Saturday, November 24, 2007

Disney 70.3...The Raycation is born

With six of the athletes I coach racing the Florida 70.3 May 20th, and one of them making her professional debut (not to mention that it is held when it is 50F warmer than where I live), I was compelled to make the journey to Orlando.

As the father of two children, I have spent more than my share of time in the land of Mickey Mouse, but this was easily my most memorable trip down. One of the 6 athletes competing was Ray, father of 4 (including triplets), attorney, race director and all-around great guy. Ray has a time share and took it upon himself to do all the "heavy lifting" required to get me down to Florida and housed. It was phenomenal, really. I was picked up at the airport, brought to the finest accommodations and poured back into the airport at journey's end (more on that later).

In addition to Ray and Danielle, I was there in support of Don, Jessie and brothers Geoff and Gerry. The six of us flew into Orlando having prepared for the 90F+ heat and 90%+ humidity as best we could coming from Long Island where it hadn't broken through the 60's.

The race was to be for everyone a positive experience on one level or another...though the positive elements weren't immediately apparent for everyone. For Danielle, who made her pro debut, this race was incredible, finishing 6th, within 2.5 minutes of 3rd and just being passed by rock-star Heather Gollnick in the finishing mile. For Don, who put out the next fastest time, a near PR, delivered a great performance considering his inexperience and the fact he wasn't heat acclimated. This race marked Geoff's reintroduction to the addiction known as triathlon and established him as a staple for all future "Raycations". As Geoff says, "you're not having fun until I say you're having fun". The problem is I passed out before I heard him say it...I'm getting to that. For the three remaining athletes, they would, perhaps, benefit more through adversity. Jessie would have some technical trouble with her bike after finding it laying down in T1 and would, along with Ray, who would find out later was burning with fever, DNF'd. Gerry would struggle with cramping and under perform. Each would show their class soon after, though.

Jessie would redouble her efforts and break 5:00 for the first time just weeks later at Eagleman and then follow this up with late season success in Colorado and Arizona against some strong fields. 2008 will be a break-through year for Jessie. Ray would also receive redemption at Eagleman and PR the NYC marathon by 20 minutes. Gerry would include electrolytes in his race day arsenal and never cramp again. He'd also win almost every AG race he entered after that. He and his wife Laura have not aged in the 20+ years I have known them...seriously spooky.


The aforementioned crew, along with Jessie's Dad Armand and Danielle's parents Dan and Jan all went to Shula's steak house for a victory celebration (sans Ray, the organizer of the whole Raycation, who was curled in the fetal position, burning with fever, sucking his thumb). Geoff and Dan started the flow with a couple Magnums of Banfi and before we knew it, I had to make a withdrawal from the 401K for my part of the dinner bill. As we settled back into our condo, Geoff ordered room service and several more bottles of red. Fortunately, before passing out, I helped a couple of the crew box their bikes after seeing Don and Geoff standing on one of the boxes like the gorilla from the old Samsonite commercials. Fortunately, I had prepared my small napsack and laptop bag and had slept completely dressed with shoes on as a corpse does, in a casket, with hands crossed against my chest...on the floor. Somehow, my internal clock woke be 10 minutes before the shuttle was to pick me up and return me (more like pour me) to Orlando International Airport.


My one recollection from the ride to the airport was listening to a gentleman who had finished the race in a little over 8:00 hrs. It seems he and his coach were confident that you simply had to double the time to complete Disney and add an hour to figure out his projected time in Lake Placid 2 months from then. I wonder how close that estimate was.


Till next time, cheers.

1 comment:

Dee said...

Great story, coach ;-) Blog looks great!