New addition! (and race report)

Yes its been a while since I last blogged, as my mom never fails to point out each time we talk :-).  Lets start with a quick race report, then I'll move on to the important stuff, that beautiful baby boy of mine!

Mesilla Valley Sprint Triathlon was last weekend, and I was looking forward to testing out the old pain gauge before Nola 70.3 in three weeks.  Fortunately for me, I had forgotten how much sprint tris HURT.  As I had done this same race last year, I was anxious to see if I'd improved any.  As my wife coach has repeatedly told me, you can't compare races as conditions are always different.  For the sake of this blog, I'll pretend I don't know this :)

On to the race.  As we live in the desert(no open water), this is a reverse triathlon, starting with a 5K run, then a 20K bike, followed by a 500 meter swim.  The run was PAINFUL.  The lead group of guys gapped me wihtin the first 5 minutes, and as I got to the turnaround I had approximately 20 people in front of me, the leader at least 1 minute ahead of me.  I did hit the halfway point at 10:20, and as the first half was gradually up hill, I felt a little better about how bad I was sucking wind.  I managed to negative split the second half of the run and hit T1 at 20:20--thats my new 5K PR by one second :-).  Also, faster by 1:20 than my run from the race last year!

A quick T1 and onto the bike.  I quickly passed 4-5 guys in the first 2 miles, then spent the next 10 minutes trying to slowly catch the shirtless guy up ahead.  I passed him at the turnaround, and we switched positions 3 or 4 times over the next 5 minutes.  As he passed me for the third time, he looked over with a HUGE grin and shouted, ITZ ZE RACE!!  Ahh, the Germans, gotta love them!  I finally gapped him on the next hill and cruised into T2 about 20 seconds ahead of him.  Bike time, 34:50, almost 10 minutes faster than last year!  The course HAD to be short!(It was, by 2.4 miles)

An even quicker T2 and as I'm heading to the pool I hear my German buddy screaming what could possibly be a long litany of expletives as he tried to rack his bike and catch me(which he did, halfway through the swim).  The swim has always been my Achilles heel in these ridiculous reverse triathlons, but today I felt much better than usual.  And other than my German friend, I got passed by no one.  And, wait for it, I actually PASSED 3 people in the pool!  I finished in 8:40, an improvement of 1:25 over last years 10:05!

Final time, 1:04:57, 11th overall, and 1st in my age group! 

OK ENOUGH OF THE BORING STUFF WHAT ABOUT THAT BABY?!?!?!?!?

What can I say, I'm a DADDY!  :-)  These past three weeks have been unbelievably amazing!  I already can't imagine life without Hunter; its like all my life I've been waiting for him to get here, and I didn't even know it.  I could go on and on about my little man, but let's just get to the important stuff, pictures of my buddy!

 Of course we have already taken almost 1000 pictures...literally!  But I can't share all of them, at least not all at once :-)