For years an outfit known as Enviro-Sports has conducted what is has dubbed the Ultimate Escape Alcatraz Triathlon without incident.
"This is the 19th year they've had it," said Lawrence fitness guru Lynn Allen. "I figure if a lot of people had been eaten by sharks, they wouldn't still be doing it."
San Francisco Bay doesn't have sharks, of course, but it does contain treacherous currents -- as anyone who has ever seen a movie about the former Federal prison on Alcatraz Island knows -- and that means the swim portion of Saturday's event could be dicey.
"You take a ferry over to the island," Allen said, "then you jump off and swim back to the mainland. You don't swim straight back. It's a course in a big C because of the currents."
Allen and at least four others from Lawrence will participate in the Alcatraz Triathlon. It will be the first for Allen, a consultant for Heartland Fitness Inc. Last year she and several people from Lawrence ran from one rim of the Grand Canyon to the other and back.
Now she'll be participating in only her second triathlon since she was in college. Earlier this year, she finished the Topeka Tinman Triathlon.
"I used to do them years ago when they first started, but then I went on to other things," she said.
Now she has gravitated back to the grueling swim, bike and run event that has grown steadily in popularity during the 90s.
Allen has been training all summer with two Lawrence doctors -- Kevin Stuever and Carla Phipps; Jeff Sigler, a local pharmacist; and Chris Johnson, an associate professor of music and dance at Kansas University. All five will fly to San Francisco late this week.
The Alcatraz Triathlon features a 15-mile bicycle race through the historic Presidio district and a 10-mile run through Golden Gate National Recreation Area, but the 1.5-mile swim may be the most difficult leg.
Not only are the currents bad, the water is, as Allen noted, "awfully cold. It's a full wet suit swim."
Once the race is over, instead of collapsing in their hotel rooms, Allen and the other four participants from Lawrence will try to find a place where they can watch the Kansas-Colorado football game on television.
Allen's husband Terry is the Jayhawks' head coach.
"We have to finish early enough to see if we can find it on TV somewhere," Lynn Allen said. "I hope we can find a place."
The KU-Colorado game is an ABC regional contest and isn't scheduled to be shown in the San Francisco area. On the West Coast, the network will be telecasting the San Diego State-Southern Cal game, but the KU-CU contest might be available in a sports bar.
-- Chuck Woodling's phone message number is 832-7147. His e-mail address is cwoodling@ljworld.com.
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