Saturday was the Ironman World Championships, which is the one day of the year where I don’t have to pretend to care about ironman, and will actually sit and watch the coverage, by choice, and with enthusiasm. The Kona Ironman is is inspiring. I almost raced it in 2006, but (luckily) I broke my wrist and collar bone about a month before the race. So instead, I went with my friends on the UH Triathlon Team and volunteered for water patrol, then stuck around and watched a bunch more of my friends finish the race.
One of those friends was Neil Samson, who finished in a little over 11 hours. At the time, friends were still allowed to run over the finish line with competitors. When Neil finished, we followed him across and handed him a beer. Well, we tried anyway. Check out this finish video, it’s kind of funny (don’t worry, we run across within the first 10 seconds of the video).
It seems pointless to give any more recap of this years race from my point of view. Everyone already knows that Craig Alexander kicked ass, and the awesome cyclists all blew up in the heat. Potts came in 8th and top American after racing in Dallas last week at the US Open. That’s probably the most impressive part of the race to me. Of my Hawaii friends I saw that Rachel Ross had a good race, but I was hoping she would be the top amateur and she was fourth.
wow, Neil was like 10 seconds ahead of “One-Armed Willy!”
So was I man, so was I 🙂 Can’t all be great races though.. maybe next year! Andy looked awesome out there, I’m always blown away by both his athleticism and his attitude.. he’s a great one.
Sorry about all that hot sauce.