Friday Flashes!

I thought I’d spend my lunch time writing a quick Friday post. By the way, this makes 30 posts in the 30 day period that began August 15 and ends this coming Sunday!

I was up in Washington last weekend, and couldn’t help but think of the Nation’s Tri event that will happen this Sunday. That will so exciting for the people doing this Olympic distance triathlon! Many of them will be doing their first tri, and any of them for Team in Training are helping to defeat blood cancers. GO TEAM!

This being September 11, I have to pause for a second to reflect on the horrific events on this date eight years ago. I think for the first time in my life, I understood how my parents must have felt on December 7, 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. To all those who lost their lives that day, to those who tried to save the trapped and recover the victims and now are often ill and dying from lung diseases as a result, to those in the military engaged in two large wars as a result of this day, and to all of their family members – this is a day to reflect on their loss and sacrifice. And especially to the members of the military fighting and dying so far from home, it is a day to offer special prayers and thanks.

I feel good about doing Light the Night this year. I did it once before and it was a great way to show support for the cause of fighting blood cancers, and to show support for all suffering from these diseases. It is also a beautiful event to be a part of, with all of the lighted red balloons with a few white ones interspersed. I will blog more about that in the days ahead as the event gets nearer, and as I come up with at least a minimal fundraising strategy. I am going to set my goal at $200 – to a least raise something without people feeling that all I do is badger them for money (for a great cause, I might add).

I met a young woman yesterday at a business meeting who lost her fiancé a few months ago to tongue cancer. He was only 35, and suffered horribly during his illness and eventual demise. It is a reminder to me about how awful these diseases are, how many people suffer from them 24/7, and how much more there is left to do.

I’m Lighting the Night!

On October 29, I’ll be walking in support of the Virginia Chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in the Richmond version of Light the Night! As a blood cancer survivor, I will be walking with a white balloon in a sea of red balloons. I have joined a LTN team: Faith’s Hope. This team was formed by a local lady named Faith who was diagnosed this spring with Stage 4 Hodgkin Lymphoma, and is undergoing heavy-duty chemotherapy as we speak. Faith has raised over $5,500 for this cause while battling cancer, which I think is pretty amazing, and I am honored to join her team.

I just joined up for Light the Night today, and therefore won’t have time for a little while to customize my Light the Night page, which can be reached at:

http://pages.lightthenight.org/va/Richmond09/ARitter

After being done with fundraising for Team in Training for just four months, I am not going to do heavy duty fundraising for a Light the Night Campaign. I just can’t. Friends and family would shoot me, assuming that they stayed around long enough to shoot me. More likely, I would walk up to them and say “Hey! Guess what? I’m fundraising for the Light the Night, and I was wondering ...” Suddenly, I would realize that the only sound was crickets calling, and that I was by myself. I would notice my friend, now appearing no larger than an ant in the distance, sprinting away with a running pace that Usain Bolt would envy.

Of course, if anyone seeing this is led to make a donation, that would be great. But I am doing this primarily to support LLS in spirit, to support Faith, and to walk proudly as a fortunate and grateful survivor of a blood cancer. If I can somehow raise a couple of hundred bucks along the way, then that would be a wonderful exclamation point to my Light the Night experience. But that will not be the focus of my efforts. I’ll be happy to be out there among hundreds or hopefully thousands of others, showing support for a great cause and for the many, many people dealing with blood cancers.

Does Wellsphere Scam Bloggers?

In mid-July, while I was on vacation, I received a very flattering and interesting proposal from Wellsphere, which began as follows:

“Hi Racn4acure ,My name is Dr. Geoff Rutledge, and I am delighted to invite you to join Wellsphere's HealthBlogger Network, the world's premier network of health writers …”

You can view the entire e-mail here. In a nutshell, the email praised my blog and writing, and offered to increase my blog readership through their Health Blogger Network, as well as providing innovative new features for my blog. It stressed that while I was giving them permission to republish what I had written on Wellsphere, I would retain all ownership of my content, and they would not make other use of my content without my permission.

The email was effusive in its praise and in the benefits of joining their blogger network. Even so, I was busy at the time, and figured I would get back to it later. I got a reminder email two weeks later and at that point - without even taking two seconds and checking it out independently – I joined up. I did click on the link in the email that displayed the terms and conditions of joining Wellsphere. It was fairly similar to what Geoff Rutledge had said in his email, with the exception that it clearly said that I was giving them permission to republish my material in any form they wanted, without compensation to me. But even so, it stressed that I was the owner of the intellectual property. The link to these terms of service is here and here.

Nearly a week went by, and I just kept blogging without giving it much more thought. Then I got an email from a friend and fellow blogger to beware of Wellpshere, because they had been implicated in scamming bloggers. She gave some details about some harder to find terms and conditions that essentially would give Wellsphere ownership of my content. The note, in part, said: “However, when you read the "terms and conditions" which appear to be upfront but the reality is they are elsewhere on the site and much more detailed. The bottom line is that you loose ALL copyright to your work on your blog, past, present and future. They cleverly word it so you THINK you retain all rights but you do not. They can do what they want with your posts, make money from it and you loose all rights. They make money off your blog and you could not use your own work to say publish a book in the future. They retain the copyright.” The suggestion was to Google “Wellsphere scam”, which I did.

Holy crap! I got all kinds of hits with Google and started reading some of them. This was scary stuff! There were a lot of seriously pissed-off people out there! Had I indeed just inadvertently given away the rights to everything I wrote on my Racing for a Cure blog? How can they tell you one thing and then secretly have something else take precedence over that? I started digging around on Wellsphere’s site beyond what I looked at before, and found language here that included some really alarming stuff. Included were these two nuggets:

Ownership: “All Website Materials, including any intellectual property rights in such Website Materials, are the property of Wellsphere, its affiliates, licensors, or the designated owners, and are protected by applicable intellectual property laws.”

Content You Submit to or Post on the Website: “… You agree that any and all comments, information, photos, videos, feedback and ideas that you communicate to Wellsphere or submit or post to the Website or give Wellsphere permission to post to the Website (“User Materials”) will be deemed, at the time of communication to Wellsphere or submission or posting to the Website, to be the property of Wellsphere…”

This was clearly in opposition to any of the more obvious conditions that I had been fed. I am not a lawyer, and have no idea how the law interprets one rule that says I retain ownership and another from the same entity that says they are now the owner. But my guess is that if this was Wellsphere’s intent, they would have had a really good team of lawyers come up with this language.

In any event, given what I had seen using Google, and this conflicting language, I decided to pull out of Wellsphere immediately. I emailed them and said for them to delete all my content and my profile. To their credit, I got a message back from Dr. Rutledge in less than 30 minutes telling me that this had been done, and that my content was also deleted from their servers. Of course with computers, it is impossible to know for sure, so I printed and saved records of everything.


To continue reading this post, go here.

Does Wellsphere Scam Bloggers? (continued)

Continued from part 1

After reading a bunch of the articles I found – just Google “wellsphere scam” and you will see the same articles – and thinking about it for a while, I realized that best case, I had entered into this way too hastily. I should have at the least used Google myself prior to committing to be a Wellsphere Health Blogger. I had been seduced by the flattery in the note. But there was a huge clue in the soliciting e-mail that should have told me that this was just a mass produced come-on: the introduction:

“Dear Racn4acure:”

Anyone spending five minutes on my blog would be able to know my first name. Anyone spending 15 – 30 minutes and doing some poking around on links could learn my full name. Obviously no one had. They looked at the fact that I wrote about cancer in some way, saw that I posted things fairly regularly, and decided to see if they could add me to their blogger list with a flattering note. By stroking the ego of people who write, they got plenty of takers, including me for a week. And had my friend not filled me in, I’d probably still be part of Wellsphere.

Now if I were still a member, what would I be giving up? At the very least, if they really liked what I wrote, and published it as a book either by itself or with some works of other bloggers, and it became a best seller, they would not owe me a dime. Clearly, the conditions they listed right up front gave them that right. Thinking about it quite a bit since, I think that was foolhardy on my part.

Now worst case, what if I used my blog postings to create a book? Or say I wrote a book, and used a few of my blog postings in it? Let’s say it became a best seller (go along with me here, people, as farfetched as it sounds) and earned me a million dollars. If the terms of the more stringent section applied, in theory, Wellsphere could sue me because their loading my writing automatically gave them intellectual property rights and ownership of everything I wrote on my blog. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants – to be sued by someone because you published your own writings?

Not being a lawyer, it is impossible for me to know if (1) this latter scenario could happen and (2) if it was deliberately set up by Wellsphere’s lawyers to sucker and scam bloggers. But I was not willing to take the chance, and there are enough people out there saying very negative and angry things about Wellsphere to make me leery. The world wide web can be a very nasty place, so caveat emptor.

One of Wellsphere’s claims in their pitch was that readership of your blog would increase if you became a Wellsphere health blogger. But upon looking at the posts of bloggers who’s content was placed in Wellsphere, all of their blog links were internal. In other words, when you clicked on one of their posts shown in Wellsphere, it would go to that post in Wellsphere, not in their blog. There was a link to the author’s blog in their Wellsphere profile, but all other links to their material stayed within Wellsphere. So the claim that it would increase readership seems unlikely.

So does Wellsphere deliberately scam bloggers? Well, I don’t know how to definitely answer that. If they deliberately set up conflicting terms of service so that they can claim intellectual property to anything that a blogger writes, then clearly the answer is yes. But even if this is not the case, by allowing them to publish what you write, you clearly are giving them the right to use your stuff in any form they choose and make money on it without any compensation to you. That seems like a bad deal in exchange for possibly a few more people dropping by your blog – if they don’t just choose to read your blog totally within Wellsphere’s portal.

So for this blogger, the negatives and potential negatives far outweighed any potential gains that I might realize, once I got over the heady flattery of being chosen to be a Wellsphere Health Blogger. What I write may never make me rich – it may never even earn me a dollar – but it is my creation, and I am not willing to give the possibility of earning a buck to someone else for no compensation. And I am certainly not willing to risk giving away my intellectual property to someone else through a possible weasel clause created by clever lawyers. So therefore, I, for one, will remain unaffiliated with Wellsphere.

The Uncivil Society

I was going to blog about something else tonight, but decided to leave the athletic and cancer arenas for a night to dabble in the political side of things. I am really concerned about the direction our country has been taking for the past 20 or so years with our lack of civility towards one another.

For a long time, whatever party is in power is demonized by the party out of power. Whatever you felt about George W. Bush, he is not a demon. Whatever you feel about Barack Obama, he is not a demon. Yet to hear their opponents talk about them, you would be surprised not to see them holding a pitchfork, sprouting horns, reeking of sulfur, and roasting babies alive to eat them.

Note the flap over President Obama addressing schools earlier today. Why would anyone of any party not want the president, no matter what party he belongs to, to encourage kids to study hard, to stay in school, to believe in themselves and their value, and to tell them that if they drop out, they not only let themselves down, but they let their country down as well? Most local schools here refused to show his talk. I am flabbergasted and appalled by this. Far right-wing talk show hosts apparently spread this message that somehow the president was going to indoctrinate our youth into his evil ways. God help us all!

Did anyone see where, at a rally about health care reform recently, two guys of opposing viewpoints got into an argument, which led to a fist fight, which led to one guy biting a finger off on his opponent? Did anyone see the tape of people screaming at and berating the woman in a wheel chair at a “town meeting” in New Jersey the other week? She suffers from two autoimmune diseases and was expressing her viewpoints about health insurance to the politician running the meeting. Her right to free speech is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, and these rude morons were just screaming at her. At least they didn’t attack her physically and bite her finger off, but that is about the best I can say of them.

Whatever happened to civil discourse, to polite and reasoned disagreement? Why can’t people agree to disagree? What has happened to basic human kindness, to respect for others? Ben Franklin was asked by a woman, after the Declaration of Independence had been signed, what they had just created. His answer was reputed to be “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.” If we can’t start showing some civility towards one another and rationally discuss the incredibly complex and difficult issues facing our country and the world, I fear that our days as a republic are numbered.

Think about this, the next time you hear some right-wing or left-wing talk show host running off with diarrhea of the mouth.

Long, Slow Healing

I’ll tell you, as we get older, it takes such a long time for injuries to heal. I partially tore my right rotator cuff in 2007, probably around June. I didn’t know it at the time, only that it hurt every time I moved my shoulder a certain way. In retrospect, I tore the muscles one of two ways. It could have been from painting the inside my garage. This took me two full days of work and a partial third day, and especially painting the ceiling using the roller on a long pole made my shoulders ache. More likely, it was doing an abduction exercise, one in which you hold a weight by your hip and then extend your arm directly out to the side until your arm, and the weight, is parallel to the floor. I had been doing this with 15 pound weights, but then moved up to 20 pounds one time. I noticed some discomfort after about a dozen reps, and went back to 15 pounds.

Either could have done it. I read that painting overhead is a cause of rotator cuff tears, and the orthopedist that I saw said that the particular abduction exercise I had done was a leading cause of rotator cuff tears.

In any event, this was now about 27 months ago. It took a few months of doing the male thing and ignoring the pain, followed by several months of various examinations and trials of things, and finally an MRI to diagnose partial tears of the supraspinatus muscle and the labrum of the right shoulder. I could have had surgery, but with the Arizona Marathon coming up just a few months away at the time, I decided to do that only as a last resort. So I got some physical therapy, and religiously (for a while) did the exercises on my own that I learned. When it started to feel a little better, it was easy to no longer consistently find time for the exercises.

What they said was to do low weights and a lot of reps. For months, I avoided doing certain exercises with my right arm in water aerobics. For well over a year, moving my arm certain ways hurt a good bit. My shoulder made a popping sound during this time with any movement, even those that didn’t hurt much. At some point, most of the pain has faded and I guess the tears have healed for the most part. I can’t tell you for sure when that was, but probably within the last six or eight months.

More recently, I have tried to pick up some of the exercises again, and have increased the weight just a little bit. It is still a lot less weight than before. Two years ago, I was doing curls with 25 pound weights – now I am using 15 pounds. I was using 140 pounds on a “military press” style machine, and am now finally up to 70. This is after long periods of time with 30, 40, 50, and 60 pounds. I always try to be aware of doing too much, but I know that could happen in a blink of an eye without me even being aware of it. As long as it has taken for this to heal – at least a year and a half – I am not eager to have it happen again.

I guess as we get older, we have to strike a balance between doing too little and doing too much. It can be frustrating at times. The other day, as I was doing reps with 70 pounds, it felt a little exasperating to realize that I was doing 140 pounds a couple of years ago. For a second, I was tempted to try that much weight, but common sense over-ruled my male-sense. If I ever want to do a triathlon, I think I am going to need healthy rotator cuffs. But I am also going to have to have even more upper body strength. I’ve considered going back down to 50 pounds and just increasing the reps. Any advice?

Kind of Crazy

To each his own. I am sure that many people think that anyone who does a marathon is kind of nuts. Well, as a multiple-times marathoner, I saw something on TV tonight that seems quite nutty – the Badwater (aptly named) Ultra-Marathon, run each July across Death Valley. I had heard about this before, but was reminded about it tonight while watching “Nature” on PBS.

This race is 135 miles long, and is run non-stop. It starts at 280 feet below sea level, and ends up at 8,300 feet elevation at the Mount Whitney Portals. Cumulatively, racers gain 13,000 feet in elevation while crossing three mountain ranges after getting out of Death Valley. The winner finishes in less than 24 hours, which is pretty amazing. That is an average pace of 5.6 miles per hour, much of it across Death Valley in July! I don't think that Death Valley was named as a joke to scare people away from paradise, do you?

In 2008, 82 people started the race and 75 finished. The last place finisher took just over 57 hours, finishing nearly a day and a half after the winner! But they finished! The finishers that year ranged in age from 27 to 66, with most of them in their 40’s and 50’s, amazingly enough.

Do I think I would ever attempt this race? Not even tempted. It seems kind of crazy to put your body through this. How about you – any thoughts of ever doing something like this, of testing yourself to the absolute limit of your endurance?

If this race seems impressive (and it is, even though it is also nuts), go here to read about a non-human ultra-marathoner that goes thousands of miles non-stop.

Art is Retiring From Team in Training: Forever!

You heard it here first: I am retiring from Team in Training forever! Folding my beloved purple singlet and stuffing it in a drawer. Hanging up the running shoes. Putting away my white TNT cap with the three 26.2 and one 13.1 pins on it. No looking back. No changing my mind. No way!

By tomorrow morning, this will be big news, starting with my interview and extended coverage on ESPN Sports Center. In my press conference, I will blink back tears and tell the world that it is just my time to go. I will thank my teammates and supporters, and answer a few questions from the shocked audience and press corps. Then the other networks will pick the story up: NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN. “We interrupt this programming for a special bulletin…”

There will, of course, be some statements from teammates. Some of them will get a little choked up, but you will hear things like: “Well, it did seem like he had lost a step lately.” And “I kind of wondered if he was losing his groove when he made that rookie mistake and had sunscreen nearly blind him in Nashville.” And “I hate to see him go, but I guess if he says it’s time, it’s time.” And “Truthfully, he has been kind of a disruptive force on the team lately.”

Out on the streets, women will openly sob quietly and hug one another. They will say things like: “He was such a hottie!” And “I can’t believe we won’t see his amazing physique lumbering down the marathon courses anymore.” Grown men will stare at the ground, shuffling their feet and pretending not to cry, and saying things like: “Dang!” And “I can’t believe he is retiring after all these years!” Little kids will go nuts with sports card trades: “I’ll give you two Derek Jeters and three A-Rods for your Art Ritter in the 2006 Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon in San Diego!” And Friday night, sports bars all over will do a brisk business as fans everywhere attempt to drown their sorrows. (Please drink responsibly!).

Yep, I’m hanging up the running shoes for good. Of course, expect to see some clips on the news of me out doing laps with some high school cross country runners. Gotta keep the publicity channels open, right? (I’ll be the one doubled over on the ground, gasping for air while I throw up.)

Nope, I won’t be back. Not now. Not next year. Not never. Never-ever! Until, of course, I judge the time is right, and I can get a huge donation and a lot of great press by jumping back into the game. You know that $25,000 donation I was hoping for? I bet I can get double that for LLS with this strategy. Just imagine the headline: “Walmart Agrees to Donate $50,000 to LLS if Ritter comes out of Retirement.” Or maybe a pro-football star will make a huge donation to lure me back? Maybe Peyton Manning or Donovan McNabb? Maybe Tom Brady? Maybe – dare I hope – Brett Favre?

So did I say never? What I really meant to say was, well, you know. So don’t totally rule out seeing me back on the marathon course at some point. Could be Virginia. Maybe New York – turning on those jets down the stretch. Perhaps even pack my stuff and head to Green Bay. Somewhere. Someday. Bank on it – I’ll be back in a purple jersey before too long. Hmmm – purple? Maybe in – Minnesota?

Thank You, Nation's Triathlon Team!

On Sunday, September 13, Team Virginia and TNT teams from many other chapters will converge on Washington D.C. to participate in the Nation’s Triathlon. If you are part of this, helped coach or mentor a team, or participated in some other way, I want to thank you on behalf of cancer survivors and people with cancer everywhere. I hope that if you are on a team for this race and see this post, you will share it, along with my thanks, with your teammates.

It sounds like a great course: 1.5K swimming in the Potomac River, 40K biking, and 10K running – including a run past my favorite Washington sight – the Jefferson Memorial. As much fun as I had running the Country Music Half Marathon last April, part of me wishes I was on your team for this race, doing my first triathlon. I know several great people that did this event last year and had a blast!

Of course, the only way you are getting this boy to swim nearly a mile in the Potomac any time soon is if I have a dive mask. And SCUBA gear. And I am being towed by one of those torpedo-looking things you see in the movies where the (pick one) terrorists or elite special forces troops are moving in for a surprise attack. But maybe in 2010, if I can get my act together, I will do this race or one like it. The idea appeals to me, and I really admire all of you for doing this tough race, and for raising so much money to help cancer patients and, ultimately, to defeat cancers.

When you think about it, many cancer patients also do a triathlon of sorts, except their events are not swimming, biking, and running. Their events have names like surgery. Chemotherapy. Radiation. Or maybe instead of one of these "events", the substitute a bone marrow transplant. Or a stem cell transplant. Unlike a triathlon, where one really hopes to be done with the race the same day that they start, a cancer patient’s “triathlon” can go on for months or even years. Their “transitions” often take place in hospitals. And when all is said and done, the outcome for completing their “race” is either life or death. For people with cancer, it is a very high stakes triathlon, deadly serious, and all too often, deadly.

But I believe, through your efforts, and the efforts of all the other “Purple People” now and in the past and future – raising nearly $1,000,000,000 to fight blood cancers so far - you are helping to tip the odds towards survival. There will be people alive in the future who would not have survived otherwise. They will not know you, but they will give thanks for you every day.

So thanks for making a difference, for working so hard as troops in this war on cancer. Go have a great time – you have earned it. Create amazing memories, ones that you will mesmerize your grandchildren with someday. When you get back I would love to get comments about your race. And I would also love comments giving advice about making the jump from being a marathoner to becoming a triathlete, because I hope to join your ranks another time!

GO TEAM!

Discussing Future Events

During the Silent Mile Training, Kristi and I – both Hodgkin Lymphoma survivors – walked six miles together. It was the first time we’ve seen each other since the race weekend last April in Nashville, and it was great to see her again. First, it is still only months since she had her second cancer diagnosis, and it was wonderful to see her in good shape and out there walking at her fast pace. Second, it was fun to “catch up.” A big part of our catching up involved talking about what our next event could be.

Kristi had been in touch with the LLS office, and had a good feel for some of the spring and summer season (2010) events. For example, the team is doing the New Orleans Mardi Gras Marathon and Half Marathon – the first time they’ve done this race since I got involved in TNT in 2005. Now that could be fun – I’ve never been to the Big Easy.

Also on deck for Team Virginia is the Seattle Marathon in June (I think), which replaces Alaska for next year. Another place I’ve never been, and frankly, being an outdoors lover, Seattle and the great Pacific Northwest has a lot more appeal to me than New Orleans. Maybe I could get in some hiking or tour Seattle. In New Orleans, I think I’d be dodging people who had partied way too hard. And having been finished with fundraising for only four months, I don’t feel ready in this economy to start bugging people in just two more months, which I will have to do I sign up for New Orleans. But for Seattle, I would not have to start fundraising until December or January. It is very tempting.

I keep thinking that I would like to do a triathlon. In fact, being a Philly boy (GO EAGLES, yeah, go ahead, yuck it up with the Michael Vick and dog jokes), I was really tempted by the Philadelphia Triathlon this next June. I mean, come on, swimming in the “Sure-Kill” River? Oh, if my mom could see me doing that, she would turn over in her grave! When she was a girl there, they didn’t catch fish in the Schuylkill River, they caught fish skeletons.

But as it turns out, TNT Virginia took that one off the docket for next year. Damn! They are doing the Tampa Bay (St. Anthony’s Triathlon) but that is in April and that means starting that fund-raising in just 2 months, plus getting a bike in two months – yikes! Will I even have a job in two months? Better make sure of that first!

Kristi is intrigued by the Nike Women’s Marathon a year from October. And I am tempted as well. First, it was number one in my poll a few months ago. Second, I got that nice Nike Winged Victory Award from LLS in June, and is that a sign or what? Third, I wouldn’t have to grit my teeth and start fundraising again until probably April. Fourth, I have a sister, two nieces, and a nephew in the Bay Area. And fifth, I would love to do an event with Kristi again, although she will walk it. If I walk it with her, she will lose me after about 10 miles, and I’d be hurting by that point to hang with her incredible walk speed. If I run big chunks of it, I will likely lose her at some point, but maybe not – she walks that fast. My point it, it would be hard for us to figure out how to do the whole thing together. But it appeals to me to have two strong survivors doing this race together with Team Virginia – as examples to each other and to our teammates.

I also told her that I would be worried about being the last guy to finish at Nike. There are only like 800 guys in the race (and about 24,000 women – talk about great scenery on the race course!) and I doubt I would be one of the faster men, unless most of the others have one leg or something like that. On the other hand, if I were to be the last guy across, so be it as long as I finish the race and have a great time. But seriously, I doubt I would be the slowest man in the race.

Then there is the possibility of a bike race – Tahoe in the spring for example. I think Kristi wants to do a century ride before she does a triathlon and I probably want to do a tri first. Either way I would have to buy a bike – no getting around that. I think both of us, as survivors, have this wild idea of getting a TNT Triple Crown before we are through. I have a good 17 years on Kristi, so I have less time to get that done than she does.

And if I decide not to do Nike, but wanted a fall event, I could see what they have for triathlons. Since they are not doing one with the summer team, certainly the fall team will do one – maybe the Nations Triathlon again. That one sounds fun, and is popular.

So there you have it – a lot to think about. I guess the key thing is that I want to do another event in 2010, stepping up both athletically and with fundraising. That fact is more important than which event, and hopefully I can have fun – and more conversations with former teammates – while making up my mind!