Ben Collins

I’m finally cutting back on my training to prepare for my last race of the season, the San Francisco Pan-American Cup Triathlon At Treasure Island. (Why is it that races are getting longer and longer names? I mean, if this race were to receive a title sponsor, and if the tri-cal series had another title, this could conceivable become the K-Swiss ITU San Francisco Pan-America Cup Triathlon At Treasure Island Presented by Clif Bar.)

This week has been CRAZY. Two weeks ago I broke 50 miles of running in a week for the first time in my life, then I followed it up with two more weeks at even higher volume. For the first time in my life, I can actually say, I love running. Now I get to recover, before I go play in San Francisco in a week.

To help me play faster I have a new pair of kicks from K-Swiss. They’re the all new K-Swiss Kona racing flats, and I’m going to do a personal debut at the race on next week (Chris Lieto and Matt Lieto and Leanda Cave and a bunch of others already did their debut of the Konas at Kona three weeks ago.)

Above is a picture of how awesome they are (they also come with UK Flag, or silver and white.)

I really liked running in the L-Swiss Ultra-Naturals because they were super quiet. They’re a bit like running on clouds, but I’m excited to go back to a traditional racing flat. Here’s what I discovered with my size 10’s:

This is a picture of my new K-Swiss Kona racing flat on the left, and my old Brooks Racer ST on the right. At 270g, the Kona is 5g lighter than the Racer ST, but unlike the Brooks, the Kona has a medial posting for added stability. The Racer ST also comes in a posted stability version, but the one shown is the neutral. I’m not sure what the weight difference is between regular laces and the quickie laces I put on the Brookes, but I’m assuming it’s negligible.

Right now I’m just wearing the Kona Racing Flats around the house to get used to them, but they fit really well, and I can’t feel any seems on the inside that worry me with regards to blistering.

With the Racer ST’s, I had ritual before races that I would go through. It involved putting liquid Band-Aid on every part of my foot that would hit a seem in my racing flats, waiting for that to dry, then wrapping my foot and each individual toe in paper tape. If I was lucky, half the paper tape would still be on when I made it to the run. I may have weird feet, I don’t really know. The Racer ST’s are great shoes, but with only my in-house wear testing of the K-Swiss Kona’s I’m fairly certain that these will be better from a blister standpoint.

I have a bunch more to blog about from the past week, so I’m going to start typing now and just set everything to publish one day apart for the next week. Stay tuned for some classic bencollins.org awesomeness.

Today is one the better holidays of the year. I had a Halloween spin class, and a bunch of people dressed up. Carrie took a picture, but I am not being allowed to publish the picture, and as an instructor I’m not allowed to photograph my own class (instructor’s handbook says so). Bummer.

[Left is what I walked into my bathroom to find a few days ago. This is my mom’s idea of a practical joke.]

Today is also the last day for everyone to sign up for the Pac-10 Fitness Challenge. University of Washington is losing by a shit-ton (Thanks to Kevin Collington for that wonderful phrase), despite the fact that Aaron and I have been slaving away from 4-7pm each night this week trying to get people to sign up. If you like UW, go to the link above, register, and log all your training hours for the week. If it was more than about 500,000 hours, we might catch up to Washington State University.

[That’s Carrie Wigton (my boss) to the left handing out K-Swiss hats and energy drinks to people as they sign up. “Do you know what the Pac-10 Fitness Challenge is? If you sign up we give you free stuff!]

[Here’s one girl registering for the Pac-10 Fitness Challenge on my computer. Isn’t my laptop cool?] 

Ok, all these photos don’t make up for the lack of seeing my spin class dressed in costumes, so I’m reposting a video that I made last spring. I have yet to come up with a good sequel, but with the season ending I made soon be forced to use my creative mind for something even more dorky.

This may still be a lame alternative to posting a picture of my spin class, so imagine this:

Me, dressed up as Sarah Palin: a red power suit, a (very) short black skirt, a dark wig that I tried to style into something like a bun (but it fell apart in my bag on the way to the gym), and my sister’s white tank top underneath (She’s 60 lbs lighter and 6 inches shorter than me).

One person showed up to class and thought he was in the wrong place.

The costumes that showed up to class were:

• a cat (ears and a tail). This was probably the most spin-friendly costume.
• A Baker Woman (long blue with white poka dots dress and an apron that said, “What can I bake for you?” – this costume may also be titled “Ben’s Dream Woman”)
• Sheriff Girl (braids and a sheriff hat.)
• a retired roller derby girl (basically just a roller derby t-shirt)
• a tiger mask (a half-face orange mask)
• Carrie as a football player (she only wore the padded pants and an athletic shirt and gloves – no jersey or helmet)

and the winner of the “Ben Collins’ favorite costume in his spin class” award:

• The Prom Queen. She wore her gigantic dress all the way through class, then ripped it off in true prom queen style.

I gave away K-Swiss hats and visors and Clif Bars to everyone that wore a costume. I’m also giving away another prize: The, “Ben Collins’ Favorite Spin Instructor Ever Award”.

It goes to me.

Here’s my playlist that I got Courtenay to help me with for WAY too long:

1. Your Ghost – Kristen Hersh (I played this before class even started)
2. Insomnia – The Cruxshadows (Creepy goth music while people continued to come in)
3. Walking with a Ghost – Tegan & Sara (Upbeat warmup song)
4. Aisha – Death in Vegas (Iggy Pop on vocals. This song is about a murderer and it creeps me out the same way the TV show Dexter creeps me out.)
5. Ghostbusters Theme – Ray Parker Jr. (no explanation needed)
6. Tomb – Wumpscut (Another creepy goth song, but upbeat enough for the first hard interval)
7. Werewolves in London – Warren Zevon (Another classic)
8. Phantom of the Opera Theme (I love that song)
9. Heart of the Party – Severed Heads (creepy)
10. Toxic (Armand Van Helden Remix) – Britney Spears (10 min techno version for a long interval)
11. Dead Man’s Party – Oingo Boingo
12. Thriller – Michael Jackson (Last interval – give me everything you’re got!!)
13. Friday the 13th Theme
14. Purple People Eater
15. Organ Donor – DJ Shadow

I think the class was a huge success. And I was able to play less crappy pop music with the excuse of it being Halloween. That made me happy, and nobody seemed to mind. Tuesday I get to go back to the 60 minute Christina and Britney slut off that seems to win everyone over. Actually I had a request for an 80’s day, so I may have everyone dress up in 80’s workout clothing and give out more stuff.

.

I picked up a copy of MixMeister Studio, a music mixing program that will allow me to make some sweet mixes for my spin class. If they don’t love me yet, they totally will.

Now, my next project is to plan the perfect Halloween workout (for October 30th). I need some suggestions for Halloween music. See, I really hate the monster mash, but right now I’m short on ideas and it has made its way into my play list. Here’s what I have so far:

1. Werewolf in London
2. Thriller (a Halloween song list without thriller is like trick or treating without candy)
3. Dead Man’s Party
4. Spooky
5. Friday the 13th theme
6. Ghostbusters theme

I need twice this many songs! And they all have to be fun to ride a bicycle to! And I still need to get my costume put together!!! I have so little time!

These are the Best Friends 4 Ever! (BF4 – only there are five of us) the 2008 Champion Team from the UW Intramural Swim Meet.

Top from left: Brian Davis, Kurt Hardesty

Bottom from left: Maryann B, Ben Collins, Marijana Surkovic

We won the meet with only five people, which is awesome because I was told that it would be nearly impossible without a full roster of 14 people. Fortunately we won all but three events (I lost the 50 fly, Brian lost the 50 breast and Maryann lost something, i don’t really remember, but it doesn’t matter.)

The prize was free t-shirts!

On the back it says: Intramural 2008-2009 CHAMPION!!

This is Carrie (my boss)

and me…

I’m so happy right now…

I’ve been so busy the past week. it’s getting really hard to find time to sit and write a blog, but I’ll do some bullets of the awesome things that have happened that I will have to write more about later.

• The Rocket Ride – Herriott Sports Performance started a new group ride that managed to kick my butt. After dealing with a knee injury for 6 weeks, this was my first true test of my fitness. The results? I got Dropped, caught up at a pee break, stayed with a couple attacks, got dropped, took a shortcut, caught back on, got dropped, regrouped with the chase pack at a stoplight, got dropped again, then skipped coffee to go run at the track. In other words, I have some work to do.
• The IMA pool had the lane lines in the right direction for the weekend, which made me quite  happy. Then Today, with the lane lines back to screwy perpendicular, I dropped an orange cone in the deep end for Aaron Scheidies and that made him happy. I’m convinced the pool is a foot too long, however, because I have yet to be even close to the same times when the lanes are switched.
• Carrie (my boss at University of Washington’s IMA) made a bunch of cds for me filled with music for spin classes. She titled all of them “Ben has no good music for spin class”. Have I mentioned how awesome she is?
• I ran over 50 miles last week, and will do more this week, and almost every additional mile I do this week will be a fast mile. So if I end up doing 55 miles this week, it will be 5 more fast miles than I ran last week. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet that 55 miles is not that much.  When will I be as confident running as I am swimming?
• The fall leaves are in full colorific display in Seattle. It makes my runs awesome.

It’s 8:15pm. I’m going to bed.

Thursday I had a head to head collision with another swimmer. we were both fine, but it hurt a lot. The girl I ran into said she was fine. It was just a confusion about where we should be in the lane. It was the same no-line-on-bottom double wide lane that made me so angry the previous three days. The girl was swimming into the far right corner of the lane then turning around and swimming at a 45 degree angle to the other side of the lane. This was her best guess as to how she should maneuver in the lane. My best guess is to flip near the center of the lane and swim in a football shape. If I’m passing somebody I go in a smaller width football, and if I’m being passed I would swim closer to the lane lines. Unfortunately, our two methods conflicted when she didn’t see me swimming to the center of the lane to flip, pushed off, and we collided.  I moaned and rubbed my aching head for a few minutes, then floated on my back, moaned some more, talked to the girl (who was really sorry, and actually a very good swimmer – beautiful technique), and then went to the lifeguard office to fill out an incident report.

There is still not an orange cone on the bottom of the pool for Aaron to use in order to see the wall.

Last year I posted my friend Peggy McDowell-Cramer’s race report from Kona. I was pretty sure last year that nobody could every do more ironman races than she had done (without being completely insane like Chet the Jet), but this year she did another full Ironman in New Zealand, and went to Vancouver for the Age Group World Championships (where she didn’t even say hello to me because she had to get to wedding in LA the same afternoon), and still had the energy to finish of her season with her 13th Ironman, and 8th time racing in Kona. She’s 67.

Let that soak in for a minute.

…[Left is Peggy in the Team US outfit. I took the picture off Slowtwitch]

Here’s her race report (Click here for the finish video at 16 hours 56 minutes 27 seconds):

  a pretty hard day, that’s for sure.       it was very satisfying to finish it, before the cutoff, and, of course, stop running.    we had adverse environmental conditions in two-thirds of the race, and that tends to take its toll.
    the swim started out just fine, but the water felt different at a couple of points—just harder to swim—so i gathered we were in some swell action.  i had that confirmed when i got out and saw the time, which was seven minutes slower than last year.  i did have a very quick transition (bike clothes are under the speed suit for swimming), so i still felt hopeful starting the bike.  the small spur of road that starts the bike portion is lined with people yelling …much akin to the finish chute…and it tends to be an encouragement no matter how fast or slow one is.
  the first part of the bike went well enough, and continued to do so until out on the queen K highway a stretch, when we were hit with a pretty strong headwind.  this made up for the past few years which had relatively mild conditions.  it was normally hot (in the mid-80s):  i dont’ think i’m a very good judge of temperatures in the heat of battle.  i take a bottle of water at each aid station and squirt it through the vents in my helmet; and even if i don’t feel like i need it, it always makes me feel much better.   
     the wind factor is slowing and annoying when it’s in my face/head-on,  but that’s less harrowing than the last 18 miles to the turn-around (and back).  good thing i reminded myself of it the week
before.  it was windy. i asked about the velocity afterward and heard one report of mid-30s.  i think that was a low-ball estimate.  it’s wearing, as i’m nervous i’ll lose control and go over, of course, so
it’s a real tension producer for that stretch.  i was thrilled to get out of it.  i was hoping that the headwind we had would be a wonderful tailwind the last 30+ miles, but that didn’t pan out, either.  it was more of a side wind, and that left things at the usual place: do what you can.  all in all, i’m a stronger biker than last year, so was still pretty pleased with my time.
    the end of the bike is a valet service affair, so all one needs to do is get off and start running into the transition area.  i’m already out and on top of my shoes, then swing my right leg up and over the saddle as i’m braking to the dismount line, then put that foot down and start running, letting go of my bike.  and the bike catcher does whatever he’s supposed to do—i don’t look.  but as all of this transpired, some woman volunteer there apparently thought something was amiss, or that i was in trouble or whatever….she called out something to the effect that i shouldn’t worry.  ?????  i told her i wasn’t worried.
   the transition tent has volunteers and i always ask for a helper as soon as i enter the tent.   that went well.  then i take the bag in my hand (gotten from the rack, by #), empty it at my feet, and tell the helper what i want, in what order.  she wasn’t particularly fast or adroit, as she got each thing somewhat wrong, but as i was taking off my bike shirt and accepting my run shirt, my left hamstring went into a take-this! cramp.  as i was moving this way and that, trying to find just how it would be stretched out and quit, an abdominal started to cramp.  this disrupted our conversation a good deal, but engaged a massage volunteer who offered to massage my hamstring.  i thought i was better off moving forward, one way or the next, so declined, got my shirt on, got my shorts on, sat down, greased my toes, socks and shoes on, and made a hasty exit.
   the run start was pretty good, as things go, and i saw many friends racing and spectating/cheering, so it was a fairly upbeat time.  we do a little over five miles out alii drive, which is usually one big sauna, and it wasn’t as bad this year.  there are structures on both sides of most of the road, even though the ocean is one of the sides, and there are a lot of trees, so it’s extremely humid.   i still douse myself with water at each mile/aid station.  i used ice more this year, to undetermined effect.  i put some down my front a few times. held some in each hand sometimes, and used a big hunk to ice my face here and there.  it’s still hot.  it’s still a real slog.
    i was, as aforementioned, better on the bike this year, but my run completely fell apart and was a sorry shuffle.  or worse.  i’m tempted, on this monday after the saturday race, to say it was an
embarrassment.  however, it’s the IM, anything can happen, and it’s all good if you’re still moving forward on your own steam, and hit the line before midnight.  and i did.  but it was pretty close.
   the finish line on alii drive is wild, and this year was more electric and overwhelming than ever before.  announcer mike reilly said the same last night at the awards banquet.  actually, he said that before running a film clip of late night finishers, which had several seconds of my own happy arrival.  i sort of get teary and gooey just thinking about it, so suffice it to say that it was overwhelming.  when i stopped i had mike on my left and two photographers in front of me.  then i hugged mike, and immediately got grabbed by three other friends, before being taken by my catchers.  and then i needed them because i was very unstable.  after going forward for so long, any side to side movements are very unsteady, and i’m reduced to a stagger without leaning on my catchers.  but they are there for that purpose, take you to get your finisher’s shirt and medal, give you water, see if you’ll eat pizza or cake, and help you go up the two steps to have your finisher’s picture taken.  as for the cake, i saw that and told them, flat out, that it looked simply disgusting.  after more than 17 hours of ingesting only things ending in   ose  i was pretty repelled by the thought of sugar anything. 
    an l.a. tri club couple met me at the finish line, too, and they very nicely helped me get my bike and walked the blocks over to my condo with me, and—here’s the great part—carried my bike up to my third floor unit.  i was wondering how i was going to feel doing that, and ..god lives and intervenes in human affairs…i didn’t have to do it.  then i got clean.  ate a little protein.  and got out flat.
    sunday started just fine, with a great time at church, then seeing friends, packing, etc.  a bunch of us got to the dinner line early (so we wouldn’t be part of the radio ministry/actually could see something), so that was a very good time to see more people and socialize. 
     ironman puts on some entertainment, film clips, as mentioned, and winds up with the awards, age groupers first.  as this started it began to sprinkle.  and then rain.  and then the theatrics started.  a complete mess and scene ensued.  some of us got under the tables, many headed for the small space under a couple of canopies over the food serving area and, naturally, didn’t all fit.  there was a strip under the tables that was dry, which is where i sat, but with the downpour that became a lake, so my long dress was all wet in the back.  i and others came out when the rain abated somewhat, and held folding chairs over our heads.  this might look odd for a person to do, but there was a sea of wet souls doing it, and it looked like something from a comedy movie.  at last it was time for our age group to go up, waiting to go on stage for awards, so the chair was out and we just stood in the rain.  this year each of the five award winners in each AG got a braided lei, a umeke bowl with the appropriately engraved brass plate on it, a ti leaf lei inside it, and a watch.  when we walked off stage my friend and i turned our bowls upside down and found they’d been almost a quarter full of rain.     from there we watched the pro women get their awards (hasty), and the poor men didn’t even get that much since the sound system had now gone out.  it was over, we splashed the two blocks to the condo, stripped, put on a beach towel, and wrung out lots and lots of water before putting the clothes in the dryer. 
   so, a wet, but quite good end to a wonderful finish line end of a very tough race.  just living that finish and having that throng of people simply wishing me well and enjoying the end with me is huge. maybe more than that.
peggy

Thank you Peggy.

Here’s what I did Tuesday. It was way better than my crappy Monday.

I had oatmeal and caught a bus to University of Washington (Left is the IMA).

I swam with Aaron in the IMA pool, which is managed by idiots, and which is currently set up in such a way that accidents are imminent. Luckily they haven’t had any major incidents yet, but it’s bound to happen.

Aaron could see the wall because there are no black lines on the bottom and wall is completely white, so he got out to ask if he could put an orange cone on the bottom of the pool. It was such a reasonable request, that I would have probably just done it without asking. There was even an orange cone sitting on the side of the pool for no apparent reason. Aaron’s more diplomatic than me, however, and he went to the office to ask while I continued to warm up. After I had done about 300 yards waiting for Aaron to get back with his cone I gave up and went to see what was taking so long.

The pool manager was responding with all the rehearsed bureaucratic lines he knew (I think his knowledge in this field far surpasses his knowledge in anything else related to his job).

“Well, I’ll have to ask Maintenance about the cone, but in the mean time you’ll just have to be careful.” “We’ve been swimming like this since the 60’s and nobody’s been hurt” (yeah right). “This setup was good enough for the good will games.” (The good will games were held next door in the Pavilion Pool where the varsity team trains and races. That pool is also quite small, but it has stands and six lanes.) “We’ve always done it like this.” (actually, they’ve always swam double lanes in the same direction as the six black lines on the bottom of the pool – a setup that is already lacking in intelligence – but the double lanes with crooked lane lines going perpendicular-ish to the black lines is definitely new.)

The manager then tried to explain to Aaron that the IMA is a place for inexperienced swimmers to “recreate” and not for athletes to train. “Just imagine a single lane with somebody doing side stroke while you swim over the top of them – that’s sure to cause collisions”. (I’m going to skip the obvious improbability of a side stroke swimmer being in the fast lane while there are actually fast swimmers)

Aaron started to say something to the effect of “At least with single lanes people can stay near the lane line and each lane will be half as crowded.” But I cut him off and said, “No Aaron, he’s right. The public pools in America are simply asking for law suits because they all seem to think that single lanes are safer. It actually turns out that the UW is the among less than a percent of pools that have figured it out and play it safe with double wides.” The pool manager completely missed my sarcasm and seemed for a split second to be happy somebody was on his side for a change, so I explained that I was being both condescending and sarcastic (I admit this is not the best way to start a discussion), and that my point was that straying from the norm is not safer, it confuses people not used to that particular pool, makes the lanes more crowded, and provides fewer options for swimmers of various ability levels.

That’s when he told me to talk to some other Idiot Manager Guy (IMG), who I told that the double lanes were not my main concern, that it was the perpendicular to normal flow that I thought was most dangerous, and furthermore, if they were going to change the lane lines, they could at least make them straight (one of the lane lines goes about 4 feet diagonally, so the two lanes it separates both go from 8 ft at one end to 12 ft at the other).

“Just change the lane lines back to normal when classes aren’t being held”

“That would be a great deal of work”

“It would take five minutes”

“No actually…”

“No really, I could do it by myself in five minutes, do you have a watch?”

“This is ridiculous”

“No, this is the most dangerous pool setup I have ever witnessed and you are just asking for somebody to get hurt.”

“Leave. Don’t swim here. If you don’t think it’s safe, then you can leave.”

“I’m not leaving, I’m just giving you warning so that you have the opportunity to change something before somebody gets hurt, whether that’s me or somebody else, if it happens it falls on you.”

“No, it won’t be my fault if you choose to stay here”

“It kinda is your responsibility to maintain a safe environment”

He then got frustrated and decided to show his authority to somebody else. He turned to Carrie, who was on the deck showing an aquatic instructor something important.

IMG: “You need to get off the pool deck with you street clothes.”

Carrie: “She’s with me, I’m showing her something”

IMG: “Carrie, will you please escort this woman off the pool deck”

Carrie: “Why?”

IMG: (I’m paraphrasing here because I don’t remember how the rest went and I decided to get in the water anyway.) “Because I can’t seem to win any arguments today and I want to feel powerful and less like the idiot that I am.”

Aaron never did get his orange cone, and he continued to miss walls for the next 3000 yards before we got out.

He went to have some cute sorority girl read to him while I ran, taught a spin class (it went well, I had to tell stories because apparently I wasn’t talking enough. Hopefully they don’t find out about this blog and I can just repeat stories that I write.), then I ran again, then I went to PT, then I ate a GIGANTIC burrito and then I did a Yoga class and went home. It was an awesome day.

Oh yeah, and I learned nothing from my lesson in diplomacy. I’m still swimming at the IMA and still colliding with people who are swimming at various degrees of not-straight which are different from my own.

Here are some things that made my day get continually worse after getting out of bed this morning (that was a huge mistake).

1. I accidentally poured about a 1/4 of a bottle of hot sauce on my breakfast burrito because I’m used to the bottles with the drip top and this one didn’t have that little drip hole so when I turned the bottle over it just came pouring out. I admit that this was my fault, but my belly still hurts from eating so much hot sauce.
2. I sat next to a woman from LA that only wanted to talk about how rainy Seattle is and how she comes here for business several times a year and “it just rains every time I come here” and she thinks that makes people in Seattle grumpy. WE’RE NOT GRUMPY, WE JUST HATE LA!!!
3. When I finally got to the IMA (intramural athletics building at UW) I found that the pool, which is an L shape, was set up perpendicular to the normal direction, so rather than swimming laps on the shallow side, we swam from the shallow side to the deep end, and the lanes were set up double wide, with no lines of the bottom of the pool,  and no backstroke flags. Basically the facilities manager of University of Washington’s IMA is an idiot. This is the most dangerous swimming pool conditions I have ever swam in. People were swimming in diagonals, hitting each other, ramming into the wall because there’s no T on the bottom to gauge by… It was awful. And tomorrow I’m supposed to do a workout with Aaron Scheidies, who can barely see, and who uses the black line to know if he’s going straight and the T for his turns because he can’t see the wall.
4. Plus the clock is not positioned for the lanes like this, so I have to bring a wrist watch if I want to know my intervals. They said they would keep the pool like this until the other campus pool (where they give swim lessons) opens again. Until then they say they need the shallow end to be open. HELLO! IDIOTS, you will have more injuries from lap swimmers running into each other than from swim lessons learning to use deep end!  I’ve taught beginners in water over their heads, and it’s not that hard. AAAH this was by far the worse part of my day.

   After that I went and ranted to my new boss, Carrie, who really only cares that I have a song list together for my spin class tomorrow. (Maybe I should be doing that instead of ranting on my blog.) Ok, then I ran and got ice and then saw two people I knew while I was trying to get to a bus stop to get to class, and

5. one was Brian (who was dressed exactly like he is in the picture to the right) and he had the nerve to tell me I looked like someone from a bad 80’s movie (See the picture of me above), but I kind of like my new K-Swiss sweatshirt. Even Courtenay complemented it, and she’s always the fashion critic. When I finally got to the bus stop to catch the 852 bus (which I had never heard of)

6. it turned out that the Metro Trip Planner was WRONG about the bus stop and that bus didn’t actually come there. But then the bus that goes to my house came, so I hopped on it thinking I might have time to get home and borrow a car and get to class.
7. But Seattle rush hour (despite what the LA woman said this morning) SUCKS, so I didn’t get home in time and when I did
8. there was a downpour of rain (I still hate the LA woman) and I was soaked and
9. hadn’t eaten anything all day, and was
10. too late for it to make sense to go to class, so I was
11. GRUMPY! REALLY GRUMPY!!

(See, most lists go to ten, but mine goes to eleven.)

Saturday was the Ironman World Championships, which is the one day of the year where I don’t have to pretend to care about ironman, and will actually sit and watch the coverage, by choice, and with enthusiasm. The Kona Ironman is is inspiring. I almost raced it in 2006, but (luckily) I broke my wrist and collar bone about a month before the race. So instead, I went with my friends on the UH Triathlon Team and volunteered for water patrol, then stuck around and watched a bunch more of my friends finish the race.

One of those friends was Neil Samson, who finished in a little over 11 hours. At the time, friends were still allowed to run over the finish line with competitors. When Neil finished, we followed him across and handed him a beer. Well, we tried anyway. Check out this finish video, it’s kind of funny (don’t worry, we run across within the first 10 seconds of the video).

It seems pointless to give any more recap of this years race from my point of view. Everyone already knows that Craig Alexander kicked ass, and the awesome cyclists all blew up in the heat. Potts came in 8th and top American after racing in Dallas last week at the US Open. That’s probably the most impressive part of the race to me. Of my Hawaii friends I saw that Rachel Ross had a good race, but I was hoping she would be the top amateur and she was fourth.