Some thoughts on Kona and some other thoughts

Well, Kona was a spectacle. The hype around the race is ... well it's a lot of hype.  The course itself is mostly uninteresting and difficult mainly due to the fact that the bike and runs are along a coastline. As a consequence, it is windy and (frequently) very sunny.  Kailua-Kona is populated, the entire week, with a lot of triathletes that are really fast.  What that essentially means, however, is that the town is full of...frustrating people.  There's a lot of "me first" attitudes being tossed around, which I suppose is pretty normal in the triathlon world.  Athletes do it, coaches do it, manufacturers do it...it's ubiquitous! Just imagine: if you took the fastest and most serious people at every Ironman race and lumped them all into one small town for a week ... there'd be consequences!

As cynical and jaded as I sometimes seem to be about Ironman and road triathlons (and maybe triathlon in general) I really am just hiding a little bit of jealousy that I haven't qualified for Kona and haven't raced Ironman successfully in quite some time.

Speaking of that, I was having a discussion with Christine the other day about how everyone in Charlotte seems to have signed up for next year's Ironman Wisconsin.  This has got me thinking that - although Wisconsin has never been a race I've been eager to do - the time may have come to get back on the road.  She agreed, saying that it was time I "stopped hiding in the woods!"

So, with the last race of the year on the horizon, what should I do???

Option 1)

Continue to hide in the woods

Option 2)

Return to the glory days of road triathlon

Option with the most votes will win the prize (the prize being me doing that thing, obviously).

Full Distance #1 - B2B 2009

Full Distance #2 (dnf) - Louisville 2010

Full Distance #3 (dnf) - Cozumel 2013