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Race Result
Race Report:
The majority of this race report is not actually about the race. It's about Taylor Love, who the race benefited. So you're not going to find a lot of triathlon talk until the end. This is your chance to bail, but I hope you continue to read.
After the race, the awards ceremony was held at Worldgate. I saw a "grandma-looking lady" carrying around a young girl who I recognized from the race material. I introduced myself to Taylor's grandmother and said hi to Taylor. Taylor has beautiful blue eyes and a wonderful smile and a tremendous spirit. After our conversation, Taylor said "bye bye" and blew me a big kiss. As we were waiting for the results to get calculated and for the awards to be given, I watched Taylor. She's about 5 months older than Keegan, my youngest child. She liked to press the buttons on the vending machine. She seemed very curious about the racket ball courts and her surroundings in general. She is the typical 2 year old, with one exception, Taylor has neuroblastoma. A deadly cancer with no known cure. At the beginning of the awards ceremony Taylor's mom got up to speak about her daughter and the horrible disease she is fighting. I was amazed at her strength. I can't imagine getting up in front of a bunch of people and talking about the disease that might take my child away from me. I was glad I did the race and that my race fee was going towards helping Taylor and her family.
Taylor has been in my mind a lot since Sunday morning. I would like to do more to help them. I plan to find all the loose change I have and put it in a bucket. I plan to ask all my friends, family, neighbors and co-workers to give me their loose change. I will do this until the beginning of December and then I'll convert all the change to cash and give it to Taylor's family. Loose change is in the cup on your desk at work, in your car, in your gym bag, in your napsack, on top of your washing machine, in the dryer, piggie banks, dusty containers you've been keeping forever, under the sofa cushions, in your camelback, the pennies on the ground that you see but don't pick up, the pockets of your winter coat and I'll bet you can find it in other places as well. I'm hoping you can find the energy to collect all the loose change you can find. I'm hoping you will ask your neighbors, your friends, your family and your co-workers to do the same. I'm hoping you will find that you really won't miss it all that much and that you'll give it to me so we can give it to Taylor's family. If you would like to help, email me back channel at kbohnenberger@yahoo.com with the subject Taylor Love. I would like to collect from the RATs at the Ironman Social at the beginning of December. If you have some change to donate and you can't make it to the social, just let me know and I'll find a way to get it.
Here is an article that ran in the post a few months ago:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/livinginloco/2007/03/neighbors_rally_for_taylor_lov.html
You can also find out more at:
http://www.graceoughtoncancerfoundation.org/loneliestroad/
where you will find a picture of Taylor and other kids suffering from this horrible disease.
Now on to the less important stuff, my race ...
I sent email to the RATs mailing list looking for one last race to do this season.
I looked at Giant Acorn but it was full.
Someone responded with a link to the Worlgate Race for Taylor Love. I was in.
I have never done a race at Worlgate before. They have two distict transition areas similar to Reston. T1 is at worlgate and T2 is at the Herndon caboose where we meet for the saturday RATs ride. The race was a "sprint." The swim and the run were short for a sprint, the bike was long for a sprint. 300 yard swim, 17.8 mile bike, 2 mile run.
I went to packet pickup on Saturday. There were a lot of first timers doing this race so it was fun to listen to them chat about the race and ask questions. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was asking tons of first timer questions myself. They give you two bags, one for T1 and one for T2. I put my sneakers and my running hat in my T2 bag. The T1 bag was to put you post swim stuff, like your towel, your goggles etc.
The race start was 6:30am. I got to Worldgate a little before 6 and set up T1. I put my T2 bag in the designated boxes they had waiting for us. They transported the T2 bags to T2 for you.
I warmed up in the pool for a bit and got in line and waited for the swim start. They were sending people off in 20 second increments. The person before and after me didnt show up so I had 40 seconds before me and after me. I wasn't sure about my swim time so I put down 6 minutes. I ended up catching the person in front of me in the 4th lane and I actually got up and walked for a few seconds. The person in front of me let me pass going into the last lane and I ended up doing the swim in 00:05:09. I need to guess better next time.
From the pool you walked down a bunch of steps and went outside to T1 which was set up in the parking lot. The race director and race information was very clear about walking in the stair well. Run, and you get DQ'd. The big question in T1 was long sleeve jersey or RATs sleeveless jersey. I went with the RATs jersey a headed out on the bike. The bike course turns right out of the parking lot, then left on monroe, then left on that little street that takes you to Jimmy's old town tavern, then to the bike path. You follow the bike path out to Partlows and back to the caboose. I was a little bit cold on the bike but was happy that I went with the sleeveless. Before the race I was a little worried about racing on the W&OD because of street crossings and non-racers on the trail. This turned out to be a non-issue. They had policemen at all the street crossings and there weren't very many people on the trail that early. The bike was fun.
As I came into T2 I got off my bike and the volunteers took my bike, my helmet and my shoes and gave me my T2 bag. My hands were a bit numb from the ride so it was hard tying my shoes. Coming off my 1/2 ironman walk-a-thon, I was looking forward to the 2 mile run. As I headed out on the trail I heard Kevin Kunkel cheer me on. He and Joanne were doing the finish timing. Two miles goes by pretty quickly. Not a lot to talk about. I made it out and back and finished in about the race in about 1:19. I think I was in the top 10 of about 80 people. Obviously there weren't a lot of fast people signed up for the race.
I hung out at the finish line and chatted with Kevin and Joanne and cheered on the finishers. After a while I started getting cold so I decided to head back to Worlgate. The only bummer about the race is that you have to bike back to Worlgate. The volunteers said that they didn't officially take back your stuff but it would probably make it. I decided to take my sneakers and my running hat back myself.
Overall the race was really well run. The volunteers were excellent and of course it was for a great cause.
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