OK so these aren't really new shoes and for that matter, who calls themselves "Poppa" anymore? I'm actually wearing these shoes today because my other shoes are still a touch damp... Soaking wet really. You see, I, like hundreds of other volunteers arose at the butt crack of dawn to volunteer for the Copper Creek Triathlon. I swung through Altoona to pick up Matt from the Rassy tri squad who was in town from Fort Dodge. The skies looked pretty threatening and I'd run through several rain showers all ready. Optimistic, we got his gear loaded and headed for check in. I took off for the bike repair tent to rendezvous with Donny and find out my assignment for the day. As he wasn't around, I shot the breeze with Squirrel and geeked out on some of the tri-gear.
Then the rains came... And that was all she wrote folks. Around 7, Jenny made the announcement that the race would still be on and that we'd get final instructions at 7:30. 7:30 rolled around to wind whipped rain, whitecaps on the lake, and a veritable river flowing near curb deep in spots through the parking lot (and the reason my shoes are soaked). A few minutes later the race was cancelled. Now I'm sure that no race director wants to cancel their race so I can't help but wonder if there weren't some outside influence in this decision. The talk we'd heard all morning was that if we couldn't do the 8 start time, it would be pushed back hourly in attempt to make the event happen. Now, we're at 8 o'clock and headed home. I wonder if the safety crews from Pleasant Hill pulled the plug on the event. I know this winter, the Des Moines police caused the cancellation of a 10K run due to icy conditions and they wouldn't provide the necessary support. Seems to me that something very similar could have happened here. In any case, bravo to everyone for showing up mostly ready to rock and roll and hopefully they'll be able to reschedule for this year.
Saturday for the most part was a lot better day. I met up with Tom and Steve for an early morning ride. I anticipated heading south to Carlisle and then on to Summerset park before heading towards Martensdale and finally downtown for a stop at the farmer's market. Alas, if you check out the route here you'll see several reroutes before we even reached Carlisle along with a short stint on the Highway 5 bypass just to reach town. I guess that would make Kim proud for riding our bikes where we needed. All was for nought though as both the trail and roads were flooded a couple miles outside of Carlisle.
A decision to still shoot for our goal of 50 miles was upheld so I meandered us down through the south side of Des Moines and out to Pleasant Hill for a preview of what was supposed to be the bike leg of the triathlon on Sunday. The hill up to Doane's Park would have been fun to see some people suffer on. Probably would have been reminiscent of the Grand Hill at the Hy-Vee tri. We passed through the setup area at Copper Creek and shot our way down for a well deserved break with a farm boy's burrito at the market. FYI- for anyone familiar with these amazing burritos, they have a new stand at the north end of 4th Street past Java Joes. They're not at the corner of 3rd and Court any longer. One final 5 mile stretch back to my place and we finished the day with a shade over 50 miles on the clock.
Other than a few hours spent at work, I was pretty lazy this weekend. Time to start getting on top of things here soon.
