"Ladies and gentlemen, you are about to witness one of the greatest spectacles in all of sport!" These are the muddled words I hear over the loudspeaker while standing on the beach with 2100 other athletes minutes before the start of Ironman Coeur d'Alene (IMCDA) 2008.  And I kind of seize on that word "spectacle", because spectacles are great for the person watching.  They're not always so great for the people in said spectacle.  Oh well, let's get on with this thing. Just like at Ironman Canada last year, there was no real warning for the athletes.  At some point the...

I'll write more later when I've got more time and energy.  I figure most of you reading this saw the results from Sunday, I'm 10 minutes closer and that's nothing to sneeze at.  But just a quick thought that came across when I was writing to another friend about the race... This race seemed much harder than my first two.  I think part of it is because the "Wow!" factor wears off and you're out there trying to compete for minutes and seconds against very capable competition.  Because you're actually racing - against yourself and your limits and your fellow athletes...

What a difference a week makes.  When the long-range forecasts started reaching this weekend, things looked bad.  Cloudy and showers.  I wasn't so concerned with the weather on race day.  I train in crappy weather most of the time anyway, but I did want it to be nice for hanging out and relaxing during race week.  Given this area hasn't had more than two consecutive days of nice weather since early May, I didn't have my hopes up.  Fortunately, the forecasts were wrong.  Today it's sunny and mid-70s.  Shazam. So here's how Ironman week usually goes.  You show...

Confession.  I consider quitting Ironman at least two or three times a week, sometimes more.  Almost all of that consideration occurs between 5:45 and 6:00 in the morning.  I've embraced the fact that I have very little capacity for positive self-talk in those first 10 minutes or so of the morning.  We all have our personal prioritization around basic needs: sleeping, eating, resting, getting our groove on, etc.  And if there's one thing for certain, it's that as I get older, sleep gets higher and higher on that list. Early in the morning, particularly with my habit of staying...

It was cloudy, rainy, cool, and generally shitty today again here in the Northwest.  Seattle isn't known for it's great weather, but many of us put up with months and months on end of dreary drizzle for the incredible summers we, uh, sometimes have here.  Except we didn't really get one last year, then had an especially cold and wet winter, snow in April, and mid-50s and raining since then.  I counted 5 days over 70 so far this year, and 4 of those came in a chunk.   Normally the good weather doesn't really break until July 5th, but this...