Just curious.
-C
maybe…if you do get the opportunity to see the pile of bags be prepared to search. Some races it’s such a mess that it’s impossible to find your bags. Each race is different. My rule: don’t put anything into the bag you can’t live without.
Nope.
Race director will say that there is no guarantee. Generally you get it back but they can’t guarantee it. At soome point they are left unattended. Most folks get their stuff back no problem.
Mike
At IMLP, yes. Special needs (bike and run) is right on Mirror Lake next to the start. Family can pick up for you or you can get it at the end as its only a short walk from the finish.
The following is taken from a report that I wrote for xtri.com on IMFlorida last fall:
Special needs bags have been around at IM races for years. When I was racing, I never used them as I found that a combination of what I could carry with me on the bike and the generous and frequent aid stations at most Ironman races served all my needs. At Ironman Florida, the day after the race, I wandered through the bike and run special needs bag retrieval section near the run turn-around. I was amazed at what I saw, realizing that all of this stuff was packed away, but never picked up. Here’s a short list of what I found in and out of bike and run Special Needs Bags:
A wide variety of sandwiches, the most popular being peanut butter, but there was some great meat ones there to and a few of those had mustard! Not sure if it was Grey Poupon! Some nice looking bagels. Dried soup mix. Many bike pumps, air cartridges, and spare tires. All kinds of un-opened custom mixed sports drinks. Many bottles of Gatorade( Can’t they get enough of that that on the course?). Spare bike parts, inner tubes and tires of all kinds. Running shoes. Socks. Cycling jerseys. Even a cycling helmet!( Were they expecting to crash!) A watch – Timex Ironman, of course. The chest unit to a heart rate monitor. Women’s sanitary products. Strange little packages containing strange little pills( Did they have second thoughts about drug testing??). Zip locked bags of peanuts, dried fruit, pretzels, figs, carrots! . .and some stuff I had no idea what was in there. Athletes, can retrieve all of this stuff the day after the race. Strangely, many do not!
Fleck
Whoa! Isn’t rooting around is other people’s special needs bag a bit, well, creepy?
It varies by race venue. IMC does not return them, or give you the opportunity to retrieve them. Loop courses where the SN station will be near the transition area are more likely going to be able to accommodate retrieval of the bags.
scott
the day after placid last year, i went by not knowing if it would be there or not. they were and if i were dishonest, i could have had a field day with everyone elses! they’re totally unsupervised so don’t put in anything you wouldn’t want to lose.
Normally, I would not do such a thing, but my girlfriend was looking for something that she had discarded at special needs, in the hope of retrieving it. Once there my journalist side took over and I thought it might be part of a good story on what goes on behind the scenes at IM Florida.
Fleck
My experience at LP and WI is that they don’t put a high priority on organizing and securing special needs bags after the race, so I wouldn’t put anything of particular value in there. The transition bags are put back on your numbered hook - you can find those pretty easily.
4 IMNA races - 8 special needs bags successfully recovered.
The only trouble I’ve ever had was last year at IMCDA they were pretty much scattered around inno particular order. The other 3 they were pretty much in order and easily found.
But yeah, if you were a sleazy bastard and decided to rip off your fellow IM athletes you could snag someone else’s stale sandwhich.