Cancun 70.3, Part 1

The Day Before

Cancun is a beautiful place. There is no doubt about that. Gorgeous turquoise water. Soft sandy beaches. Warm tropical breezes that help with the heat and humidity. Huge, luxurious hotels right on these beautiful beaches. Truly a tropical paradise.

We are not much ones for luxury hotels where the highlight of the trip is sitting on the beach getting a sunburn or hanging out at a pool bar. We'd rather be staying in a more rustic setting, roaming around on Mayan ruins, eating local food from an open-air roadside restaurant, snorkeling cenotes and coral reefs. But we're here for the event, so resort hotel it is.

And a fine hotel it was. The Westin, at the quiet end of the hotel zone, 3 miles from the actual event. The nearest hotel to the event, too. Our room was quite large and had a stunning view of the beach and that amazingly blue ocean. Our amigas, Vicki and Michelle, had another room nearby.
The first order of business on this day-before day was to do the practice swim. At 7am we took a taxi to the beach where the event swim would take place. A fair-sized crowd of athletes was there, along with the race director and the spokeswoman for the event. The swim buoys were all set up and they explained the course to us. First the race director spoke in Spanish, then the spokeswoman repeated it in English.

The course is a big half-mile rectangle. In the event you swim two loops. They had jet skis on the water and lifeguards on the beach this morning to assist us if needed. We could swim as much of the course as we wanted to.
Basta and I both swam one loop. Even though I wasn't doing the event, this was my workout for the day. The water was around 78F (26C), so very pleasant. No wetsuits allowed. The constant wind keeps the water always a little choppy, but it's small chop. A slight current pushed us gently towards the shore.

I found myself swimming next to a 45ish latino man. We bumped into each other and veered off. He'd swim past me, furiously kicking and thrashing, then have to stop to breaststroke and breathe. I just kept swimming, plugging along, sighting well, swimming around him when I caught him. He'd get behind me and then take off swimming furiously again. Once he smacked me in the leg with his thrashing. That surprised both of us. You expect some contact in an event with a bunch of people around you, but this was just a practice swim. With nobody else anywhere near us. Dude. Get your own bit of ocean. I looked back at him. He'd stopped and with a very chagrined look on his face waved his arms at me and said, 'Sorry! Sorry!' I smiled at him. He was cute. He could stand to pay a wee bit more attention to his swimming skills, but he was cute.

It was a nice swim. They had water and Gatorade for us afterwards. Vicki had just wanted to feel the water and stretch her arms a bit so she swam to the first buoy and back. Michelle, who had knee surgery not long ago, stayed on the beach and tended our bags.

After a shower and breakfast we headed up to the host hotel for the expo. There all was well-organized. Basta and Vicki got their packets, along with a very nice fleece jacket (why a fleece jacket in a place that is always 85F/30C with 90% humidity? I don't know. But it's a nice jacket and we can use it at home.) They also got tickets to the pasta dinner. We bought some expo stuff. All very typical there.

We learned that there were athletes from 30 countries competing tomorrow. The highest percentage of athletes are from Mexico. Next biggest group are from the US. After that are smaller numbers of people from around the world. Plenty of Central and South American countries were represented, like Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, and Brazil. Also Europeans, a handful of Australians, and a few Brits and Canadians. The event did not sell out, but had close to 900 competitors. I think this is the 3rd year it's been in existence. I suspect it will sell out in future years as triathlon grows and people learn about this beautiful venue and the high-quality event organization.

The competitors had to take their bikes to transition and leave them there overnight. Bikes only. No helmets, shoes, bags, pumps, anything. They recommended taking off any saddle bags and bento boxes, too. Basta didn't hear that part about removing everything and left his bento box, saddle bag, and pump attached to his bike. We hoped they'd still be there tomorrow.

Bike checked in, body marked, ready for tomorrow.
The pasta dinner was a little bit of a bust. Far too many people for this restaurant to handle and then the pasta wasn't very good and there wasn’t much of it (and no, I'm not Jewish). But we had arrived early and got seated easily, so that was a plus. When we left there was a long line of disgruntled athletes stretched out the door waiting to be seated.

At last, back to the hotel for a fine pre-event sleep.