Barefoot Triathlon Part I: The Day Before

Jim here again for TBA. When we left off, we had run a 5K and tried to run a triathlon, but it was cancelled. Team Bad Ass was in bad shape. A team established to run triathlons has so far run nothing but a 5K. Fuck, I mean retards and terminal cancer patients can run 5Ks. We needed a tri, but more importantly we needed to get our shit together.

I went about finding a race. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, finding one that we could do that: A.) wasn’t a complete piece of shit; B.) wasn’t too far away; and C.) didn’t conflict with our complex, stacked social calendar.

I found a bunch of garbage races – bullshit set up behind the Podunk Fire Department outside of Shitville, Michigan, where they have the half dozen racers take turns swimming laps in the city pool – but there was nothing that really stood out.

I came across the Barefoot Triathlon as kind of a fluke, having seen a bunch of listings for a race in Gaylord (Matt really wanted to go), but there wasn’t a functional website. I called the race organizer who informed me that it had been cancelled. But there was a silver lining in the shit-storm cloud; the race was to be replaced with one at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City. Done fucking deal.

We signed up for the inaugural Barefoot Triathlon (Barefoot is the name of the resort’s concierge magazine, the race is not actually run barefoot. This is Michigan, not Appalachia) and actually started doing some training.

We hit the gym quite a bit in the month or so leading up to the event, but I think our run training and swimming were more helpful. Though, more than once, I contemplated murdering Matt for making me run.

The day before race day, we piled all of our shit into my car and hit the road. One of Team Bad Ass’s many fans joined us for the car ride. She was planning on meeting people in Traverse City, so we would actually have a spectator this time.

The ride up was pleasant, save for the biohazards that Matt would release periodically. Seriously, something is dead inside of that guy. I had been to Traverse City once before on a two-day bike tour in 2008 (The Bob Chappuis Michigan Bicycle Adventure). It was a decent town, but most of my time there was spent gambling and drinking.

We got to town in the early afternoon on the day prior to the race. Driving up along the bay, we could see the marker buoys already set up for the swim – large orange spheres for the Olympic distance, and yellow ones for our Sprint distance race. Packet pickup went rather smoothly once we figured out just where the hell it was. All three of us missed the giant circus tent the race folks had erected just beyond the parking lot at the Grand Traverse Resort.

This particular race had two separate transition areas; one from swim to bike (T1), and another for bike to run (T2). We drove down to check out the swim start and were initially thwarted by a slovenly guard with a beer gut at a security gate. Matt stepped out of the car and disappeared into the guard’s booth for a few minutes. They both came out and we were allowed to proceed down to the beach. Matt was unusually quiet for some time afterwards and he is still very guarded about the whole transaction. But talk about being a team player!

The swim course was to start in the water, swim out to the first buoy, turn and swim parallel to the beach, then turn and head in to the swim-exit. The space between the swim-exit and the first transition area looked to be fairly convoluted. There was a boardwalk that we would have to run on and a pool house that we would have to run around. I found myself thinking that the course would be better swum in reverse. We got in the water and found the water temperature to be much warmer than we had anticipated.

After checking in and out of the Super 8 motel (details are being withheld until various statutes of limitation run out), we headed over to the casino. We opted not to hit up the buffet so as not to be bloated fat-asses in the morning. We instead ate a real shitty meal in the casino deli. With the possible exception of the poorly prepared chicken tenders, the casino treated us pretty well; I won about a hundred bucks playing craps and blackjack, Matt cleared about eighty dollars on the slot machines. What a bitch.

Our new hotel was much closer to the race start, and it had a pool/hot tub and breakfast. We soaked in the hot tub for awhile before heading to bed.