The Twists and Turns of the Battling Bloggers

The first bit of news is the announcement of Jessica's new blog -- http://austintriathlete.blogspot.com/.

You would think in an area that had that many strong triathletes, that that blog address would be taken already. Guess they're all busy training and competing.

Back to the Texas Independence Relay, I don't want people think I'm taking this all too seriously.

We've had some interesting twists and turns along the way, and for various reasons, we've lost J.D., Jessica and Barbara. (We did lose Joe for awhile, but the running Gods have given him some days back to run with us on the TIR.)

In the meantime, we've added Katy Lampson and Tommy Stunz. We could be back at full strength soon.

Katy wrote Monday night:

May I ask Adrienne Langelier? She is a member of 7 Hills and is very fast. She won the half marathon in Huntsville last October, and she just placed as the top female at the Surfside Marathon the weekend before last. She is 25, a graduate student at SHSU, and seems to be an enthusiastic runner. I also think she is the type that would go with the flow, and do whatever you needed her to do - the easy going type. Let me know and I'll extend the invitation.

So I replied back and told Katy to "go for it". (And this means I'm able to delete that e-mail out of my inbox.)

Tommy chimed in on Tuesday morning:

My son Jakeb could run with us. I do not know if you are interested in having someone who is not an adult.

Jakeb is 14 and will be 15 on March 18th. His 10k pr is 10 seconds slower than mine. He set it last year at Bayou City Classic (approx 48 minutes). We have been training together lately for Hog's Hunt and I think he could handle 3 legs of short to medium distance.

It is totally your call. I did mention it to him to see if he thought he could handle it and he said he thought he would do okay and said "it sounds like fun." I told him it may not be an option at all so not to get his hopes up.

Like I said if you would rather not I am fine with that as is Jakeb. I wanted to offer it up as an option.

I told Tommy that I had given a green light to Katy to extend the invitation. Otherwise, we'll add Jakob. For the record, and I also told Tommy in an e-mail early this morning that - based on who was on our team - I had no problem on having Jakob join us if things worked out. (Another e-mail I can delete. That's 29 out of what came in today.)

I was really ready to go with 11 runners, but the idea of having an additional person that could replace Jessica's speed - or improve upon it - is to build the cushion that we have of making the cutoff without any problem.

Tommy told me he was good with whatever, but this comment was typical of our entire team: "I haven't really tried to understand the rotations and van switching as of yet. My plan is to show up with a back pack full of my stuff and go where I'm told to go and run when I'm told to run and have fun in the process."

And as I was preparing this blog post on Tuesday evening in a WordPad document, Katy responded and said that Adrienne accepted the invite ... and with that, I re-did our spreadsheet and e-mailed the entire team what I hope will be our last version.

This all wasn't how I planned it last summer; however, it's working out.

But we still have to get to Gonzales to implement the plan!

And ... I won't rest easy until I see who shows up for the Road Warriors when we get to Gonzales. In good-natured fun and competitiveness, I will NOT be surprised to see Andrew Perry, Rick Cook or Kimberly Hager.