PPE ‘Ride and Stride’ Race Report

Usually on the road, I slug out a few miles solo at some odd hour of the morning or evening just hoping to get home and return to my routine without having lost too much fitness. This trip has been a little different because instead of coming back to Columbus for the weekends, I just went to Phoenix. It saved me about 10 hours of flight time each weekend, 20 hours total. The nice thing is that my brother, Dr. DB, had arranged events for me both weekends. I already posted about the PeeVee half marathon but this weekend was a little more special. I was a participant in Pinnacle Peak Events inaugural race, Ride and Stride race #1.

Dr. DB and my buddy Feebs started a race event management company about a year ago. They’ve got a website, bank account, business cards, and even a great big banner. This week it became reality with their first race. It was short and sweet. 7 mile bike ride, 1.5 mile run. I’ve participated probably 50 plus races in my life but I’ve never really been behind the scenes or actually ever volunteered so I’m going to give you the back stage pass to the 3 days of my involvment.

Friday 2:00 pm: After a long week in Cisco, I’m having a few beers in the San Jose airport when I get this text: ‘(Mrs. Dr, DB) will pick you up at the airport, I’m building bike racks for the transition if you want to help’. My first though was, I should probably not have any more beers if I’m going to work with power tools. I was indeed picked up and dropped off at the rack building area. A remarkably kind man is helping Dr. DB drill and cut conduit to make 5 bike racks. I lend a little hand and some much needed project management. I start throwing out things like ‘critical path’, ‘ownership of responsibilities’, and ‘task dependencies’. I think I was as useful as any project manager has ever been in bike rack creation. 9:30 we were home and after a few beers and catching up I was off to bed.

Saturday 6:42am: Despite the huge event this weekend Mrs. Dr. DB had a race on Saturday morning. I agreed to watch their 2 kids while they went out to race. This is a family that is not fulfilled with putting on 1 race a weekend; they also want to participate in a race on the other day. I was awakened by my nephew who is just over 2. He was already out on the sunroom, without pants, yelling to an non-present mommy that he has to ‘poopy’. Any one that knows me, knows that I am so unqualified for moments like this. I think I would rather face an Ironman open water mass swim every morning of the week than one morning with a 2 year old needing to potty. I pointed him to the bathroom shut the door and waited 25 minutes for him to reemerge unscathed. Hell had been avoided. As soon as the absentee parents returned, I jumped out for a quick 3 mile run before the temp hit 100 degrees.

Saturday 10:00am: Packet pick-up was the focus of the mid day. The PPE management staff and I sat at Road Runner sports for 5 hours telling people about the race, the course, what to expect, etc. Between registrants, we talked about race ideas, training plans, and race goals. This was also an opportune time for me to evaluate the competition. There was a huge ½ Ironman triathlon in the area that weekend as well so Feebs and Dr. DB had high expectations for me at their first race with a potentially diluted competition pool. Feebs is loaning me his bike and shoes, Dr. DB has a helmet and race clothes. They expected me to win and were giving me a rough time about it. It was a good couple hours. Just to give a little shout out to my friend ‘Jules’ aka ‘getting married in Hawaii Ironman week’; she was also picked as the likely winner of the woman’s race. She is a terror in the water, strong on the bike, but coming off knee surgery. She could probably still pull the win since it was a short run. It was good to see her at registration as well. Best wishes next month.

Saturday 4:30pm: I took a little personal time to grab a few beers with Feeb and chat about his pending visit. We watched ASU pull out a victory and generally just took a few minutes to not stress about the race. Dr. DB got a baby sitter and did the same with Mrs. Dr. DB over some sushi.

Saturday 6:00pm: More bike rack building and this time, I was more than a project manager; I was a worker. We cut the remaining conduit, assembled and labeled the parts, dropped a bike on it and declared it race ready. By 9:30 Dr. DB and Feebs had chatted on the phone about 43 times, driven over most of the city and had everything ready. As I crawled into bed at 11:30, Dr. DB was still in full preparation mode, putting together a few more race goodie bags, double checking his morning to do list and informed me that he was heading for the venue at 3:30am. Of course my response was, ‘I’m in, wake me’.

Sunday 3:30am: I am awakened by Dr. DB standing in my room. Boy am I tired, and he is juiced. Dude is really enjoying this. All I want is 3 more hours sleep and then some coffee. He is like a guy that is ready to take on the world. Regardless, I grab my borrowed helmet, borrowed bike shoes, borrowed race uniform, and whatever else was close and stumbled to the truck. Once to the race venue, we unload a bunch of stuff, carried this here, that there, and started setting up some table and chairs. Feebs and Dr. DB needed to go out to the bike turnaround and run turnaround, I agree to wait in the truck. As you can guess, I fall back asleep and 2 hours later everything is set up and mostly ready to go. Just remember this at your next race, all you need to do is take a little nap and the ‘race ferry’ will set up everything.

Saturday 6:00am: I rack my ride and stumble over for some coffee. There are very few things in this world that enjoy more than a cup of warm black coffee as the sun rises. Really, I know it is strange, but you give me silence, sunrise, and decent black coffee, I’m going to be completely satisfied for as long as the silence or coffee lasts. Phoenix is hotter than hell most of the time but there a moments in the morning and evening when I actually consider moving there. This morning was another of those moments. Of course that was long gone by the time I burnt my hand on a bike rack that had sat in the sun for 4 hours. Um, OK. Done with my Zen moment, sorry to bore you.

Saturday 8:00am: Race starts in TT fashion. I was bib #16. It is funny how some numbers stay with you. I’ve always been #16 when I played soccer growing up. Similarly, Dr. DB will always be #13 and my older brother, Professor Brinkman, will always be #15 to me. Dr. DB knows this and gave me #16, Professor Brinkman would have done the same. I’ve digressed enough….16 people were going off before me at 15 second intervals. The only really fast looking racer is seeded right in front of me. He had an ASU “Track Club” T-shirt on at registration so I’ve been eyeballing the kid all morning. I had no idea what he could run but I figured worst case he would run 4:30 miles and I would run 6:30 miles. I would need a gap of about 3 minutes off the bike. We had no chip timing and I didn’t start a watch but I was probably off the bike in about 20 minutes. I passed everyone on the bike course and was first to transition. With no one in front of me on the run, I was just running scared. I hit the turn around in 5:20 and saw “Mr. ASU Track” about 30 seconds later. I pushed hard and didn’t think he could make up a minute in .75 miles. I ran the last .75 in about 4:30. I crossed first and got my first ever first place finish. It was so much fun to go “balls to the wall” for 30 minutes. I’m sure future PPE events will have tougher competition but I was able to win the first one. Thanks to Mrs. Dr. DB and Dr. DB for hosting me both weekend. Thanks to Feebs for the bike and shoes.

Almost home now, the captain is telling us to turn off all electronic devices or the plane will crash. See the rest of the MRC(am) guys on Tuesday at the track.

Stats

9/23 Wednesday: 4 mile run (no timing)
9/24 Thursday: 7 mile run (no timing)
9/25 Friday: Rest
9/26 Saturday: 3 mile run (no timing – my God is Phoenix hot)
9/27 Sunday: 1.5 mile run (hard but no timing)
No idea on weight, I’m afraid to look though after 2 weeks of bar food and travel.