While I carefully craft some other blog posts... I'll give my predictions for Kona...
Women - Chrissie Wellington Barring a mechanical on the bike.. the race should be a cakewalk for her
Men - Steve Larsen I like to pick on favorite and one dark horse... so Mr. Larsen gets my nod. He can bike with the best, and he's improved his swim/run. Can someone juggle a business, 5 kids, and training to win Hawaii? We'll see...
It's a quiet evening at home, I'm sitting here catching up on some blogging while my beautiful wife Naomi sits and watches Survivor Gabon *rollingeyes*. We've managed to survive a month together as husband and wife, wow.. that was tough.... HA! Just kidding! Life is great. :-)
With the fall, Naomi is back to school. Naomi's profession as a teacher is very demanding, sometimes ridiculously stressful and can quickly turn into long hours if she doesn't manage her time at school carefully. I have gained a lot of respect for teachers, and they certainly deserve that long summer break that most of us envy so much! However, she has told me that she has another great class this year and will feel sad if we go to Australia... but not too sad I suppose!
I say "if" we go now... because our trip might not happen! The Australian teacher is having visa issues. Some extra paperwork was sent, but we have no guarantee that the visa will be granted. We're both ok if Australia doesn't happen, as we agree then it was not meant to be. Obviously, we'd love the opportunity to go, but we know that life will be good if we stay in Edmonton.
Naomi and I have been out enjoying the famous Wednesday Night Cross Country series here in Edmonton. For $2/race we can go out and punish ourselves on some of the fantastic trails in the river valley.
Last weekend we went down to Goldstick Park to watch the cyclocross racing. That is AWESOME stuff. If you don't know... it's beefier road bikes w/ knobby tires on soft trails. Naomi and I are going to have to buy cross bikes and give it a go if we don't head off to Aussie.
To finish off the tri season right, both Naomi and I wanted one more race. I tried and tried, but wasn't getting good flights to any of the races we wanted to do. I have a lot of Airmiles racked up, but the options they give you for flying are usually quite restrictive. I even tried to get flights back to Regina last weekend, but no go. After some more searching and a few phone calls to Airmiles... I managed to find us some reasonable flights to do a 1/2 Ironman at the end of October! WOO! I'm hoping the weather holds out so that I can get some decent weekend rides to keep my bike legs in shape before then!
I have been doing some reading. First, I finished off "The Last Lecture". It's a good bathroom/coffee table read as it is broken up into many chapters. Enjoyable, but nothing mind blowing.
What I am reading right now, however... is the Power of Now. I am not going to say much... except GO BUY THIS BOOK. If you are ready for what it says, it should change your life for better, forever.
I need to do a proper write up of our wedding day. How can I go and write all these silly triathlon race reports, and not write about the most wonderful day! Coming up in my next post....
After a bit of a detour to get around construction on the way back from Penticton, Naomi and I are finally back in Sherwood Park. Naomi is back to school tomorrow, I'm back to work. Now it's an all-out 4 months to get ready to head off to Aussie!
Naomi has been writing good stuff, and posting all our photo's to facebook... so check out her blog on the link to the right.
IMC was fun to watch as always... I may come back to this race in 2010. There seemed to be a lack of the usual atmosphere in Penticton this time. Maybe it was the cold weather... but I don't know. Steve King was certainly missed at the finish line.
Our last pic in Penticton was a gooder... Naomi with her favorite pro, Belinda Granger, and women's winner!
Here's my video of Rhodesy, the men's winner finishing:
