IMWI Weekend Adventure - Saturday

Saturday dawned dark and wet. I woke on time not from the sunrise, as I'd hoped, nor from the (late) wake-up call, but from waking every two hours or so on the lopsided hotel mattress and checking my watch in frustration. I went to the 8 am volunteer meeting more convinced than ever my "allergy attack" was turning into something more involved, and piled on the cold medicine to get me through the morning.

To my relief I found Monona Terrace and a decent parking spot with ease. I followed the signs to the volunteer meeting and found it with no trouble. I walked into the huge hall and noticed stacks of boxes distributed throughout the room, each labeled with a volunteer station and sitting next to a sign with the station's name. My OCD was happy with what appeared to be organization on a massive scale.

That was the last time all weekend I would have this feeling.

The first thing I noticed was that the volunteer teams were divided around the room so people could sit at a table with their captains to get information. Many, many people were signed up for multiple stations, but no one seemed to have a plan to handle that little detail.

Anticipating trouble, I found both my captains before the meeting started, informed the Gear Bag captain I had to get instructions from the Bike Sag captain and that I would meet them shortly. He said that was fine and to meet them after the meeting in ballroom C/D, where the crew gear was stashed.

The volunteer meeting closed with the announcement that the weather for the next day was supposed to be in the 60s, a bit overcast and no rain. Then they sent us off to meet with our individual teams.

Working the bike sag team is fairly complex when you get down to it. The course is broken into sections, and each Sag driver patrols a section. The Van drivers are assigned to aid stations, where the Sag drivers drop riders for transfer to the vans and transport back to Monona Terrace. Mix in a variety shifts starting at 7:30am and going until the course is cleared, everyone needing a radio and window signs identifying us as 'race support' vehicles (so the police will let us through), and in general needing a way to transfer this equipment between shifts, and you have the making for a mess. Especially when the volunteer instructions do not require you to have "knowledge of the Madison area" to work this station (many stations do state this requirement) and you have people like me signing up for it.

Of course, with all this complexity, I assumed the captain would have a plan of attack, a schedule of rendezvous points and equipment hand-offs, a cell-phone list, etc. How couldn't he? He'd been emailing us for weeks to ascertain course section assignments.

Yeah. The best way I can explain my reaction to the captain's "plan" is: Danger Wil Robinson.

He gave us printouts of the course map... in a manner of speaking. What he gave us were photocopies of a b&w printout of the color map from the website. The entire section I was supposed to patrol didn't even show up and was literally a blank white space. Far as I can tell... that was his entire plan. That, and telling us our section assignments in terms that were not actually on the map. (e.g. One designated patrol route was from Verona to Cross Plains, but the map does not show the city names or locations.)

He had no plan for meeting us in the morning to hand out radios, supplies or vans (the race supplies some vehicles.) He had no plan to arrange equipment hand-offs between shifts. He didn't even have the right t-shirt sizes on hand for us (which we had signed up for online and should have been handled by a computer!!) - not normally a big problem, but there was one volunteer who needed a 3X and there was only a Large available. Only my recent weight loss saved me from the same humiliation. It was ridiculous.

Had I not suggested that he, perhaps, would be wise to take down all of our cell phone numbers, there would probably still be people wandering around the damn course trying to find him. Had I not, at that moment, insisted he give me HIS cell phone number and then program it into my phone while he said it, I would have missed my entire first shift. I literally asked him concrete questions over and over again before I got any semblance of acceptable answers. When I left, I had pinned him down to meeting me at the Verona aid station at 7:30 am. I was planning to watch the swim start at Monona Terrace and had my own van, so he agreed I didn't need to meet him until then.

I finally got away from Captain Clueless and headed for the gear bag room where, of course, there was no one.

I wandered into every single ballroom where gear bags would be stored. I asked the information lady stationed by the doors and she took me right back to the rooms I'd already been too.

It was getting to be almost 10 (the official volunteer meeting probably only lasted until 8:30, the rest was spent in frustration trying to track down poorly organized people and information). I was pretty sure the gear bag areas opened to the athletes at 10, so I wandered around the shopping area for a bit. I figured I'd find a gear bag person in the gear bag rooms right before they opened for the athletes, and that is how it worked out.

By now the cold medicine was wearing off, I was feeling like hell and I had a gear bag shift to work from 3 - 6. I wanted to take a nap, but also knew I was going to be screwed if I didn't figure out the bike course before the next morning since no amount of grilling was going to get me the info I needed from my damn captain.

I literally drove around near the Alliant Center for about half an hour before I figured out the way the bike course headed out of town. Those of you who have been there understand just how ridiculous this is, and how bad the directions must have been!

From there, between the half-assed map and my vague recollection of the awesome bike course video that Simply Stu did, I was able to figure out my section of the bike course (more or less) and I headed back to the hotel for a nap.

I woke up feeling even worse and not knowing how I was going to face 3 hours of work. I piled on the cold medicine and headed out.

Fearing the worst given the morning's experience, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the majority of the gear bag work was already done - the captains said they got started ahead of time and it worked out great. We were done with T1 bags by 4:30 and a couple of us popped over to T2 to give them a hand, but they were already done too.

I stayed for a minute after everyone left. Right then, I didn't care about my stuffy head. Seeing those empty rooms, the rows of bags sitting in silence... it hit me hard. In less than a day these rooms would be filled with athletes, racing for the title of Ironman. I soaked it in. I know it's a cliche, but those rooms truly felt like the calm before the storm. No one could no how literally true that would turn out to be.

T1 on Saturday afternoon.

I stayed an extra moment in T2, getting a feel for the room I'd work on Sunday.

I knew that working on Sunday meant there were things I probably wouldn't get to see, so I walked around a bit to check out the venue. I got a kick out of seeing the rows of race-ready bike bling.


From the bike overlook I went to the top. I stood up there for a long time, staring at the water. Trying to imagine swimming that course myself. I have no idea how the athletes faced that dark, angry water. On my best day, on the best weather day, I could do it now. I think. I can only keep working towards the day I can face it like they did, in these conditions.


I went back to the hotel and I slept, waking only long enough to call my husband, and for him to talk me into acknowledging that I was sick, sleeping later and missing the race start. He said my friends racing would understand. And because, he said, "there's always next year."