Quote Originally Posted by Bike Chick View Post
Yes, Colby, I wish I had known before. I would've been looking for you in T1 and would've liked to have helped you get dressed. Who knows, I may have helped you and not even known! I waited for you with my camera in T2 but stepped away for a few moments for an overdue restroom break and missed you! How frustrating! Yes, there were lots of jellyfish stings. Mostly on arms and necks. I saw one man come into T2 with his eye swollen shut asking for medical--a jellyfish sting. Did you get stung? I sure hope not.

DH volunteered as a wetsuit peeler. Hope his group was able to help you. There were 11 of us from home that volunteered and 7 of them will be competing next year---6 of them first timers. They went down at 6 AM to stand in line for early registration and there was already a line. All of our group got registered so it looks like we will be training for IMFL in this house next year. It will be DH's first IM. I'm hoping to train with them and possibly do a half by the end of the year and, who knows, maybe I will sign up next year
EYE SWOLLEN? OMG. That sounds awful. I did not get stung, but there were a couple of times I said "oh crap" in the water and had to move around them, and I adjusted my breathing to look ahead more. If they were close to the surface, they looked like the same as the wake from other swimmers, which would make it easy to put your hands right in them or brush right by them. There were plenty of them, at one point I'm sure I could see more than a dozen at once, though only on the 2nd loop and generally in deeper water. At the athlete briefing, the swim course director said "I've heard we have jellyfish, but I haven't seen them" - well now we all have. They were very pink, thankfully. My dad spent a few years on the gulf coast (Texas side) as a kid and encountered jellyfish that made themselves much less obvious.

I wasn't confident enough I wanted to come back to sign up the day before, but the line on Sunday was nuts! Lots of people complaining online that they didn't get in, too. Volunteering is a great way to see the race, help out, and get in if you're interested in racing it. And of course, it's a great race to watch and could surely use more spectators! There were lots of spouses, families, and volunteers on our flight in to PCB.

Heading back to Austin tomorrow night, and I hope to put up a race report soon - I finally took a day off work today, so I was trying to maximize on time away from the computer.