If you’ve ever completed an organized run or triathlon, chances are you can find your results on Athlinks.  It’s a great site that basically goes out and collects race results from the various race and timing sites.  Once you set up a free account you simply put in your name and age and it takes its best guess as to which race results are yours.  You can “claim” the ones that belong to you and leave the others for their rightful owner.

Along with tracking all of your results, it lets you know how your best finishes stack up against the rest of the world.  I consider myself a triathlete, but I might should consider myself a runner.  All of my running results place me in the top 50%, while all of my triathlon results place me in the bottom 50%.  Reality is that many more people participate in running events, which means my triathlon results are probably a little more indicative of my actual abilities.

So all of that brings me to the “ego” portion of this post.  The first organized event I ever did was the Cowtown 5k Back in 2009.

I distinctly remember the day.  Sarah trained for it.  I figured I could keep up with her for three miles just off of my natural studliness.  Somewhere around the first mile marker I realized I had made a huge mistake.  At the second mile marker I came as close to throwing up in a race as I ever have.  I told her to go on and I’d see her at the finish.  Athlinks doesn’t have splits listed for this run, but I’ll guarantee you my last mile dropped off considerably as I watched Sarah disappear into the masses.  My end time wound up just over 31 minutes.

It’s crazy the journey life takes us on.  The next year I did my first sprint triathlon.  The following I did my first Olympic, and on it went up through the completion of my first Ironman last fall (side by side with Sarah, no doubt).

So this week I’m going back to the beginning.  While most of my friends are running the full or half marathon  I’ll be doing the same race I did six years ago.  This time I’m in a completely different decade of my life, yet I still hope to take five to six minutes off of my time from 2009.  For the past year my ego has wanted to see a new 5k number on Athlinks.  God willing and weather cooperating, this week it will finally happen.