Sunday, March 1, 2009

There is always a dawn after the dark

Before I can write about the Half Ironman (actually called The Israman in this case) in Eilat this past Friday, I feel compelled to state what seems to me to be the obvious: Most men over the age of 40 should not wear wetsuits or Speedo bathing suits. Yes, they may be in great shape inside but you have to be sensitive to those of us who only see the outside.

Let's just agree that that is a given and then we can proceed.

Friday morning started for the Isramen at about 4:30 a.m. Although I wasn't in the competition, I apparently was intended to "feel" the spirit of it, so I was up at 5:00 a.m. It wasn't even weird when my phone rang at 5:25 a.m.and it was my friend Sarah sitting in the hotel lobby with her four half-comatose children waiting for me and my comatose crew to join them so that we could go cheer for a bunch of fathers who opted to jump into the Red Sea at promptly 6;00 a.m. Basically, we were the co-opted and it wasn't pretty.

We dragged the kids down the streets of Eilat at 5:35 a.m. According to what I know about night-life in Eilat, many tourists had probably just gone to bed. The streets were quiet but when we arrived at the launch point, there were other crazy people just like us.

And then came the moment of truth. Out of nowhere materialized our motley team. We took all sorts of obligatory photos and then this un-Godly horn blew and they all ran for the water.

Imagine it. All these people in wetsuits and colour-coded swim caps running towards the water at 6:00 a.m. in the dark and under the cover of a light rain. It was really a fashion parade of swimwear do's and do not's. I would like to add that the eight women competing all looked great in their wetsuits, but I really had doubts about some of the men. A few looked more like buoys than ironmen. And I also have to mention that it would be a cold day in hell before you convinced me to don a wetsuit and run towards the water and then blindly jump in.

(I grew up where the water never warmed up. You could rest assured that you would get muscle spasms in the arches of your feet if you innocently walked into the ocean even in early August. To me, bodies of water are a nice thing to play beside. Also a great place to fill your sand bucket.)

Once all the competitors were out in the water, it was impossible to tell who was who. However, my friend Sarah who is also a veterinarian has a theory. She thinks that kids are like little baby penguins and the likes. They can identify their parents instinctively even when they are clumped together with a group of other similar looking members of the species.

I would love to poo poo her but Zeve immediately proved her point. We were on the outlook for Chaim to return to shore and at one point I thought I saw him. Zeve checked the spot where I was looking which was about 200 meters away and he said to me matter-of-factly: "That's not Abba. Those aren't his goggles."

He was right but how the hell did he know that? Who can see someone's goggles when they are 200 meters away and their head is bobbing up and down AND it is a hazy early morning? By that point it was about 6:30 a.m. and there was some early morning light but I would have sworn that was Chaim and I would have been wrong. Hence, Sarah's point was made.

Josh, Sarah's husband, was the first out of the water. He was followed by our friends Mark, Glenn and Carl. (keep in mind that there are several law and MBA degrees between them and as far as I can tell, the sanity quotient of chopped liver.)

Now the trick to this part of the program is to get out of your wetsuit (not so easy) and get undressed and redressed in public, before jumping on your bike and riding away (leaving all the spectators with the scary visual imprints of naked, wet athletes).

I didn't see Josh or the others do whatever it was that they had to do because I was waiting for Chaim. That was a small gift from God. We really don't need to know our friends THAT well. Yes, you can have too much information -- particularly when it involves Vaseline in unspoken places.

Here's a little something I learned. Some competitors work as teams. One person unzips the first and then the first unzips the other. Also, I now know that there is something to be said for taking off your wetsuit in the water. Apparently it is easier. I can't say for sure, because I don't own a wetsuit nor do I ever wish to.

Chaim surfaced after about 35 minutes in the sea and he did his zipping thing and ran off to change his clothes on his designated chair next to his pre-positioned bike. (It is really quite a smooth operation.)

He had been debating riding in wet clothes versus changing into dry duds leading up to the event. I guess he had made a decision on that because by the time we got to him, he was already partly changed into dry clothes. It's funny to see all the people standing around watching people undress, dry off and put on dry clothes. I think that there are a lot of armchair athletes out there who need to get a life of their own. This is nothing worth looking at.

I think that is enough for now. Suffice it to say that they all rode off for a pretty brutal, almost entirely up-mountain 90 km bike ride and then a 21 km run.

I know I am leaving you hanging. Yes, the suspense is killing you. I will write about their triumphant return later today.

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