Kerrville Tri Race Report

For my last triathlon of the year, I once again went out to Kerrville for the "Triathlon Festival," two days of racing with three distances. However I flipped the scripts from last year and raced the sprint on Saturday and volunteered for the half/quarter on Sunday. The reason I didn't go for the half was that being three weeks after Ironman Wisconsin, I had no idea what shape my body would be in. Of course I couldn't do the quarter if there was a longer distance on the same day; regular readers will know my crazy wouldn't allow for that. I like to commit to events well in advance, so this was all set in place well before Wisconsin; I feel I've recovered enough that the half wouldn't have been so terrible, but still not advisable. I actually offered to run for a relay team, but they didn't wind up taking me up on it. While I had a decent day two years ago doing this half 5 weeks after an Ironman, it was probably best not to race today.
As for the race I actually did- in a word, it was sloppy. More the weather than my performance- it rained the entire race and I finished with a time of 1:19:12, good enough for 4th in my age group and 20th overall.

Capitol Cruise (Road trip to Ironman Wisconsin via ND highpoint)

Way back a year ago when I volunteered for and signed up for Iroman Wisconsin, I didn't have a plan for how I would get there. Eventually I decided to drive, since it's "only" about 1000 miles from Austin. Some time after hightpoint #40 in December, I started looking for excuses to go to the rest of the state highpoints. For fun, I added White Butte, North Dakota's highpoint, as a waypoint on the route. When I saw it doubled the mileage, I laughed it off as a crazy idea. If you've read my blog, you might know that a certain brand of crazy is sort of my stock in trade. My original plan for race week was to volunteer for TriRock on Monday, go to work on Tuesday, and drive straight from Austin to Madison on Wednesday. When the idea of stopping by White Butte creeped up in my mind, it almost seemed sillier to go to work for one day than to take off on a road trip. Of course once I was already going to be in the Dakotas, it was only natural that I would also stop at the state Capitols. Watch this space for my next crazy adventure cooked up around another highpoint.