The Adventures of Marvin: 7 Months

So its been roughly 7 months since my last update....thankfully not much has happened in that time. I've been traveling around the Midwest seeing accounts, working expos and events and seeing parts of the country during my travels that I normally wouldn't see. I am currently getting packed (or at least should be packing) for Hawaii as I leave tomorrow morning to work the Ironman World Championships for the next 2 weeks. This year, Kate will be joining me at the end off the event for so much needed R&R!! It will be her first time to the island and we have done a ton of looking into all of the classic tourist things to do. I am most looking forward to some down time with her.

In the past 6 weeks I've been to Louisville and Madison to work both of the Ironman events, Des Moines for the Hy-Vee (and I raced as well) as well as Las Vegas for Interbike. Racing in Des Moines was my 3rd race of the season; and to train/prep for it, I decided not to have any beer for a week. I figured that would be enough training. And as luck would have it, it was. I crossed the finish line just like every other race I've competed in. Kate and the kids were there to watch and cheer me on as well. The only disappointment that I had all day was that they were in the finishing chute and I TOTALLY missed them. Apparently they were standing by the Mini Coopers, which I happened to miss too! Clearly I was dead set on getting to the line and calling it a day. It was a great race and an awesome course. I've done this race 2 other times (each time it was a different course) and this year it was moved back downtown. So in the 3 times I've completed this event, its never been the same. I was happy to see it back downtown as it made for a much more spectator/racer friendly venue.

The first race of the season was Kansas 70.3 and 2 weeks later we went to Lubbock, TX for Buffalo Springs 70.3. I was marginally under trained for both of these events, but again got to the line for each of them. Kansas was a blast as there were a bunch of others that Kate and knew racing it. Kate and I finished and got our medals from Chrissie Wellington and she called us out on our matching race kits. Buffalo Springs, well this was more of a death march than an event. Texas has/had been in a drought for a number of months so it was pretty dry. The ranchers were being told to keep their live stock in the shade and well watered, meanwhile roughly 1800 racers were out in 112 degree temps pushing their bodies to certain death. When I crossed the line of this one, I grab an ice cold Miller Lite and sat in the lake enjoying what might be the last calories of my life. Thankfully they were not. It took a number of days to regain proper hydration and to recover, but I had no other races on tap so it worked out well. Hy-Vee was a late in the game decision to do as Hailey was doing the kids race and I thought it would be fun to do as long as we would be in town.

So that is basically the last 7ish months, nothing exciting but that happens. I am going to try to make regular updates (I know I always say that) but hopefully I can stick to it this time.