Mullet Man Triathlon

Woke up at 4:20 with intentions of being out the door by 4:45. This would give me 2:15 to ride 40 miles. Left a 5:00am and found out it's hard to look down to read directions when it's pitch black. Only got lost once, which added 2 miles to the trip.

When I arrived at Flora-Bama's Mullet Man Triathlon, the race was supposed to start in 10 min. Someone asked me if I needed body markings, and it felt nice to say "no, I'm just here to watch." The race was delayed while the lifeguards corrected the buoys, but I still didn't have enough time to pick out anyone I knew in the race.

The swim looked like a blast! Waves were crashing over peoples heads. Lifeguards were rounding groups of people up that had been pushed almost back to the beach. If I was the RD, everyone would swim out for 200m, then straight back in. I can see the head-on collisions now. Nevermind, bad idea. Still, it sucked to see so many people walking because it was hard to swim parallel to the beach.

Off to T1 to watch the action. I saw Johnny Harrison, someone I share the same zip code with and recently met. I'm excited to get some training days in with him in hopes to absorb some of his knowledge. I heard he did the 70.3 championship, so I checked the results and saw he went 4:33 in 2006. Good enough for 11/112 in the M45-49 AG. Half the bikes were gone, and I still didn't see Mark. Assume I missed him, so I hopped on my bike with flip-flops and "coasted" 2 miles away to the only hill (a bridge). Pretty soon Johnny came by, then Mark followed 2 min or so behind. After giving my support at the 1 and 3 mile mark, I headed in to chat, then leave for home.

Around 10 miles after I left the race, a PT Cruiser woody turned right when I was on his right shoulder. He sounded really sorry, my bike was working, and I only had a little rode rash on my butt. I did my best to stay cool, asked him to be extra careful in the future. He said he saw me, but he thought I was going slow enough that he would clear the turn before I got there. If I hadn't hit my breaks, I'm sure I could of been hit by the front of his car instead of the back door. And if I wasn't on my aero bars, I may of been able to break faster and avoid the collision. Oh well, life goes on.

Rest of the ride went pretty well. 75 miles for the day. Nutrition was 4 small packs of honey from Whataburger and a PBJ sandwich. No sports drinks since I still can't find my water bottles.