# 827.....Come In Your Time Is Up

Only 10 days to go until IMKY and the bib numbers have just been posted. # 827 is me and it appears that I will have to duke it out with 376 other people for the 6 Kona slots in the 30-34 age group.

There have been some recent changes to the race details and it now looks as though the swim start will be a bit less chaotic. The previous format had been a time trial start because the river couldn't handle a mass start of 2500 athletes like in other IM races. The TT start made it a bit of hassle as you had to queue up on a jetty and just wait in line until you gradually got to the front. You can imagine how long it takes to get 2500 racers into the water....last year it was somewhere just under an hour. So for this year the TT remains but they have two start areas and hope to get everyone into the water in under 30mins. The race start is still 7am but people in previous years have started to queue before 5am.....jeez! Hopefully the double swim start will make it less of an issue to queue in the middle of the night :-)



The weather forecast looks a bit dicey 10 days out and I'm sure it will change a few times before race day but currently it looks like this:





Not blazing hot but T-Storms........it could be like ChesapeakeMan all over again!

Tour of the United Kingdom......

That's what the Tour of California could be right now. The rain and grey clouds makes the weather a bit like a good summers day in the UK. For a number of years I bike commuted a 40mile round-trip when living in the UK and spent many hours out on the bike in soaking wet clothing. I have found grit in places you never thought you would find grit. Everyday I would have my rain-jacket in my bag because you just never knew when it would rain.

Even the winter days here in the Mid-Atlantic are good days for back in the UK. At least we have a good proportion of sun in the winter and it can be pretty much guaranteed in the summer. Yeah it can get very cold and very hot but that sure beats the miserable conditions of rain and general "crap-ness"!

I guess that is one of the reasons that Sarah and I decided to put down roots in the Mid-Atlantic area. After all if we liked the rain and clouds we could have moved to Seattle!

Prognosticator of all Prognosticators.......

This past Saturday, February 2nd, at Gobbler's Knob on the famous Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney Phil, the Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators, Rose to the call of President Bill Cooper and greeted his handlers, Ben Hughes and John Griffiths. After casting a weather eye toward thousands of his faithful followers, Phil consulted with President Cooper and directed him to the appropriate scroll, which proclaimed: "As I look around me, a bright sky I see, and a shadow beside me. Six more weeks of winter it will be!"

Well, to be honest this past week I thought that good ole Phil had lost his touch after 120 years of forecasting....here I was running in shorts and t-shirt (luckily for the other people on the street!) and it was only the first week in February. It was 70 degrees and a record high, none of the usual cold wintry mix weather that we are accustomed to in the Mid-Atlantic region at this time of year.

I shouldn't have been so quick to raise doubt in Phil's talents, after all he hasn't been wrong since he got the forecasting gig in the 1800's and why would he start now....even global climate change can't fool Phil! The weekend forecast is back down to below freezing with a chance of snow showers. No cycling in shorts and top just yet, so look for the michelin man aboard a Bianchi and that will be me!