Team Cindy Alcatraz 2016 — our $27,000 race.

The 2016 campaign lit a new fire of new momentum for Team Cindy Alcatraz. 7 athletes, $27,000, and a very proud day for us all.

A heartfelt THANK YOU to you all that supported in one way or another, donations, and the many now-repeated-gifts, the words, deeds and spirit!

I had to capture it all for you, and posterity…

…and you can read about how to get involved in Team Cindy in the 2017 Escape from Alcatraz at the bottom.

Sunday 12 June was definitely the most rewarding, and hardest of my three full Alcatraz triathlons…but for Team Cindy Alcatraz 2016, the day was a huge success — made special by the team bond and friendships that emerged in this year’s cast of characters.

With the tellers now finished their counting, our fund raise wrapped up at $27,000 boosted by including a $5,000 donation from Nokia Digital Health — who recently acquired the fitness health data company Withings (and so some race tattoos!).

Escape from Alcatraz 2016 included athletes from 50 countries this year, including some of the Rio Olympic field. For me, it’s my one day a year of competing and being out there alongside them (I mean way behind…) is exciting from the moment you wake…at 4am.

I started to jot a few of the moments, and got carried away…

• Race Eve…Team Cindy Alcatraz all hanging together for the first time as we registered on the Saturday afternoon — photo just after the race briefing.

Home — about 10 blocks from the start-finish line — hosted three of the team and became “Team Cindy House” for the weekend.

It was special to have a team that had become friends sharing feelings about the 24 hours ahead and gathering for a non-traditional carb load of sushi…the untypical but light salt & carb load, before an early bed time.

Meeting Cindy’s best friend Neile Hartman and her fun husband Fred that afternoon (also competing) became a very special part of the weekend too. Talking to Neile gave a whole new proximity to the reality of Cindy’s story and getting behind an underfunded area in medicine to help — check out this post for some of the statistics.

Neile works with Elaine Schaller, who founded Team Cindy, on the Run for Research (New York on September 17th).

• 5.10 am race day, Sunday 12 June

Right to left: Matteo Lai, Nelle Sacknoff, Simon Longbottom, Kevin Chao, Kevin Brennan, Ethan Gui, Adrienne Moraff

• 5.45am race day, Sunday 12 June

20 minutes later we were “racking” our bikes and setting up our personal 3-ft wide transition area in a slowly emerging dawn…to a humdrum of generators providing the lighting, the coming and going of the buses shuttling athletes to the ferry, bikes being tuned (there are always some that have tire blow-outs before the race), the organizers loud-hailing time remaining until transition close and the last bus departs.

I’m a trying-to-look-mellow mess of over-preparing, over-thinking, checking and adjusting and usually losing things that had already been put in a special place.

Nerves? My own “therapy”? Who knows — and I doubt it will change.

And — as is tradition on travel trips — usually one thing forgotten— this year just my flip-flops. And so it was a barefoot walk through the transition area to the bus and from there onto the dock on Embarcadero…watching every step for glass!

• 6am race day, the bus to the Ferry

First-timer team mate Nelle was a-fluster too, and I hung back to make sure the last bus wasn’t going without her.

Nelle came down the bus aisle and sat down next to a 17-year old that had qualified for the race; and I was the row behind beside a 72-year old from Houston in his 8th Alcatraz.

Elder bus-mate spoke of how special the race is for him, for rubbing shoulders with the professional athletes — many of whom he’d got to know over the years, for the down-to-earth vibe of this race over others on the big race circuit, and for the course supporters in San Francisco. It’s a unique race, with conditions ever surprising individual and racing outcomes…and seems to have attracted a special bond between the Pros that hold it dear on their calendars.

And this year, that included a handful of Team USA athletes in their final preparations for Rio.

• 6.20am race day, dockside before boarding “The San Francisco Belle”

Nelle, Adrienne and I met up again dockside where you get your last toilet stop. Same vibe and smells as a music festival portaloo-queue except everyone is wearing a neoprene wetsuit, many with swimcap and goggles already on their heads.

Eric Lagerstrom (last year’s winner and a Team USA Rio 2016 athlete) clearly has the same philosophy, strolling around the corner laconically, called out for his cool by the dockside pre-race organizer cajoling us all onto the boat.

• 6.30am race day — the boat departs

The Escape kicks off from the San Francisco Belle:

…a two-floor mock-period-former-floating-casino-turned-ferry, at its load with 2,000 mostly lithe athletes elegantly dressed in black neoprene.

Everyone is sprawled on the floor, sitting, lying, talking…or in silence…staring…maybe stretching and using warm-up bands…some groups chatting and laughing.

Not far into the crossing I realized that the previous day’s high pressure and still “Lake Geneva” conditions had been shunted inland, sucking in the cold pacific ocean air. And so onshore winds and a new swell brought an ugly roll and chop to the ocean…signposts to a challenging swim…

The boat does a lap, stalls and pulls up by Alcatraz Island around 7:15am — and so you have way too much time sitting around before the 7:30am start.

Nerves build, people don’t know what to do with themselves and our team gathered tighter in a passageway behind the door that led to “the door”.

We reunited with Fred Hartman, Cindy’s best friend’s husband and the Team was gathered together checking in on each other’s heads.

It was really hard to read just how Nelle and Adrienne were feeling as first-timers, and Ethan as a slower swimmer knowing he would be near the cut-off. And then I could see Matteo — his head recovering from tonsillitis and really not being sure it was all a good idea. And Simon and I were just excited to be there together, after a full race place didn’t work out for Simon last year.

• 7.25am — the Star Spangled Banner

Most of the American athletes are with their hands to their hearts; at this stage, all the fiddling is finished — for the fiddlers, comme moi ;) — and 2,000 athletes are fully suited, rubber-capped and goggled.

It is emotional.

Through the anthem I tend to drift into thoughts of Warren, Cindy, Mum, Dad, brother Pete, sister Keara — my own gratitude to be there with four limbs and breathing — and then I think through those friends near and far (as many as I can! )that chipped in and supported in the fundraise.

The anthem’s crescendo draws nervous clapping, hugging and cheering. The boat is listing to the port side as everyone edges towards the jump door, despite the Captain’s pleas for keeping an even spread. And the engines roar intermittently, a stalling action to hold an approximate place in the currents around the island.

It’s easy to overwrite about the boat, because it is one of the most unforgettable parts of the day. The nerves and edge, the disorientation as the boat circles and rolls in the swell, but you can only see through a handful of windows. The history of Alcatraz as a prison, a few hundred yards from your eyes.

In all, I was stoked as the clapping and cheering subsided. Because I’d felt great in training, our team had become close and it meant much seeing our different states of mind there together in that passageway.

And I loved the start.

Game on.

• 7.30am — the horn blows

Check out this 360 degree video piece – drag the screen to change viewing perspective…

…and with me and Team Cindy starting to penguin to the jump from the right hand side at 1:12…but it definitely doesn’t capture the roll and chop of the mid-channel swell that day!

From where we were huddled in a corridor, you could hear the Pro athletes launch, the cheers and noise and the commentator yelling us all back.

And then, like waiting to leave a cinema through one door, everyone starts shuffling towards the back left door where an electronic doormat is bleeping incessantly as ankle-strapped race chips cross it and lead their wearers to the boat’s edge.

“This is no time to hesitate, this is no time to hesitate” the announcers repeat, and “go, go, go” as 2,000 of us emptied off the vessel.

I was giddy getting going, saw Simon’s grey hat for a couple of breaths before losing him — we’d accepted that trying to swim together wasn’t going to realistically play out — more quickly than usual settled into measured relaxed breathing…at first.

And then — and I thought I had killed this with experience — my now typical bout of nausea-inducing anxiety crept in after about 3–5 minutes.

• 7.35am — minor freak-out while swimming (seemingly, a tradition now)

On 5 of my 6 crossings this has happened to the extent that I feel like I’ll vomit in the water, have a minute’s throbbing thoughts of wanting to stop, and the inner voice chunters repetitively “right, this really is the last one”.

Despite 6 crossings now, I still haven’t been able to put this psycho-weakness to bed.

But also, I know that taking on the fear and anxiety is absolutely central to why I keep doing the race… in years past to why I played rugby…today to why I surf on days when a more than overhead swell size has me at the edge of being comfortable.

We all have to invite at least a little of that edgy fear into our lives, instead of endlessly choosing comfort and safety (why is that neurotic afflictions increase with affluence and peacetime and subside in war..?).

Photo: Pierre Le Leannec

In a minute or two, it’s gone, as I zoom into focusing on just each next arm movement…and I can get back to observing the tempo of my breathing, whether the work rate and pull in my arms is about right or too much, the fluidity of my stroke.

And, trying to pop my head up every 10–20 strokes to glimpse our steering markers: Aquatic Park, the Fort Mason “fingers”, the dome of the Palace of Fine Arts…

…and about two-thirds of the way through, those first relieving sightings of the red roof of the St. Francis Yacht club. AND THEN, the people everywhere on the beach cheering. THAT moment feels amazing.

I had a quick watch glimpse mid-way through. Seeing 27 minutes clocked, I knew that my swim time was way off the timing I was hoping for…an early disheartening moment, stupidly so perhaps, with so many variables to each year’s swim.

My crossing turned out 6 minutes slower than 2015, and I knew there was next to no chance I’d pull back towards my “stretch” goal time of 2h:51m.

• 8.10 — landing at St. Francis yacht club

Photo: Pierre Le Leannec (not me in the pic!)

You relax coming into the beach, starting to thinking through the different parts of the transition, shrugging your hips within strokes to loosen the upper hamstrings that for me often cramp on landing (and the hip flexors later in the race).

The beach, the crowd, is a disorientated high of surging endorphins, relief, disorientation, wobbly legs…and trying to spot supporters you know are there (it’s so hard for them)…all while taking your goggles off and pulling the silicon chunks from your ears.

The most intimidating part of the race is done. No heart attack or foot to the face. Breathed through the early anxiety.

I glanced around to see if I could spot my very special training partner Pierre — our photographer as he sat out this year to step up to the Vineman Ironman in July, Caroline, a wonderful friend who had been so supportive in the build-up in that I knew was there, or Neile — Cindy’s best friend with our illegal “Team Cindy” banner – and my boss Noel at Equilibrium who had got up early to come down with another of our senior team, Jay.

Back to racing — the one thing that was on my mind was staying out of the double-hamstring cramp that last year strung me into a minute or two of halted stretching half-way between the swim exit and the bike transition area, a half-mile stretch.

I left loose — and so decided to ignore my mini-transition bag of flat running shoes and a CrampsAway sachet and run barefoot. But it sprang again, in almost exactly the same place.

I maybe lost a little less time in the sudden halted stretching, than last year, but you feel pretty amateur pulled up and being passed by oodles of wet-suited trotting athletes.

Pulling into the transition area it was reassuring to see Kevin Chao and the striking Team Cindy vest. I didn’t have the energy to yell or run towards his transition zone and he was moving fast and looked set to go.

And then straight into the sequence laid out before me of Team Cindy vest, loaded with two almond butter sachets and one Cramp Away, helmet, glasses, race bib for the bike-run, bike shoes…and de-racking my bike straight into a short trot across grass in your bike shoe cleats.

• 8.20am — the beginning of the bike

Photo: Pierre Le Leannec

Getting going on the bike is one of my favourite moments of the race…you mount following the transition area timing mat, slightly unsettled legs still, but glowing inside with the crowds cheering you on.

The light headwind was warmer than previous years and I remembered smiling to myself that the air across my wet skin, and wet tri-suit (a quick-drying leotard, essentially) would mean an OK core temperature for the early portion of the bike, which is often a shivering 10–15 minutes until you are really warmed up on the first hills.

The first ugly climb of the ride is the slow march the Golden Gate Bridge base to the cliffs above Baker Beach, before a beautiful high-speed downhill, leveling into the Sea Cliff neighbourhood…

…and then an ugly climb on nobbled tarmac up the Legion of Honor hill, made only more exciting by the excitement of the cavalcade for the race passing you the other way coming downhill at a dicey speed given the road condition.

And then back into the concentration of gearing, of assessing the lactic in your legs against the distance to each man in front. Can I take him, or will that energy expenditure come back to bite me?

Seven or eight minutes later you are rewarded by the fastest point of the race, a newly paved stretch of road rounding the left-hand corner at the Cliffhouse perched above my home surf breaks at Ocean Beach.

I looked down at my bike computer and saw I clocked 36 miles an hour…and gave a momentary salute to the messy waves of ocean beach (more light is up than the dawn photo above)…stoked that this would be my last Sunday of cycling and for the months of summer surfing ahead 🙂

Hitting a 90 degree turn left into Golden Gate Park, everything went into a bizarre slow motion as I watched a guy in front of me just kept going straight — as if he didn’t see the bend of the road properly. He looked to be aiming left of a police / spectator barrier, where there was just a chunky kerb. The laws of physics were unforgiving as he ploughed into the kerb and launched from his bike over the handlebars and into a shrub. I saw him move immediately and start to get up, and so with plenty of police around, kept going….

And then a next memorable moment in Golden Gate park, the voice from back left of my rear wheel calmly: “ah, Mr. Brennan, fancy seeing you here”…as close buddy and team-mate Simon Longbottom pulled alongside.

We paced out together for the slow climb of Golden Gate Park…weirdly with a race marshall bike pulling up alongside us and glaring before noting something in his notebook. Si and I hung together for a mile or so before he pulled off – as his stronger legs always would in training. And I let him go to race with his faster bike pace on the hills.

It was nice seeing Ethan and Matteo coming past in the other direction and yelling for them, and then Nelle Sacknoff too and Adrienne …and us all yelling for Team Cindy.

Most of the bike course is a quiet conversation in your head without the intermittent yells of supporters that stroke the ego at the first transition and through much of the run.

There are no “aid” stops and so I’d use the slower flats to pull out an almond butter to fuel. Abandoning glucose-rich gels for this year’s race was feeling much better on my stomach…but I’ll never know if it affected my performance. The complexity of race nutrition…! (I don’t take triathlon so seriously you really dial in on the science of it all…).

The long final descent and a return of roadside supporters is each year a warm moment and this year I could see our Team Cindy banner up and a gang yelling at the end of Crissy Field…you supporters make such a difference, you’ll never know it!

…seeing your supporters always drives some last power output from the legs before relaxing into the final straight along Marina Green, and a wobbling dismount satisfied there is just a third of the race left to go.

• 9.30am — the run

The transition to running is always one of the hardest psychological parts of the race.

Your glutes, quads and hip flexors are all pretty knotted-up and on a lactic edge and the early strides feel far from what might be known as “knee lift”.

And then there’s the headwinds on Crissy Field – as you double back onto the bike course and along the Bay shore before the climbing starts — actually helping the legs — and spirit – loosen up. The first half of the run is really a case of pushing back a negativity and exhaustion and creating a feeling of momentum.

It meant so much to hear the cheers of there-every-year-supporters Ricarda and Christian – and then to finally see Noel and Jay from Equilibrium who I knew were out on the course.

Climbing starts just inside the Golden Gate bridge after two miles, and each year it is there that the lead females are skipping at pace down the twisting trail steps switch-backing towards the bridge. It’s a time to keep your head up and squeeze left to give them as much space as possible…and another reminder of how special it is to share a course with professional athletes.

Around this stage I noticed feeling for sure a little heavier in the legs than same time last year and worried that my run pace was a good bit slower than what I hoped I maybe hitting by then. Just moments of disappointment creeping in as to being so off my target time before you lose the self-pity to the supports using your bib-printed name to call out “Go Kevin”…and then descending onto the beach seeing Simon ahead of me on the way back in. We touched hands.

He looked strong in the build-up to the ever grueling “sand steps” — always the lactic low point of the race as your half a mile of heavy sand running is met with a 200+ step flight in which you regain almost all of the run course’s altitude in just three minutes of straight sand stair climbing.

I’ve read that even some of the Pros walk portions, and use the hand rail as an aid to keep the lactic out of their legs. It was a really nice surprise to see a friend Shannon at the top of the course as the spectator-sided portion of the course returned in time for your very last gradient of the race.

My watch was declaring an off-pace but I felt OK and strong enough that I could pick up in the final two miles back on the flat again. I’ll always remember the debate in my mind there as one of the parathletes ahead of me — a”blade-runner” with one prosthetic – came into view at a lumbering pace as I pulled into my strongest stride.

During the course of the race, all kinds of memories flash by but particularly in the final mile or so, I would always think back to how I’d push myself on the home stretch of a short 2.5 mile course I would run in the evenings behind the house we grew up in in Surrey.

And a memory of Dad asking me if I had a strategy for the end of races, and if I understood how my kick could be helpful. 30 years later it didn’t feel that strong but the richness of memory in the sustained pain of a race finish is always interesting to observe.

I caught up with and overtook “the blade” in the final three-quarters of a mile as we came off the gravel track and turned straight onto the Marina’s side.

Our support crew saw me coming and helped my closing kick, and I gave this amazing parathlete a tired but sincere and inspired “c’mon man, let’s finish strong” as I passed him.

I pushed myself into real pain for the final 90 seconds down the penultimate straight before rounding into the small grandstanded area flanked with the lines of international country flags.

• 10.45am — finished

Finishing is surreal — as those final minutes of pushing yourself into limits of joint and muscle pain ebb into just stopping…