The Circus comes to Galveston

My own private circus from the get-go; a chain of comedic events leading up to the first race of the year.

It started with Hertz – I am slowly losing my patience with their ineptitude. The plan was to reserve an SUV in order to schlep my bike box and I end up with a Mazda 3…clearly was not going to work; that only took an hour for them to figure it out.

The drive from Houston to Galveston was great, by great I mean uneventful. I stocked up on groceries as my place had a kitchen, albeit a wee bit shady. I unpacked, settled in, started to build the bike and boil water for a nice pasta dinner. After I finished building the bike I notice that after about an hour the water hadn’t boiled yet. The stove was busted, (in came maintenance)…2 hours later he discovered the stove was unplugged and the stickers on the dial were on backwards (hi being low/low being high).

After the plug in, he was on his way…and I could now have my pasta at like 11 pm. As I was cleaning up I noticed that I couldn’t open the cabinet beside the stove anymore because now that the stove was plugged in it couldn’t be pushed back to the wall far enough…who knew?? Good thing I had a screwdriver with me…buh-bye cabinet door and off to bed I went.

I woke up bright and early so I could get to the expo, get my swim on and kick back early to follow the tried and true pre-race day plan of “if you’re standing – sit; sitting – lay down; laying doen – sleep”. No dice! When I went to the car the rear passenger tire was flat. No biggie, I’d just change it….if there were a fucking tire iron in the car. I called Hertz, chewed the poor individual who answered a new one, explained my situation and was assured that it was no problem.

The plan was that I would leave my keys with the front desk and they would send a repair guy over. We both held up our ends to this point, except that when the repair guy got there, the front desk guy that took my keys left - with my keys…so nothing got done.

More ass chewing ensued…The thing that I never understood was how/why Hertz called my wife seven times, instead of me…the guy that actually rented the car; rents cars from them on a about a weekly basis; has a frequent flyer account with them, up to date with all my contact info…how they got her phone number will remain on of those unsolved mysteries I suppose.

By 5 pm, the tire was finally changed. I was thankful that all this shit happened the day before the race rather than manifesting itself somehow on race day.

I was happy to race again. Happy enough with how I did...The swim was a bit choppy, but the added buoyancy of the salt water was pretty awesome. T1 was clumsy and slow. The wind sucked the big one on the way out…crosswinds gusting to 35 mph. At about mile 10, I had I kink in my back from leaning into it, which was unnerving. I was dying and bitching. There was a bit of a tailwind on the way home that couldn’t have come soon enough and helped my average speed a ton.

T2 was much better. The run was hot. I can out of the gate at about 8:00/miles…which I soon realized was WAY TOO FAST unless I wanted to not finish and end up in the ER. 4 loops, with one ne really hot corner, that felt 20 degrees hotter that the rest of the run and a wicked sunburn later the first race of the season a small victory was done.

IMTX 70.3 Galveston
Swim: 38:04; T1: 5:00; Bike: 2:59:59; T2: 2:29; Run: 2:10:33; Total: 5:56:05; 144/347 AG.