16. Austin – 19 February 2012

It is definitely bigger in Texas! Austin, home of UT Longhorns, Willie Nelson and Lance Armstrong. Whatever you think of Armstrong, he did cycle and win the Tour de France multiple times, title or no title. I could never do that even with any performance enhancements. If you really can’t understand the hypocrisy surrounding drugs in sports, you can’t understand the irony in this.

I really like Austin. It is a cool place, lots of great bars and restaurants, neat shopping, and live music. I also ran a much faster race here — 20 minutes quicker than the last race I ran in Newport. I could live here, maybe will do someday.

The course was great — the race field was huge — but the run was good.