Atlantic Cit-Dee, Dee Three

Usually I wake up Sun-Dee mornings and open my chosen device (phone or tablet) to see what nice comment Ms. Dee-ism has written about my latest post. However, given I was up earlier than her, both with my early race start AND being an hour earlier on the East  Coast, I’d just have to do without.

Despite the three plus hours of toil the morning before, I woke up feeling pretty decent. My athletic “superpower” is that I may not have a lot of fast twitch muscles but have a boatload of slow twitch muscles. I tend to recover pretty quickly from either workouts or races. I’m also lucky that I haven’t done much damage to my body and I still have all my original equipment. I attribute part of that to sucking at tackle football when I was young, so I didn’t do any damage to my bones or joints. 

I arrived at the transition area finding all my gear strewn as I left it the day before, prior to starting off on the run leg of yesterday’s race (I made the decision the day before not to go back to the starting area and clean up my gear). I figured my goggles, helmet, bike shoes,etc.–and bike–would be there, and they were. I organized my gear and cleared out of the transition area by the 6:20 AM deadline. Often with big races the process is to get there early and then wait, wait, wait.

I found a place to sit and wait, and went to work drafting a blog post, a Sun-Dee task for a future Sun-Dee morning. Then I realized I was still wearing my eyeglasses: I had forgotten to leave my glasses in the transition area. Fortunately, my spot in the transition area was relatively close to the entrance, and I asked a race official to place my eyeglasses in my bike helmet. He graciously did so. Crisis averted. 

All in all the race went pretty well. I finished once again about 50th out of about 70 in my age group, in a reasonable time for me. Again, my swim and my bike were pretty decent, but I got a bit tired in the run, even though it was only a 5K instead of the 10K the day before. After the race, I figured about half of the guys in the group did both races, which I take as an accomplishment in itself. I have enough races (did five, need a minimum of three) to get a national ranking, and hope by year end to be in the top 250 in the country in my age group, but we’ll see. All told, for my five 2024 races, all fairly consistent results.

I gathered some post-race snacks and drinks and headed back to my hotel to shower, and then collect my bike and gear from the transition area before they started taking everything down. While walking through the casino to my hotel room an energetic young 73 year old cocktail waitress in a cute pink form fitting dress spotted me and asked me if I had been doing the race. I answered that I had and we chatted for a bit. She was impressed and in turn I told her I liked her dress. I then said I’d like a dress like that–and proceeded to show her pictures of me in my gold and black dress I wore the night before. She called another cocktail waitress and they compared notes on my picture. The co-worker said I need bangs in my wig, because it makes you look younger. All in all, an interesting conversation, and one I would have never imagined a few years ago. 

I showered, changed into clean and dry clothes, and took the shuttle back to the transition area. I loaded my gear into my backpack, hopped on my bike, and leisurely rode back to the hotel along the boardwalk.  My two choices for the afternoon were to put on another bathing suit and hit the beach again, or go visit a local mall. The mall won the coin flip in my head and I donned a cute summer dress with daisies and headed out. I had a new accessory; a crossbody bag that was a promotional item at a St. Louis Cardinals game. My friend Ms. Dee-ism went to the game with her husband, and my new crossbody bag was the one the husband received when entering (while she knows about Dee, her husband, whom I’ve known for almost fifty years, doesn’t). I get a bit of special joy from having something that a longtime friend received, but he has no idea that it’s mine now. I did walk through the casino looking for the cocktail waitresses I had met earlier, but I didn’t see them, so I headed to my rental car in the parking garage.

The mall had a Macy’s, but like many malls these days, it was pretty much a ghost town, and it was also nearing the Sun-Dee closing time of 6 PM. I made my normal bee line to the “last act” section, where Macy’s stashes all their markdown items. These days my temptations are dresses targeting women much younger than me, like homecoming and prom dresses. I found a couple to try on that fit me (I am not a size zero), and found one winner, a blue ruched dress that I loved the look and feel–and the $20 price.

After buying the dress, I drove back to the hotel, changed into another cute summer dress, and walked multiple blocks down the boardwalk to a Hooter’s located along the boardwalk. I have found the young (and predominantly female) staffers at restaurants like Hooter’s are CD friendly–and they are a sports bar, and I like watching sports no matter my outer presentation. I ate my dinner, watched the games on the multiple TVs, and putzed on my tablet–and following dinner, headed back to the casino in my hotel. I took a few more pictures, played a few hands of video poker, and then called it a night and a weekend, to pack and get ready for a Mon-Dee trip to a new location–which you will read about next Sun-Dee.