Major Props

In January, I bought a Schwaggle for a half-off entry to the Silicon Valley Long Course triathlon. However, I failed to read the fine print that said I actually had to register for the race, and that my buying the Schwaggle did not enter me into the race. Fast forward to race week (yesterday and two days before race day), and I noticed I still had not received confirmation. Well, I learned of my unfortunate mistake and immediately emailed the race director. I got this response just 1 HOUR later, "Kiet, not a problem, please check in with Janice tomorrow at packet pickup and she will get you all setup in the race."

I know the Ironman branded races are really in right now, but please please if you can, support the local races put on by smaller operations like USA Productions. We should all do our part to spread and share the wealth that is triathlon. I've raced with USA Productions for the past 15+ years, when they went by other names. They are really good people. When I sent off my email informing them of my mistake, I was very ready to accept consequences and either not get an entry or pay an extra fee. But deep down, I knew all would be okay because Ryan, the man behind USA productions is a good person. And good people always make you feel better when you are down. I've been asked to plug a lot of things on my blog, and my rule is that I only plug things as they become relevant in my life. I'm plugging Ryan and USA Productions because they bailed me out in a big way, and I would love to see their operation grow and thrive. Good people deserve good things.

And thanks to Ian for setting me up with these Reynolds clinchers. I'm testing them out for IM CDA. In fact, this whole race is really in prep for IM CDA. I know it's not a good idea to race a half-ironman two weeks out of an ironman, but:

This race is not a full half, the swim is only 1 mile and the run is only 9 miles.

This is a big team race for PacWest.

I want to practice my bike set-up, my nutrition, and my ironman pacing. The plan is to swim very hard, bike less hard, and don't even have hard come to mind when I'm running. I've had a very full week of training so I don't think I could even go hard for 4 hours.

And finally, my main reason for doing this race? I've learned that you can have the best of preparation going into and ironman and still have a bad race, so it should hold true that you can have less than ideal preparation, and have a great ironman race.