Surprise!

I'm sure many of you are familiar with that most-awesomest of Tri-podcasts, "Get Your Geek On". One of their regular segments is "Surprise A Triathlete", where they call a regular age-grouper triathlete and do a quick interview. From the very first episode, I thought to myself "wow, maybe someday they could surprise ME and I would get to be a tri-celebrity for a week!" Well, about a month ago Iron Wil got in touch with me and asked if would want to be on the show. OMG! I was very excited. I started planning everything I wanted to say. I was going to be charming, and witty, and sophisticated, and it would be a pure delight to listen to me. When the day of the interview came, there were some technical problems and we couldn't do the interview. Then we had some rescheduling troubles and it never happened. I was a little disappointed, of course.

On Sunday I was riding my bike along the City of Angels Half-Marathon course, looking for friends who were running in the race when I heard my phone ring in my pocket. I got off the bike, assuming it was another spectator friend trying to find out where I was. But it was Iron Wil and the Kahuna. I was definitely surprised! It was not the calm, controlled environment I had planned on doing the interview in a month before. Instead, I was navigating around a small crowd of race spectators with my bike, trying to find a place to hang up the signs I made, searching the scores of runners for any of the half-dozen friends I knew along the course, all while trying to come across as a sophisticated triathlete on the phone. I bonked it big time.

And I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to be one of “those people” who just went on and on gushing about how awesome Iron Wil & Kahuna were. I was gonna just play it cool and professional. Instead, I was a blabbering idiot. Well, they ARE awesome, so I guess that’s OK. I just want to be invited back again some day, so I can prove to the world how cool I REALLY am!