Mass Chaos and Confusion Ironman China

Everything I learned about triathlon I learned in the last two months
and I learned it as core staff organizing an Ironman. I used to think
I was crazy. Now I know I am.

From this vantage point the event boils down to a few choice memories
here and there...

I really wish I'd had the free time to write more during the event
cause I know there were things that should have been remembered which
blurred into nothingness only a few hours later. Countless numbers of
people who remembered talking to me who would see me later and
sometimes say things like "I hope the question I asked you wasn't too
stupid" and who I had no recollection of ever speaking to.

Strangely enough Race Day itself isn't too blurry. The day that
should be blurriest isn't. Although that day, like every other day,
had a welter of activity, the activities could be placed in little
boxes of seperate happenings whereas the rest of it was just one great
mass of humanity in the lobby of the Sheraton Resort.

I woke up at 3:20am and I went to sleep the next day at 1:30am. In
between there was the occasional time when I wasn't actively working
but there was never anything that resembled rest.

There are five hotels on the west seacost are of Haikou City. Two of
them always have a line of taxis waiting at all hours of the day. The
other three never do. Even in the daytime it's hard to get a single
taxi. Of course, one of these was the hotel I was staying at and
getting a taxi at 3:25 in the morning is never easy.

As a result I needed to walk the two kilometers to the main hotel.

I should have had my bike with me but circumstances had conspired and
things had happened and my bike, my precious precious bike, was
sitting in the transition area for the 70.3 race waiting to be ridden
by someone I had met not even 16 hours previous. This wasn't at all
like my offer to let the pro woman whose luggage temporarily went
missing to borrow my bike for training. This was something else
entirely.

A man from Beijing had shown up for the triathlon without a bike. It
wasn't lost. He didn't forget. He just didn't bring one. His
attempts to rent one from the bike shop fell flat when it turned out
that the owners of both of the usually rentable race bikes were
already planning to race on race day. His next plan was to buy a bike
in the 2000-3000rmb range but the bike shop basically told him he was
an absolute nutcase for thinking about racing 90km on a brand new
entry level race bike... at least buy something over 5000rmb or maybe
you should go talk to Marian, she's about your height, perhaps you can
convince her to rent her bike to you.

I said I'd "think about it" which was my polite way of saying "no way
in hell am I going to let a complete stranger who is moronic enough to
show up at a triathlon without a bike touch my bike let alone ride
it". He was, however, about my height. His first question when I
unracked it from public parking in front of the main lobby was "what's
the difference between a bike like this and a normal bike?" I'd only
just started to say that my bike really wasn't anything special when I
noticed a Cervelo with Zipp wheels and pointed that out to him. This
is noticeably different from a "normal" bike and he asked me, all
innocence "how much does a bike like that cost?"

"Gosh, I guess around $30,000," I said, probably getting it wrong by a
few thousand dollars but not being too far off the mark.
"Renminbi?" he asked.
"Dollars."
"Dollars?" he squeaked.
"Yep."
"And a bike like yours, how much does it cost?" he said, somewhat
warily.
"Not that much, only about 20,000 yuan."
"Only 20,000yuan?"
"Yeah. Nice entry level race bike. Not too fancy. Nothing real
breakable."
He gulped and seemed to be discouraged from rental, which was exactly
what I'd wanted.
"So, uh, how much do you uh want to rent it for?"
"You tell me."
"Err, how about 500rmb?" he says, naming the monthly salary of a
waitress.
I think about it for a split second, and decide that although I'm not
exactly rolling in money and even though I haven't worked at my hourly
rate in rather longer than I'd like to think about that this ain't
happening. But, in truth, it isn't like any amount of money I'm going
to get off of this guy is going to be worth letting him use MY BIKE so
I make a counter offer, if he donates 1000rmb to Paul Feng's medical
fund I'll let him use my bike for FREE.
He says he'll "think about it" which is pretty clearly a "no way am I
going to pay 1000rmb to use a bike for the afternoon" and I breathe a
mental sigh of relief.

About an hour later Mr. No-Bike is still in the lobby and trying to
make up his mind about borrowing my bike or buying something from the
bike shop when I see my friend Norm and the angelic me blurts out
something about how this guy is trying to make up his mind about
whether or not he ought to give money to a charitable cause in return
for free use of my bike. The selfish part of me is droning "no no no
no no no no shut up no no no no shut up mine my bike mine" but the
good part drowns it out. Norm then proceeds to sit down and spend the
next forty minutes extolling the praises of the Espinoza family, the
charity work they do, and what a cool bike Marian has at the end of
which Mr. No-Bike has made up his mind.

Damn.

Double damn when he shows up with cash in hand at the same time that
Tim Espinoza is wandering around checking things out.

It's my bike MINE but now that I've gotten this guy to donate a fairly
substantial chunk of cash to a truly worthy cause I can't go back on
my word. And, as a result, my bike, my beautiful purple home-anodized
custom titanium habanero race bike is sitting in the transition area
while I'm walking to work at 3:25am on Sunday morning.

I wave at various vehicles trying to convince them to stop and give me
a ride. Some of them are clearly race related but not noticing me, or
not caring to stop. Others are clearly the kind of drivers that I
don't want noticing for me for fear that they might hit me. There are
only a few hundred meters left when a police truck gives me a ride
and, although my bad leg isn't hurting (yet) I gladly take it.

I'm starting the day off in charge of a bunch of Hawaiin shirted high
school students who have been conscripted as volunteers. We'll be
doing body-marking together. I start as practice dummy and have a
variety of numbers including "007," "123," and "444" written on and
washed off with some kind of stinky alcohol turpentine like substance
before I'm satisfied that they know what they are doing.

No idea what the stuff is but at one point when I'm washing someone's
mis-written number off I get a faceful of it and spend the next ten
minutes dizzy and nauseous.

The athletes come in bursts. During a few slow times things get a bit
silly with some extra non-standard body markings including Chinese for
"Go China!", "Haikou Team", smiley faces, and in one case "Shut Up and
Run" across one man's chest. During non slow times I not so
occasionally freak out. Don't these people know that I'm a
crowd-hating introvert? Don't I know that I'm a crowd-hating
introvert? What the hell am I doing here and why am I doing crowd
control? Can't you just stand where you are supposed to go? NOW!

Stupidest question of the morning is asked by a complete stranger (who
presumably remembers meeting me early in the week but who I don't
remember meeting) asking me if I'll take pictures of during the race
and trying to give me a digital camera. I explain that
Marathon-Photos is on site but it falls on deaf ears. They cost
money. Giving your camera to a stranger is a much better way to go
about things.

The transition area is supposed to be restricted to athletes only and
I get ****y at this one cop who keeps letting people in. I also get
very VERY angry at a Korean woman who I keep having to kick out who
insists that her Friends and Family wristband ought to let her in.
You'd think after the fifth time I order her out, and lead her out and
tell her to stay out that the body language would be enough to get her
to stop coming back in but she's insistent that she wants to stand in
the middle of the road in the TA and take pictures.

As the transition area calms down I move out to the bike catch zone.
Sheraton would probably frown on us spray painting their fancy stone
driveway and I end up with a roll of yellow duct tape writing the word
"dismount" across the driveway while dodging athletes who are having
their bikes caught. My bike comes in and I immediately take it off
the public parking racks (one group of people to catch the bikes, one
group to take them back into the TA for proper parking) and begin to
wheel it away. Power is so easy to abuse. The teenagers don't even
ask me what I'm doing taking a bike in the wrong direction and they
trust me when I say it's my bike. Ahh, if only I were dishonest.
Lots of equipment I would have loved to own that would have been far
too easy to walk away with in the chaos.

Things have slown down quite a bit by the time I have a vehicle and I
had been told that I ought to be at the finish area to help sell
barbeque tickets (though it turns out this responsibility has gone
over to someone else when I get there) so I ride the run course
downtown. Traffic is an utter mess and I immediately understand why
the shuttle bus has been having problems running. I pick up cones
that have been knocked over, ask spectators along the way how things
are going, and just generally make my way downtown. No one has any
hard questions for me and I'm totally in my information desk zone.

I snag a handful of PowerGels from one aid station and eat one for
lunch. Only one. It's the first time I've ever eaten a PowerGel and
I immediately regret doing so. YUCK.

I forgo my free barbeque ticket in favor of food from Pizza World.
I'm sick of their food by now (as sponsor they've fed staff all week
long) but it's more convenient than getting in to the dinner
(especially since I have my precious with me) and lets me keep my good
watching spot near the finish line.

At about 14 hours of racing I get a text message from Sugar Chen. He
lives at the General Administration of Sport National Sailing Base and
both the run course and bike course use the street that literally runs
through the middle of the base. "There are still people running. How
long does this race go on?"

Eventually Sugar, his little brother, and a third person I've not met
before come to the finish line to join the party. Most of the people
are doing a fairly good job of indiscriminately cheering everyone.
The Chinese people especially so. They just don't care who you are,
what country you come from, or what time it is, you showed up so
hoorah hooray go go go. Sugar won his Olympic selection a little over
a month ago and he's got five times the enthusiasm of anyone else
there, jumping up and down and screaming encouragement at everyone who
makes it into the finishing chute. He understands sport. He
understands endurance. He understands pain. And he's very very
impressed by the Ironmen. Amateurs who aren't giving up even when
they've been racing for 15 hours.

I cross the finish line as part of the friends and family group for
Hai Ge. Zhao Jiansheng is going too fast and I'm limping too much by
the time he crosses. I also cross with Norm at 16:35 and my bad leg
just gives up. As he goes to the athlete rest area, I head for the
medical tent, hopping on one leg unable to put any weight on my right
foot without screaming agony. I rightly suspect that I won't be able
to walk on Monday. I don't have an explanation for the inflammation
and infection on Tuesday.

My trip to the medical tent was fortuitous however. One of the newbie
pros, a person I'd met more than a few times during the event, is in
there still barfing four hours after her finish and she has no money
and no way to contact her teammates who, when I contact them, had
assumed that she was already tucked away asleep in her hotel room.
She'd been missed in the crowd because she came in seconds after the
Chinese pro. People knew she had finished but no one had specifically
noticed HER.

Meeting the Chinese pro was kind of startling experience for me. Some
time earlier in the week I'd heard a conversation going on behind me
in the lobby and I guessed from the content who it must be, so, the
next time I got up I asked "excuse me, are you Mr. Dang Qi?" and
before I could get an answer from him, got an affirmative from the
coach or manager type person with him. He was looking at me a bit
funny in what I assumed was the usual "this white person speaks fluent
Chinese stare" when he asked me "Meigui? Is that you?"

It turns out that back when I was slow and fat he used to ride sweeps
with the Hainan Cycling Association.

-M

Wonderful story! Thanks for posting.