Mother's Day

I can tell she is pissed from the way she is walking toward me. Long steps, purposeful steps, I-can’t-believe-I-just-did-that steps. I am doing the announcing up in the tower at what is affectionately called ‘The Hot Corner’ at the Ironman 70.3 in Oceanside, California back in March of 2008. It has gotten that cool ‘The Hot Corner’ label because the participants come out of the 1.2 mile swim, ride a few blocks, and then turn left right below where I am standing.

When the triathletes return from their 56 mile Tour de Camp Pendleton, they will take a right when they get to me and head back to transition. Then it’s time to change once again, this time to running gear, and attempt a two loop out and back 13.1 mile run that comes right by me twice more.

Some people see their family members less often than I will see the 2,000 Iron-hopefuls on this picture perfect Saturday morning.

But this particular woman, who really did not want to be seeing me quite so early in the day, is almost directly underneath the tower and now I can see why she is so upset. Tina Lount-Pretre is from Canada where she ran track – the 1500 and the 3000 – and cross country in high school and college. She completed her engineering degree at Harvard and her masters at Stanford, so the woman obviously has a tad bit going on upstairs. Which might explain why steam is coming out of both ears. Turns out that her back tire was rubbing and she decided to solve that by opening up the rear brakes. While she was riding. “I ran right into the Caution: Bump sign,” she remembers. Not quite the Ivy League thing to do. She went down in a heap, cut open both shoulders and split her front tire into three pieces. Lount-Pretre got to her feet and realized that she was bleeding and that her bike was toast.

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