Well I’ve stolen away form my convention for the first time and have about two minutes to write a breif report of my Rockmand experience.
First let me start by thanking Chip for a great race on top of opening his home to so many of us for dinner the night before (and even a couple of guys that had never heard of us and were invited to come and party anyway - I expect to hear form many of them here soon)
Second let me say what a great group of people all of you are to have finally met in person! i’m so happy to have met you and look forward to seeing you at the races in the future. you all have an opn invitation to come and stay at my house any time you come up to michigan to race.
To sum up my race it pretty much goes like this -Not as good as I had hoped, but pretty much what I expected. All in al I can’t complain considering the amount of training that I had neglected in the month prior to the race.
the swim was about average especially considering that I could not sight a damn thing and thought several times that I was turning into the creature from the black lagoon with all the seeweed that I was towing with me. The bouys with the life guards on them were areally nice touch an i expect to see that at a lot of future races. I apologize to the number of people who’s toes I grabbed on the swim and especially to the people that i’m sure I kicked right in the head.
The bike was perfect. smooth roads and rolling hills made for a fast race and all the aid stations were staffed with plenty for sure handed volunteers with ice cold water and Heed. The only thing that went wrong was a traffic cop who decided to leave his intersection in the middle of the race resulting in me almost turning into someone’s hood ornament. a blaring horn was my only warning that I came very close to being another race tragedy thread on this board. According to guy on the bike behind me Chip had a reall talking to the officer in question about the incident. I was happy to see so many of you pass me like I was staning still. this is a really tough group to try to make a name for yourself as a stron cyclist. Just all the more reason to do more long rides on the weekend - oh darn. rroof I was the one who yelled Go get em Rod! as you passed on about mile 40 you sure were going fast as i was starting to fad a bit! and Nebz you have the most poorly maintained nice bike I’ve ever seen, but it sure didn’t slow you down any! Go get that thing checked out already will you 
the run is where I came completely unglued as expected. those first couple of miles out of T2 were brutal, as well as the last four miles of the course. but other than the hills that run was beautiful. Mostly shady and the sun decided to stay away for most tof the early morning making for perfect weather. As always there were lots of volunteers and a very well marked course (although we were promised mile markers Chip!).
Lots of ice cold water was waiting for us at the finish, as well as lots of fellow slowtwitchers and family. Having showers there at the park was really nice even if they were ice cold! i needed to wash all the Heed off of me that I mistook as water and dumped over my head at the first aide station on the run.
thanks again to all the volunteers and to chip for putting this all together. There were a few kinks as can be expected from any first time endevor, but I really felt that the staff was really trying to do everything they could to make it go soothly. even thought I hate running and this was a perticularly hard run course, I thinkk that I will be back next year to try and catch (or at least keep up) with dtreeps out there on the run.
Speaking of running I gotta go, but i’ll be back when I can to check in and post some more. Until then it was really great to have met all of you and we will see you at the races!
BTW for those that asked it’s T’war pronounced like car, and it is my sisters nickname for me (shortened from Pet’war from when she was taking french and gave me a french name)