Diary of an Insomniac

It's 4:30 am.  Or, to put it another way, it won't even be The Butt Crack of Dawn for another half hour or so.  I've been up for about a quarter-hour or so.  It wasn't my plan to get up quite this early, but I woke up, made the mistake of looking at my watch and thinking a little about what all I have to do today, and then started tossing and turning.  Pretty soon, I realized I was gonna wake up Sally if I wasn't careful.  So I got up.

Eh.  I'll be out on my bike in an hour or so.  In the meantime, it's quite in the house right now.  Everyone's asleep, even the dog.  There's a reason why this is my favorite part of the day.

***

The Towers of Terror made a surprise appearance over at Rival Angels last week:

The Towers of Terror at RivalAngels.com

I created the Towers of Terror with Rival Angels' creator Alan Evans a couple of years ago for the now infamous Rival Angels Halloween Special.  The girl in green is Lover Lola, and the taller girl is Zombie Luna.  Their manager is Johann the Zombie Potentate of Doom, who was originally created (by me) as a villain for Awesome Storm Justice 41 webisode #40.  But when production stopped over at ASJ, I re-purposed Johann for Alan, and now here he is.

It's awesome when your creations take on a life of their own.  Alan tells me that the Towers of Terror figure prominently in Rival Angels' fan fiction.  Which is unbelievable to me on a lot of levels.  In any event, Rival Angels has been really successful for Alan.  He tells me that he'd like to sell more books--an who wouldn't--but the series itself and it's ancillary revenue streams are strong, and he's apparently touring quite a bit--doing comic book shows all over the place--to support it.  Nice, huh?

Back From Tennessee

Sally an I got back from Tennessee about an hour ago.  It feels good to be back.  For once I'm in the enviable and unfamiliar position of not knowing exactly what to do with myself for a little while.  That kind of thing is rare for me.  I don't even need to go cook right now.  I'm at loose ends.

We went down to Tennessee this last time to clean out my mother's house.  If you're new to the blog, she died last month.  And it's been a struggle for me lately, trying to come to grips with everything.  On top of that, the sheer logistics of her diseases and the fact that I live in Connecticut and work in New York have made things so much more difficult than they had to be.  Well, more difficult than they had to be in an ideal world, anyway.

In any event, Sally and I went down there Friday morning to organize her house, her effects, and all the rest of it in advance of the Estate Sale, which is coming in a few weeks.  We got up at 4:00 am, flew down, rented a car, and then drove to her place.  I dropped Sally off, went to see the Lawyer and the Banker, and then came back.  In the meantime, Sally packed and organized.  We've hired a moving company, and not to put to fine a point on it, but we spent our time in Tennessee lately basically looting my mom's house.  We took 36 bags of clothes to the local Goodwill, packed up the china, the crystal, and the silver, and decided on what to auction and what to move into temporary storage in CT.  My mother is from an OLD Southern Family, and her house was a museum.  Choosing through it and getting it packed was a real job.  Of course, some of the stuff is still bound for sale, but in CT antique stores where it'll hopefully fetch a better price.  And some of it'll no doubt wind up here.  For example, we're going to replace our couch with my mother's new(est) love seat.

It was an interesting experience going through Mom's stuff.  She's got no more secrets, and if you've ever been in a Southern family, you'll know that those secrets can sometimes be profound.  Oddly, the biggest lesson that I learned was that my father, Recon Marine and All-Around Bad-Ass of All Trades that he was, was an inveterate scrap-booker.  My entire High School swimming career is enshrined in scrapbook.  He saved every damn news clipping!  So is my Plebe year at West Point.  And his time in Okinawa, Japan.  And the year he spent living with a woman after my mother divorced him.  It was wonderful, really, getting a glimpse into his mind back before he went crazy.  It was almost like talking to him in the way-back-when.

Mom also had all my West Point uniforms, a million pictures from the old days, and a basically a metric ton of memories, all crammed randomly into drawers along with medical bills, prescription forms, and tchotkes from TJ Maxx that she bought on sale whenever she got depressed.  Going through all that stuff was... heartening?  depressing?  invigorating?  a sense of closure?  Maybe a little of all of that.

In any event, we met with the Auction Guy and the Mover, and we got the house packed up.  Truthfully, I didn't think we'd have time to do it all, but we worked hard, and we finished early, and yesterday we even knocked off early and went to dinner.  And after dinner, we went to Tullahoma's used book store, where I found a copy of my Favorite Comic of All Time, the New Mutants Special Edition... for $.99!  Of course, I immediately bought that for Hannah, along with the first How To Train Your Dragon book and something about unicorns.

And now we're home, and... yes, my time is running out after all.  Have a nice Memorial Day, and thank a Veteran.

Some Light Reading for You Thursday Morning...

Here's what I read yesterday that I thought was worth sharing:

Over A Quarter Of The Field From Wrestlemania 7 Is Dead.

Robert Gates is leaving the Defense Department, and in leaving, he’s begging Americans to have an honest debate about defense spending.

Paul Ryan—and by extension, the entire Republican Party—is pretty much dead in the water.

I'm still working on The Way of Kings but so far it's real good.

And finally, my group is looking for a new Senior Engineer.  Given the qualifications, I'm thinking that the search might take awhile, so if you know anyone looking for a job, let me know.

How Do You Fit It All In?

Somebody asked last week how I fit it all in.  He mentioned something about work and family and tri-training at the butt-crack of dawn.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t familiar with the issues. 

Honestly, I wish I could tell you that there’s some secret formula for it, but really, the secret is this: I work at it.  And to be fair, Sally works hard at giving me the time to get out there, too.  She knows I’m a better, more balanced person when I have time to blow off some steam and get my mind right on my bike or whatever.  But really, it’s just a lot of effort and a lot of effort at being consistent with my training and with my lifestyle.

That said, if I had to list the keys to being a successful husband, working father, and competitive amateur triathlete, I’d probably list it out like this:

I’m lucky to have a background in Swimming.  True, I’d be a better triathlete if I was a super-strong runner and a merely average swimmer—rather than being the exact reverse of that—but swimming is by far the hardest discipline to pick up later in life, and I think it really, really helps to head into the water feeling confident of not only surviving but of actually coming out feeling good and with a decent lead on the rest of the field.

Getting up at 5:00 am doesn’t bother me.  Early morning swim practices set a pattern in my life that’s never ended.  After swimming, it was West Point.  After West Point, it was the Army.  And after the Army, I worked at a company with a 7am start time.  As a Supervisor, I had to be in at 6:30.  So now I wake up at 5:00 or maybe 5:30, even on Sundays.  At this point, I’m just hard-wired that way.  And as long as I’m up, I might as well get dressed and go ride.

My dad was a competitive amateur athlete.  I grew up seeing the lifestyle firsthand.  Dad taught me to run, lift weights, and basically be a competitive guy.  I did my first 5K at age seven and my first 10K before I was ten.  Having that in my background helps.

And then my dad drank himself to death.  I cannot emphasize enough how much this influenced me and the man I’m trying to be.  After Dad left the Marine Corps, he literally didn’t know what to do with himself.  So he crawled straight into a bottle.  After that, it took ten years and a Hell of a lot of Popov vodka for him to destroy the body that he’d spent a lifetime building.  So.  My commitment to myself and to my kids is to be the good man that my father was for most of his life but to leave his vices and his failures behind.  It’s a challenge, but his example lives on for me, both positive and negative.

I go to bed early.  During the week, I’m in bed by 9:00 or 9:30, and on the weekends, it’s 10:00 or so at the very latest.  Words to live by from my first swim coach: “Eat right.  Get lots of sleep.  Go like Hell.”

I commute on my bike whenever I can.  This is new, but it’s really helping.  In terms of time, biking is the hardest discipline to train.  If I can put in 40 or 50 miles on the folding bike during the week, then all I have to do is get out there once on the weekend and do a long ride with some intervals, and I’m good to go.  Yeah, there’re always gonna be faster guys out there, but riding a little every day provides at least some much-needed consistency.

Finally, I have a job with regular, manageable hours.  That it really helps.  I often wonder what’s wrong with me, why I don’t have more professional ambition.  I’m a smart guy, decent education.  Surely I could make more money, right?  But really, right on the face of it, the trade-offs just aren’t worth it.  I have a nice house, money enough, a beautiful wife, and great kids that I see every single day.  Against that, who gives a shit if I’m a bank vice president or something?  I mean, I could have stayed in the Army and all that, and who knows how things would’ve turned out.  But my heart wasn’t in it, and that’s no way to go through life.  And honestly, I’m not sure that I was all that good at faking it.  So, bottom line, I’ve got some free time, and I use it… on triathlon.  Or Dungeons and Dragons.  Or whatever else strikes my fancy.

So, given all of that, here’s my typical ideal training week:

Monday:

Commute-ride (active recovery), 11-miles total.

Tuesday:

Commute-ride (active recovery), 11-miles.  After work: Short run, usually 3.3 miles.

Wednesday:

Commute-ride (work the hills), 11-miles.  If I didn’t run Tuesday, I’ll run Wednesday.

Thursday:

Commute-ride (aggressive), 11-miles.  After work: Short Swim, maybe 2000 yds of speed work.

Friday:

Commute-ride (aggressive), 11-miles.  After work: Sometimes I do an extra run or some yoga here.

Saturday:

Long Run + Long Swim. 

Depending on my training emphasis and what I’ve done earlier in the week, I’ll either run long and swim easy or run easy and swim long.  A long run lasts about an hour and covers maybe 6 or 7 miles, and it’ll often include an interval workout from Podrunner.  A lesser run might go 4 miles or so at a steady, aerobic pace.

Swimming is much the same.  If I’ve managed to put in two runs during the week, I’ll go really long in the water on Saturday morning while my kids are in swimming lessons.  I might put in 3000 or even 4000+ yards, usually high tempo mid-distance work.  After something like that, I might not run at all or do anything else workout related for the rest of the day.  On the other hand, if I go long on the run on Saturday morning, I might only put in 2000 yards in the pool, in which case the workout is likely to be 5 x 100 @ 1:35 Warm Up, followed by 15 x 100 @ 1:30 (aerobic pace), and I’ll work on maintaining a steady pace while holding my heart rate at around 160 bpm.

Sunday:

Long Ride or Long Run. 

Again, whether I ride or run here will depend on what else happened during the week plus what my training emphasis is and what events are coming up as well as how the weather’s holding up.  I’m a lot more likely to run when it’s cold outside or drizzling rain.  On the other hand, if it rained during the week, so that I couldn’t ride, and/or I already put in my run miles, I’ll either force myself to ride or, in a pinch, go get in the pool again. 

Some Notes:

I use a points system to track my training.  I give myself a point for each 100 yards in the water, each quarter-mile of running, and each mile that I ride on the bike.  At the end of the week, my goal is to have at least 120 points and not more than 110% of whatever the highest point total was that I hit in the last month.  Right now, my upper limit is around 150 points in a week.  By comparison, if I were only running, that would be just less than 40-miles per week.  A heavy but manageable work load. 

What that means in practical terms is that if I ride 44 or 55-miles on the folding bike during the week and then put in a 3.3-mile run on Wednesday and a 2000-yard swim on Thursday, I usually find myself carefully counting points during the weekend to get the most out of what’s left.  Add in a long swim on Saturday morning—because the Greenwich Point One Mile Swim is one of my “A” races this year, and I already have to be at the pool for kiddo swim lessons—and I usually have the points remaining for either a long run or a long ride but not both.

But that’s one of the reasons I like Triathlon.  You can’t be good at everything.  Thus, there’s always something to work on.

The other thing I should mention here is that I train on a 4-week cycle.  Schedule permitting, I work three weeks hard, one week easy.  Those rest weeks are critical for preventing illnesses and injuries.  They also offer an opportunity to spend quality time with your family during the heaviest part of your training season.

So that’s it.  The secret is this: commute by bike, give up drinking, and get to bed early.  But also make sure you marry the right woman because triathlon is not a personal commitment, it’s actually a commitment that your whole family has to make together.  But then again, your commitment to your personal fitness is something your kids will emulate later in life. 

Remember: what goes around comes around.  You can’t just be the kind of man that YOU want to be.  You actually have to be the kind of man that you want YOUR KIDS to be when they’re adults.  They learn from your example. 

2011 Milford Y-Tri Race Report / Weekend Update

Alright, having looked at the numbers a little bit, I’m calmer and more at peace with how things went yesterday.  It wasn’t a great race by any means, but it wasn’t quite the disaster I thought it was at first blush, either, so…  Well, I’m dealing with it. 

That said, this year’s race report is brought to you solely by the fact that I noticed via the blog’s statistics page that A LOT of folks had read my report of last year’s race in the days leading up to this year’s race, presumably while trying to decide whether or not they ought to come out and give this race a try.  And since I also noticed that the field this year was a little deeper in terms of talent, well, here we are.

Pre-Race (or, How Not to Optimize Your Triathlon Performance)

My story starts on Thursday, May 19, 2011.  We traded in our old Honda CRV and my mom’s Nissan Altima for a new Honda Pilot last weekend.  Sally picked up the new Pilot on Thursday, but she was running late at the dealership, so she didn’t have time to let them install the bike racks.  No problem, she thinks, I’ll just go back next week and get it all hooked up.

Except that it was our CRV that had had the bike racks previously.  Meaning that as of Thursday, we no longer had a car with bike racks.

“No problem,” says I.  “That damned Pilot is HUGE.  Surely we’ll be able to get both bikes in the back.  Seriously, nothing to worry about.”

Famous last words.

So I get home from work the next day, Friday, and I’m exhausted.  It’s been raining, guys in my office have been sick, and my allergies are driving me crazy.  I want to sit down with a beer and TV and just chill.  But no.  Hannah and Emma (my daughters) had won tickets—good ones—to the Bridgeport Bluefish game, the first in a 3-game home stand against the Lancaster Barnstormers.  So we head out to the game, and I’ll admit that it was fun.  Had some beer, watched some baseball, saw the girls march in the kiddo literacy parade.  Everybody wins.  Well, except the Bluefish.  But in any case, though it wasn’t as relaxing as I might’ve hoped, it was fun.  And it wasn’t like it was a marathon, either.

Saturday was more of the same.  Took the kids to swim lessons, swam an easy little workout myself, went to the chiropractor, made brunch, cleaned up, took Emma to the library, etc.  By the end of the day, I was happy enough, but I’d been on my feet a lot and wanted to sit down with the TV and just rest.  But no.  Hannah had a gymnastics show, which ended up lasting until almost 10 pm.  Ugh.  But, as Sally pointed out, Hannah watched me race.  The least I could do was watch her perform, too.  And Hannah was good.  She really was.  I could wish that her show hadn’t been the night before the race, but what are you gonna do?

So… Got home late.  Slept like crap.  Had been on my feet all day.  This wasn’t the pre-race I’d been looking for.  But the Y-Tri is a short race, so it wasn’t an insurmountable start by any means.

Race Day (or, What Can Go Wrong Will)

Got up Sunday at 5:30.  Saw that it was raining.  Made a pot of coffee and ate a banana, a yogurt, and a Cliff Bar.  I usually use Power Bars, but with this being a short race, I decided to give the Cliff Bars a try based on their claims of improved healthiness or whatever.  Then I went out to pack the car, and uh-oh…  The bikes don’t fit.

*sigh*

I spent twenty damn minutes wrestling with the bikes and the new car, and they just wouldn’t go.  So I got Sally’s bike in there, took the front wheel off of mine, put mine in MY car, and we had to drive two cars the whole five miles to the race site.  Argh!  On top of which, I had to let the air out of my front tire in order to get it off, a factor that would come back to haunt me.

Eventually, we got to the race.  We were running late, but we got there with a little over an hour to spare, and I figured we were okay.  Got registered, set up in Transition, and basically prepped.  So I’m about to head to the pool to start doing my pre-race yoga/warm-up ritual when my front tire lets go.  I’m literally just walking by, and it goes “POOF!” and that’s it.  I’ve got to change the tire.  So I borrow a lever, change the tire, start pumping it up, and somehow I’ve grabbed the wrong size inner tube!  I guess somehow I got one of Sally’s for the spare instead of one of my own, and now I’m scrambling, trying to find a new, correctly-sized inner tube.  This takes ten minutes.  But finally, I get the tube, get it all set, and I’m finally ready to now RUN over to the pool and do some yoga when, oh wow, now they FINALLY have body marking set up—with exactly one person holding a marker.

Suffice it to say that by the time I got to the pool, there was no time for any yoga at all and minimal time for stretching.  I was the second swimmer in a pool-swim triathlon, meaning that I had to be ready to go right at the start.  From the time I left body marking, I had ten minutes before the race started in which to change into my suit, warm up, and be ready to go.  That sucked a lot.

Swim (In Which Nothing Bad Happens)

So we lined up.  I knew the other guys at the start of the race from last year’s race, and we talk a little about our seasons, and I stretched a bit.  Then the guy in front of me took off, I hoped in the water, and 30-seconds later, I took off.

They let the first few of us go off with 30-seconds between swimmers.  By that, I know that my first 100 was right at 1:00.  My next 100 was probably around 1:05, and my last was probably around 1:15.  I mean, I could feel myself slowing down, but I was okay, and I didn’t want to push too hard right at the start of an hour-long race.  Anyway, I touched the wall at about 3:20, hopped out of the pool, and then ran outside and over the timing mat.

 -- 300-yard pool swim in 3:31; 1/6 Age Group; 1/91 Overall.

Bike (In Which A Wrong Turn Causes Mayhem)

T-1 was untimed.  I’m guessing that it took me around 2-minutes, but that’s a wild guess.  Eventually, I got on the bike and felt like CRUD.  I don’t know if it was being on my feet all day the day prior, or if the lack of yoga in my warm-up factored in, or if I was just off all the way around.  Regardless, I felt heavy and slow for the entire first five-mile loop.  At one point, I even stood up and tried to stretch out my calves, which seemed to help.  On top of that, my bicycle computer wasn’t working, a casualty of my repeated tire changes.  Argh.  Still, by the time I got to the second loop, I felt better.  Breathing under control, quads not screaming quite so loudly.  Went up the little hill, around the turn, up the second climb, and…

Wait.  Second climb?  There’s no second climb on this course!  And why the Hell does that sign say “Welcome to the Town of Orange”?!

Yup.  Don’t ask me how, but I somehow missed a turn and wound up in Orange, CT.  I can only guess that the traffic volunteer at that turn went out to take a piss at the exact moment that I hit—or rather, missed—the turn.  I remember that it was CLEARLY marked the first time I went around.  Regardless, I put my head down to start really hammering once I started feeling better, and when I looked up, I was in the Town of Orange.  So I turned around, asked directions, fumbled, and eventually found my way back onto the course.  If MapMyRide is correct, I managed to make the Y-Tri’s 11-mile bike course into about a 13.5-mile course.  In any event, I KNOW that I had to pass a group of riders that I recognized twice, and I estimated after the fact that I added between 9 and 10 minutes to my total ride with that detour.

 -- Approximately 13.5-mile ride in 44:43; 4/6 Age Group; 46/91 Overall.  Not my best effort.

As a side-note, if we assume that T-1 was exactly 2:00, that had me averaging 18.96 mph on the bike.  That’s not terrible, especially considering that I had to stop, turn around, and then fumble my way back onto the course after having tried to get directions from a passerby.  But I’d hoped to average around 20 mph and might have succeeded without the mishaps.  Regardless, at the time I was PISSED.

Run (In Which This Farce Finally Ends)

Got to Transition—again untimed—fumbled with my gloves and the laces on my running shoes, and eventually headed out.  You had to run out the back of transition and around to get to the parking lot and the eventual running course.  On top of everything else, it felt like hazing.  Anyway, I headed out, now behind a bunch of folks I’d been in front of.  I was steamed, but I kept running.  Not so much because I wanted to try to place high—that was out the window—but because I’d trained and wanted to see what I could do.  I mean, at a certain level, it really didn’t matter.  It wasn’t like this was my season’s A-race or anything, and I’m not gonna lose my scholarship because of poor performance.  I was just STEAMED.  But I didn’t quit or anything.  

Eh.  In the event, I felt okay.  Not great, but okay.  I’m running better this season, and I felt that yesterday.  Still, I didn’t light the world on fire or run well enough to make the biking crap unimportant.  But I did, at least, re-pass some of the folks who’d passed me while I was lost on the bike course, and that’s worth something, I suppose.

 -- Approximately 2.4-mile run in 20:08; 3/6 Age Group; 16/91 Overall. 

If we assumed that T-2 was 90-seconds, and that I’ve got the correct distance down for the run course (2.2 miles from the official course map + .1 mile of parking lot in each direction that the course map doesn’t show), that puts me at 7:45/mile, or a touch faster than I was per mile at the Westport 10K.  Which is about where I’d expected to be.  Not blazing fast, but faster than I’ve been in years when I haven’t done as much run-interval training.  I should note, though, that at the time I finished, most of the posted results were for runners who were MUCH faster than me, so that I thought I’d put up something like 8:30 or even 9:00 per mile, and I was FUMING.  Inconsolable, really.  On top of getting lost and having all those bike malfunctions, it easily ruined the rest of my day.

 Summary

-- Milford Y-Tri Official Time: 1:08.22.  3/6 Age Group; 27/91 Overall.

At this point, my biggest complaint is that the Transitions weren’t timed.  I mean, it’s my fault that I got lost.  I don’t know how it happened, but it only happened to me, so who else can I blame?  It sucks, but what are you gonna do?  Still, if the transitions were timed, at least I’d have better data on my performance, and I wouldn’t be guessing after the fact about how I did.  Given that this was at best a B-Race, that would be worth more to me than the placing statistics.

By the way, Sally ran this race, too.  And yes, this was her first triathlon.  Her swim was a very respectable 8:34, or 2:48/100.  Personally, I think she’s ready for Open Water next time.  At 53:09 (~13mph), however, I also think she needs to spend some more time in the saddle.  That bike leg is a little slow.  Finally, her run was a respectable 21:13 or 8:25/mile—not bad at all for the last leg of a first-ever triathlon.  That’s faster than I averaged on my first ever triathlon, anyway.

So there you have it.  If you’ve got questions about this race and aren’t a regular reader of my blog, feel free to hit me on email at danthead (at) gmail.com.  And please note that I’ve used (at) instead of @ there in order to avoid spambots.  Or you can leave a Comment.  But if you Comment a year from now, just realize that I might not notice it in time to answer your questions before the race.

Don't Ask About the Race

Seriously.  Ugh.  I had a flat pre-race, and then my spare inner-tube turned out to be the wrong size, and it was all downhill from there.  I was slower in all three phases than last year, and to top it off, I took a wrong turn on the bike course, adding maybe 3 miles and 10-minutes to my total time.  I even had to ask directions!  After that, I'm not gonna lie, it was hard to stay motivated and put in a quality run.

Yuck.

At times like this, I'm reminded of some of the reasons why I quit swimming.  Going off the emotional cliff after a really disastrous performance is not fun.  Honestly, I feel like Vince Young, ready to throw my helmet and shoulder pads into the stands at LP Field.  I mean, I'm coming out of it now, but yikes!  It's the Mean Reds all over again.

Race Tomorrow

As I've mentioned here before, we've got a race tomorrow.  It's Sally's first triathlon.  And she's SO nervous, she's acting CRAZY.  Ugh.

Eh.  She'll be okay.  Once she realizes that the swim is short, and the rest of the race is MUCH longer, I think she might even be happy.

Go Sal!

Keep Your Damn Government Hands Off My Iron Man!

Following up on one of last week’s posts, we saw this week that both Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump have formally dropped out of the 2012 presidential race.  Leaving almost no one besides Romney actually running.  With that, Slate seems to think Tim Pawlenty is now your next Republican presidential nominee.  Eh.  They may well be right.  Still, if more than 1-in-25 Americans can pick Pawlenty out of a line-up, I’d be astonished. 

BTW, if you actually go through and read that article, ask your self a question: How many Americans can actually chant, “Keep your damn government hands off my Medicare,” with a straight face?  If Slate’s to be believed, there’s a whole movement out there.  Scary.

***

Sally and the kids and I had a nice weekend.  Kind of laid back.  A lot less physical labor than we’ve had in the last few weekends past. 

I took Friday off completely from working out and instead went out for a few beers with some of the guys from work.  Nice time.  To say that I don’t get out much is to make the understatement of the year.  Still, I had a little hangover on Saturday morning, so my planned five-and-a-half miles of interval runs turned into a straight, 5-mile aerobic-paced jog, and when I eventually got into the water, I didn’t have my best stuff at all.  Plus, we were out of Gatorade at the house, so I actually bonked towards the end of the swim, and that left me feeling headachy and wasted for the rest of the day.

Which isn’t to say that Saturday was a bad day.  We had a leisurely brunch at one of the local diners after swimming, and then we drove to the Honda dealer, where we (eventually) made a deal to trade in our CRV and my mom’s Nissan Altima for a new Honda Pilot.  Unfortunately, that took several hours.  But now, Sally tells me, she can carry fully HALF of Hannah’s Brownie troop with her in the car when they go out on outings.  This, apparently, is a good thing. 

I’m sure the dog’s gonna like it at any rate.

I spent the rest of the afternoon ironing and watching the new Iron Man cartoon on Netflix with the girls.  They loved it.

Sunday was rainy.  I’d planned to do a long ride (with more intervals!) to close out my Week 3 training, but I ended up bagging it.  I’d been exhausted all week, and Saturday’s workout left me feeling even worse than I’d felt during the week, so that by Sunday morning, I was ready to close out my Week 3 training early and head straight into my regularly scheduled Rest Week.  Thus, instead of me going long on the bike, it was Sally who went, going for a quick brick: 8-mile ride/2.5-mile run.  She looked good doing it, too, which was nice. 

I did eventually make it to the pool Sunday afternoon, but I only put in about 1700 yards of mostly tempo work.  After that, it was more ironing with Iron Man, and then the skies cleared up long enough to let me grill hamburgers and hot dogs.

So now it’s my Rest Week, and I’m slowly but surely starting to feel like myself again.  Finally.  It’s a good, too, because we’ve got our first actual triathlon of the season on Sunday.  Admittedly, the Milford Y-Tri is a short race—300-yard pool swim, 10-mile ride, 2.2-mile run—but it fit well into our schedule, and it’s hard enough if you do it at a dead sprint.  Which is what I did last year.  Last year, I also won my age group here, and as I mentioned last week, I’d really like to defend the title belt.  Plus, this’ll be Sally’s first triathlon, and I’m excited to see her race.  I think she’ll do well.

***

I keep feeling like I need to call my mother.  She’s been dead for maybe four weeks now, and mostly I just can’t shake the feeling that I haven’t talked to her in a while.

How Do You Promote Women in Sports?

Past the link below, you’ll find a short post on SB*Nation’s pro-cycling blog written by a female pro cyclist, along with a bunch of pics of various women of pro cycling in various states of undress (all quite safe for work).  Sure you can enjoy the pics—and to be clear, everyone involved in the discussion past the link seems to take pleasure in doing so—but the issue at hand is a little more interesting.  The writer asks whether the girls taking these pics are basically doing a disservice to the seriousness of their sport by selling themselves as sex symbols instead of as professional athletes.  The issue comes up because the writer herself was asked to do a pin-up shoot, and while she was happy to be sexy enough to be asked, she ultimately wanted to sell herself as an athlete first—albeit one with a drool-worthy body.

Thus the question, which I think is a fine topic for the football offseason: What do you think?  Can women athletes who sell themselves primarily with their physical attractiveness still be taken seriously as athletes, or do they at that point become little more than highly skilled fitness models?  I mean, can you even imagine Tom Brady or someone of his caliber posing for Playgirl?

Here’s the link, titled “The Elephant in the Room”.

For the curious, my answer is different depending on whose benefit we’re worried about.  If you’re a female pro-cyclist (or triathlete or bobsledder or whatever), and you want to make a living from your sport, then I think, yeah, you have to do whatever you have to in order to put food on your table and pay your mortgage.  Pro-sports people are basically entertainers, they get paid to a large extent according to the amount of interest and publicity—and thus sponsorship—they generate, and that’s just the way it is.  You don’t like it?  Go sell insurance for a living. 

I mean, I’m not saying that every female athlete—or every male athlete, for that matter—ought to basically pose nude, but I do think that athletes are like any other celebrity, and that they’re therefore justified in doing whatever will keep their names and faces in the papers so long as they’re comfortable with it.  Bottom line, that’s how they make their money. 

Does it help if they can get on the podium occasionally?  Of course it does.  That’s the object of the sport, and then, too, there’s the prize money to consider.  I think winning should always be the primary objective of any professional athlete.  My only point here is that if you’re struggling to make a living as a professional athlete in a small market sport—and there are lots of sports out there with athletes that fit that description—then you’re justified in doing whatever you can to make your living.  Beyond that, you can only hope that your success on the field (or the track or the pool or wherever) is enough that folks see you as an athlete first and not just as a sex symbol.

The other side of the equation, then, is what’s best for the sport.

Here, I gotta say that I think all those glamour shots are poison.  Lindsey Vonn is one of the most successful skiers in American history, but then she posed in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition, and even her fellow competitors wondered if she was still taking the sport seriously.  But while I think the move was a no-brainer in terms of Vonn’s personal finances and her personal ability to attract sponsorship, I think that the real damage those shots did was to the sport as a whole.  I mean, why take any of it seriously when the best woman is the world is better known for what she looks like in a bikini than she is for her actual skiing?  Because look, regardless of the quality of the athletes involved, there’s a reason why folks don’t watch the Lingerie Bowl to see quality football.  Bottom line, football isn’t fundamentally what’s on display there.  In marketing terms, the football isn’t where the Value Proposition is most closely focused.  And if that’s maybe not such a big deal to specific individuals participating in sport, I think it’s an absolute deal-breaker for the sports themselves.  People go to a bike race to see bike racing.  If what you’re really selling is boobs, then that’s a problem.  There are lots of other, better places to see boobs than at a bike race, even a bike race with a lot of hot female racers.

These sports need to know what their value propositions are, and they need to sell on them rather than the sex appeal of their stars.  The sex appeal is just a bonus.  It doesn’t hurt, but if it becomes the point, it actually damages the value of the brand.  That’s as true in bike racing as it is in anything else.

Of Gods and Presidents...

Before I go any further, let me just say one thing: the whole death-industrial-complex is a fucking jobs program.  It’s unbelievable.  Seriously.  I literally cannot believe the amount of technical, legalistic bullshit that goes into trying to put somebody’s final affairs in order.  Shit, she’s dead, she left everything to me.  It’s not that she liked me so much, but I was her only son, practically her only living relation.  How fucking hard is that to understand?  Look, there is no valid reason why I have should have to fill out all these damned TPS Reports in triplicate.  Except to keep a lot of lawyers, accountants, bankers, pimps and prostitutes in fat cash, homey.  It’s driving me stark raving crazy.

Yuck.   

Alright, so I haven’t done a lot of politics lately, but I gotta say that I’m pleased to see that Donald Trump’s would-be presidential campaign finally seems to have flamed out.  It bothers me the way that all of this year’s would-be Republican candidates are basically just reality TV stars.  Even Newt Gingrich, a formerly serious guy, seems like he’s just in it at this point so he can sell some T-Shirts, grab a spot on Fox News after it’s over, and maybe write another book.  He must know he can’t actually win the election.  Not only is he short and dumpy compared to the president, he’s also perhaps the second most polarizing figure in recent American political history (behind Hilary Clinton), and he’s got an extensive and well-documented history of cheating on his wives.  This is not the way presidents are made.  And Gingrich is smart enough to know it. 

Bottom line, besides Mitt Romney, there’s not a single serious candidate in the Republican race.  And what’s even worse, Romney has to run away from his strengths in order to appeal to the Republican base!  Ugh.  I mean, I don’t love Romney or anything, but I can at least admit that he’s a smart guy who came up with a smart health care system, and that he’s a successful-enough business man to maybe make a serious effort at intelligently balancing the budget.  But right now he can’t run away from his own record fast enough, especially on health care, which is arguably his greatest success.  Hell, even the fact that he’s an upstanding Mormon family man is gonna hurt him with the Birther/Wingnut faction of the GOP, let alone the fact that he was governor of Massachusetts.  Y’know, the Republican base will in no way vote from some Yankee businessman from Massachusetts.  It just ain’t gonna happen.  Which leaves us with Trump and Palin and Bachman and whoever the Hell else wants to get out there and rouse the rabble in some hopelessly quixotic campaign to confuse the issues and scare the Hell out of everyone with a bunch of talk about gay marriage.

*groan*  Those guys are all so scared of the gays.  I just don’t get it.  Like it’s catching or something.  Look, I don’t actually know all that many gay people—and I work in Manhattan!—but the ones I do know are totally NOT scary.  Not scary at all.

Still, I get it.  The current president looks utterly indestructible, and so all best Republicans are simply holding their fire this time around.  And that leaves us with the wackadoos.  But still…  it’d be nice if the GOP could at least put up the appearance of a serious fight.  I mean, it’s not a done deal or anything.  We are actually going to have an election.  It’d be cool if we could get a candidate or two to at least discuss the issues.  Somebody who doesn’t have to “phone a friend” in order to come up with a list of the last few books she’s read or the newspapers she reads regularly.

*sigh*

On the brighter side, I saw Thor last night, and it was totally better than I thought it was gonna be.  I blame that entirely on the screenplay.  I noticed in the credits that the movie was actually written byBabylon 5 creator J. Michael Stracyznski, and I hope like Hell that means he’s gonna put another series on TV.  Babylon 5 was awesome, and the major networks are very obviously searching for something they can put out there that’s both good and relevant to pop culture and comic books.  Stracyznski’s probably the right guy to go to for that.  Still, I’m not holding out too much hope.  I mean, I’d like to see that long anticipated HBO long-form series of the Bendis/Maleev run on Daredevil but I don’t actually think it’s coming.  But who knows?  Maybe something good will show up.

Of course, if it does, they’ll probably just cancel it after half a season.  Like they canceled The Chicago Code.  Fuckers.  America can’t get enough of Bob’s Burger’s, but no one wants to watch the Chicago Code?  What the Hell is wrong with this country?

Eh.  That wasn’t really the brighter side, was it?

Anywho, Free Comic Book day was last Saturday, and I gotta say that I LOVED the thing that Robert Kirkman put out, Super-Dinosaur.  An obvious concept, maybe, but very well crafted, and my kids loved it.  I’m putting it on my Pull List.  And seriously, I can’t wait to see what Kirkman does with it.  What an awesome book!

Now if they could only write Batgirl for actual pre-teen girls, it’d be all good.

And finally: Triathlon.  Where I’m tired of being tired. 

It’s now that part of the season where the early aerobic prep is hitting hot and heavy, and none of the big races are close enough to justify resting or attempting to round into form just yet.  So I’m basically hammering myself into hamburger every weekend, and right now, it feels like it’s been a month since my quads started hurting.  Just walking around takes a conscious effort of will.  Seriously, not to pimp Kirkman again, but I feel like the walking dead, and it’s getting old. 

Thankfully, I’ve got my first actual triathlon of the season in about 10 days, meaning that I’m four days and an afternoon away from starting a Rest Week, and I cannot fucking wait.  Granted, this isn’t one of the bigger races, and I’ve got to do at least one long bike ride with intervals between now and then, but still… It’s an excuse to back off, and I’m taking it.  Plus, I won my age group at this race last year, meaning that this year I need to defend the championship belt. 

Hey, it’s something, right?  Maybe not as good as being WCW’s European Champion, but y’know, it’s nice to actually win every once in a while.

Well, I think it is.

I Feel Famous

I finally let Facebook add friends via my email account and then went through the six-degrees-of-separation they use to predict the REST of the folks you ought to know in their network.  Very surreal experience.  It seems like I'm about 2-degrees-of-separation away from all of the most famous comic writers and triathletes in the world.  And the rest of the folks that I know are all still in the Army.  I guess my past lives and my hobbies are just the overwhelming bits of my life.

Oddly, only two people from my actual, day-to-day life were on there  Which just goes to show you how much I use email these days, I suppose.

Long Swim

This morning's workout was the most swimming I've done in years.

 - 3 x 200 @ 3:15 warm up
 -- 3 x 300 @ 4:15 }
 -- 4 x 200 @ 2:50 } base interval = 1:25/100; aero-pace
 -- 5 x 100 @ 1:25 }
 - 400 Kick
 - 400 Pull
 - 50 easy drill
 - 5 x 50 @ 1:00 sprint - fly / free / fly / free / fly
 - 100 Warm Down

And now I'm tired.

Traffic

I was looking at the traffic on the old blog today.  Because none of you EVER comment, but I know folks are reading because I get a fairly steady stream of emails and in-person comments about stuff you read here.

So, here are today's stats:

United States 14 Croatia 3 Philippines 2 Denmark 1

Question: Can I get our readers from Denmark and Croatia to comment?  That'd be cool.