Tri-Asshole

I despise hotel internet service charges. In fact, I refuse to pay them.  So when I saw that my Portland hotel room required $9.95 to use the web per day, I knew I wouldn't be posting any blogs for the weekend.  I will post a few images though.

But I must share one story in particular from the wedding weekend.  The Portland marathon wound through the magnificent city yesterday, which required every ounce of restraint on my part not to participate.  Of course, the fact that it was sold out in July helped matters.  There were a few runners staying at the Hotel DeLuxe, including one man who strode in Saturday afternoon wearing an Ironman Coure d'Alene jacket.  Naturally, I wanted to introduce myself and chat.

Well, he didn't want to chat.  Especially awkward since we were sharing an elevator ride.

I told the man I was racing Ironman Arizona in a few weeks, to which he coldly replied, "You could have picked a harder one."

Talk about a Charlie Brown moment!  This guy removed the football before I could kick it and tripped me along the way!

I awkwardly stammered about how IMAZ was my first, which only dug me deeper into this guy's dark hole.

"I did Silverman for my first."

Well, uh, I did Wildflower this year.

No response.

Then, mercifully, it was time for my exit.

"Have fun," he said.

Gee, thanks.

It took me a few minutes, alone in my room, to get over such a hit to my psyche.

Ironman Arizona...easy?

Finally, I regained my sense of perspective.  I had merely met my first tri-asshole, which is rather amazing since I've been in the sport for two-plus seasons now.

And in the end analysis, Tri-asshole fueled my fire for the remaining two weeks of peak training.  So much so that I snarled and begged Coach Gerardo to increase my training workload this week and next so that I finish my peak training in the strongest condition possible.  Gerardo had taken off 15% of my workload since this past week was so light, reasoning (correctly I'm sure) that it's potentially detrimental to boost hours significantly from one week to the next.  But I'm more than ready.  Having the last few days to relax and not think as much about training helped re-energize me.  And it's not like I didn't train either.  Earlier that Saturday, before I met Tri-asshole, I ran three hours...on a freakin' treadmill.  Granted, it wasn't the fastest pace (roughly 17.5 miles), but I still did it.

That run ultimately doesn't matter right now.  Only tomorrow matters.

In case you can't tell, I've got my game face back on.

Tri-asshole has no idea what he's started.

39 days and counting.