Elbaman

All through last week I'd had this weird, funky feeling that I couldn't put my finger on. I was fine, in good health, but it was like whatever positive feeling I was trying to go towards wasn't panning out. I felt down for no reason. Even my daughter asked me if something was wrong.
Friday night Giorgio, the runner for our Elbaman
team, walked in the house and I had to give him the bad news. Our cyclist had bailed at the last second. Thirty-six hours before the event we had to try and find someone who could hop on a bike and ride 180 kms (a.k.a. 112 miles). I could have handled about half the distance but I hadn't been on a bike since the beginning of september and I've never covered more than 100 km. We started calling everybody we knew. We called my triathlon club, we called cyclists. But no one was willing or trained to bike the distance. I called the organization and explained our predicament. We told them that we were coming anyway, even if it meant just participating in the swim and run legs of the race for no medal.
As you all know I had trained for this. A lot. There were times that I really did not want to go down to the pool but I felt responsable for my two other teammates - so I worked out anyway!
We decided to visualize a triathlete that had trained for the race but had suddenly gotten scared of the swim, that would be our man.

The three hour drive to get to the Island of Elba from my house takes you south through Bologna and Florence, then West towards Pisa and then south again to Piombino where the ferry docks are. While we were in line waiting to get on the ferry boats we met another group of triathletes. We were so excited to be meeting other people that would be participating in the race! When we announced that we were doing the relay we got blank stares back and a couple of yawns. Oh. We were only swimming 2,4 miles and only running a marathon. B-o-r-i-n-g.
Made me laugh!

While we were on the Ferry we got a call from the race director, they'd found a cyclist for us! When we arrived at the expo we met Dino. Sixty years old, in absolutely fantastic shape, a master swimmer...in the pool. He just couldn't get over the waves and the salt water. No problem, Dino! We had a team again.

(to continue tomorrow)...