Sunday was the Squamish Triathlon. Tam, Kai, and Kathy were signed up to do it this year, so I thought I would be fanboy again, and show up to cheer them on.

The only problem of course was that the race started at 0900h, and I spent the night camping in Gibsons, after racing a 2.5 hour race, and then attending the resultant party. There are no roads from Gibsons to Squamish, despite the two towns only being about 20km apart as the crow flies.

This means I got to get up at 0500h, pack everything up, and make it down to the ferry terminal by 0600h to catch the 0620h ferry to Horseshoe Bay, and then drive up to Alice lake, where the triathlon was starting.

That hurt.

After forgetting which side of Highway 99 Alice Lake was on, I managed to find the right spot. It seems a common problem with Triathlons is the lack of parking at the race starting point. This race was no exception. I had to park about a mile down a hill from the start, and carry my 25 kg backup up the hill.

When I got to the race start, it was the usual madness before a race. I was supposed to find Tam to give her my HR monitor wrist unit, because it was less likely to interfere with taking off her wetsuit. If you've ever seen a Polar 625X, you'll understand why.

Watching triathlons is slightly more interesting that watching paddling races. With a paddling race, you get to see the start, and the finish. With a triathlon, you get to see the start, finish, and the transitions.

I cheered Kai, Kathy, and Tam through the swim -> bike transition. Although, there were about 3 women in a row that looked a look Kathy, so I'm pretty sure I was cheering the wrong person on at times.

Tam has spent the last few months working hard on her swimming, and was rewarded by shaving 11 minutes off her swim time, beating her own expectations by 7 minutes.

After Tam transitioned to biking, I walked back down the hill to my bike, and rode over to where the bike -> run transition was.

Seeing as how the bike was going to take over an hour, and I had the keys to Kai's car, I spent a while wandering the parking lots looking for a blue Matrix to put my massive backpack in, as carrying it around was getting old fast. But I didn't find anything. Which is probably good, I can imagine Kai's remote working on another car, and then putting my backpack in some stranger's car.

Unable to part with my backpack, I dejectedly wandered back to the bike -> run transition. Kathy came in about a minute after Kai. This time I mostly recognized her. Tam made it in 78 minutes after she ran past me with her wetsuit on, which is pretty close to the 80 minutes she was predicting.

The next step was to wander over to the finish, so I could see them across the line. It was brilliantly sunny out, and I grudgingly decided to air out the tent, as there was still dew on it when I had packed it.

Unsurprisingly, about 30 minutes later, Kathy came across the Finish, and about 10 minutes later Kai came across. Tam made it in about 52 minutes, 2 minutes longer than she expected, although this can be explained away by the nature of the track, a longish transition, and one of her shoelaces breaking.

Although I was really happy for the triathletes, I had begun to fade from having 8 hours sleep over 2 days, a hangover, and a race the day before. I helped Kai, Kathy, and Tam get their gear from the first transition and then wandered back to the tent to pack it up so we could leave.

Happily, I had pegged the tent down, as the wind had begun to swirl. This probably helped it dry, but made it rather difficult to pack. Seeing my difficulty, one of the volunteers came by and offered to help. I was rather taken aback by the offer, but eagerly accepted. Yay for acts of random kindness.

As the event was timed by raceheadquarters, the results were posted almost immediately after the race was finished.