This past weekend, Kris, Ben and Kyle ran in the Wildflower Triathalon. I went to support them, carry their crap, run errands, and cheer them on. When we were leaving, as I walked up a flight of stairs a triathalon participant caught my eye at the top of the stairs.

She was a fit black woman with her triathalon number pinned to her jersey. About my height with a bright smile on her face, she carried herself like a tired athlete who conquered the course and walked away victorious.

Crossing the net and projecting incredible athletic feats and daring accomplishments, I made a note of her number intending to look it up today.

And so I did.

I went to the Wildflower 2005 website, and tried to look up the triathlete's information by her bib number, 8579. Turns out, the search form worked only by event, first name, last name, gender and age group. Well, I knew her gender and guessed her event was the Olympic distance triathalon. There were over 3100 women participants, and the results displayed 50 athletes to a page.

Ugh.

So, I guessed her age between 18 and 30, because of her bib number (which were allocated based on age), giving me 647 participants to look through. She wasn't on those pages, so I looked in 31 to 40. She wasn't there. Good lord woman, how old are you?

41.

Turns out, the woman is Retha Howard. She completed the triathalon in just under 4 hours: 3:52:07. She lives in San Francisco and trains with the Embarcadero YMCA. She ran a 9:52/mile pace in the 10k, and rode a 38:26/mile pace in the 40k ride. She spent 9:41 in transistions (contrasting to the Kris-Ben-Kyle transistion times of about 2:10).

Putting this all into perspective now, Lora Bowman did the triathalon in 3:44:04. Cat Rondeau, uber athlete, did it in 3:13:39. I'm closer to Lora, and apparently Retha.

Lessons learned?

I'm still projecting every other person out there to be better, stronger, faster than I am. I'm still intimidating myself when I don't need to be. I'm still not objective when it comes guessing anything about someone else: abilities, age, etc.

As much confidence as I project, apparently I haven't internalized nearly enough.

Kris, Ben and I drove south Saturday night, for Ben, Kris and Kyle Smith to run the Wildflower 2005 triathalon as a relay.

Tragically, Ben's flight was cancelled, so we were unable to drive down to the hotel early in the afternoon on Saturday as planned. We drove down late in the evening, leaving around 6:45, arriving in King City for the night late, and meeting up with Kyle, who was at the hotel already.

Fortunately, everyone wanted to sleep, so we were able to go to bed early. We all woke up at 6:30, to drive to the race, which turned out to be a good thing: we missed at least 4 turns on the way to the race.

On the way south, we were looking for gas for Kyle's car. We turned off 101 and took a tour of San Ardo. Population 501. One gas station. Barely. It was one of the itty bitty towns that is sort of lost in time. We asked the gas station/convenience store attendant for directions to Jolon Road. The guy tells us, "Hold on. Hold on." When we didn't stop and immediately look at him, he started raising his voice, "Hold on! HOLD ON!" Whoa, hold on buddy. We're not going anywhere.

His eventual answer? "Jolon Road is just south. I think. I haven't been there in 10 years or so. I don't get out much."

The road was five miles south.

Not getting out much, indeed.

Turns out, Jolon Road loops along 101 South. We could have driven the 20 miles along a narrow, winding road, or fly along the freeway, and take the short part of the loop.

We took the short loop.

We had a few other mishaps along the way: Kyle forgot to put on the chip that tracks his movement when he's racing. 2 minutes before the race started, he realized this. Kris ran the chip down to Kyle, so they were able to track him, just fine.

When the top level swimmers came in around 18 minutes, Kyle predicted he's swim the mile loop in about 21 minutes. After 22 minutes, we started to get worried when he didn't come out of the water. At 25 minutes, we figured we missed him.

Kris and I ran over to the transistion point, to see Ben standing there, What? What? Where's Kyle?

Turns out, Kyle swam a 28 minute swim. Kyle always breathes to the right, which means he drifts right when he swims. He had lined up on the right side of the swim area, because all the turns were to the right. Well... since there are no swim lines, Kyle swam out of the course, then had to correct back into the course, then back out of the course, then correct back into the course. He thinks he might have swum 1.1 miles.

Ben cycled really well: he pedalled a 1:43 race.

Kris didn't run as well as he wanted, running a 45 minute race. Not too bad for someone who was horrible sick two weeks before.

The race was really well organized. Seeing Kyle again was great. The three of them are already planning on swimming/biking/running the race again next year.

Mike and I have been trying to come up with a name for our new company. Mike is a little reluctant to starty a new company, having started to before and knowing the perils of possible friendship loss by going into business with a friend (that and I suspect things are going well for him, too, so why rock the boat?). We have the obvious ideas of permutatuons on our names - miki, mikitt, guho, mikiguho, gullsden, hodsull (my mother's current favorite). In pondering these, we have to wonder: what makes a good name? What name will inspire companies to talk to us, but allow us to be approachable for the small guy, too?

And there is also the concern mentioned above: how do you ensure a friendship when business is involved?

Mike and I get along really well. I enjoy his company and greatly enjoy working with him. Our skill-sets are similar enough that I don't feel overwhelmed, but different enough that we can still learn new things from each other.

When I was at VA, I didn't really think I could find a better group of people to work with. Ever. Now, well now I'm not so sure. Working with Mike and Doyle is a good time.

Now if only we could figure out what to name the company.

Did I mention I'm a UFC fan? Okay, not really. I'm a closet "Ultimate Fighter" watcher. Or not so closet.

Heh.