¿Dónde están las patatas?

I feel sick.

I spent a lot of time debating which Ironman to do next year. Coeur d'Alene was the right choice. The timing, the location, the course... It was a good decision. The wildcard option was to do Brazil a month earlier with some people from my Tri-Team. I wasn't sure who was doing Brazil, but at the time it was all Ironman Veterans, and some fairly hard-core ones at that. Great guys, but it would have been difficult trying to train with them. And the thought of a 12-hour plane ride to do a race just pushed it over the edge.

Today we had a Tri Team informational lunch meeting for people who were interested in doing Ironman Brazil. I like to support all of our events, so I went. I expected there would be 4 or 5 of us there, and maybe 1 person would sign up. Boy, was I misguided. We had at least 25 people. 10 of them are on the "short list" of people who are pretty much ready to lay down the cash and register. There are probably another 10 who are likely to do it as well. Newbies and veterans. Slowpokes and Superstars. And these are some of my favorite people on the team. We could be sending as many as 20 people to Brazil for one spectacular Ironman vacation.

Of course, I'm already registered for Coeur d'Alene. Which means I'll be able to train with them, suffer with them, go through all the misery with them... then miss out on the big pay-off of the Brazil trip.

The thing is I don't WANT to do Brazil. Coeur d'Alene is still the right race for me. But I hate the thought of not sharing equally in their journey. Maybe I should just do Brazil in May and then CDA in June. I should be recovered by then, right?

Ow

I went for a run July 4th. It was my standard 4.3 mile course in Griffith Park. I wasn't running particularly fast. I felt fine after the run. I felt fine the next day. The following night however - OH MY GOD - some of the worst shin pain I have ever felt. Just lying there in bed, every now and then I feel a shooting pain coming from my left shin. It was pretty painful to walk on Friday. Everything SEEMS to be OK now, but I'm not taking any chances; I'm going to hold off on the running for a few more days, just to be safe.

Training with the Champs

I've been mentioning the first female member of the Axis of Evil, Leader Leah. She's been torturing us with all of her running drills this season. Seems like she may actually know what she's talking about after all. This week she qualified for and competed in the 2007 USA Triathlon Age Group National Championships. How awesome is that?!

I'm all about reflected glory. So if I'm training with these great athletes and going to barbecues with them, that makes ME look good. Great job, Leah!