MICHAEL LOVATO | Professional Triathlete

Why the Underpants Run? Why a report on the Underpants Run? Why not talk about the race first? Well, to me, the race really starts to place its pressure on folks ’round about Thursday of race week. It’s an impressive phenomenon, the Hawaii Ironman pressure cooker.

Different folks face, and therefore handle, the pressure in different ways. Some take a running leap-off-the-cliff start, by preparing, preparing, and over-preparing in the several weeks pre-race. They tackle more than they think their competitors are tackling, and they flog, flog, and flog themselves until they are injured or sick, and cannot even get to the line ready to rumble.

In an unprecedented move, I thought I’d post a super-quick race report, only… 28 hours after the fact. My intent is to post the full blow-by-blow in a day or two, after letting all the ins and outs sort themselves out in my post-race brain.

Yesterday was my ninth Hawaii Ironman, I started with race number nine, and holding with the theme, I finished ninth. For those of you who followed online, you may have noticed that I crossed the line in tenth place, but due to a disqualification of one of the fellows ahead of me, I got bumped up a notch to hold my niners intact.

I almost let an entire week go by without an update… almost!

This time around I’m going to blame my lack of updates on the fact that Amanda and I have unreliable internet access. Never mind that I am a lazy blogger, or that Amanda has that same patchy internet access, and she has managed to post. Hmm. Maybe I just lack things to say.

Today marks the first day of October, and it marks the tenth consecutive year that Amanda and I have spent much of the month in Kona, Hawaii. We just arrived, and we are very excited to be here. Driving into town we both imagined how great it would be to have a second home here. What a great place!