the whole crazy thing

Well, I finished my first tri yesterday, and I think I may be hooked.  Competing against Scott definitely helped fuel this fire, and actually the true fuel may be the fact that he beat me really only because my T1 (transition between the swim and bike) was 50 seconds slower than his.  I will include exact race details later, but heck, I feel kind of robbed.  With that being said, triathlons are cool, really because of the fact that you have to transition between different disciplines and quick.  Anywho, the race actually went pretty well - I was 72 out of about 400-500 folks, and went a respectable 1:12:13.   Read the rest of this entry »

Probably the best way to do this is just to go mile to mile with my thoughts and feelings. Al and I drove out from bourne, about a 20 min drive early that morning (5AM) to avoid any traffic because as with many coastal towns, there’s really only one way in and out, and nowhere near the total number of folks in the race (10,000) could be staying in Falmouth.
We shuttled out to the start line in woods hole at 8:15 with Jeff nervous that they’d already closed off all the roads. We made it to the start line no problem and hung out for about an hour and a half until the 10 AM race start. We attempted to watch the elite start, but got in trouble and sent to our start corral by no less than 3 race officials. After a quick bathroom stop, we got in our corrals with the other cattle and soon we were off.

Mile 1: Like in any race this large, the start was darn slow, but we were towards the front of the corral, things spread out within a minute or so. Jeff told me not to wait for he and Courtney, and as my goal time was a monte per mile faster than theirs, I obliged and took off at a comfortable feeling pace in the cool shade, not worrying about my pace and the fact that the first mile was mostly uphill.
Split: 7:23
Avg Heartrate: 161 (82% of max)

Mile 2: I started to get into a rhythm but I also felt a bit of a burn in my legs. That first mile had been a bit too quick especially with the hills. Mile 2 is also mostly uphill, but does have some downhill, all of it steep. I’m still feeling mostly good, though the way I’m breathing and any muscle burn is something to be concerned about this early in the race.
Split: 7:58
Avg heartrate: 173 (88% of max)

Mile 3/4: after mile 2 we pretty much emerge from the tree cover and are in direct sunlight. I know I’m going to suffer for blazing that first mile and the heat isn’t helping one bit. I decide that there will be no walking until mile 4, buy do slow my pace down a bit as I’m still breathing a little too hard. I walk through two water stations during mile 4 and pour the water down the back of my neck to prevent from overheating. I take my Gu at the beginning of mile 4 instead of at the end to try and prevent a serious bonk.
Splits: 8:36/9:11 - overall I’m still only a minute slower than goal after 4 miles.
Avg heartrates:170 (80%)162 (83%)

Mile 5: I suffer through mile 5 walking through a few water stations to try and get my engine to run on all cylinders, but my legs feel fairly blown out. I know the end is coming, so I try and rev myself up mentally to build miles 6 and 7.
Split: 9:42 (goodbye goal, hello pride)
Avg HR: 163 (83%)

Mile 6: I start feeling a bit better, bit just can’t get my legs going. My turnover has sucked for the pas few miles and my strides are way too short. I rally through with little to no walking thanks to Andy and a little Sweet Caroline.
Split: 9:19 (stride length is 9 in. Shorter than mile 1)
Avg HR: 168 (86%)

Mile 7: the last mile always passes by quickly and this one especially. I work on building through the mile
And try to accelerate up heartbreak hill and carry that into to final downhill and through the finish. It mostly works as I pass folks left and right across the finish.
Split: 8:44
Avg HR: 174 (89%)

Final official time: 1:01:57
Watch time: 1:01:49

+’s: nutrition mostly worked (but I need to eat beforehand), no pain, learned the course, no serious bonn.
-’s: missed goal healthily, splits were wacky bad, allowed stride to shorten too much too quickly, unconteolled first mile pace.

Overall I must admit, I had a ball. I think that my overall performance would have been much better had I not been training for a triathlon and as a result decreasing my running mileage to accomodate the increase in cycling and swimming. Also I was training to peak a week later (for the tri) so I really didn’t rest until the 2 days before the race.
I did have a ball and there’s always next year to correct my mistakes.

As I sit and listen to the air traffic controllers do their thing on my flight from Boston to denver, I figure it’s as good a time as any to blog about at least part of my trip to beantown. By the way if you fly united ever, this air traffic control channel is great. The Boston air traffic controllers especially are great. Currently, the sky seems more crowded than boston streets during the big dig. Apparently, there is some sort of ash cloud over new england from some sort of volcanic activity - why this wasn’t in the news I have no idea. Now some pilot is emailing something to an air traffic controller. But I digress.
The trip out was a fast one, basically to run the Falmouth road race and visit at least part of Al’s family and like always, it was far too short in some ways and in other ways it was pretty much perfect. Five days is definitely long enough pop in and hang out with most folks, though since I was there mostly on weekdays, hangout time with some folks i.e. hopers and my mexifin half brother was quite limited.
I did get to see Melisa and Dimitri, both of whom are quite delightful.
Also, five days is not long enough to see the more annoying side of family or quasi family members that their more immediate members have to put up with.
Ok this getting long winded and has taken far too many asides, so I’m cutting myself off here and giving my thumbs a rest. Race details will be up with pictures once I’m home.

What exactly is that smell that you get when you mix a bunch of different candies together?  Usually you’re supposed to answer questions when you propose them - normally being in most types of writing - but here I will just let that one marinate for a while.  I found a bag of candy from a candy bar that was part of the wedding I went to a two weeks ago and while the candy was indeed fresh, the smell reminded me quite a bit of the many halloweens I collected candy and basically let it sit around for a whole year until I could replenish my cache.  It’s not quite sweet, not quite rotten, but you get hints of chocolate, as well as that of the non-chocolate candies.  And despite the fact that it’s a bunch of delicious things all in one package, the smell isn’t appetizing at all.  If only this were true of the contents of that bag.

I just installed ZenPhoto and now have a functioning photography link on the front page of my site.  Alternately you can very simply click here.  Right now I only have a test album up with some pictures of REI employees at our local A League Baseball game, but there will be more including my portfolio soon.

JCGwedding04.jpg

Originally uploaded by shutterpoet

I was just going through my photos from Jackie and Chris’ wedding and came across this bad boy. If you’ve looked at my photos from the wedding, you’ve already seen it. I love this picture, not because it is the best technically (background is way not clean), but mostly because that is what Jackie’s face looked like the whole dance. Let’s just say that the dance was not scripted and her dad had a few moves up his sleeve she wasn’t ready for.

So I promised a full review of Mamma Mia! In my previous post I was in the theater and now it’s morning and the sudafed I took last night to keep me from sneezing after working for the whole day in mustard is effectively acting like rocket fuel (note time of this post).
Well overall, I must say that the movie was fantastic. There won’t be any oscars for it, but it certainly lived up to the hype and for the most part, to the broadway musical also.
Note: this is only going to be an enjoyable viewing experience if you like cheese. It just so happens that Mamma Mia is one type of cheese I enjoy quite a bit, with the other kind being Provalone.
Pierce Brosnon was absolutely terrible in his (too numerous) solos, but let’s be honest, put meryl Streep in anything and she’s gonna shine bigger and brighter than everyone else. The plot mostly followed the musical with a little creative license taken and several (five?) extra songs. Certainly the best part was the flipper dance on the dock, but the entire movie pretty much kept you laughing or eating up lavish musical numbers. Most made sense, some were a little wierd, but fun wierd kind of like me.
If you get a chance, make an ABBA station on pandora.com and you’ll be surprised what the genome project pulls out.

We’re sitting in the theater waiting for mama mia to start and I think I may be the only straight male in the theater that is excited to see it. I did see another guy when we walked in and he looked like he was waiting for the gestapo to take him away.
OK apparently there is a couple on a date that just walked in too, so that guy must be looking to score big time tonight.
The ya-ya sisterhood is sitting in front of us. They even have a woman with really short hair and are discussing whether singing is appropriate.
Previews are starting. More later,

We just got back from a quakes game against the Stockton Port (A’s a-league team).  Good fun was had by all I hope.  Allison and I heckled as usual, and there was plenty of heckling to be done due to the severe crappiness of the teams.  We also got some fireworks action.   I’ll have pics up eventually and a more complete post in the AM.  Here are some hastily processed images to satiate some of your hunger.

Brian and Minerva show us how REI employees enjoy their time away from work.

Ok, my photos from the JCG wedding (that’s the monogram, so that’s what I’m calling it now) are up.  I’m still working on photos from the baseball game, hollywood, and the getty center.  For now I’m still using mobileme gallery as the eye candy and the interface kind of rule.

Update:  I forgot to put the link.  Click here.