The day after a big race is one of the best days of the year, and one of my favorite feelings. The stern faces of my competitors have now become the soft smiles of my new friends. The Aussies have transformed from battle-ready comrades to pub-crawling revelers. The British have gone from pasty soldiers to bleary-eyed, red-nosed celebrants. Heck, even the Germans say hello in the hotel now. (More on the country profiles later…)


Immediately after the race I wandered around the finish line, receiving and returning accolades from fellow competitors, massages from Chinese PT students, and an assortment of post-race shwag and food from race organizers. Guys I had passed in my age group talked about what had happened (good and bad) during the race. Three young physical therapists took turns laying us face-down on massage tables and pounded out our taught hamstrings and calves. Hundreds of race organizers and their volunteers carried armloads of sponsor-emblazoned towels, medals, and water bottles and sent us home with enough Dextro Energy products and house wares to ward off any upcoming trips to Kmart.


The athletes milled around the recovery tents in varying states of undress, having peeled off the top halves of their soggy and cold national team speed suits and grimy, wet (and sometimes bloodied) running shoes. It’s a pretty funny scene; we all look worn out, red-eyed, soaked to the bone, and strangely happy and serene. The elation of a monumental task completed (both in unison and in competition) is unifying, and the sense of commiseration and camaraderie is both warm and sweet. Sport is great “glue” for people, probably why the Olympics is viewed as such a popular and wonderful event. The ITU World Championships mimics this for the true amateur athlete and the weekend hack, who wants to see how he stacks up against the rest of the world, and then wants to have a beer with the very same guys he’s trying to pummel.


The event was highly organized. The Chinese take organization (and pageantry) very seriously. We had a battalion of buses carting us to and from the race site, and hundreds of volunteers and military marshalling and corralling and running us through security checkpoints. There were TSA-type scanners and searches at every entrance; the Chinese were not letting anything go to chance. We had credentials and wrist bands and scanners and meetings and overhead announcements in a constant stream. We felt like hired guns that had come in for the entertainment of the public, and yet we were treated like total professionals.


I sent a frozen and exhausted Henri back to the hotel on the team bus, and spent the rest of the morning drying out, warming up, and re-hydrating while I watched the Men’s Elite (professional) competition. It would take me several thousand words to describe the speed, efficiency, and drama of the men’s pro race – you can experience the feeling by visiting www.triathlon.org and clicking on the video of the Men’s Elite Series Grand finale. My ego, which had been inaccurately and unreasonably inflated just an hour earlier (did I mention I was Number Five In The World?) was brought crashing back to earth by the display of the Brownlee Brothers of Great Britain (Alistair and Jonathan, the world’s # 1 and 2-ranked triathletes) and the rest of the pro men’s field ripped through a course twice the distance of our race, at approximately twice the speed. I was suddenly glad for the contrived and specified nature of amateur triathlon, with its five-year age groups and gender-specificity, its various distance classifications and even its occasional weight divisions (there is a Clydesdale/Athena division at some races for men over 200 lbs and females over 150 lbs.) Basically, I’ve chosen to compete in a sport that allows me to complete against other men, my age in a very specific set of disciplines at a very specific distance. And I get to go to a “world championship” for that. It’s kind of like saying I’m going to figure out how to compete with the best of the world in woodworking. Seniors Woodworking. Furnishings Category. Hardwoods. But indoor hardwood furnishings woodworking…


While I watched the speedy pros, I noticed a couple of the coveted race banners (which had adorned almost every lamppost and building in Beijing) had been laid down near the finish line to make way for the television camera coverage. I had been coveting both the English and Chinese versions of the World Championships banner since our arrival, and I come from a long line of event paraphernalia thieves – one of my uncles has an Olympic flag at his company headquarters in Chicago, a self-serve gift from the 1976 Innsbruck Winter Games. As I leaned over the race barrier and pretended to watch the Elite Men transition, I used my toes to dislodge the eight-foot nylon banner’s wire fasteners and zip-ties from its steel post. An ITU official wandered over to where I was performing my crime, and I decided to ask her if the banners were going to be for sale at some point. She raised an eyebrow as she noticed my covert operation under foot and said in her Kiwi drawl, “Well, why don’t you just try an’ nick one, Love? Would you like me to turn the other way, then?” I had both banners in my knapsack within 15 seconds. God love the cheeky Kiwis, even if they do pronounce the word “no” with three syllables (“Aye, Nay-yeau…”)


I remembered to retrieve my racing bike and gear, and hopped the team bus back to the Loong Palace Hotel, where I commenced the post-race tradition of Indiscriminant Eating and Drinking. The Palace has a cholesterol-laden version of an American Cheeseburger, with ham, bacon, and a fried egg on top. Tomato Egg-Drop soup, two Chinese beers, and a package of chocolate cookies (the last of which was enjoyed in the bath Henri had drawn for me upon my return, like Kato in the original Pink Panther movies. Then, one of the best all-time naps, interrupted only by a 9pm wake-up call of hunger pains. I joined Rico and Elaine and Doug and Dave in the hotel bar while Henri slept, and we finished the evening off with giant steins of lager and huge bowls of Neapolitan ice cream.


Kind of a self-indulgent afternoon and evening, but then so is racing (and the training leading up to it.) It felt good to set such a goal, qualified for it, trained for it, made the necessary sacrifices, and executed Elliot’s game plan almost to a ‘T.’ Except for that swim…Of course, that’s the thing that will keep me coming back, the areas of improvement (despite the muscular attrition of age) that I think I can overcome and do better next time. That’s why I go back to Nationals. That’s why I’ll try to race Worlds next year in Auckland, New Zealand. I hear the water will be cool enough for wetsuits (yea!) and that the bike course will favor hill-climbers, and that the banners are easy to steal…