What It Takes

So I'm not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing but I decided to read up a little on how the Kona slots are actually divided up at each of the qualifing races. Here is what I found...

• IMWI has 72 slots
• 10% go to Pros - I'll round up to 8
• Each of the 12 AGs get one slot for Men and Women as long as there is someone racing in that AG - 24 slots
• That leaves 40 more slots which are divided based on number of people in each AG
• There are 210 registered in my AG and 2,691 total - 7.8% in my AG
• 7.8% of 40 means my AG gets another 3.12 slots, plus the 1 that all AGs get

Therefore, if everyone takes their slot, I will have to be top 4 to qualify for Kona, or in the top 1.9% of my AG.

I see why it can take years for most people to qualify. I have a long way to go in a short time if I have any chance at making it this year. Based on last years results, I probably have to drop another half hour off my goal time to make it this year.

All I can do is keep training, race my race and see what happens. It's a good thing I like a challenge and can stay focued for more then a year because it may take a few more.

New Bike

Back in junior high when I was into BMX I decide to build up my own bike. I picked each part individually, ordered them over a few months and built the bike up. In fact, I may have enjoyed the process of building the bike almost as much as riding and I am still proud of that bike today.

Now that I have been doing triathlons for a few years, I decided I wanted to build up a new race bike. There is nothing wrong with my current tri bike (a 2005 Felt S22). It has been good to me and still works well, but I've decided I would like a full carbon bike and to built it from scratch on my own. Plus I figure since I put more miles on my bike in a year then my car I should have something I'm proud of.

I've started by buying a 2008 Argon 18 e-112 frameset and now I am in the process of picking out all of the other parts. I went back and forth between the e-112 and a Cervelo P2C. The Cervelo is known for being one of the best bikes for the money and there are always hundreds of them at every race. I was really close to gettin a P2C, but I have always really liked the Argon bikes and was able to get an 2008 model which brough the price down to around the same as the P2C so I went for it.

So far I have the frame and fork, and I also have a base bar and aero bars. I will probably just take all of the dura-ace components off of my current bike, clean them up and move them over to this bike instead of spending money on new components.