Have you ever seen 1000s of women peeing in the woods all at the same time?
At the 100th Boston Marathon (40,000 runners), all the athletes were bused out to the starting line. But there was a long traffic jam of school buses on the country road leading out to Hopkinton because it took longer than expected to unload everyone at the start.
So we’re all sitting on these buses, hydrating to get ready for the race, and of course we have to pee - bad. First, one guy asked to be let out of the bus to pee in the woods. Everyone laughs and gives him a hard time, but then a few more ask to be let out, and then all the guys are in the woods peeing. A little later, after all the guys were back in the buses, one woman asked to be let out of the bus, then a few more, and soon all the women were out there too.
that’s nothing… right before the start of the nyc marathon there were tons of women squatting right out in the open. there was one long urinal for the men… and, at the end a bunch of women doing their business. in full view of everyone.
He was wearing an Amercian flag bikini brief and his little pencil pecker was bouncing to and fro. No shirt, no socks for bike and run. Truly disgusting. I hope I never see that again.
No one should be wearing a thong unless your a hot female, confirmed by at least 2 strangers telling you that. Maybe he hated tan lines.
There is a runner here in town who runs all the races wearing a rather threadbare speedo. lovely (heavy sarcasm).
At the old Oceanside olympic distance race (USTS) a few years ago I was swimming behind two guys that were bumping, elbowing, splashing, grabbing, cutting each other off - all out war. At the swim exit, one of the guys tripped the other as they were running toward the transition area. The tripped guy proceeded to sprint up to the other guy and TACKLE him NFL style. That is about all I saw and then I heard that they began to fight - wrestle and it went on for a few minutes before race officials, volunteers and spectators separated them.
Needless to say they both got DQ’d and cops actually had to escort them out since they kept jarring at each other in the transition area - calling each other out to go fight more in the parking lot. I didn’t hear anything past that, if the fight continued or if they knew each other before the race but it was pretty crazy.
At the time I thought it was super funny, it’s just a triathlon after all.
Well, this thread settles it. For my first tri, I will do it in a thong (I’m a guy w/ a hairy lower body … yes, you’re welcome for the image … enjoy), have a 32oz longneck beer in my bottle holder, a pack of cigs taped to my frame, and a lit cig in hand (don’t smoke) while in the aero position with no saddle. I will do my best to stay in “front of the pack”.
I may not win, but I will be remembered.
Quick Q about the guy with no saddle, “Please tell me he was standing the last 30km?” or at least tell me there was no “seat post”. The way it is written sounds incredibly painful.
Ironman Canada, 1997: Guy comes out of the swim and the “wetsuit strippers” grab him. They unzip him and start to pull his suit off. He starts for the changing tent but an over zealous stripper pulls his suit to the ankles.
He has nothing underneath.
Fans at Ironman Canada acquire a copy of the race brochure with the competitors’ names and numbers. A man equipped with a megaphone on a roof top has an assitant with binoculars. She spots the number, calls out the name from the roster printed in the paper and the man with megaphone says, “number 223, Tom Demerly, Dearborn, Michigan”. The crowd in the street below hears it. When I approach about 1500 people are yelling my name. For about :30 seconds I am world famous in Penticton. Ever see that scene in Gladiator when the rag-tag gladiators kicked the chariot guys asses and the crowd goes insane? That was totally me. I levitated to the finish line. Still gives me goose bumps. It’s why I’m doing New Zealand (partially).
I go for a training ride in Laguna Phuket, Thailand. Scott Molina, Norman Stadler and one other guy show up. We get an escort from the Royal Thai Police with two cop cars and six motorcycles and an ambulance and a sag vehicle. They close a freeway for our training ride. No shit.
USTS National Championships, Hilton Head, S.C., 1986 I think- maybe 1985, I don’t remember. A hurricane has moved through the area days before. During the swim I run into: A lot of lumber. A lounge chair. Clothing. At one point the water is so rough I sight on the course between strokes and find out I am looking DOWN to the deck of a rescue boat from on top of an eight foot swell. The 1.5K swim normally takes me about 20:00 (back then) but takes over 45:00 today.
Chicago Triathlon, 2001 I think. I have a decent swim but my age category wave is so crowded I wait 3 minutes while treading water to get a spot on the stairs to exit the swim and cross the timing matt and stop my swim split.
At Ironman Hawaii I lock myself in one of the fancy porta-johns accidentally 30 minutes before the start and can’t get out. It takes about 5 mintues to open the thing. It felt like four hours locked in a phone booth with your own poop a half hour before the biggest race of your life.
I was datng a girl named Amber at the time. She is an incorrigible princess. She decides to do the Chicago Marathon. I (mistakenly) agree to accompany her in the race. She says, “Can you carry a couple things for me I will need during the race?” I mistakenly (again) agree. My backpack (that’s right, I had to run the race with a backpack) contains: Toilet paper (her favorite brand), two kinds of chewing gum, mints, power gel (only kind she’ll use, not the “yucky” kind at the aid stations- “that’s gross”)tapes for her walkman (which she wore during the race), spare batteries for her walkman, tampons, a spare hat, hair scrunchees, a brush to fix her hair before the finishing photo is taken (I am not shitting you), two flavors of chap stick and spare band-aids. At the fourteen mile mark the race is getting ugly for her and she says, “I think this is something I have to do alone…” I’m like, “Not a problem girlie, here’s your shit…” She wouldn’t take it. She made me run the rest of the race carrying all her crap by myself.
What the hell was I thinking? Obviously that was pretty much it for Amber and I.
On a training run at Laguna Phuket I run into a clearing during one of the off road sections and come face to face with a huge Asian water buffalo. About four actually. The biggest one, closest to me, starts doing that snorting thing you see them do on TV in bull fights. Not good. It charges. I run. I lived, as usual.
During the Marathon des Sables in 1999 I am in the middle of a particularly desolate stage with no other competitors- or living things- in sight. A guy towing two camels appears out of the heat haze. He motions me over to me and I go. He looks me up and down and says, “I see you like jewelry,(I was wearing my Army Graduation ring around my neck) want to buy some rings and necklaces?” He speaks perfect English. He produces a bag filled with an assortment of rings. I buy one and keep going. At the end of the day several competitors ask, “Hey, did you buy a ring from the guy with the camels?” I was like, “Ah, yeah, I did actually…”
There are a million more, but I’ll bore someone else with them…
This doesn’t top many of the others posted, but the guy deserves a little recognition: at the Catalina Triathlon in Southern California this year there was a guy in 40-44 or 45-50 group who had a black and white toy cow mounted on his bike helmet. The cow had nice little black and white wings. And they flapped up and down when he turned on a switch in the back. He got the most cheers of anyone going by the crowds in the three laps of the bike leg. His attitude was just right for this race, which marks the end of the local season. He really ‘had his Cow screwed on straight’ IMHO while other people were breaking their arms crashing whilst pushing hard on the rather technical downhill bike course…
D*$% Art, I thought I had gotten that image out of my mind. That might even have benn me next to you, but that p/o the race was kind of fuzzy. We must have been close (14:36), or squat girl was having a real hard time of it.
A few k´s into the run I faced a plumbingproblem I had to deal with. As there were no port-a-johns in sight I stepped of course into some bushes between the road and the beach. Since I was intensely focused on “the task at hand” it took me a few seconds before I realized I wasn´t alone. From my squatting stance I saw two guys performing an erotic act of sorts. I´m not going to eloborate on this but it was latino lovin´at its finest.
I think one of the best was the one where Mark Allen was in a porta potty when he heard the start gun go off (not sure which race it was). He did the wipe and dash. Hit the water with a toilet paper tail trailing behind him. That would have been a sight.
The only thing I’ve ever done that could be considered crazy (well to me anyway) was getting a flat tire at the halfway point into a 25km out and back race. Thought for half a second about packing it in and waiting for the sag wagon to pick me up. But since it was one of those rare occassions when I actually had someone at the race to cheer me on I figured I had to make good. Put my helmet on my aero bars and my cycling shoes in my helmet and ran back to trasition. 12.5km. Did I mention that running is not a stong suit for me? I managed to get back into T2 still ahead of about three people (okay so they started 6 waves behind me…what’s your point). My cheering squad wondered what had happened to me (expecting that my cycling prowess would have had me back almost an hour before). Gave them the run down as I was changing into my running shoes (feet were totally black on the bottoms from fresh road work). Then proceeded to run the ensuing 7km run. Needless to say I was very well warmed up and actually managed to pass a few people before the finish. Don’t know who was more impressed me or my cheering squad.
Jonas - eeeeewwwww. That’s a nasty image burned into my mind.
A lighter story…this year’s Ironman Kona, a penalty box official comes up to me in the transition area with a problem, they can’t find the bike-to-run bag for #669 who had incured a bike penalty. I go through 1800 tansition bags, plus the now re-racked swim-to-bike bags and can’t come up with #669. The penalty official calls back the marshall on the course to have him recheck the bike number as he must have written it down wrong. The marshall calls back and has verified three times that it is indeed #669 and he has to be pulled into the penalty box when he gets back to the transition area.
More frantic searching high and low. This has taken over an hour at this point. I look at a bike check-in sheet to see if this was someone who didn’t rack their bike and bags the day before but still went ahead and decided to ride the course anyway. Nope, wasn’t a no-show the day before but now I don’t even find this number on the list. I grab a race program and #669 was never assigned!!.
We have a bandit on the course with some sort of official-looking numbers and he gets a penalty! We couldn’t wait to see who this was (no wasn’t Cowman, he’s too identifiable). The turd never came into the transition area and we never found out who it was or how he got that race number.
I was about a mile from my house waiting for a train to pass. After the train passed, the crossbars went up and I began to cross the tracks. once I crossed them i heard a crack and the entire crossbar fell at a 90 degree angle flat on my back/head. Luckliy no damage was done, but it definitely caused a scene since it was one of the busier intersections in College Station, Tx.
Do you think that the number was upside down? #669 upside down is #699.
Could have been but I think when the marshall checked and rechecked serveral times you think he would have noticed the wording on the bike number and the one on the back of the athlete were also upside down. All I know is that it drove us nuts and wasted a lot of our time.
**OK I know I’ll get it again for this BUT. For me it’s the anti religion and anti United States stuff that is put out by some slowtwitchers without anyone standing up! **
It’s called “picking your battles”. If I devoted 3 hours of “internet debating” (that’s Greek for “time wasted” … I think) every time someone posted something bad about religion, God, etc on a message board … I would have time for little else.
You do realize that many folks will say something anti-religion just to get a spark out of the religious, right? It’s not trollism (if that’s even a word), but it’s definately playing “puppeteer”. If someone said something anti-religion and no one commented, they’d likely not say it again.
I guess after being involved in internet debates that lasted weeks and in the end no one changed their mind, that I recognized my time would be better spent.
I realize one of the greatest gifts God gives each person is the gift of choice. I also realize that people will not always choose they way I have chosen. That is their decision. If they know the consequences, and still hold that choice, they live with it. I can talk to them until I am blue in the face and all we have in the end is a lot more carbon dioxide than when we started.
The point can really be made if religion has any place being discussed on a triathlon board. It’s not a subject that can be covered in 2-3 threads.
Quick Q about the guy with no saddle, “Please tell me he was standing the last 30km?” or at least tell me there was no “seat post”. The way it is written sounds incredibly painful.
Sorry, I don’t know. All I know is: I saw the saddle lying on the street - I saw the bike in T2 without a saddle - I was told there was someone riding without a saddle. I’m ashamed to say that the competitor was in front of me during the bike split (he started two waves earlier).