Penalty, ref!

Football (a.k.a. soccer) is the national sport of England, my homeland, and receiving a penalty is usually a wonderful thing since the penalty kick taker has a great chance of scoring a goal, and unlike American sports, goals/points do not come easily in football!

In fact, USA Today ranked "saving a penalty kick" No. 9 on its Top Ten list of hardest things to do in sport! Penalty Kick
Though, once you read the rest of the "Top Ten", this source of information can be largely discredited ... c'mon, hitting a baseball is harder than the Tour de France? Ten Hardest Things in Sport. Perhaps I am biased because I run marathons and ride my bike ~10,000mi/year rather than hang out in batting cages. Also, after the Turin Winter Olympics, perhaps "landing a quad" should be downgraded?

Anyway, I bring up the topic of penalties since I received my first ever penalty in a triathlon this past weekend. It is not a positive thing... you are stopped mid-race while the referee marks a red slash on your race number and tells you that once back in T2 you will have to find the sin-bin and hang out there for 4 minutes before proceeding to rack your bike! Despite some notable recent examples of "how to receive a drafting penalty" (Nina Kraft and Natasha Badmann at Ironman Hawaii 2004 and 2005 respectively), I did not remain as cool as I should have done and spent far too much time and energy getting flustered and trying to protest that I was waiting for the guy to pull over so I could continue passing the field ahead of me... lessons learned - yell at the dude I'm trying to pass to pull over earlier and don't waste time contesting a penalty!

One other notable thing from the California 70.3 race:
At registration a young marine asked me my race number. I replied, "Number 2004". His reply: "that's the year I graduated high school". That's young!