In the end, Spain's Ruben Ruzafa defended his title but was photo-bombed by a halloween ghost with a special hawaii greeting.

Instead of a band at every mile, budget cuts in the lawsuit-plagued Rock & Roll half resulted in just a lone banjo player at the finish.

The Beach to Battleship ironman was more of a fight than usual.

Paging Herbert and Timothy...I suggest that an "appendix" be added to the "Weekend Box" courtesy of AlwaysCurious!

Thanks, Dev! Glad you enjoy them.

Slowman wrote an article about WTC's enforcement of its trademarks, and we learned of 50 new "ironwords" it hopes to trademark. Those applications include all but one of the following; presumably it already owns that one.

Trying to bolster the trademark application for "Road to Kona", ironman VP Jeff Edwards has been territory marking on the Queen K.

And trying to enforce its application for "A Ticket to Kona," WTC staff have been stalking airports worldwide and leaving their mark.

A NASA rocket reached 70.3 meters/second, violating wtc's trademark of that number. The rocket instantly exploded.

Kids have been egging the houses of everyone who has carved a triathlon pumpkin. But sparing the pumpkin, for it's an innocent party.

Realizing they'd screwed up the finisher's medal, ironman Florida cancelled the swim to make sure no work went unrewarded.

But to make up for the gaffe, they deployed a crack team of bike marshals to break up the pelotons.

I'll second that, these posts are pure gold!

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Long Chile was a silly place.

+1. The IM FL medal is fantastic. Well done!

Dave and Mark took a wrong turn during their weekly ironwar re-enactment and ended up in Kennedy Space Center.

At IM Lake Placid, Rachel Jastrebsky finished 7th and Dark Mark handed her a $3400 fan-funded check.
At IM Florida, Rachel finished 4th and Mike Reilly dropped a pumpkin on her head.

And Lionel Sanders, too humble to call himself "Ironman Champion" after winning a duathlon, sent a proxy to accept his award.

Meanwhile at Noosa, the Aussies hired competent water safety officials so the swim could go on.

Apple sent some of its factory employees to "volunteer" at a Taiwan 70.3 aid station.

And at the NYC marathon, Meb was crowned king for a day and American Superhero for a lifetime.

The usat board, feeling guilty about its role in the west african ebola crisis, decided to help. But after 5 hours of bickering, could only agree to send finisher medals to a tribe of Maasai in Kenya.

The Taiwan 70.3...love it. Keep 'em coming!

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

Utah voters made it illegal to drink open containers of redbull from fuel belts.

And nationwide voters chose irreverent coverage and controversial topics over interviews with vanilla athletes who give shameless sponsor plugs.

In Chattanooga, hoping to eliminate participation in competing holidays, Andrew Messick changed his birthday to December 25th.