They said, in plain English, that the opportunity to really register for Kona
would come thirty days after I'd paid my money, and only be open for 15
days. The worrisome part of all this was the timing. This process is
run by the World Triathlon Corporation, which has two main jobs:
license other triathlons for the Ironman World Championships, and put
on those championships on the 3rd Saturday of October, in Kailua-Kona,
on the Big Island of Hawaii. And, their headquarters, conveniently, are
right there in Kona. BUT, the third Saturday of October was smack dab
in the middle of that thirty day window. And, I would be in Maui at the
end of that window. I sensed trouble.
Armed with my holy number, "IM-0108", and the secret web site, I make
my first effort 4 weeks and two days after the Wisconsin race. Web page
does not exist, I'm told. Maybe it's a browser issue? I use a Mac, with
built in browser Safari. I
go to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, then to Mozilla, FIrefox, and
Netscape. All the same thing! Maybe it's a Mac issue? I try my PC at
work. I get in!
I navigate my way through a waiver, an age stipulation, and my
name and password for the registration site (different of course from
the secret Kona password). I easily find myself in a registration zone,
where you're supposed to call up my name on the list of people who had
qualified at Wisconsin, but all I see are a few stragglers from earlier
races, the UK and Monaco half Ironman.
OK, maybe I'm too early. Or, maybe they are just BUSY, what with the
Big Race this Saturday. I wait until after the race. On Monday,
Tuesday, the same routine. Now I'm getting worried, as I have to travel
to Maui, and I'm not sure I'll have internet access there. I call the
number on the precious paper, and get told, duh, everyone's busy, but
the sweet young thing who handles this will get back to me within a day.
She doesn't, so I write an email. Pronto she replies back that things have been busy, but the
site should work now.
But I'm off to Maui? I gnash my teeth the whole way there, more worried
about getting registered at Kona than my upcoming Xterra World
Championships, where I was 2nd last year, and hope to podium again.
But my condo does indeed have broadband access, so I plug in and try
again. This time, success! That is, Safari on my Mac works, and I
breezed through the initial entry portal, and find my name at long last
on the magic list.
I blithely go along filling in all the demographic data, humming
contentedly that I would soon be officially official for my date at the
pier on Oct 14, 7 AM.
I type in the secret code (see above), and get - "invalid password".
Hmm. Must have typed it wrong. Five tries later, I'm starting to steam.
I try all manner of options - spaces between the hyphen and the
letters, between the hyphen and the numbers, an upper case hyphen, no
hyhen, anything I can think of. This can't be happening to me!
They gave me an invalid password! But Paula Newby-Fraser herself handed
me this form, and other people I qualified with are disappearing from
the list, so their
passwords work. Why ME? It must be because I don't really deserve to go
there; this is a message from the gods of Kona to Stay Away.
I flash off another email, complaining of the whole process, but by now
it's Friday night, and I don't expect to hear back until Monday. I
fantasize that maybe I'll have to make an emergency flight to Kona to
straighten all this out, on Monday after the race but before I fly home.
Saturday morning, I go through the whole ritual again, trying every
permutation of the password I can think of, and trying all the
combinations in each of my four browsers. Nada. Then I peruse the list
of those still unregistered; when you register, it seems, your name
disappears from the list. I check the list against the qualifiers list
from IM Moo. Mainly those who were roll downs like me are still on the
list.
In a flash, I decide to try the numbers above and below me, thinking
there may have been some transposition of names and numbers when
converting from a paper to an electronic file. The first one I try,
IM-0107, works! Eureka! I cruise through the remainder of the
registration and get TWO actual confirmations back from Active.com.
Armed with this knowledge, I call up the WTC folks on Kona. I explain
the whole bizarre transposition, and ask for two assurances: (1) Am I really registered (seems
I am, as Active sent the confirmation to me, not the poor bloke
whose number I have), and (2) Will they check their files to make sure
that others are not caught in the same trap. She says they will, and
thanks me very much.
So, breathing much easier, I exit my condo, out into another glorious
Maui sunset. Ready to race once more up (and down) the rutted, rocky
slopes of Haleakala.