It was a
stressful week. The Gold Nugget
Triathlon’s main event took place on Tuesday night and women across the state were
feeling it.
“Akkk.
I'm freaking out,” one woman wrote on Facebook.
More
comments followed immediately.
“Nervous first
timer.”
“All I
can think about today!”
“I was
counting the minutes all day.”
Later,
someone posted, “I am stressing myself out.
I feel so anxious about 8 p.m. coming.
Never done anything like this – EVER!
And I want it so bad!”
Another
woman shared, “I woke up at 2am. Woke my
husband up asking ‘what time is it, what time is it?”
Someone added
a comment to that post, “I woke up at 4 a.m. in a panic that I had missed it. I can’t eat and I’m pacing and can’t get
anything done today.”
All this anxiety-ladened,
high stress chatter wasn’t about the race itself—it was about registration.
The Gold Nugget Triathlon is a women’s only sprint-length race that takes place in
Anchorage annually. It has grown in
popularity to such a degree that organizers have limited participation to
1500. Demand is so great to get one of
the slots that the on-line registration process has become a race in and of
itself.
As first
time triathletes, two of my sisters and I had prepped for registration. We’d received advice from past participants, so
we knew we needed to pay attention and we knew we needed not to underestimate
the competition. The website contained
all the information we needed: it told us that
at 8:00 p.m. sharp, a link would go live on the GNT’s homepage and from there
we’d key in our names, click “submit”, and then wait to receive a confirmation
email. Fine. No problem.
We made sure the date and time were on our calendars and booted up
multiple computers (thank you husbands).
My cell
phone reminder chimed at 8:00 p.m. on the dot.
My alarm buzzed an instant later.
I hit the refresh button on my laptop and immediately got back this horrible
error message “page could not be found.” My stomach lurched.
First
time jitters, I coached myself.
Refresh.
Refresh.
Refresh.
Still, no
GNT page.
I went to
Facebook and found this panicked post.
“What’s
happeningggg???”
I wasn’t
alone. I thought about my sisters. Were they having the same trouble? I didn’t want to text message them because
what if they were in the middle of successfully registering and I interrupted
them and they timed out and didn’t get in because of me?
“I’ll try
it on my computer.” Matt said from
across the room.
I kept
hitting the refresh key.
“Nothing.”
He said.
I stared
at my screen understanding that the GNT page had crashed.
I took a
deep breath, trying to calm my frazzled nerves.
At 8:02 p.m., I hit the refresh button again and, yes!, this time I got
the familiar banner – I was on! I
scrolled down the page, clicked the registration key and, incredibly, the registration page loaded for me. I carefully, carefully
typed my name and birthday, re-read it to ensure I hadn’t fat-fingered
anything. Then, quickly, clicked “submit”.
Immediately,
I texted my sister: “I got through…registered…you
need help?”
A flurry
of text messages and phone calls followed – we’d all gotten in. I opened Facebook to see what was going on
over there.
A woman
had just posted, “I should've had my heart rate monitor on -- geez! It was
agonizing watching that page try to load and then finally success, and all is
good.”
Another
entrant raved, “Everyone had a mini-heart attack!”
Expressing
what we were all feeling, a woman posted:
“Whew! The hardest part it over!”
Later,
someone penned this haiku as an ode to on-line registration and shared it on Facebook.
Gold Nugget Panic
Registration Open Call
Quick trigger finger
Registration Open Call
Quick trigger finger
At 9:43 p.m.,
Lia, the stalwart Facebook page monitor reported, “The first three minutes were
rough with overloading the server. Nonetheless, 1000 ladies registered in the
first 5 minutes and then we hit the 1500 mark at just over 16 minutes!!”
Now, we
can all get back to training for the real race:
swim 500 yards, cycle 12 miles, and run 4 miles come May 19.
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