The crew woke early and laid out the game plan. John C. would be twittering and assisting Tri California with social networking duties, Joe B. would be collecting video and helping John and me. I would get prerace comments and pictures, bike/run course pictures from the motorcycle, finish line pictures and post race interviews from the worlds most talented athletes.
8:00am and the horn sounded the pro men’s wave was the first to go, followed by the pro women. We were stationed on the dock snapping photos and video of the mad dash going on in the water, exciting stuff.
Rasmus Henning (Pro Male) and Julie Dibens (Pro Female) led their waves out of the water.
After watching the top 15 ladies come out of the water I headed to my moto driver. We mounted up and tore off after the men and women out on the bike course. From a fans perspective, this is the way you watch the race. We pulled along side of the athletes and took some great action shots.
The key is to pull up and not disturb their race. Be there but not be seen I guess you could say. I hope we achieved that. I had the best moto driver ever. We were able to catch everyone we wanted on the course.
Michael Raelert took a big lead out on the 56 mile bike course. For a while we thought we were with the lead guys and then we were at the top of a hill and I saw a dot on a bike. It was Raelert doing his thing; solo. We caught up to Michael and snapped a quick group of photos and then posted up at a few key spots to get photos of the rest of the group.
After we collected the shots I wanted we dropped back to catch the girls in actions. First was Julie Dibens, who was poised and doing her thing; leading. Melanie McQuaide was the next in line but not too far behind her were Virginia Berasategui and Angela Naeth. One thing I have recently learns, that if Naeth is around on the bike, you can guarantee that she will do some passing. Dibens was first and Angela worked her way into second place coming into T2.
Before heading out onto the course we were told the men would finish this race around four hours. We had to watch our clocks, so after a few hours of being on the bike course I decided to head in and catch the athletes on the run course. We posted up around mile 8 of the run course. This may not have been the wisest decision by the time the top 10 guys came in we headed down to the finish line area. We missed all the ladies because of poor execution.
Michael Raelert continued to lead and Joe Gambles was second as they passed me at mile 8.
Day 2: Records are Made to be Broken! To be continued…
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