Da BIG race!

We woke up about 4:30 am and met Ang and Jess in the hotel Lobby. He was geared up and ready with his bike. On the way to the car we began see lots of people riding to the transition area. One guy asked if he could hitch a ride, but we had no extra room. We wished him luck and sent him on his way. He had to catch a ride to a ferry that dropped them in the water, um, I mean had them jump into the water.

Escape from Alcatraz is a 1.5 mile swim, 18 mile bike (very hilly) and an 8 mile run.

He did awesome, but before we get to that.... We walked from our hotel to the transition area to cheer him on. On the way, we heard the paddle boat sound and they were OFF! From the shore all you could see was white caps from the swimmers on the calm bay. They were too far out for us to actually see Jesse. (You can barely see the ruffed up water in the picture I took here.) There were 2000 people in this race and they empty the ferry in 6 minutes. Jesse had later told us how his goggles broke apart in that time and he had to hurry up and get them fixed before hopping into the water.

From the beach the athletes had to run 1/2 mile (!!) before getting to the transition area, so many had bags on shore to stuff their wet suits and grab some shoes for the pavement. I am pretty sure we missed the leader in transtition since it only took Andy Potts 22 minutes to swim that. (CRAZY) We managed to find Jesse and stalk him as he transtitioned to the bike. His swim was 38 minutes, and thanks to the long run to transtition area and getting the wet suit off, his T1 time was a little over 12 minutes. Still... pretty darn good!

Jesse rented a bike for the 18 miles but found out the shifting wasn't the greatest and met the pavement on one of the hills. He usually averages over 20 mph but thanks to bad shifting and hills his average speed was 15 mph. He finished the bike in 1hour and 12 minutes. T2 (second transition) time was 3:32. It sounded like a heard of horses when the athletes mounted the bikes on the pavement with their special shoes for clipless pedals. Kinda funny.


On the run, there is a part called the 'sandladder', which is basically what it sounds like. The entire run follows along the bay, sometimes litterally running on the beach. While we were waiting for Jesse to come back on the bike, the announcer gave us updates on Andy Potts, the race leader. He said that while he was running on the beach he dropped (or passed) a person riding a bike! Crazy! We watched the leader finish the run, the whole time, workin' the crowd. He has won this race many times. Apparently he won $8000 for winning on Sunday!

While we had sometime to kill, I was playing with the timer feature on the camera...here is one fun pic from that...










Jess finished the run in 1 hr and 26 minutes. Overall, 3:32:38. Pretty darn good!

After a quick shower and packing up we grabbed some pizza and ate a kitchen sink worth of ice cream at San Francisco Creamery. 8 scoops, 8 toppings and optional whipped cream, nuts, banana's and cherries. I whimped out, my stomach could only handle one of my 2 scoops. They had pic's of people that conquered the sink. The fastest time was something like 7 minutes!! Talk about a brain freeze!!!



So now, we are at the airport in Cleveland waiting for our connecting flight to Louisvillle... It was a fun trip and I miss 'em already, but I am looking forward to seeing the kiddo's and sleeping in my bed when I get home!