two wheels, two seats and too much fun!

If you're looking for my story of the great Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon, scroll down a bit...

We almost fell getting on the bike the first time, but by the end of our five mile ride, we agreed this was the highlight of the trip. And we even had time for a hike to see the Golden Gate Bridge (for the 69th time) before our ferry left for San Francisco. Fifteen minutes on a gently rocking ferry heading north from San Francisco is Angel Island State Park, previous home of the US Army, Chinese refugees and many others across the years. My cousin Carrie suggested we explore it, so we rented a tandem bike to make a simple outing more characteristic of a Douglass adventure.

Getting on the first few times nearly ended our fun, but we rapidly learned to communicate (or rather, Sandi resorted to giving Army-like commands to coordinate our mounting efforts). Once aboard, we cruised easily over rolling hills with varying views of the Golden Gate Bridge. Sandi found himself thinking that for once, he was in control of where we rode (I usually play tour guide when we ride). Just then I inadvertently leaned and forced him to turn, shattering his moment of victory. He repaid me by refusing to brake on a steep downhill. It’s one thing to fly down hills when you have your own brakes; it’s entirely another when someone else is in control, and you can only give them backrubs to win back their favor… But on the other hand you can also sightsee without concern for navigation and talk on your cell phone while providing peddle power!

However, I’m not sure Sandi really deserved help peddling after the heart attack he gave me earlier in the week. A few days before, we had driven down Lombard Street, (the “crookedest street in the world”) with a car-full of characters. After the winding decent I parked at the bottom and stepped out of the driver’s seat to snap a picture. When I turned back around the car was rolling downhill straight for a row of parked cars and a sidewalk crawling with pedestrians! I leapt for the door and yanked it open only to find it occupied – by my wonderful husband who apparently has little concern for the condition of my heart! Thankfully there was a red punch-buggy nearby so I could give him a good smack before running around to the passenger side amidst roaring laughter from the packed back seat.

We were in San Francisco to compete on the Fellowship of Christian Athletes – Endurance team in the well-known Accenture Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon. For more stories from the race, visiting my cousin Carrie and our jaunts around town, see my blog.

Hope the humidity that is melting us in SC is leaving you plenty dry!

Donna

In the days before Alcatraz

The motel was decorated with colorful flowers and climbing plants, but the rooms were tiny. It still had all the vintage charm of when it was built with in 1939. However, it was a bit shy on floor space once we packed it with four adults, two bikes and all their triathlon gear. We didn’t have much time to consider the challenge, however, before meeting my cousin Carrie, her boyfriend Mark, and our two roommates for dinner. We were taking Carrie out to a nice place to repay her for donating her wetsuit to me for the dreaded Alcatraz Triathlon swim, or so we thought. Instead she welcomed us all to San Francisco with traditional Kohout hospitality.

Despite going to sleep in wee hours of the morning east coast time, all four of the people in our motel room had piled into the tiny kitchen before 6am. The discussion never bothered with small talk, but jumped straight into theology and practical Christianity. That became the standard morning routine and a highlight of the trip for us all.

We met our Fellowship of Christian Athletes – Endurance (FCA-E) teammates for lunch. In the midst of getting to know one another, it became clear that two of us had missed the boat – we had not understood that we needed to enter the race online several weeks before. So we were not in the race. Suddenly the beautiful view of San Francisco bay, the Marin headlands, Alcatraz Island and Angel Island seemed to mock me. So all the training, packing and unpacking the bike, travel and preparations were for naught? Still something in me knew that it would all work out; God was still in control. But my characteristic pessimism lifted its nasty head and placed a small cloud over our US Penitentiary (USP) Alcatraz tour that afternoon.

The fascinating history and shore-to-shore relics and ruins, however, helped me put that “in its box” for a time. Army cannons, barbed wire fence, roofless brick walls and intact concrete buildings lined the steep walkway to the main prison building that had housed some of the most notorious criminals in the country. Inside the prison building stood three layers of barred cells containing the only the bare essentials. Rule #5, after all, was “you are entitled to shelter, clothing, food and medical attention. Everything else must be earned.” We each donned headphones for an audio tour that included recordings from the prison when it was active. It sounded like mayhem! Yet the wardens lived on the island and even raised their families there. According to the children, who are now grown, it was an idyllic existence. The prisoners, however, had a different perspective: they could see, hear and smell freedom daily, but couldn’t reach it. It was torturous. USP Alcatraz closed in 1963 during a push for rehabilitation for criminals, rather than punishment. Which is more effective remains under debate; several former prisoners finished their sentences and were released to become productive and upstanding members of mainstream society. No one is known to have successfully escaped from “the Rock” but three did flee the island, never to be seen again.

With that comforting thought in mind, we returned to the mainland for Dinner. Two local fellow triathletes cooked and cooked dinner for all eight teammates. We all stuffed ourselves with scrumptious salad and pasta, then accepted sufficient leftovers for a second team dinner the next evening as well. (Thanks, Klassens!) Food coma made for a good night’s sleep, though we still woke far too early for our morning kitchen counseling session.

Chris, FCA-E’s founder and national director, drove with us to the expo area. He volunteered to give me his swim spot on the relay team if I couldn’t enter the race. Though I didn’t completely feel this way, I said, “If God wants my jersey out there on the course, He’ll make it happen.” And I decided I would race the whole thing, or I’d help with the booth. The swim spot was Chris’s. We ran into the race director as soon as we got out of the car and found out he had just become a grandfather for the second time! He wouldn’t be able to see the baby until later in the week because of the race, of course, but he was excited about it. And sure, we have extra race spots for those who didn’t get signed up yet. I was ashamed that I had doubted. This race is a miniscule thing in the grand scheme of history, but God is lavish in His love, and cared even about this tiny event in the life of one tiny person (even though it was HUGE to me – I’ve wanted to do this race for years!).

the Great Escape from Alcatraz

Wind and cold closed the Saturday evening expo early, and the weather hadn’t changed by 4am Sunday morning when I rolled into the transition area. After my gear was set up, I met Teddy and Justin, who would bike and run respectively on Chris’s team. I walked Teddy through the handoff of the timing chip from Chris before the bike ride, and how to find Justin after the ride. (Each teammate would wait in the transition area and hand the computer chip ankle strap to the teammate who would race the next leg.) Chris, a highly competitive veteran triathlete saw these remedial academics and blanched. I guess we forgot to tell him neither of his teammates had ever seen a triathlon. However, Teddy and Justin are excellent athletes and their team finished third out of 24.

I finished significantly behind them, but then again, I started behind them also. Or so dictated the plan for race start. After a short 4:30am bus ride from the transition area to the ferry, Chris, Jay, Tom and I froze outside for the next hour until the ferry started loading. The San Francisco Belle was a floating casino gutted of all furniture. Even so, 1800 athletes barely fit. Jay and I were the lucky ones, squashed against a wall where I curled up inside my wetsuit and sweats, trying to get warm. I didn’t feel my feet until fellow racers’ body heat warmed me for half and hour in the crowded bathroom line. I barely made it back to our coveted place against the wall in time to finish getting ready to race. When I arrived, I found that my spot was taken, but Jay was talking with a guy about FCA-E and Christ. The enthusiastic man suggested, let’s pray. I leaned forward in to their huddle to join them. Meanwhile, Chris had gotten to pray for the race over the ship’s loudspeaker (it was too loud on the lower deck where I was to hear that, however.)

In the bathroom line, I’d heard the description of the race start: pro’s, challenged athletes, teams in the first wave at 0700; 30-34 year old athletes in the next wave at 0701; 35-39 year old athletes at 0702:30… That’s all I needed to hear, so I stopped listening. Each group had a distinct color bathing cap. The wave before me (Jay’s wave) had red caps. Mine was light green. I lined up in the midst of a sea of red and green caps. A fog horn blew. The race had started. But I stood still in a milling crowd steeped in anticipation. A minute passed and the loudspeaker mumbled on. My earplugs and neoprene bathing cap drowned out what might have been audible above the din. Slowly, the red- and green-topped stream of black wetsuits oozed through two sets of double doors. As I neared the choke-point, I heard the countdown to my wave’s start. By not pushing eagerly toward the brisk water, I timed it so that I leapt the two feet down into the swirling sea just as they sent off my wave. There were already green caps in the water, and many red ones still on the boat. It was just a big mass-exodus as fast as people could funnel out the doors and down the stairs from the second deck.

Normally in triathlons, the swim is mayhem at the start and quiets down once the racers spread out and settle into their own paces. But that is in pool and lake triathlons. In San Francisco bay, the choppy waves kept me from finding a rhythm, and repeatedly tried to usurp the air being gulped into my mouth. Fifty-six degree water slid up my arms every few strokes, but surprisingly didn’t steal my breath or numb more than half of my legs. Those weren’t the only disruptions, however. Normally, triathlon swims go from buoy to buoy, never more than couple hundred yards from a course marker. But this swim goes from a boat beside Alcatraz Island to Chrissy Field on the mainland. There are kayakers along the course for safety. But there are no buoys, just strong currents and a lot of pre-race advice on how to find your route. I aimed at the white warehouses until I realize all the other swimmers were “down current” of me, so I was being more conservative than they. Then I shifted my aim point to the dome. As I swam, the dome slowly aligned itself with the red-roofed building that marked our exit point. That was all I could sense of the current. But when I saw that my time for this 1.5 mile swim was faster than my last lake-swim time for 1.2 miles, I walked away with renewed respect for that current.

Overall, the swim was not nearly as bad as I had feared from all the warnings and nightmares I’d heard. But as I bent to remove my wetsuit, a stinging pain engulfed my neck. It would be several weeks before my neck would heal from the salt water sandpaper my wetsuit had apparently become (despite multiple applications of Body Glide).

I stomped my way free of the wetsuit and donned running shoes for the half mile “warm up run” to the transition area and my trusty steed. Along the way I greeted Sandi and passed many people jogging in their wetsuits, which I decided was probably the better way to go. It could not have been 60 degrees out yet, but I was comfortable in my FCA-E jersey and tri shorts. Comfortable minus my lower legs, that is. They were still comfortably numb.

Part of the reason I subscribe to the mantra “where there’s a will there’s a way” is that I will my bike shoes on at each triathlon – because my fingers are simply too cold to function and my feet are numb. I may have looked funny in my bright yellow sleeveless jersey and multi-colored fleece mittens, but by half way through the run my hands (and feet!) finally returned to their normal state.

For all I had heard and read about the Alcatraz swim, I had no idea that the bike and run were worthy opponents also! I must have touched every gear on my bike at some point, shifting from the largest to the smallest cog at least once every mile, and even standing once when I ran out of gears before I ran out of up-hill. Between daunting climbs were steep descents over painfully rough roads decorated in neon pink paint to warn of the worst pot holes. Nearly every steep down-hill was adorned with dangerously sharp turns in the middle or bottom. The only semi-enjoyable one passed the buffalo in Golden Gate Park; I knew were there from driving the course the evening before. I also knew that the views along the rocky coastline were phenomenal – I just couldn’t take my eyes from their scan for smooth pavement to enjoy them. The fun of this course certainly lay in the difficulty of it – and though 18 miles was a short bike leg compared to the swim and run distances, it is definitely of comparable challenge!

Willing my way out of running shoes and into bike shoes, I held my mittens in my teeth. As I started to run, I donned them unashamedly. Not only might they help my hands feel like hands sooner, but they were great companions for my runny nose. The wind in my face as I ran the first two flat miles of the run course wasn’t a welcome breeze, but wasn’t unpleasant either, especially since it would help blow me to the finish line later. Leaving the flat of Chrissy Field, I was surprised by a set of steps. The course map designated “sand stairs” at mile 4.5, but said nothing of these. These began the narrow section of shoulder-wide trails overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific coastline that continued for the next mile or so. Along the way we funneled through a tunnel whose roof sloped from sufficient running height to just above bent-in-half height. Pro racers brushed past on their return leg through the dark of the tunnel and along the narrow trail edges with shoulder-high brush. We ran single file until finding a strategic place to pass, like the wide winding road down to the beach. The hard packed dirt of the road gave way suddenly to soft grayish sand. Shoeprints led to and along the water’s edge then up around the turn-around at mile four. An occasional wave pushed returning runners into oncoming out-bound runners as people danced out of the foam’s way. Up from the beach led the famed sand staircase. A set of logs with about two feet between each were cabled together up the steep slope. I stepped on one end of a log and a heavier athlete stepped on the other, nearly launching me airborne. I wished he could have launched me up to the top, but that never happened. Instead I trudged from log to log and pulled my way up the railing to the top then turned down the same narrow trail we’d come up. When Sandi and I hiked that trail the next day, the views were beautiful.

Hitting the wide flat trail through Chrissy Field I realized I had mixed feelings: I was glad to have only two more miles to run – and those flat, but I would miss the challenge of hills and trails. This was truly “triathlon meets adventure racing”. It was the closest to an off-road triathlon as I’d ever seen at a road tri. And I loved that aspect of it! No longer occupied by where to place my feet and how to balance along the winding trail, I searched for something to keep my mind engaged. I settled on the Twila Paris song words “for the glory of the Lord, I have been created” and marched my running feet to its beat, while praying that somehow this race would be for God’s glory, both for me and for the other teammates. I crossed under the finish line just under three hours after leaping from the boat, happy to have completed this race that I’d wanted to do for years.

We spent the overcast, brisk afternoon downing pasta, soup, fruit and cookies, and sipping coffee and hot cocoa my cousin Carrie and her friend Mark procured for us. Even the caffeine, however, could not preclude the much-needed nap that loomed before dinner.

Teddy’s little Subaru Forester was packed to the gills with six compact, athletic bodies on our way to Gordon Biersch restaurant for our victory dinner. We had only a little more trouble fitting in on the way home, stuffed with hamburgers and fries. Did I mention the real reason we work out? So we can eat whatever we want!! Jay regaled us with tales of God’s handiwork at the Lake Placid Ironman last year, where Jay was baptized after the Iron Prayer service. It was good to be encouraged by yet another reminder that God is still in the business of changing lives.

That evening, the FCA-E team split to return to the six states from which we’d come (PA, MN, NV, NM, VA and SC). It sounded as if other teammates were as excited as we are to continue furthering FCA-E’s mission and God’s work around the country. So thanks for putting this all together, Chris!

After Alcatraz

Sandi and I stayed for the next few days as tourists. We cooked breakfast for Teddy and Justin before sending them on their way, and falling back into bed for a long nap. Our next challenge was figuring out the busses since Teddy had taken his car! We began the first of many rides on Bus 30 to China Town for a walking tour. The guide included the fortune cookie factory where we snuck as many “mistakes” as we dared. She gave us recipes for the odd vegetables sold at street-side markets. And she walked us through a temple rife with burning incense, candles and bowls of fruit. We opted for lunch on our own and followed the locals to a Chinese café complete with a whole slaughtered pig hanging in the kitchen.

We strolled through the financial district then UP to Coit Tower. So much for an easy day off after a hard race! When the street ended because the hill steepened, stairs led us up even further. Eventually we found the base of the tower and took the elevator to the top. Unfortunately a stream of clouds flowing in from the ocean over the bay covered Alcatraz Island. However, we could see all the terrain in the city we’d already covered as well as what was in the plan for the next couple days: hiking the Marin Headlands, Ghirardelli Square, a WWII-era submarine and North Beach, the Italian district of the city.

Day Two of tourism was a victorious homework day: we finally finished all of the work for our Hermeneutics class, which meant Sandi was out of school for the summer! (I am still working on Romans.) We took his victory hike on the trails above Mill City in the Marin Headlands before meeting Carrie for dinner at Spinnaker. Since she was sans Mark, we of course took the opportunity to find out the real story  between marveling at keeling sailboats, seal heads periscoping up from the waves and watching the sun cast its last evening rays on the slopes of San Francisco.

Our last day found us testing out a tandem bike against the advice of locals. We rode around town enough to realize this would be a challenge, then loaded the bike on a ferry to Angel Island. Once there, we settled into a routine: peddle for a few minutes, stop to explore ruins, take a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge; peddle, explore, take a picture, etc. I’m not sure if we felt cheated or relieved when we could no longer see the bridge.

We ferried back to the mainland and wiled away the afternoon peddling around the city. Wandering from chocolate shop to the café and back in Ghirardelli Square, we scored sample caramel chocolates at each place, each time. Finally, we bought Mom and Dad a bagful of chocolates and peddled on to the cable car turn-around, where the workers manually turn each car around for its return journey up the cables. Sadly returning the bike, we explored the WWII-era submarine before dinner at a very Italian family-owned establishment in North Beach.

Carrie dropped us at the airport in the morning for the reclamation of our house, which we found occupied by the Bryans, who’d even stationed two of their clan of six in the trailer. We only won back one of our rooms, however, since they were invited guests in the process of moving. Thus ended the Douglass adventures for the month of June. We are breathing a sigh of rest from the crazy four months we’ve lived in SC even while we gear up for a crazy July and August, full of races and travels.