The Triple T Chronicles, Volume IV: Mother Nature Gets Hot and Bothered

Good evening loyal blog followers; you are looking well. The MSU Triple T crew is looking a little battered and weary but we are hanging in there. After a lovely early afternoon spent trying to cram as much food as possible down our little gullet holes (often against our will) and discovering that putting 58 pounds of ice in a bathtub will yield an ice bath of mind-numbing magnitude, we headed back to Shawnee State Forest for our second Olympic race of the day. The distances were the same as this morning, but this afternoon, there was a twist: The order of events was switched up, with the bike coming first, followed by the swim and then the run. You may be saying to yourself, "Hey, that sounds neat/fun", but you are 9000% wrong. Picture, if you will, creating a whole slew of lactic acid in your legs during a 25-mile bike and then going completely horizontal and rushing all your blood to your arms, allowing the lactic acid to just sit and stew in your lower extremities. Getting out of the water after this happens is absolutely miserable; it looks something like this:

This is what the average Triple T racer looks like exiting the water during Race #3.

On top of all that, Mother Nature turned on the heat lamp this afternoon, which made things especially unpleasant. To give you an idea of how warm it was during our race (which started at 3:00), the Weather Channel in the lobby proclaimed that it was 79 degrees out...at 8:15pm. However, despite all the odds stacked against them, the Spartans soldiered on; here is the rundown on how we all did (note that teams raced together for this race and only one time per team is recorded):

Greg Boyd ~ 2:31:40 (38th)
Clemens Drenowatz ~ 2:40:47 (91st)
Tim Fredricks ~ 2:42:30 (99th)
Team McCallum (Josh Mc. & Jeremy) ~ 2:44:08 (107th/108th)
Team Hollywood (Josh Ma. & Alex) ~ 2:49:42 (131st/132nd)
Team Misfit Toys (Scott & Eric) ~ 2:50:22 (137th/139th)
Team Squid Butter (Nancy & Alissa) ~ 3:17:52 (259th/260th)
Team Triathlon is Our Victorious Secret (Renee & Kate) ~ 3:36:07 (304th/305th)
Julia Jones ~ 4:01:08 (325th)

Tomorrow we go after the biggest fish of the weekend: the half-Ironman. Gun goes off at 7:00am; wish us luck.