A Night with the Pros

It isn't every night that you get to meet the 2x Ironman World Champion. It is even rarer that you get to take him to a bar and have beers. Tuesday night, I had the opportunity to do both.

As part of their new push to become more community oriented, all3sports, hosted a fundraiser for the Tri-Kids program. The group works in conjunction with the East Atlanta Kids Club to provide triathlon opportunities to 7-12 year olds who reside in inner city Atlanta.

To help the profile of the event, all3sports enlisted the help of a few professional athletes. In addition to their outreach efforts this year, all3sports has ramped up its sponsorship opportunities and snagged a couple of the highest profile athletes in the sport. Joining the event was Craig Alexander, the Kona winner the past two years and 70.3 series winner prior to that, Mirinda "Rinny" Carfrae, 2nd place Kona last year and women's marathon record holder in the event, and Heather Gollnick, 5x Ironman winner and race director of the Rev3 series. Needless to say the event was stacked.

The program was billed as a group run, q&a session and dinner. And it lived up to the hype. The group of attendees were split into three groups and went running through Piedmont Park with one of the pros. I was selected to run with Heather and had the task of trying to navigate the hyper woman through the running paths of the park. While it was supposed to be an easy run, it was amazing to see what tremendous shape these athletes were in. Craig and Rinny were both coming off 70.3 victories the previous weekend. Their easy running...was at 8:15-8:30 pace. I kept trying to slow Heather down because we were dropping our group. Rumor has it that Craig didn't even break a sweat in the Atlanta heat despite wearing a long sleeve shirt. (rolls eyes)

Afterwards, the pros gathered at the venue and answered audience questions for about 45 minutes. Fortunately the topics were light and ranged from training to diet to their backgrounds. The tri-kids were also able to ask a number of questions to learn what the pros were like as kids. Then we ate. The pros made themselves completely available to everyone there. They were gracious enough to talk triathlon all night and take as many pictures as needed.

The best part of the night is that after the event the pros were persuaded to join about 10-12 of us at the local watering hole for a few more hours. A couple of drinks later and the conversation became really candid about the sport. They were free to talk about things they wouldn't otherwise say on the record. Better yet, it showed exactly how human they were as they discussed the struggles of a pro athlete, how to balance the travel with their family needs, in sport competition and just cut up with everyone. They are human after all!!!