Busselton 2004 Ironman Report
I came down as a novice student just to work as a volunteer on race day. Sounds pretty boring but it was inspirational! I hadn't done much of my massage training by that stage. I was struck by the triumph of the human spirit the Ironman encapsulates.
The weather was hot during the day. I drove down from Rockingham in the morning, attended the volunteers meeting, being briefed by the massage organiser, Katie Greenfields of Duchess St Physiotherapy, set up my table and watched the last couple of hours of the race. The inaugural Busselton Ironman was won by Australia's Jason Shortis. To show what short thrift the ladies get, who can remember who won the first race in the ladies category???
Activity was slow in the massage tent until around four pm and then got really busy. There was no daylight saving for the first three years of the Ironman. As soon as darkness fell, an hour earlier than in 2007 for example, the wind picked up and the temperature dropped dramatically, so the sweat soaked athletes started to suffer from hypothermia. The people working pre event in the massage tent that year had all finished their Diplomas of Remedial Massage from TAFE or the Perth Academy of Natural Therapy and didn't need to log any hours for volunteer work on the day and most left around 10. I was the only one left with the remarkable Katie Greenfields, massage organiser until midnight. Believe me, it is the athletes who arrive in the last hour that need the most looking after. Some have to covered in thermal blankets and other blankets and left for a while before you can give them a massage. For the last hour we move our massage tables into the first aid tent to make it more convenient regarding having to move the athletes.
Thoroughly exhausted, I went back to the camp on the edge of town where all the masseurs were staying and joined the party. The following night I attended the awards night. The masseurs were invited in after the dinner to watch the awards and join the party. I put on my tap dancing shoes and danced the night away before driving home the next day.
I had an exam with Barry Harwood the following day, which I promptly failed due to being on a natural high still from the Ironman. I did not attend the Ironman in 2005 because I had exams the following week and did not want to muck up again.
What the Ironman event did was give me an interest in sports massage. I had decided to retrain specifically with ache and pain relief in mind. My target group was baby boomers who at 50 might have developed aches and pains over their working lives, and who these days are likely to live until they are 80. So who is going to do all that work? As I have stuffed up financially, I need to work instead of retiring, so I thought that this would be the way to go having had my aches and pains relieved by remedial massage after I had spent thousands of dollars exhausting all other avenues, including the revered Martinovich in Fremantle, chiropractors, physiotherapists and acupuncturists.
In a later Sports massage course with Barry Harwood, a sprinter was a fellow student and brought in other sprinters from the Curtin University club to work on, and an Olympian also came in for a talk. This course also raised my interest in sports massage. While the course was still on, I attended the Wanneroo Gift, similar to the Stawell Gift, as the masseur for the Curtin University team.
The Wanneroo Gift
All day I gave the Curtin team warm ups and warm downs before and after each heat. One lady in the 500 metre event wasn't sure if she would race because of a knee problem. Using techniques just learned from Barry Harwood I did some work on the glutes and IT band rather than working on the knee itself and asked her to test it. A few minutes later she came back and said I don't know what you did but it worked and I'm going to race. She came third in the final, winning a couple of hundred dollars in the process.
In the final of the main event, the 120 metres, Curtin did the trifecta. Mistie, who had come several times to our course as a body, came third and won, I think, $250.
From this experience I concluded that I was not doing annything wrong and was probably helping the athletes, but you be the judge. Anyway, it again gave me an interest in sports massage.
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