He's in, He's Out, He's In . . . Malfer is Kona Bound!
After Jim Myers, who relies on Slowtwitch to decide how much to wipe in his pre-race ritual, relayed a false Slowtwitch report on Kona slots to our IMTX Team, Mike Malfer was left thinking he made the cut only to have his hopes dashed by a race official. After a tense wait at an extra long post race banquet, we learned that, indeed, Mike's 9th place age group finish was enough for him to qualify for Kona, joining fellow Bull Bob Schloegel in October. Technically, Malfer is the first BKQ (Bulls Kona Qualifier) as Bob qualified under his former minor league team*
Mike Malfer, Luke Wilson, and Steve Cosentino participated in Ironman Texas which began as The Lone Star Circus. To start things off, our fourth participant, Jim Myers, was DNS because he failed to register in time. The fiasco further unfolded as Malfer found a break in the carbon fiber of the disc he borrowed from Jason Taylor (because Malfer doesn't like to spend money on bike equipment, right?) After buying the last disc wheel in town and getting over a case of vertigo using Coz's magic pressure point arm bands, Malfer was ready to roll. Meanwhile, Luke, thinking he forgot his shoes trekked all the way to downtown Houston in search of the right pair of Specialized shoes with a lift to compensate for his mutated short leg. Later that afternoon, Luke found a bag and said "Gee, COZ, funny you have the same sort of SMT bag that I usually put my shoes in. Doh!" We will skip the part about the morning of the race where Luke and Coz took the absolutely last available pre-start bio break, entering the water as things were started and cursing the fact that we chose white for the bike shorts.
And that, is where the fiasco ended, at least for Malfer and Luke. The two pushed a valiant effort on the bike and started the run strong. They were close enough at one point that Luke got within sniffing distance of the Aviator clad Malfer on the run, only to have Malfer's Purple Patch energy boost kick in to propel him to a 9:38. Luke also broke the 10 hour mark, setting an Ironman PR with a 9:53, throttling the current IM Bulls PR held by Jim Myers at 10:59 by over an hour, enough extra time to plan out an entire race season and figure out when to register.
Meanwhile, the circus clearly shifted to COZ who was obviously jinxed by his recent Slowtwitch triathlon post titled ''Triathlon Jesus". He avoided a couple of lightning strikes on the swim and paced well on the bike using WWWJD (What Watts Would Jesus Do) to set up for a good run. Unfortunately, the run became a bit of a death march which was further exacerbated by getting lost after the race and walking back to the hotel, finishing with an expanded distance of 143.6. COZ was still thinking he might not have escaped his blasphemous commentary when on the way home, an overheated Pit Stop exploded like a gunshot in the car. Of course, he may still meet his fate by being attacked by a pack of Wolves after the *minor league comment above (just kidding, guys).
CONGRATS MIKE - KONA 2014
MIKE MALFER, LUKE WILSON AND A PSYCHO, DELIRIOUS POST RACE VERSION OF COZ.