(Chrissie Wellington, looking like she could stand to lose a few pounds.)
Surprisingly, I don't feel too bad about having passed up the chance to go to Kona this year. I can't imagine fitting training and travel in alongside moving away from Detroit and then to Denver in a few weeks. Still, I enjoy checking out folks' Kona pictures and blog entries about the days leading up to the race. I keep all those images in my head during training, and next year I hope to race Kona and put up a solid result there. Not getting chicked would be pretty good.
After getting in a long ride tomorrow morning, perhaps to a cider mill and back, I plan on having the computer in front of me all day to watch the live streaming coverage of the world championships. I don't understand how some triathletes can find watching IMs, especially Kona, to be boring. Lay-people, sure, I can get how they don't see the excitment of 8 hours of swim-bike-run. But to triathletes with knowledge of the top pros' strengths and weeknesses, there should be plenty of suspense. Watching the uber-bikers lead over the main pack and wondering whether any of 'em will be able to hold off the fleet-footed likes of Craig Alexander and Chris McCormack is more entertaining to me than about any other professional sporting event.
There are plenty of althetes I'll be keeping an eye on. I've got a soft-spot for the fast riders because they bring some of the most drama to the sport. I'd like to see Normann Stadler be healthy and have a good race. Maybe he'll even get some support - a train of fast riders would be a nice equitable balance to draft advantage offered available to those in the main pack. Chris Lieto, Philip Graves (just 20 years old!), and maybe Maik Twelsik (probably spelled that wrong) will hopefully ride near Stalder and even things out. I'd also like to see Faris Al-Sultan back toward the front. He just seems like an interesting guy. Finally, I've also got to root for Andy Potts, assuming he races, because he's a U of M guy.
On the women's side, it's hard not to root for Chrissie Wellington and Natascha Badmann. Both of them seem so happy to be racing. I'll also be checking the splits of Heather Wurtele, one of Chuckie's professional athletes.
Finally, I'll also see how some of the AGers I've competed against this year do. Somehow almost all of the top 25-29ers at both LP and Lou are managing to make their way to Kona, and I wish them good results.
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