St Anthonys weekend

I drove from NC to Orlando yesterday in order to spend the evening and morning with my 9-months pregnant sister, her hubbie, and their adorable 2.5 year old daughter, to whom I am known as Da Godfather. We had a rocking time telling stories about financial armegeddon, the curiosity of what sex their new baby will turn out to be (they have opted to be surprised), and other myriad topics. Today my mother (Nanna to the little one), Cate and I played in the backyard pool for close to an hour and talked about bugs, and where bugs come from, and swimming, and why splashing is so fun.

After that I hit the road to St Pete.

It is a good time to race St Anthonys; the race is sort of gigantic but I exercise caution on the roads and enjoy seeing a lot of friends we've gotten to know over the years here. Ten years ago I placed 3rd overall in the amateur race to future pro Brian Fleischmann and Jacksonville legend Dan Domingo. Nine years ago I placed 2nd to Dan in a 1 hour 57 minute battle that came down to a 15 second kick in the last half mile, and in 2003 I took 5th overall to a handful of future pros and amateur world champions. With the level of competition these days among the amateur elite the opportunity to repeat that sort of race is slim, unless I quit my day job (ha ha) and train 2x the amount I am doing now (which I'm not interested in).

However I am looking forward to one of my last big battles royale in the M35-39 category, as many of us are in our second decade of racing against each other, and the shit talk knows no end. I am hoping to come near the 2:00 flat mark with something like a 19 / 1:00 / 40 + transitions.

It is hard to believe that next year I will be moving onward to the first official old guy category - I think I may qualify for movie ticket discounts and get a seat at the front of the bus as well.

If you read Bri's blog you know that our good friend Wendy Johnson of St Pete passed away this week after a battle with melanoma. Wendy changed my life permanently and for the better by putting me in touch with my future wife and your favorite blogger Bri. I will hope to see Wendy again in whatever life may wait us after this one and thank her again for her kindness. She and her husband Al were at our wedding and we were able to thank her properly. My thoughts are with her and Al in this time of grief.

Poop. No swim. St Anthonys first annual duathlon.

The big cheezes at St Anthonys Triathlon decided to cancel the swim this morning.  The water was pretty choppy and they were having trouble launching the kayak safety patrol.  In the old days they would have put a couple people on surfboards and had at it.  But that was when there were only 1,500 competitors and there was no purple menace.  After having a fatality during the swim a couple years ago, they are rightly erring on the side of caution.   With 4,000 competitors, probably 20% of whom are barely able to complete a 1,500 in the pool, it was a good decision.

That being said, what a bummer.  I was looking forward to the swim since I have been training pretty well.  The bike and run are not bad but the swim would have launched me into a top ten finish and a cool St Anthonys award.  So it goes.

The swim, oops, I mean bike went well.  It was windy as heck and I am not quite to the point of churning over a big gear, but I put in a respectable 1.02 at 24.1 mph.  My times here have been between 59-1.01 in past years.

On the run - I somehow launched off to a 6:10 first mile and a 6:20 second mile, which is faster than I've run off the bike all season.  I slowed down a bit from there but it gives me hope and courage and smiley happy faces for the upcoming sprints throughout North Carolina.  Total finish was 41:39 on the run.

I finished 16th in the M35-39 category in 1:46 something.
After puttering out the last couple of miles I decided that racing the White Lake half is more than I want to suffer through just now.  If they will switch me to the sprint I'll compete in that, otherwise I'm just going to shout at peeps.

Here is a picture of what the chop looked like to someone who has never seen the ocean or bay.


Here is what it looked like to me.