Race Report: Georgia Veterans' Triathlon 2010

Meanwhile, back at the Woman’s Triathlon….

The Georgia Veterans’ Triathlon is held, appropriately, in Georgia Veterans’ State Park, in Cordele, Georgia: up the road from Tifton, and down the road from Macon on I-75.

The park is fabulous- we’ve camped there twice, in a huge campsite, and stayed at the Lodge once, in a beautiful room (in which I proceeded to put black marks on the wall with my bike- they came off, thank goodness). The park is on Lake Blackshear, and sports both a regular gold course and a disc golf course (giving me two different opportunities to suck at golf). There’s a great museum with some great military memorabilia, a swimming beach and a couple of great restaurants. So, once you’ve finished your morning workout, and have eaten your post-race sausage dog provided by Stripling’s General Store, and take your nap, there are lots of things to do.

As for the race itself- it’s one of my faves.

The swim is a 500 yard beach start in the very nice warm water of Lake Blackshear. The bike course is rolling and a little technical, following the road that follows the edge of Lake Blackshear. The run covers 3.1 miles of park road (and is sometimes brutally hot).
It’s a well-organized, fairly small, laid back race.

The women started in the last couple of waves, so it was basically a Woman’s Triathlon later on the course. This is a very good thing.

I believe that I’ve discussed the phenomenon in other blog posts. An all-woman triathlon is very different from a co-ed triathlon. . I over-generalize, I know- we do have very assertive and aggressive riders in my gender- but there’s a different vibe there, especially amongst us back-of-the-pack female athletes. Although Cordele is, of course, a co-ed triathlon, our starting position created a Virtual Woman’s Triathlon.

Two classic examples of Woman’s Triathlon behavior from the race:

I Had to Use the Mom Voice.

As a rule, I do not mind young people racing triathlon alongside me. There are some excellent young triathletes out there. The kid that I had to deal with on the bike course, that day, was another story entirely.

Kid was an absolute nuisance on the bike. I caught up to him a couple miles into the bike, on one of the more treacherous turns in the course. He was weaving all over the road; he’d call “on your left,” start to pass, change his mind and nearly ride into another cyclist. When someone tried to pass him, he looked over at them and sped up. He drafted. He blocked.

But when Kid finally started riding to the left of the center line, I had about enough. It was time for the Mom Voice.

“You need to get on the right side of the lane NOW! You are breaking the rules, and you are going to get hit by a car and then you won’t grow up to be a pro triathlete (actually, I pray that you don’t grow up to be a pro triathlete, period).”

The Mom Voice worked- at least, long enough to get around the little monster and get some distance between us.

[At this point in the report, I would really like to climb up on my soapbox and express my views about Kid’s participation in this triathlon. But, for the sake of brevity, I will refrain. Perhaps another time. Soon.]

No, No: You Go On. I’m Not Competing Today.

I was, thankfully, past Kid and on the final couple of miles of the bike course. I was thinking about passing the woman in front of me when, suddenly and inexplicably, she flew over her handlebars and lands, faces first, on the ground.

I unclipped and dropped my bike on the grass.

The poor girl was trying to sit up. There was blood dripping from her chin, and she had somehow woven herself into the bike when she crashed. One of her feet had lodged itself in the spokes of the front wheel, of all places. I wiggled her foot out of her shoe to free her, as there seemed to be no way in hell that I could free her shoe from inside of the spokes. We used the sock to put pressure on the gash in her chin, which was now dripping blood steadily onto the asphalt.

No fewer than 4 other women stopped, jumped off their bikes, and came over to help. Another woman slowed down to talk to us.

“Are any of you girls competing today? ‘Cause, if you are, you can go ahead, and I’ll stay with her.”

We all insisted “no, no, we’re fine. You go ahead and go. We’ll stay with her.”

And we all did, until a passing truck driver offered to carry her and her mangled bike back to transition. One of the girls helped her to the truck; another loaded her bike on to the bed of the truck; another loaded her own bike onto the truck and rode with them.

I got on my bike and rode out onto a now empty course. I wasn’t disappointed about the loss of a lot of time in the race, but I really didn’t want people to think that I was last in because I was an incredibly slow pathetic biker. This is also a very classic Woman’s Triathlon attitude: we are pathologically afraid of finishing last, because everyone will laugh at you and point and you will be completely humiliated and never do another triathlon again, if you ever do one to begin with, because what’s the point in doing a triathlon if that’s going to happen to you? This is why, of course, our beloved Sally Edwards always volunteers to be the Final Finisher in her Woman’s Triathlons.



Surprisingly, I was not dead last that day. I did manage to pass a few people on the run. Everything else ended fine. Kid disappeared before I could throw him (and his parents) in Time Out; the injured triathlete, I heard, needed stitches on her chin, but that was about it.

I had my sausage dog, and my nap, and then played a very bad game of disc golf. And I remembered, even though I don’t race as much as I want to, how awesome this sport is—and how awesome women triathletes are.

Ben Misses All the Cool Stuff: A Post from Camp Scamp 2010

Can you see the deer down there?

Ben misses all the cool stuff.

I do not know why it was his unlucky fate on this vacation.  It wasn’t that he was doing anything wrong, per se.  It was just that he always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I am sure that he got tired of someone telling him that he “should have been there!  You should have seen…”

… the salamanders. 

Missing the salamanders is an especially unfortunate event, since Ben loves salamanders. He has posters of salamanders; he has read books about salamanders.  But he had grown tired of hiking up the trail to Anna Ruby Falls, then back down the trail from Anna Ruby Falls- about a mile, up and back, on a pretty steep path. To limit his complaining, we let him head back down the trail while Allen, Jenni, Libby and I lingered at the Falls, watching the cascading water, taking pictures, and wondering out loud watching waterfalls and taking pictures of them was fun (my theory is that people are attracted to water because they are trying to find their way back to the primordial soup from which they emerged at the dawn of time- but, hey, that’s just me).

On our way down, Jenni wondered if we could find any salamanders along the path.  She found a good place to hunt:  on a big, wet, slimy rock next to the trail.

We saw little brown heads.   Then we saw more little brown heads, peering out from the rock. And then, like those pictures where you have to make your eyes all out of focus and fuzzy so that, all of a sudden, you can see the 3D picture in the pattern- there they were.  Little salamanders, big salamander, all over the rock.  Our ‘oohs’ and ‘aahhs’ attracted a crowd, which we regretted, since people started coming over and plucking the salamanders off the rock to play with. (People:  leave the poor salamanders alone!  Don’t you remember “look, don’t touch?”)

Ben, who, as I told you, loves salamanders, was far down the trail.  We yelled, but he couldn’t hear us.  He was, needless to say, disappointed. This disappointment resulted in bickering with the other sibling, which resulted in one of the siblings kicking the other, which resulted in Mom hollering. But, of course, the siblings were back to being friends by the time we got back to the campground- which is how these things work in my family.

…the swimming deer.

A couple of days later, we headed out to Tallulah Gorge, near… well, up there in North Georgia somewhere.  This is one impressive hole in the ground, nearly 1000 feet to the bottom. I refused to go within 5 feet of the railing; Libby had to take me by the hand so I could look down the big hole, because I felt like the floor was falling down below me.  But the view was definitely worth getting all woozy over:  there were giant rock cliffs, and a river flowing at the bottom, hundreds of feet down.

Since we had been in the car for over an hour, during which time I assume that he must have consumed a quart of iced tea- Ben had to find the restroom.  Quickly. So he headed back down the path, away from the overlook, in search of the restroom.

Still clinging to Libby’s hand, I hung over the rail with Allen, Jenni, and Libby. Something was swimming in the river, traveling from one bank to the other.

“It’s a person,” one of us guessed.

“No, it’s a dog, I think,” said another one of us. 

When we all looked closer, we realized that it was a deer.  Way down below us, a deer was swimming across the river to the other bank. 

We didn’t know that deer could swim, and we had no idea why a deer would even want to swim across a river like that.  We were fascinated.

The deer finally made it, and hoisted herself up the bank, off to find– whatever interesting thing was on the other side of the river.  And that is, of course, when Ben reappeared.

A pattern was forming:  Ben leaves.  Something interesting happens.  We postulated:  if we keep sending Ben to the bathroom, what else interesting will happen?

We may try that.

Although Ben tends to miss some of the more extraordinary things in life, he often makes extraordinary observations about the more mundane things in life. “How did you miss that?” often becomes “Where did you come up with that?”

Camp Scamp 2010

It is time once again for Camp Scamp: our yearly foray into the wild, using the Scamp as our base camp.  Last year we headed into the wilderness of Southern Connecticut and New York:  facing giant lobsters and New Yorkers.

This year, we were supposed to attend Camp Scamp Canada 2010.  However, thanks to my not-so-careful reading of Entry Requirements for Canada and, worse yet, Re-entry Requirements for the United States (Passports?  You gotta be kidding!), that adventure ended before it began.

With three days to spare, we revised the Camp Scamp 2010 Schedule of Events. When work gets intense, my favorite escape is imagining my butt in a green inner tube floating down the Chattahoochee River; therefore,  a trip to the North Georgia Mountains seemed in order.  And then?  Head south to visit the family, and then…. Why not?  Drive clear down to the edge of the United States, and show the kids the Southernmost Point in the U.S. - Key West, Florida.  We were gonna have it all:  the cool mountain air and the warm Caribbean breeze.  Camp Scamp 2010 was going to be truly epic. 

Letters from camp are, of course, a summer tradition; I suppose now they’re emails, tweets, Facebook posts, text messages and Skypes from camp. But, at any rate, communications from camp are a key element of the sleepaway camp experience.

(For the definitive example of the genre, I refer you to Allen Sherman’s classic Letter from Camp)

What follows is a series of communiqués from Camp Scamp 2010:  the good, the bad, and the ridiculous.  Our Letters from Camp.

Snakes Alive!

Six compelling reasons to mow the yard here in Waresboro:

1. Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake
2. Pygmy Rattlesnake
3. Canebrake Rattlesnake
4. Copperhead
5. Water Moccasin
6. Coral Snake

These, of course, are the six venomous snakes found in Georgia.

It is venomous, not poisonous, by the way—venomous critters inject venom; poisonous critters harm you when touched or ingested. I have a favorite rest stop in Interstate 95 in Florida, around St. Augustine (work with me, here). There’s a huge chain link fence around a little pond, and a big sign that says “Beware of Poisonous Snakes.” I guess Floridians don’t know the difference. And they obviously didn’t consult my favorite Park Naturalist, my stepdaughter Jenni Smith, who has educated me about venomous snakes.

I’ve gotten to the point where I can admire and appreciate the little bastards, but, still: NIMBY. Not in my back yard, baby. You can demonstrate your beautiful markings and show off your gargantuan dimensions, but do it when I am zipping by you on a bicycle, please.

I have been surfing the University of Georgia website tonight, hoping, please, please, please- don’t let that be a Water Moccasin that I almost stepped on when I went out to feed the chickens this evening. Please let it be something fat and brown and non-venomous. Like a Brown Water Snake. I think that I’ve convinced myself that it is a Brown Water Snake.

I would have taken a picture to share, however:

1. I am sane.
2. I was too busy being horrified, screaming and fleeing for my life, to get my camera out.

Allen, however, shares neither of these traits. This is why we have some spectacular pictures of the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake that came to visit when Libby was mowing the lawn last month.

When we returned from vacation, our lawn was way overgrown. The snake was happily slinking through the deep grass and minding its own business, more or less, when Libby happened upon it with the John Deere.

Libby did not scream in mortal terror, and only sounded mostly alarmed when she hollered for Allen to “Come here!”

“Are you bleeding?” I called, even though it really didn’t sound like the cries of a bleeding child. But I had to check, because she faints at the sight of blood.

“There’s a rattlesnake!”

This got my full attention. It was time to go help save Libby. This is what we moms do, even moms who are terrified of snakes, when their child is threatened by a rattlesnake. We would stomp on its head with our bare feet if we had to.

I was not sure what to expect when I got to the side yard. Libby had made herself as small as humanly possible on the seat of the lawn mower, feet curled under her. She pointed over to the unmowed lawn. “There! Can you see him?”

“No….”

Yes.

“Holy sh**!!” (I really need to stop swearing around my children).

I saw him, all right. At first, only his tail with the rattles was apparent, and then he slowly slithered into sight. I don’t think that a snake that size can move other than slowly. He was heading back towards the woods, and wanted no part of us. He tried to look as unobtrusive as a three-foot Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake could, as he slithered back over the lawn. “Just act natural,” I could hear him think to himself.

So we got Allen. And we got Libby off the seat of the lawn mower. And then we got Ben. And then we got the camera. And then Allen got the camera. And then Janna started screaming at Allen: “What are you, an idiot? Get away from that thing! What are you doing so f***king close to the thing? It’s going to bite you! I am going to be a widow! No! I do NOT want a close up picture with the macro lens!!”

Ok. I was over-reacting a bit. He meant us no harm. After watching him for a while, I think that we all realized how magnificent he was. Ophiophobe (that’s a person who is severely freaked out by snakes) that I am, I nevertheless didn’t want to see it killed. However, there was no denying that he could be big trouble for a lot of creatures on our farm. We were torn.

So we feigned trying to dispatch it: we went into the house to get the shotgun, but-wouldn’t you know it - the trigger lock was on, and we weren’t sure where the key was, or whether we had the right shells….

And-- wouldn’t you know it—when we got outside, he was long gone, back into the pine woods. I’m sure that he’ll stay there, as long as the lawn stays short.

The lawn is a little shaggy again, which explains the Better-Not-Be-A-Cottonmouth that I saw slithering into the grape arbor this evening. Thank goodness Libby will still mow the lawn; however, she demands that Allen perform a “snake check” of the perimeter before she heads out there. Venomous creatures have not dissuaded her from her most lucrative money-making operation—she is a teenager, after all.