Volunteering for Outdoor Divas Triathlon!

Today I volunteered my first triathlon.

The Outdoor Divas Triathlon is in Longmont, CO at Union Reservoir and has the same course as both the Summer OPEN Triathlon and the Oktoberfest Triathlon, as all three are run by Without Limits Productions.  I raced the Summer OPEN this year, which spontaneously became my first duathlon because heavy rains the week before the race had upped the E. Coli count in Union Reservoir to ridiculous levels and the swim portion was canceled.  I also raced the Oktoberfest last year, so I am pretty familiar with the course.

Outdoor Divas is a sprint triathlon and it is also an all-female race.  There were about 500 athletes there, with a few relay teams, and a busy expo and many children and husbands/fathers/significant others/friends looking on.

I got up at 5am so I had time to get my crap together (I didn't need much crap) and stop for coffee and a ham-egg-cheese sandwich thing from Starbucks.  I ended up getting there about 6am, which was about 15 minutes before I was told to show up, but I wasn't the first one there so I didn't have to wait around.

First I did body marking, which is trickier than it looks.  I wanted to get the numbers nice and dark because I get annoyed when my numbers rub off too quickly, but the chisel point on my giant sharpie didn't really help things.  I was pretty glad that I'd run races there before because this race had a LOT of first-timers, who were understandably nervous, in addition to athletes who just hadn't raced at this venue before.  Being able to answer their questions about the course and transition area made me feel really helpful.  I mostly stood around chatting with other volunteers as we marked people up, until transition closed.

Then I was on kayak duty.  Most of the other kayakers/lifeguards were people that worked at Union Reservoir and park rangers.  It's been a long time since I was in a kayak, since I had to stop kayaking for a couple years after shoulder surgery and never got back into it (although I wouldn't describe myself as an avid kayaker before my surgery, I was experienced enough to be able to roll my kayak).  Fortunately paddling isn't really a skill you forget, and the most annoying part was sitting out in the sun on the lake.  I assisted two athletes, one who wanted to take off her wetsuit mid-race (weird but okay by me, I had bungees on my kayak to secure it) and one who needed to rest on my kayak.  So I felt useful!  All of the swimmers made it out of the water, which is awesome.

After I turned in the wetsuit to the announcer tent so the athlete could pick it up later, I was on finish line crew handing out finisher medals.  So, a couple things about that.

1. It was really damn hot standing in the sun at the finish line, so I don't even know how bad it must have been running.  Yow.
2. Handing out things and getting timing chips off seems easy until like seven people cross the finish within seconds of each other.
3. Why do I look huggable?  I had two athletes hug me when they crossed the finish.  No one else got hugged.  I mean, I wasn't going to deny them hugs, but I'm not really the hugging type, so I don't know why I was the one getting hugged.

The other downside to finish line crew was that we were all hungry, and by the time all the athletes had finished, the food tent had shut down.  Having read the WLP facebook page, I know the athletes thought everything was run really well, but the finish line crew could have used a few extra volunteers to come and give us a break so we could get some food and get out of the sun for a bit.  We had one guy who was also emptying trash bags to grab us a couple things, like bags of popchips.  If I hadn't grabbed a Mix1 before joining the finish crew I may have started to gnaw my own arm off.

So afterward I basically wandered the tents looking for food samples, which ended up being mostly Luna bar.  Personally I don't care for Luna bars but I wasn't about to be picky.

Then I got to rifle through the registration tent for goodies.  I snagged myself a tech shirt and another blue water bottle, because even though I am starting to have a giant water bottle collection, I figure there is no such thing as too many.  However, I saw on the facebook page that someone was happy about pint glasses, which means I must have missed the pint glasses.  Or they had been put away/all given away.  So, that's kind of a bummer.  Also I find it a little irritating that the back of the t-shirt says "tri like a girl," considering the majority of the athlete field was over 25 and therefore hardly "girls."  (This is the same reason I don't like the "Irongirl" label, because when I first saw it I thought "That's great, let's get girls into doing triathlons and multisport when they're teenagers!" and then I realized that's somehow also supposed to apply to grandmothers in their 60's.)

It was pretty awesome volunteering overall.  I felt useful and it was really cool to see athletes in the swim from out in the water (I was definitely checking out the form on the lead swimmers) and also great to be on the finishing crew.  You get to see so many happy faces cross that finish line, I had a grin on my face the whole time, even as I was grumbling about being hungry.  (Which was legitimate as it had been five or six hours since breakfast, which wasn't particularly big to begin with.)

I think I will volunteer for more races in the future, and yeah, that discounted race entry sure is a good incentive, but it's also just a good experience overall.  And hooray for all those newly-minted triathletes!

PS: I forgot my camera, so no pictures.  And I did get food, finally - I stopped at Chipotle on the way home and got a massive burrito, which squarely hit the spot.  All's well that ends well!