BlogSeptember 9, 2008 LANCE IS BACK!!! Yesterday I saw the news on ESPN.com, I wasn't sure if I believed it. Today, it was on ESPN.com and the news again read that Lance Is BACK. It appears; with no salary, no bonuses, only doing five races, and with one goal which is to win the Tour De France, he's returning to professional cycling for all the right reasons. Lance is literally taking the the Cancer Bull by the Horns and is doing everything he can to put the global fight of cancer back onto center stage. After thinking about this for the last 24 hours I awoke at 5:00 AM this morning for our normal Tuesday morning Gainey 'brick' ride. As I reached for my helmet I saw one of my pink Komen breast cancer bracelets. It occured to me that my personal fight with breast cancer is really the only important thing that I do in the world, in the giant scheme of things. It definitely motivated me for our Tri-Scottsdale Susan G. Komen Tri for The Cure event next year and our fundraising work we do every day. To date, we've raised somewhere around $100,000. This amount is miniscule compared to Lance, but if every racer out there took his lead and did what they could, we would have quite a philanthropic world! The last ten days I spent up in Montana with my father and older brother Porter. I had an incredible time and a couple of the experiences were too sacred to discuss here. It was really wonderful, seriously incredible days. I plan on getting up there more in the near future. Lately I've been struggling in an effort to write blogs, I really haven't been up to much triathlon-wise. I'm aware that even my avid blog-readers aren't too interested in my day-to-day activities so I'm not writing so as to not waste your time! I believe my strength is in writing race reports, and with my racing starting back up this Sunday out at the Malibu Nautica Triathlon, hopefully I'll have some interesting reports to share soon. My body is healthy and I'm ready to go race Sunday, then planning on doing the local Tempe Nathan's Triathlon next week, and finally the little Ironman over in Kona. Rightfully, I'm many times over more optimistic than last year, my form is coming on strong, and my result could be my best to date. Even though I don't spend much time updating this blog, I do read those blogs of my fellow competitors. I've found that I really like the way my fellow Americans write, they seem educated and in touch with the readers. Of course English being their first language doesn't hurt either! I get a little tired of the age-old sponsor plugged blog,'I zipped up my XXXX wetsuit put on my YYYYY goggles, I raced off on my world's best ZZZZ bike and boy was it fast! Entering transition, I put on my XYZ running shoes and knew I wouldn't be caught because these XYZ shoes are just so fantastic...' To me, it's understandable if you're making thousands of dollars whenever their brand is mentioned in the National Media as you must do it to make a living. To report it in a blog though, it just seems like a lame and insincere practice for that day when it comes... I've been somewhat guilty of this in the past, and most pro triathlete blogs read this way, painful... The other type of blog that bothers me is the overly Type-A Triathlete Blog that breaks a race report down into categories of things like 'night before' then 'pre-race' and next 'the swim' 'the bike' 'the run'... Most people at this point realize that triathlons do have a swim, a bike, and a run... They also realize that in most cases you will be writing in chronological order, to me it's a little tedious reading blogs/race reports like this but perhaps I'm just in that kind of mood. Listing the events of the day is something I've also done, and I feel like it's all more of an experience and to break it down into finite pieces takes away from the overall experience. When a cyclists writes about a timetrial I've rarely seen it broken down into,'The first 5K!' then 'The second 8.5k heading west into the wind!' Triathletes do this all the time. It sort of reminds me of that old joke,'How do you find out who the triathlete is at the party??? You don't have to, he'll find you.' We love to talk about our experiences, 'cause you know they're so interesting. My race reports are often guilty of the listing as well, I'll try to do it less in the future so that I don't annoy myself too much. I pride myself on being 'objective' in my reports. I hope that if others were there watching the events take place, or experiencing them first-hand they would think,'Yep, that's pretty much how it happened!' A few times though, while proof-reading my race report, I've accidentally deleted it. I then re-write the report and it reads like a totally different race leading me to ask the question,'Was I even there???' Once I went to check the race results just to make sure. Perhaps I too become subjetive at times... Now that I've ranted on blogs, let me share a few positive things with you. There are four young/strong/super-quick and smart pro triathletes who are passionate about their sport and write great blogs. I'm sure there are others, but here are four I've stumbled upon. They also update them frequently so in that regard they're way cooler than me. A couple even apologize if more than a few days have gone by and they've failed to write anything. This makes the reader feel so good, I should do it more often. Let me do it right now! It's been forty days since my last blog, maybe at least that long, my apologies for not writing to you sooner! OK, here goes, this is my Type-A list of first class triathlete blogs: Jordan Rapp- This guy is a top pro triathlete about my age from somewhere in the US, maybe upstate New York. He's an ex-rower, insanely fast, and I'm sure his best days are ahead of him. He won Soma Half last year and finished within a whisker of winning IMAZ this year. To top it off, he attended Princeton and received a degree in engineering. Thankfully, you don't need to read his bio to realize he is just stupid-smart on all levels. This becomes quite clear in reading his frequent blog posts. Check him out at www.rappstar.com Justin Daerr- This is my next superstar blogger. This guy has gone from the everyman average college student triathlete to one of the top pro triathletes in the sport in a few short years. He's coached by endurance-sports genius Joe Freil, and he follows his program to the T... Justin's blog is awesome because he lets you in on his methodical approach to the sport while being laid back. This has brought him lots of IM success. Check out www.JustinDaerr.com Blake Becker- Another guy, American, pretty young, fits the mold of a smart hard-worker who has a good triathlon future. Blake lives in Wisconsin and writes really informative blogs quite frequently. I enjoy reading them and I know others do too. Be careful though, Blake will make you feel lazy with his regular training regime posts. Like I said, he works HARD! Check out www.BlakeBecker.com Greg Remaly- My final young-cool-crazyfast blogger is this guy. Like Jordan, Greg is almost nerdy-smart yet he keeps the bad dude Alpha-Male personality I don't know how... Perhaps it's because he's 6'5 and some other things I can't put my finger on. Greg swam somewhere EastCoastWise in college and shot to the top of pro triathlon pretty quickly. Because he's so bright, his blogs are pretty fun to read and they are far from typical. I mean that in a good way. www.GregRemaly.com So there's my potpourri of Barnes & Nobles music,'If you like LewisElliot.com blogs, you may also like........' If you don't like mine, why the heck have you read this far? See you in Malibu, (or Tempe Nathan's). Cheers, Lewis « Back to Blogs |
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