it! It was easily .6 mile long! It was a very narrow area, so it had to be wayyyyyyy long to accommodate all the athletes. Naturally, since the officials had to add my name to the registrant list late, I got the added bonus of having my rack literally at the very end of that runway. EECH! Oh, well...it was very easy to find on the very last rack!



Race morning we had to leave the hotel BY 6:30 A.M., although our race didn't start until ~9:45. It was a very strange setup in the transition area, to be sure. First of all, that was when I discovered I had forgotten my Hammer Gels for the run, as well as my Endurox for after the race. A teammate happened to have one extra Hammer gel, which was better than nothing.

Then I tried to get to some water, but we weren't allowed out of the transition area! OMG! We were stuck in there LITERALLY for about an hour while the elites were swimming and weren't allowed out! Finally we were allowed to the staging area but I stopped at our team massage therapist's table and had her stretch me out first. I finally got one sip of water from another athlete!