Schenectady, New York

I've been in Schenectady this week for a class on advanced power flow.  The town is without a doubt one of the most depressing places I've ever been.  GE used to have a big plant here way back in the day, but then they shut the plant down, and as they were leaving, they pretty much turned out the lights and shut the door.  Now all that's left is a shell of a downtown full of nice buildings with a lot of empty office and retail space and a bunch of people who looked whipped and depressed.  Everywhere you go, there are adults just sitting on the side of the street--even in the middle of downtown--looking beat.  At rush hour, you can walk right across the city's main street without even looking both ways.

*sigh*

It hasn't been a really exciting week.  I mean, the first day or so was okay just because it was nice to get a break and get some sleep, but towards the middle and end of the week, the place has become practically unbearable.  Fortunately, the town itself is pretty enough.  I went for a long run along the river on Wednesday morning, and then I did a tempo run this morning in the same basic area, but other than that and a few hours of extra sleep, there's not much to be said for the week.

I did get out to see Harry Potter VIII last night, and I liked it, but it was kind of a drag to know how it was gonna end.  I mean, it's an impressive visual spectacle, but I wonder how hard it would've been to follow without having read the book.  'Course, I suppose by now everyone has read the book, so maybe the issue is moot.  At any rate, I'd have preferred to have seen Captain America, but Sally said that she wanted to see that with me, so...  What are you gonna do?

Not sure what all we have planned this weekend.  I know I'm gonna go for a long(ish) bike ride tomorrow morning, but beyond that, I don't have too many plans.  You?

Hello?  Anyone?  Plans this weekend?

*sigh*

Amica Ocean Beach 19.7 2011 Race Report

Alright, sorry I didn’t have a post for you yesterday.  I’m in Schenectady, New York, this week for a class on electric power flow modeling, and although I’ve got a bit more time than normal on my hands, I’m off my routines and just couldn’t quite find the motivation to do much of anything yesterday.  But today’s a new day, and I’m slowly but surely recovering from the race Sunday and the heat and weeks of training leading up to it.

Before we really get started here, and I want to take a minute and note that what I reported on Sunday was wrong.  I thought I went 1:35 last year at the Ocean Beach triathlon.  Actually, I went 1:31.  Which means that I was, in fact, slower this year than last year, and at least on its face that seems a little hard to understand.  I mean, I’ve been training much more.  Much, much more.  So I’ve been going through the events of Sunday’s race to try to figure out what happened, especially since I’ve got another, bigger and more important race coming up, and I want to perform at least a little closer to my full capabilities when I get there.

With that said, Sunday’s race wasn’t without its bright spots.  The key here, I think, is to take away the right lessons learned and continue to improve on the things that are better than they were.

Leading up to the Race

The days leading up to the race were hectic.  That’s kind of par for the course when you work a real job, live in a house that you own, have a wife, kids, and an active family life and everything else that goes along with the American Dream.  In specific, it’s summer and the kids are out of school.  On top of that, we were in the middle of a pretty severe heat wave in Connecticut last week—with temperatures in the mid- to upper-90’s—and our house isn’t air conditioned except in the bedrooms.  To be fair, we rarely need air conditioning in coastal Connecticut, but this past week was one of those rare times.  And that affected both my home life and my work.  At home, I had to deal with exhausted kids and a cranky wife.  At work, well, I work for the power company in New York City.  It was hot Thursday, and then we hit our all-time peak electric load on Friday, and there are some things that go along with that for me.  Still, I did the best I could to kind of lay off of things on Saturday, and I’ve got to say that Sally was pretty damned helpful in that department.  With the exception of when I got up to cook dinner on the grill, I tried to stay off my feet on Saturday, and I think I was mostly successful. 

Bottom line, it’s hard to tell how much the heat and the sheer craziness of last week affected my performance.  I mean, I think there probably was at least some effect, but I don’t think that the heat in particular affected me all that much.  Certainly, I wouldn’t call it a deciding factor in my overall performance, but I could be wrong.

What’s probably a bigger deal is the sheer amount that I’ve been training these past few months.  I’ve been training between thirty and fifty percent more this season than last season, and while I’m quite sure that that’s improved my overall conditioning, I also wonder if I’ve not allotted quite enough recovery time to my schedule.  For example, there have been many, many weeks lately when I’ve not taken even a single day off from training—if you include the ten miles I commute every day on my bike—and I happen to know that that kind of thing will eventually wear on a body.  As long as you can avoid injury and train smart that’s probably okay for your final peak performance, but you do need to allow adequate rest at some point in order to completely recover if you want to get stronger and faster.  Muscles only grow when you rest.  Balancing training and recovery can be a tricky task, and I’m not quite sure I’ve been at the optimal point lately.

Race Day

In any event, we went to bed pretty early on Saturday night, and I slept well.  My alarm went off at 4:40, and I got up, grabbed the stuff I’d packed the night before, threw my bike into the back of my car, and I was out the door by a few minutes after 5:00.  I had to stop and get gas, but even so, I thought was good on time.  I had to drive for about an hour to get to Ocean Beach, eating a Cliff Bar and a banana and drinking Gatorade as I went.  I got to the race site just after 6:00 am, confident that I had plenty of time.

As it happens, that wasn’t quite correct.  We had a tiny thunderstorm cell come through the area and kind of wreak havoc on pre-race preparations.  So although I ended up (eventually) getting everything set up in time, I left myself very little time for warm up and stretching, and what time I had I cut even shorter by forgetting my water bottles back in my car.  I literally had to run to my car to get my bottles and put them onto my bike and then run down to the waterfront for the race start.  Not the most auspicious of beginnings—and made even more so by the fact that I couldn’t go through my pre-race stretching routine.  Bottom line, I think I needed about twenty more minutes and that not stretching enough really hurt me, especially on the bike leg.

I did, however, manage to get into the water and swim a little bit before the race, and I had a few minutes to stretch and collect myself during pre-race instructions.  I felt like I was ready, and I felt fine in the water, so who knows?  Maybe the lack of pre-race yoga had nothing to do with anything.

Swim

Eventually we headed over to the start point, lined up in our heats, and got ready to go.  My heat was first, and it was pretty big.  More to the point, I didn’t push my way through to the front of the wave, which meant that once we started, I was surrounded by other swimmers.  However, I did at least start off to one side, and once the gun went off, it took me no more than about fifty meters to outdistance most of the pack and find open water.  The water itself was cool and glassy—perfect conditions, really, for a good swim.  By the time I hit the first buoy, I was out there alone with the elite athletes, one of whom I bumped going around the buoy.  After that, we kind of got into a little chicken-fighting kind of thing, and I don’t really know what to say about it except that I try to take a very tight line around the buoys, and with 2 years of high school water polo under my belt, I know how to fight folks off in the water.  In any event, I finally put a pretty hard elbow into the poor kid’s chest, and after that, he took a different line.  And for what it’s worth, I apologized after the race, and he didn’t seem like he’d taken it too hard.

Once I got out onto my own line, I made a conscious effort to slow down and get myself under control.  In past triathlons, I’ve tended to run a little hot during the swim and leave too little left for the run.  That’s silly, especially for me.  This time, I kind of cruised a long, confident of my swim training this season and determined to keep myself in control and breathing easily.  After I turned at the last buoy, I fell in directly behind somebody and let them pull me in the rest of the way to the beach.  Then I ran out of the water and up the beach—what turned out to be a very looong run to Transition through thick, loose sand.  Argh.

1/2-mile swim: 14:24.  1/35 Age Group, 6/356 Overall.

In comparison to last year, that’s actually two minutes slower.  Last year, my swim was two whole minutes faster, but I placed 8^th overall against a slower field.  That’s only possible if either the swim distance was different, or the timing mats were placed closer to the beach.  It’s hard to say which of those things it was.

T-1

Before the race, Transition was a zoo.  They crammed 400 athletes into a space that was meant to house maybe 300.  This was a serious pain in the ass during set-up, but it wasn’t a big deal during T-1 because during T-1, I was one of only about ten guys in the area.  In any event, I grabbed my helmet, gloves, cycling shoes, and jersey, threw all that on, and headed out.  I felt like I made decent time, and compared to last year, I was faster.  It helps that I don’t wear a wetsuit.

T-1: 1:57.

Bike

Once again, the deck was slippery, so I made my way gingerly to the start of the bike course, mounted, slipped, re-mounted, and set off.  And right off the bat, I knew something was wrong.  For whatever reason, my legs felt dead.  Why?  This is what I’ve been trying to explain to myself for the past few days.  Was it the heat leading up to the race?  Simple over-training?  Poor pre-race stretching?  For whatever reason, I didn’t have it, and I knew it right off.

To make matters worse, the course was wet, and there are at least ten ninety-degree turns along the 16-mile route.  I usually corner pretty hard, but I almost went down on the first corner when my rear tire hit a patch of wet paint, and after that, I took it easy.  Far, far better to have a slower bike leg than to lay my bike down due to idiotic aggression on a wet race course.  So I found myself hitting my brakes a lot—pretty much every time I’d get into a decent rhythm.  I’d come out of a corner, peddle hard with dead legs to get back up to speed, eventually start feeling better, and invariably within the next mile there’d be another hard corner, and I’d have to slow back down and start again.  I don’t remember this being a problem last year, but then again, last year the course was dry, and I didn’t feel like such shit on the bike.  This year, the whole thing was a trial.

Normally, I enjoy the bike leg the most in a triathlon.  At this race, I just wanted it to end.

16.1-miles on the bike: 49:44 (17.8 mph).  17/35 Age Group.  126/356 Overall.

Last year, I averaged 18.5 mph and was just over a minute faster.  So yeah, this ride was shit.

T-2

I was super-happy to get off the bike.  I ran—gingerly—back into Transition, threw off my bike shoes, helmet, and riding jersey, threw on my running shoes—now with speed laces!—and out I went.

T-2: 1:01.  That’s pretty good, especially considering how slow you had to run into and out of Transition due to the wet boardwalk.

Run

It is a rare race when I’m actually looking forward to the run, but that happened this time.  Still, it was dreadfully humid during the run, and the sun was coming up to full power.  So I wouldn’t exactly say that I enjoyed it.  I did, however, manage to hold form, and far fewer people passed me on the run than normal.  Usually what happens when I race is that I’m out of the water with the leaders, and then I hold my place against all but the most aggressive bikers.  I mean, I get passed on the bike, but not by mobs and mobs of people.  The mobs then pass me on the run.  That’s what normally happens.  But this time, the mobs had already passed me on the bike, and I held my place—and even passed a few folks back—on the run.

I’m not a great runner, but I’m improving.

At any rate, I didn’t run great, but I ran okay.  I mean, I didn’t push it, but I ran correctly and maintained a pace, and although it was humid, I eventually finished in relatively good order.

3.1-mile run: 25:50 (8:15/mile).  22/35 Age Group.  153/356 Overall.

That’s about a minute and a half faster than last year, and bottom line, I’m pleased that I ran well on a day when it seems like I didn’t do much else very well.

Final Thoughts

Ocean Beach 19.7: 1:32:55.  15/35 Age Group.  78/356 Overall.

Last year I was a just over a minute faster on the same course, most of which is attributable to the difference in the bike leg.  Honestly, this was just a rough outing, and I think that the only real positive here is that I’m running better.  That’s good.  But I definitely need to make an effort to get to my next race early and leave myself some time to stretch and get my head together before the race, and I think I also need to closely monitor my training levels leading up to the race.  I’ve put in a good base of work, but to really take advantage of it, I now need to round myself into form and get some rest—without letting go of my conditioning.  It’s a delicate balance, but if I want to perform well, I need to manage it as best I can.

Dark Knight Trailer

I'm running a little late on the Race Report.  In the meantime, here's the new Dark Knight Rises trailer.  You'll just have to content yourselves with it.

Ocean Beach 19.7: A Tough Race

It was a tough race today, and I didn't really feel like I had my best stuff.  Still, I was three minutes faster this year than last year, so I suppose I can't complain.  That three minutes is 100% conditioning improvement, though.  In terms of how I felt today, I felt like I had lead-lined legs all race long.  I just happened to hold it together and put in what looks like a decent performance.

I'll put together a full-blown Race Report later this week.

Checking Back In

It's been busy around these parts lately, which is why I haven't posted in two days.  I've got my race coming up, we had a new all-time peak electric load set in New York City yesterday--though Con Ed appears to have come through pretty well, all things considered, and we finally saw some aggression out of Andy Schleck at the Tour Thursday and Friday.  In fact, Schleck launched a MASSIVE attack from over 50 km out, which set him up to take the Yellow Jersey at the end of the stage yesterday.  Awesome and impressive stuff, really.  And on top of all of that stuff, I came home last night to find Sally in the beginnings of heat exhaustion.  Argh!

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And on top of all of that stuff, I came home last night to find Sally in the beginnings of heat exhaustion.  Argh!

At any rate, today promises to be a decent day, but a full one.  We're gonna watch the final time trial at Grenoble this morning on Versus, and then we're going to the library and maybe to the Trek store in Fairfield, CT.  I'm looking forward to it.

Race Week, Part 2

It’s Wednesday of Race Week for me, and I’m getting excited.  Granted, my legs still feel a little dead, this being the middle of my rest week and all, but racing is coming, and I’ve already recovered enough from the last few weeks’ training that I felt like I had a little pop on the first (and longest) of the little climbs that lead into office on this morning’s commute.  I’ll be skipping my commute ride the next two days to rest my legs a little more—though I’ll probably swim a little tomorrow and again Saturday—and then comes Sunday, and IT’S ON!

It’s gonna be brutal out there on Sunday.  Perhaps not as brutal as tomorrow’s stage, but I mean, we aren’t a bunch of pro riders out there.  We’re fathers and mothers, weekend warriors and engineers… people with a lot of other things on our minds besides just going fast.  Against that, the Ocean Beach 19.7 is a longish course for a Sprint triathlon set amidst 90-degree heat with neither shade nor cloud cover, and since the beach is just out past the tip of Long Island, we can expect at least some surf for the swim.  Last year, the heat and the sheer difficulty of the course—it only looks flat—caught me by surprise.  This year, I know what to expect, and I’ve spent MUCH more time in the saddle and running in the sun.  With any luck, we’ll have a little wind, too, giving the water some chop and the race a little front-loaded pain.  I mean, I don’t love swimming in choppy, surf-filled water, but I know my strengths, and if we can soften up some of those ultra-skinny runner-dudes while we’re in the water and then make them ride some into a stiff head-wind, that’ll help me quite a bit.

Eh.  Looking at Weather.Com, it looks like Ocean Beach ought to be pretty mild by Sunday.  Upper 70s with wind at around 10 mph.  Not even worth mentioning; heat wave over.  Hell, according to Weather.Com, this week’s heat wave won’t even force Ocean Beach over 90-degrees.  Meanwhile, NYC is predicted to be in the low upper 90’s to lower 100’s!

I don’t know if I buy it.  Ocean Beach Park is about 65-miles from my house, mostly east, and Stratford is expected to go over 90-degrees with ease tomorrow and Friday.  And last year it was hot.  Moreover, I definitely do remember that they hadn’t predicted any kind of special heat wave or anything in the days leading up the race.  It was just a typical summer weekend.  But the median time on the run-leg of the race was still over 9:00/mile on a flat course in my age group.  That’s god-awful.  I don’t care what anybody says: people got pounded by the sun last year. 

Bottom line: it was hot last year, and I believe it’ll be hot again this year.

Getting Back In the Saddle: Race Week!

Sorry if you missed me these past few days.  Had a great weekend—including a long brick workout, a decent swim, a long run, plenty of tube-time with the Tour, and a day at the beach with my kids—but the downside of all that was that by Sunday afternoon, I was way behind on my chores.  To make matters worse, we didn’t get back home from the beach until late in the afternoon on Sunday, and since I still had a week’s worth of ironing to do as well as a night’s worth of cooking, that meant I had to get to work straight away.  So… no post Sunday.  And then yesterday I actually sat down to quickly post the new Dark Knight Rises teaser trailer viaYouTube, but for whatever reason, they’ve blocked the “embed” feature for the trailer, leaving me empty-handed.  And at that point… I mean, there’s been more traffic around here lately, but I hardly think folks are waiting on baited breath to see what I’m gonna post every day.

So now it’s Tuesday, and not only is it the third week of the Tour de France, it’s also race week for me for the Amica 19.7 Ocean Beach Triathlon.  Exciting!  Not withstanding that it’s supposed to be in the 90s this weekend, I ought to do reasonably well.  I’ve been training hard, and this particular race is right at about my optimal distance—around one and a half to two hours.  It’s a half-mile swim, 16-mile bike (mostly false flats), and then 5k run.  Last year, it took me 95 minutes but left me baked—both because I didn’t pack a gu and because I was flat-out expecting an easier race.  This year, well, I know it’s gonna be hotter than Hell, I know the run course offers zero shade, and I know that the bike-leg only looks flat.  The addition of a slight tweak to my nutrition plan, a white running hat, and a hearty dose of pre-packaged mental toughness, and I ought to be ready to rock!

***

Over at the Tour, I’ve gotta say that I’ve been really disappointed this year with Team Leopard-Trek leader Andy Schleck.  Don’t get me wrong; I like Schleck.  Last year, when his brother crashed out of the Tour andAlberto Contador looked utterly unstoppable, Andy put up an inspiring fight.  He lost a three-week bicycle race by 39 seconds to a guy who is—easily—the best active professional rider of our time.  I enjoyed rooting for him.  So this year, with Contador coming off a dominant Giro d’Italia and stuck amidst a nasty doping scandal (left over from last year’s Tour), it looked very much like the Tour was Schleck’s to lose.  But he is losing it, and it’s hard to understand.  I mean, I know he lost a teammate to a nasty crash on a decent earlier this year, and so perhaps that and the crash-tastic nature of the first week this year’s Tour have weighed on his mind, but even so, Andy Schleck has looked utterly pedestrian all year long.  He did dick during the year prior to the Tour, he did nothing but sit on the wheels of his teammates during the Tour’s first week, he attacked repeatedly but tentatively in the Pyrenees last week, and then today he lost time on a relatively easy climb, ostensibly because he chose not to remove his rain gear prior to the climb’s start.  And then he lost more time on the decent—again looking tentative—before coming to a stop just in time to bitch non-stop about the way the stage finished.  Argh! 

Folks, this is not the way that champions are made.  I mean, I may not like Alberto Contador a whole lot, but he is at least out there giving it everything.  Personally, after the Giro and the various crashes he had in the Tour’s first week, I don’t believe that Contador can recover and win again.  But at this point, he sure as Hell looks like he’s gonna go down fighting, and I won’t be surprised if he winds up on the podium and less than a minute down from the eventual leader.  And that in itself will be quite an accomplishment.

***

I watched the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, and I gotta say that I think it looks pretty cool.  It’s really too bad I can’t post it here.  If you’re familiar with the major storyarcs from Batman during and shortly after theFrank Miller heyday, then I think maybe you can start to glimpse the overall arc of the story here.  Basically, it looks like they’re taking elements from the Knightfall arc and mixing in a little bit of The Dark Knight Returns, and well… that’s enough to make a movie.  Batman fights Bane, Batman gets his back broken, Batman quits being Batman, and eventually, Batman returns and triumphs over the bad guys. 

You heard it here first. 

In the hands of a lesser director, I would call that a train-wreck in the making, but with Christopher Nolan directing, well, at this point, I’m expecting an epic of loss and redemption.  And I’m secretly holding out hope for the Sons of the Batman to make an appearance, along with Carrie Kelley.

***

And that’s all I got.  Have a good week!

Saturday: Not D-Day

Today's stage was supposed to be the big battle, but it turned into a pretty big stalemate.  Andy Schleck attacked three times, but he couldn't get any time on any of his top rivals, and honestly, he just doesn't look like he has the acceleration to ride away with it this year.  I like Andy, and I was rooting for him to win, but at this point, I think the Tour is Cadel Evans's to lose.  That's okay, I suppose, but what I really like about pro-cycling--and any pro sport really--is seeing guys who are the best in the world exert their total dominance of the field.  That's why I like sprinter Mark Cavendish, and it's what I was hoping to see from Schleck this year.  But I think the Schlecks are about to waste an opportunity here, and that... well, that kind'a sucks.

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***

For me, today was a quasi-rest day.  I took the girls to the YMCA and let them play while I put in an aerobic swim workout.  For my main set, I did a set of 200s freestyle on short rest, working my aerobic pace.  My goal was to swim at the fastest pace I could hold indefinitely.  It was alright, but it took me a good thousand yards to settle down and really accomplish what I'd set out to do.  

I've been swimming so hard all season as prep for last week's Greenwich Point One-Mile Swim that just kicking back into a more natural triathlete's swimming pace is kind of a challenge now.  But I don't need to swim to win a race right now.  I need to swim in such a way that I'm ready to get on a bike and GO!  It's a slightly different animal, and it requires a slightly different approach.  Still, at least the base is there.

Day Off, Part 2

My Day Off is going well, if you're wondering.  It's been really nice.  I got up a little later this morning, had a Cliff Bar and a thing of yogurt, read the news, and (eventually) headed out for my workout.  I pretty much did exactly what I'd planned: a touch more than 30-miles on the bike, including riding up and back over Long Mountain Road, and then a 3.3-mile run.  I felt a little sluggish on the bike, but after the climbing I felt better, and I ran well.  After that, I came back, made a recovery shake, took a shower, and watched Thor Hushovd win today's stage.  Awesome riding by Thor, by the way.  Really, really impressive.


Friday Hair Metal


Today's Friday Hair Metal is Chickenfoot's "Learning to Fall".

If you're wondering, Chickenfoot is a relatively new creation.  It's basically the Sammy Hagar Van Halen with Joe Satriani in place of Eddie Van Halen (and a different drummer, but I've no idea who's on drums here).  Enjoy!

Day Off

What with my mother dying, subsequently having to deal with her estate, and then having my grandfather diagnosed with cancer, it’s been a tough couple of months for me.  Mentally, physically, emotionally… triathlon and the Tour de France can only take you so far.  I need a day off.  I’m finally taking one tomorrow.

I can’t wait.  I feel wrecked.  I really do.

The nice thing about the day off tomorrow is that the kids still have vacation bible school, and my wife still has her things to do, so I’ll actually have honest-to-God time to myself tomorrow.  Rarity!  With tomorrow’s stage being a relatively minor one—for a high mountains stage—my plan is to take another shot at doing that brick I planned for last week.

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I’m was planning to swim tonight, maybe 2400 yards or so, but now I think I'm gonna bag it and go later in the weekend.  Tomorrow I'm gonna do another brick workout.  No intervals tomorrow.  I just want to do a long, steady-state ride with a single climb before coming back to throw on my shoes and knock out about three miles on tired legs.  Besides needing the running work off the bike, I also need to test out my new speed laces and just do some real distance work.  After that, I’m planning for Saturday to be a rest day--maybe I'll do my swim workout some time Saturday morning--and to then take a long run on Sunday.  Then next week is a Rest Week leading into the Ocean Beach 19.7 triathlon next weekend.  I’d like to do well there, but it’s expected to be HOT!

Anybody got any plans this weekend?  Hell, is anybody even still reading this thing?

A Couple of Follow-Ups

I noted yesterday that Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s half-brother was killed yesterday, and that I’d read previously that the brother was a brutal thug who probably had it coming.  Today, the Guardian newspaper had the good grace to present a bit more on that.  The article is a good read, but it skips one of the biggest knocks I’d heard, that the junior Karzai had embezzled millions and millions of dollars from the Afghan government over the past ten years.

Today’s stage was the last flat stage for a while, and given that, it was perhaps no surprise that British Sprinter Mark Cavendish (HTC-Highroad) won both the intermediate sprint and the stage itself.  I didn’t get to see it, but I was happy enough with the result.  Cavendish is easily the world’s greatest sprinter, and I cannot help but applaud his sheer ballsy awesomeness. 

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What was a little more interesting (and surprising), at least to me, is that despite a few set-backs and a couple of legitimate challenges from other talented riders, Cavendish managed to take the lead in the Green Jersey competition.  The Green Jersey is often called the Sprinter’s Jersey, but really it’s a points competition in which riders get points for how well they finish (by place, not time) in both intermediate sprints and in total stage finishes.  Considering that there are points awarded in both sprint and mountains stages, and that most true sprinters get shelled in the mountains, it is perhaps no surprise that the recent past has seen more sprinty-type all-arounders as winners than true balls-to-the-walls sprinters.  So this year, the Tour’s organizers changed the formula a bit, and the result has been a really interesting battle.  Up to today, the leader has been Belgium’s Phillipe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto), who’s done decently in the sprints and been almost unstoppable on the climb-ier stages, but today Gilbert got shelled in both the intermediate and final sprints, giving Cavendish a massive swing in the points standings.  So, while I don’t know that I think Cav can win, I do think that it’s appropriate for the best sprinter in the world to at least spend a day or two in the Sprinter’s jersey.

Tomorrow we get into the mountains for real, and I wish like heck that I could take the day off to watch it.  As it is, I’m planning to take Friday off, but the next high mountain stage after tomorrow isn’t until Saturday.  So… so much for my “vacation with the Tour” plan. 

Tuesday News Tidbits

Some stuff I thought was interesting today:

·         Hamid Karzai’s brother got whacked.  And from what I’d read about the guy before he was killed, it sounds like he was a corrupt bastard who probably had it coming.

·         It doesn’t seem like the Republicans want a long-term answer to the public debt, probably because that would kill their primary issue in 2012.  The open question is whether they’re willing to wreck the country just to maintain a talking point for the coming election.

·         President Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to a soldier who lost his hand.

·         Netflix is raising their prices.  Apparently, they’ve either had too much success or not quite enough.  At any rate, their digital subscription arm has outrun their deal with Sony, so they either need to raise more revenue to renegotiate and offer a better service OR get some folks off the digital subscriber band and double down on DVD-by-mail.  My money’s on the former, and I’ll tell you right now that I’ll pay more if the streaming service offers more and better titles.

·         The new Harry Potter is almost out, and the studio has (smartly) decided to market Hermione Granger as the star.  Related: when did Emma Watson get so hot?!

Monday: Back to Life, Back to Reality…

It’s Monday, so I’m back to work for the week.  The weekend just flew by.  Got up Saturday for the race, swam, waited around for the awards ceremony, and then came home to pancakes.  While I was eating, Emma and I watched Saturday’s stage of the Tour, hoping against hope that Tejay VanGarderen could pull off the stunning upset.  Disappointment.  After that, I cleaned up the kitchen and then headed downstairs to iron.  Emma and Sally went to a birthday party, and while I ironed, Hannah and I watched Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. 

Unfortunately, we didn’t finish before Emma got home, and I thought the violence in Emerald Knights was a little much for her, so we turned that off and put on The Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest Superheroes onNetflix.  They like the FF because it’s very much a show about a family, and I think it’s at least watchable.  Which is to say that it’s a good bit better than 90% of the other crap that’s on TV.  Personally, I prefer Iron Man: Armored Adventures, but I can understand why the girls prefer the Fantastic Four, and I tend to let them choose the cartoons most of the time—within reason.  I mean, I won’t watch My Little Pony or anything, but we can generally agree on Voltron or The Batman or something like that.  The problem is that the girls like to punch evil in the face as much as I do, but they’re girls and prefer stories with girl heroes.  But there aren’t many of those.  With Voltron, you at least have an important, if occasionally idiotic, female lead, which is good, but it’s far from perfect.  On top of that, Hannah at least seems to understand that the show always has basically the same plot, and she’s joined me in the subversive hope that someday Prince Lotor will succeed in destroying the Castle of Lions and make off with Princess Alura.  That, at least, would make for an awesome episode.

In any event, after ironing, I went for a run, came back, set up the grill, grilled some corn, chicken, and hot dogs, and we ate outside on our picnic table.  Then once we (finally) got he girls in bed, Sally and I watched this week’s episode of Royal Pains on Hulu.  And that was our rockin’ Saturday night.  We were out cold by ten-thirty.

I got up early on Sunday.  I’d planned to go for a bike ride, but my body was sore from the race and especially from the run in the full-on heat of the day prior, so I sat around and basically soaked up some couch time.  Couch time by myself is a rarity for me.  I wrote up the Race Report you might’ve seen yesterday (below), made breakfast for the girls, and eventually turned on the crashingest Tour de France stage I’ve ever seen.  ‘Course, not much happened while we were watching besides the Contador crash, but still…  Anyway, by nine o’clock we were headed out the door for Six Flags: New England.

We bought season passes for Six Flags last time we went, and this time we decided to use them to go to the water park.  That was a good idea for a while, but it eventually got very crowded.  Still, we got to ride some great slides, and it was a lot of fun when we weren’t standing in line but I think that we all liked the simplicity of the wave pool the best, as well as the fact that you didn’t have to wait to use it but could just climb right in.  ‘Course, that’s the beauty of the passes.  We live close and can easily go back when it’s less crowded.  I’m hoping to take a day in August, so we can go up mid-week.  Anyway, we were cooked by about three pm and decided to head out, but then we stopped and road a few roller coasters and then took pictures with Batman and the Green Lantern at the Hall of Justice, and between that and the walk, we didn’t make it out to our car until around four.  Still, we were back at the house by a little after five or so, and though we were all tired, I can’t complain.  All in all, it was a pretty great day.

Dinner last night was leftovers.  After that, Sally gave the girls a shower, I made my lunch and cleaned up the kitchen, and then Sally and I showered, and I think everyone in the house except maybe the dog was asleep by nine pm.

And the next thing I knew, the alarm was going off, and I was getting ready for work.  Time just flies.

***

Well.  I know you really came to find out what’s going on in the Tour, so here’s a link to a write-up that I liked a lot on Podium Café.  It kind of explains what’s going on with the top riders in the General Classification(GC) competition.  Today’s a Rest Day, so there wasn’t any racing, but you can view the recap below if you’ve a mind to do that.

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Greenwich Point One-Mile Swim Race Report

The Greenwich Point One-Mile Swim was yesterday, and in doing it, I finally felt like I put together a really good race this season.


Preparation

I had a knee injury early on during the season, a plica.  And while that never stopped me from riding, it kept me from doing as much running as I'd planned to do during the off-season, and it got me in the pool more than usual.  Nothing wrong there, but after a while I decided just to make the One-Mile Swim one of my "A" races, especially since I'd already built a base in the water.  But then I got a brace for my knee, and it got better, and eventually I backed off on the idea of focusing so much effort on the One-Mile Swim that I would actually taper for the event, but I did make an effort to stay in the water and keep swimming a lot.


Race Day

Went to sleep Friday night excited but tired from a long week of work and family.  Still, I slept fitfully because I was excited about the race, and when five o'clock finally rolled around, I pretty much bounced out of bed.  I had a little sinus headache, but my body felt okay, and that was what counted.  So I took a couple of Advil, grabbed a Power Bar and a banana, grabbed my stuff, and headed out.  Sally and the girls stayed asleep, so for this race at least, I was flying solo.

Greenwich Point is about a half-hour away from my house in Stratford.  I got there at around six-thirty, got checked in, laid my mat out on the sand, and started doing my typical yoga routine.  Went through a series of Sunrise Salutes, Downward Dogs, Front Folds, etc, and then stretched out my shoulders and my back.  Then I got in the water about seven, giving me about a half hour to adjust to the water and warm up.

The water was COLD.  Maybe seventy degrees.  It wasn't dangerous or anything, but it took a few minutes to adjust to it and get my breathing back under control.  I swam maybe three or four hundred yards during my warm up and then got out and sat down to wait for the race to start.  Spent that time talking to the other race dudes about triathlon as a vehicle for dealing with mid-life crisis.

*sigh*


The Race

The race went off in three heats.  First there were the twenty-nine and unders, then the thirty to thirty-nine year olds, and then the forty-plus crowd.  With the youngsters off right at seven-thirty, I got in shortly thereafter and splashed around, and then at seven-thirty-five, we were off.

My heat was a smallish heat, but looking around, I saw several good-looking swimmers.  Once we started swimming, however, I pulled out in front of the pack pretty easily.  One guy took off ahead of me, and I tried to draft for a while, but he wasn't holding a very nice line on the nearest buoy, so I eventually cut away from him and just started swimming on my own.  If I had to guess, I'd say that the dude probably swims Masters, but that he doesn't do much rough water swimming.  Rough water is kind of its own art and science.  In any event, he pretty quickly out-distanced me, eventually building a lead of about four or five body lengths by the middle of the race.  I'd have caught up if I could, but y'know, sometimes the other guy is good, too.

In any event, I cleared the first two buoys, turned for the long swim parallel to the shore, and settled into a rhythm.  The next two buoys were spaced far apart but after that the last three on that line were close together, and almost before I knew it, I was turning for home.  The buoy marking the entrance/exit chute looked small from the far end of the course, and having turned, the sun was now on my other shoulder, and suddenly I was the one having trouble holding my line.  On the other hand, I saw the guy who rabbited out in front of me and noticed that I'd closed the distance some.  So I put my head down and swam, but it was a lot of ground to make up, and I didn't think I could actually close that distance.

That proved to be correct.  I got to within two body lengths by the end of the swim, but my man came out of the water a little cleaner than I did, and I wound up about thirty seconds behind.  Second in my age group wasn't too bad, and my time was very good--a full minute faster than I'd thought I might go--but still, it would have been nice to win.

Greenwich Point One-Mile Swim: 18:54.

My goal pre-race was to go under 20-minutes, and I did that easily.  Beyond that, I was second in my Age Group.  I don't have my overall place yet because the results haven't been posted, but it was a good swim, and I felt good doing it.  Yay me.

Into the Mountains...

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Cadel Evans is looking real good.  With Scheck riding so defensively and Contador looking mortal for once, I think Evans might be the man to beat right now.  We'll see what it looks like when we get to the high mountains.

Great ride by Van Garderen today.  First time an American has taken the King of the Mountains jersey in about 25 years.

Friday Mad Science: Crash-tastic Tour Edition

It’s Friday, and you know what that means.  It’s time for Friday Hair Metal!  I suppose I should really put together some kind of graphic for that.  Anyway, today’s selection isn’t technically hair metal, it’s merely the next best thing.  It’s Slash (featuring Kid Rock) with my favorite song off of his new solo album, “I Hold On.”

For whatever reason, my iPod always drops that song into my playlist right as I’m reaching Mile 5 of my typical weekend 10K training runs.  And it works for me.  Helps me hold on, so to speak. 

Anyway, I bring it up because not only is Slash a seminal member of a late-80’s hair metal band, he’s also a guy who’s still making the same basic kind of music he was back in the heyday.  And he’s still selling records.  But look, this record and Axle’s Chinese Democracy are really more tragedy than triumph, you know what I’m saying?  I mean, Slash’s record is okay—most of it’s pretty good, really—but imagine what it could have been with Axle doing the vocals.  It could have been legendary.  For example, imagine “Beautiful Dangerous” with Axle nailing those high notes instead of Fergie-warbling-on-audiotone.  Now that would have been a great song.  Straight out of the “Appetite for Destruction” playbook and probably just as popular. 

What a shame.

If you’re wondering, the other song I really like on that album is “Back from Cali” (featuring Myles Kennedy).  I guess I’ve become a sucker for the power ballads in my old age.

***

Today’s stage of the Tour was another crash-fest.  Which is weird because it was the flattest stage of the Tour.  Nothing whatsoever happened for the first maybe 125 km and then suddenly crashes all over the place.  Britain’s Bradley Wiggins (Sky) crashed out with a broken collarbone, and American Chris Horner (Radio Shack) went down in a ditch and lost something like 12 minutes—apparently because he was unconscious!  Anyway, they’re taking Horner to some French Emergency Room for tests, and according to sources on his team, it doesn’t look like he’ll start tomorrow.  And that’s a Hell of a shame because Horner finished 10^th at last year’s Tour and won this year’s Tour of California, the biggest cycling race in America.  Anyway, it sucks that he crashed.  He was a domestiqué for Lance Armstrong for years and years, but after Armstrong finally burned out last year, Horner placed in the top ten.  This year it was finally his chance to try to shine on his own.  I was really looking forward to seeing what he could do.

Still talking Radio Shack, fucking Levi Leipheimer crashed again, too.  He crashed yesterday in the rain and lost something like two minutes, and then he crashed again today and lost another three minutes on top of that.  Ugh!  I mean, I don’t know that Leipheimer was necessarily gonna rock the Tour this year, but he had a decent chance of at least getting into the top ten finishers, but that shit is out the window now. 

Eh.  With Lance gone, I don’t really care all that much about Radio Shack as a team anymore, but I was following some of their riders, especially Horner.  He’s 39, this was probably his last chance at glory, and he was riding well.  I didn’t particularly think he could win, but I did think that he had a decent chance to get onto the podium, and I thought that Radio Shack had a chance to repeat winning the Team Award (for fastest overall team, in total time, on the entire course).  Right now, that’s not looking too good.  They’ve still got Andreas Kloden in the top ten, and it’s possible that he’ll be able to finish the race in the top ten, but it’s not like he’s a real contender.  We saw Alberto Contador drop Kloden like a sack two years ago in the mountains, and since then Contador’s only gotten better while Kloden’s gotten older.  That’s just kind of the way life is.

At any rate, Mark Cavendish won today’s stage—no surprise there—but the really great thing about that was that the stage finished just as it was lunch time for me, so I was able to walk to the bike shop across the street and actually watch the finish first hand.  I also bought three inner tubes.  Anywho, it’s amazing to watch those guys as they approach the finish, and in particular, I find it amazing to watch the way that Cavendish’s team, HTC-Highroad, controls the peloton on the approach to the final sprint.  The video is below, but if you don’t ride, it’s probably hard to appreciate just how fast these guys are going and how much skill it takes to do what they’re doing at the speeds they’re doing it while surrounded by a hundred other riders and a half-million screaming French biking maniacs.  Anyway, I love it.

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***

The new issue of Competitor Magazine (July 2011) came out a few days ago, and I picked it up when I was at the bike shop.  I continue to like the magazine—especially because it’s free—but mostly because those guys aren’t afraid of a little high-end, athletic cheesecake.  God bless America.  The world could use some more athletic cheesecake in my humble opinion.  There are plenty of voluptuous and/or surgically-enhanced girls out there shakin’ it; give me a girl who can spell “beautiful” without having to look it up and who can run a 5k in under 24 minutes.  I mean, come on.  A guy’s got to have his standards, no?

So.  Anybody doing anything good this weekend?  Tell me what you have going on!