The stats are in...

I'm living is a sick house. A month ago Reid came down with the flu, then he passed it on to Alice, then it was passed on to me and I just got over it by Clearwater. Now that we're back home, Reid's got a chest infection, Alice is feeling sick, Alyssa has a bladder infection and now I'm getting a cough again. This is crazy!

Not to mention I have a major blister on my right foot that I got racing in Clearwater. It was hot out on the run and they were handing out sponges filled with water. I took one at every station, took off my hat and doused water over my head. Which ended up running down my body and soaking my shoes and when you run in wet shoes, you get blisters.

The reason I'm getting a cough again is because Reid's coughing on me. He thinks it's funny. This morning he was coughing on me to get back at me for not wearing a shirt at the breakfast table. I was wearing jeans, but no shirt and he was getting grossed out by my "moobs". To bug him further I started to make my "moobs" dance, like the old A5-35 commercials.

The one thing about Reid having me for a dad is that he doesn't need an older brother. I'm a dad and brother all wrapped up in one. Our relationship is similar to Will Ferrell and John Reilly in the movie "Step Brothers". There's nothing more fun than farting in the car and locking all the windows on Reid. You should see him try to hold his breath and start gagging, it's just like a visa card commercial - "priceless".

In Clearwater he was all proud of a crap he took. He came running out of the hotel bathroom all excited and giddy. He said "DAD, you gotta see the crap I took, it's huge"! He was so excited he was hyperventilating and jumping up and down. "Dad, come on, you gotta see this"! Alice was disgusted and told him to "stop it, and flush the toilet". Then he whispered to me "Dad, come on, you gotta come and you gotta look at this thing, it's huge"!

Now at this point most normal fathers would be like "Reid, that's enough. Go in to that bathroom and flush the toilet right now and grow up. No one wants to see your poo"! But of course I'm not a normal dad, so I figured I'd take a look. This was a big moment for me. Just before I pushed the door open I was trying to anticipate what I was going to see. Was it going to be an impressive crap, or was it going to be what a young boy thinks is an impressive crap?

I opened the door and took a look. I have to say that my boy has grown up. If I couldn't verify that it was him in that bathroom, I would have thought Andre the Giant used our bathroom. It was a big one. I don't even know how he got it out without getting stitches afterwards. It was a good thing he took it at a hotel with that super suction flush, because if it was at home, it would be plunger time.

I'm so looking forward to party on Saturday and having my first beer in 40 days. I almost had one last night and the only thing that held me back was having to go for some liver enzyme blood work this morning. I figured drinking the night before a liver blood work test would probably skew the results. So instead. last night, I munched on leftover Halloween candy and passed out on the sofa in a sugar induced coma.

Today has been a numbers day. The first was crunching numbers for my party. I've been putting together the list of people that are coming and trying to determine the amount of booze and food I need to get. I was using highly scientific algorithms to figure out how many cases of 24 beers I need. I figured I needed four cases, one for me and three for all the others.

I also got an email with all the results from Clearwater. I then put together two sets of stats. One set using my official finishers time and the second set based on what my time should have been without breaking my chain. The total Age-Grouper field was 1292 competitors, of which 897 were men and 395 were women.

Swim 35:16 1009 / 1292 overall (1:50 per 100 meters)

Bike 1 2:21:02 761 / 1292 overall (average 38.41 kph / 23.82 mph)

Bike 2 2:17:07 585 / 1292 overall (average 39.6 kph/24.5 mph)

Run 1:34:44 662/1292 overall (7:13 per mile pace)

Total 1 4:37:51 91/153 Division and 519/897 overall Men and 662/1292 overall

Total 2 4:32:56 81/153 Division and 428/897 overall Men

Top 10 Take aways - (and one extra)

1. My swimming sucks!!!

2. My first transition sucked.

3. The competition was superb.

4. If I swam just 2 minutes faster and cut my very poor first transition by 1 minute, I could have broken 4:30.

5. My running has really improved.

6. My legs have never hurt so much a day after a half Ironman.

7. My legs have never taken 5 days to feel normal after a half Ironman

8. I didn't embarrass myself or my Country

9. I'm glad it's over

10. The event was well organized, especially having on-road bike mechanics.

11. My swimming sucks!!!

Off Season - No Training - lots of eating Tootsie Rolls, Nibs and Hot Tamales.