I've touched on this before, but figure it's worth a shout again. Unfortunately, the triathlon is the Bob McCartan Memorial sprint. I say unfortunately because Bob passed away during the event a few years ago, it was his first one, I believe. I didn't know Bob real well, but then again, no one really needed to, to realize that he was a really great guy. You know those people that you can just start a conversation with and the next thing you know, a couple of hours have passed and you can just tell the person's a really good person. To me, this fit Bob in a nutshell. I got to know Bob one summer while I played in the Emmetsburg Wednesday night golf league. I had a great time that Summer playing golf, laughed quite a bit, and a good portion of it was at the behest of Bob.
Bob knew that I had done a couple of triathlon's and on a Thursday night, my Dad, Bob and I talked for what seemed hours about the upcoming sprint triathlon in Emmetsburg. It was to be his first. Bob had been putting plenty of time in the pool and had been working pretty hard for the upcoming race. He wasn't going to win, but he was having fun preparing for it. Sadly, it would be the last triathlon that Bob got to do, as he unfortunately had passed during the swim portion. His funeral was incredibly sad. Another great thing about Bob was he was a Hawkeye fan...his body was carried out to the Iowa Hawkeye Fight Song. It was fitting. Hopefully, in the future, I'll be able to get more of my friends to attend this event in honor of Bob. We'll go hard, but more importantly, we'll have fun. Nacho Libre, Dogman and It's Mister to You! are going to be participating from the team. According to ESPN's bottomline, Mister to You! is the early favorite to come out of the water first.
I guess I'm kind of tying this into why I like to do triathlon's as well. Obviously, I want to do well and have put in some time to try and do well. This is only a very small part, however, and is not what keeps me dragging my butt out of bed into the pool or out along the highways on my bike. Don't even get me started on this running business.
Mainly I do these tri's because of the people that I get to do it with. Dsm911 and I used to swim at Raccoon River and either go to Jimmy's or HyVee for breakfast, depending on the day/place. Captain's wouldn't be the same if the team hadn't just done the tri that morning. Suffering on the bike is a lot more fun when I'm laughing at something Hammerhead or Nacho Libre said. Then, there's beRock getting me to fly down steep gravel roads at insane speeds.
What's better than swimming at Okoboji with Mister to You! and Ironman? Running in the heat of Okoboji with Dogman...ok, trying to go fast when Dogman starts pushing away from me. Initially, I like to know my times for the events, and I still know some of them, but these aren't the memories I'll take away. It's the people at them, the people I train with and share beers with afterwards. To me, this is the "tri lifestyle." This year, I've had two tri's. The results haven't been incredible and I messed my shoulder up pretty well. But...it's been a great year so far. Great times with even better people...and it's just getting started.
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