An update and an open apology

Didn't do the Solvang Century. Ended up helping a friend with some stuff.

Didn't do the March Triathlon. Stress fracture - left foot. Hopefully it's better by April 10th.

Now for the open apology part...the triathlon race director was cool enough to refund my entry fee since it was a medical problem. Cool. We already had a campsite reserved at the race site, so I figured to try to be nice I'd offer to volunteer since they were cool enough to refund my entry fee, and since we were already going to be there. I've also raced a bunch and relied on volunteers, but never helped out myself, so I thought it was time.

I got up early and headed down to the transition area. They told me they needed some help marking peoples' race numbers on their bodies. I grabbed a marker and jumped in. I didn't really get any training, I just tried to copy the other folks marking racers. We marked the backs of hands, biceps, left quad and right calf. What I didn't realize was that we were supposed to put their race number everywhere but the calf - that was supposed to be their age group. Oops. Let's just say the race officials were probably pretty surprised when there were folks in the 529, 213, 417, etc age group.

I wasn't done there though. I was marking a guy I knew and after I had marked his hand and a bicep, he asked me, "How did you know my number?" I replied, "Uh, I don't." As I had been yakking I never got around to asking him what number he was. I just marked him with the same number of the racer I had previously marked. Oops. We couldn't find anything to clean him up with so I scratched through what I had written and tried to make it look like his number.

When I saw him after the race I asked him how it went...and called him by the wrong name...for the second time that day. So in light of all that, I just wanted to offer an apology for all the mayhem I caused on Saturday. Maybe I should stick to racing instead of volunteering.