Storyteller's Playbook

The Last Storyteller's Playbook Post

2011-10-08T11:46:00.000-04:00

Yup. This is the end.

I decided to start a new blog, called Danno's Lair. I did it because, bottom line, I think this blog's name is a little confusing and more than a little off-topic. So if you want to see what's new with me, head over to the Lair and check it out. There won't be any more posts here, so there's no need to come back... unless you absolutely want to.

See ya in the next life!

Season Revisited

2011-10-03T19:17:00.001-04:00

Triathlon season ended, not with a bang but a whimper. I feel like I put in a really, really good season of training, and in many ways I feel like I’m now in the best shape of my life. But racing-wise it could have gone better. I opened the season with a good performance at the Brian’s Beachside Boogie duathlon in April but then got lost on the bike leg at my first actual tri of the season in May and followed that up by bonking right at the end of the NYC Tour de Cure in June. After that, I laid down an absolutely crap-tastic performance at the Ocean Beach sprint in July and followed that up with exactly three-quarters of a good race at Litchfield Hills in August. And yeah, I did eventually manage to close out the season with a reasonably strong performance at the Westport Kiwanus Triathlon, finishing 3^rd in my Age Group and 12^th overall, and that’s fine. But even there, there was still plenty of room for improvement. I mean, I was actually leading my Age Group with less than a mile to go on the run, so more than anything, I feel like the lesson of this tri season is the same as it’s always been—I’m a good swimmer, and I can hold serve on the bike, but the better guys always seem to close me out on the run, and it seems like there’s never anything I can do about it. To be the triathlete that I reallywant to be, I need to find a way to get in some three- and four-hour workouts in there early part of the season, and I somehow need to find more time to focus on running. And oh by the way, as a 38-year-old husband and working father of two, I doubt strongly that I’ll ever be able to either find more time to train or to recover enough to train successfully if I do actually manage to commit more hours.

*sigh*

I love triathlon, but living that lifestyle is a constant struggle for focus, balance, and discipline. Which is to say that I like being a competitive athlete again, but I have to really work at not letting it take over my life. I’m not on scholarship. I’m not doing this professionally. I’m not even on a team. Truth: no one really cares about this stuff except me.

When tri season ended, Sally and I decided to do the Hartford Half-Marathon. It was a no-brainer, really. Sally’s already run a few Half’s, and for me, though I’ve never run that far before, I also know that I’m still carrying a full season’s worth of triathlon fitness. I didn’t need to get in shape for the race so much as I needed to just refocus my fitness and build some more strength in my legs. Yesterday I finished an 11-mile training run in exactly and hour-forty, so at this point I feel pretty good. I mean, I’m tired and a little sore right now, but I nevertheless feel reasonably confident. I don’t think the Half is gonna be easy by any means—in fact, I expect the last half-hour to be downright painful—but I ‘m pretty sure I can finish, hopefully in something like two-hours.

After Hartford, it’ll be the true offseason. Given how tired I am right this minute, that sounds kind’a nice.

I Caught Hannah's Cold

2011-09-22T19:38:00.001-04:00

And now I feel like poop.

Crazy Busy Day

2011-09-19T18:54:00.000-04:00

Good news: We are now officially signed up for the Hartford Half-Marathon.

Bad news: It's been a crazy, crazy busy day. Sick kids, wacky work, dinner, dishes, house... It's a very full schedule. If I owe you a note or an email, please be patient with me.

Thanks.

First Ever Storyteller's Playbook Contest!

2011-09-17T14:49:00.002-04:00

Okay, so here's the deal: we had a tag sale today, and one of the things I realized was that I have WAY TOO MANY paperbacks. Way, way too many. I mean, I sold some books today--mostly review copies of comics I'd had left over from when I used to review for Paperback Reader--but... I still have WAY TOO MUCH.

What I need to do, I think, is have a little contest to get rid of some of this stuff. So, first off, here is what you will win:

1. An autographed copy of Bronx Angel: Politics By Another Method. BA: PBAM is my original graphic novel. I thought all the old copies were destroyed in our basement flood a few years ago, but I just found a little stash, and I'll send you one if you win this contest. A real life, genuine rare book!

2. A grab bag of paperbacks from my library--as many as I can fit in a large Priority Mail envelope. Mostly fantasy novels, but if you can name a specific author or genre, I'll make sure to include whatever I can that's appropriate. I read A LOT.

3. At least one random comic trade paperback.

So, what do you have to do? Honestly, I'm not sure yet. Anybody got any suggestions?

Connecticut Triathletes Facebook Group

2011-09-15T07:16:00.001-04:00

In case you're wondering, I started a Facebook group for Connecticut Triathletes. If that's you, please go join and introduce yourself:

Connecticut Triathletes Facebook Group

Thanks!

Pain Face

2011-09-14T20:48:00.002-04:00

2011 Westport Kiwanus Triathlon Race Report

2011-09-12T18:27:00.001-04:00

It wasn’t a bad weekend by any means save for the fact that my Tennessee Titans looked utterly inept. As I noted on Saturday, we got home pretty early from swim lessons and shopping on Saturday afternoon, and I settled in to watch some pretty good college football. I saw Army go down by three to San Diego State, and all things considered, that seemed like a moral victory. Then the University of Tennessee laid the wood toCincinnati, setting up what looks like a pretty good game next weekend against the University of Florida. I mean, Tennessee ain’t really Tennessee anymore, and I’m not sure how much Florida still looks like Florida, but the Vols’ QB and wide receivers looked pretty good Saturday—good enough to make me think that UT might actually be “Receiver U” again one of these days—and I don’t think I’m ready to buy into South Carolinajust yet. So, bottom line, all predictions to the contrary, next week’s game might just be for the driver’s seat in the SEC East. I know I’ll be pulling for the Vols with both hands.

My parents and grandparents might be gone, but I can do at least that much to honor their memories.

Anyway, needless to say, I wound up downing that third beer Saturday afternoon. Happily, I don’t think it affected me too much.

Pre-Race

Tri season is over, and to tell the truth, it’s basically been over for me since Litchfield Hills. Moreover, right after Litchfield Hills, Sally and I decided to start training for the Hartford Half-Marathon, which means that I haven’t been on my bike or in the pool much at all in the past few weeks. I’ve been running a lot, so I don’t think I’ve lost any actual fitness, but form is always a concern, especially in swimming. Moreover, I’m still commuting on my folding bike, so although I didn’t think my riding was gonna be sharp, I was more concerned about not having swum in a month, especially in a race that’s decidedly swim-heavy. The Westport Tri is unique in that respect. It’s a full half-mile swim, coupled to a tiny bike ride and a short run. So, bottom line, it tends to bring out as many well-rounded swimmers as actual triathletes. Considering the way I race, that’s a potential concern.

To deal with that, Sally and I swam a bit on Saturday, basically trying to work out the kinks in our strokes and get warmed up. I wanted to do just enough Saturday morning that I’d be able to warm up quickly on Sunday pre-race. After that, it was time to get out, hit the showers, and go one with our lives. After we got the kids to bed Saturday night, we packed our bags, made our Gatorade, laid out our clothes, and then sat down to watch some TV. We got the movie Limitless from Netflix on DVD, and I liked it a lot.

Got up the next morning at five. Loaded the car, grabbed the kids, kissed the dog, and off we went. It was chilly and more than a little windy on Sunday morning, but check in and set-up went well, and I had plenty of time for pre-race yoga. And by our appointed 7:30 race start time, the air was almost as warm as the water, so what do you want?

Swim

Like I said, it was windy. Usually the Long Island Sound is glassy on summer mornings, but with the wind coming in, we had swells of about two feet by the time you got out to the first buoy. I was in the first heat, and after we finally got pre-race instructions, they blew the air horn, and off we went.

I didn’t feel like I got a great start. I was in maybe the second row back from the water when we started, and it took me maybe 150 yards to clear the pack and get into the open water. Even then, I could tell that a few folks were ahead of me. Moreover, it was hard to see—both competition and buoys—in the swell. Between the waves and the people, I was on full burn all the way out to the first buoy, and when I turned, it was only with an effort of will that I was able to make myself calm down. Even then, I still felt like I had to muscle the swim just to stay on course and firmly in control.

Well. If it was hurting me, odds were it was hurting everyone else even more.

In any event, the swim felt long but wasn’t really. After Hurricane Irene, the shape of Westport’s Compo Beach has changed, forcing a change to the swim route. What was initially a 12-minute point-to-point half mile because a 10-minute out-turn-and-back rectangle. Complete with rip currents.

Eh. I checked my watch as I came out of the water. 10 minutes exactly. Like I said, it felt like a lot, but really, it was nothing to complain about.

It took me almost a full minute to run up through the loose sand to Transition.

Not-Quite a Half-Mile Swim: 10:51.1. 1/20 Age Group; 7/255 Overall.

As it turns out, I came out of the water somewhere between 3^rd and 5^th, I think. So there were several folks in the following heats who would go on to beat my time in the water. That’s kind of a lot for so small a race.

T-1

Crossed the mat into Transition, ran to my bike, flopped down, grabbed my spare water bottle, and sprayed the sand off my feet. Then I carefully threw on my bike shoes—trying not to reapply the sand I’d just removed—before adding helmet, cycling jersey, and gloves. All of that went well except the gloves, which had me fumbling like an idiot. Some guy beat me out of T-1, but based on later placings, I think he might have actually come in before me on the swim.

Anyway, soon enough I was out on the road.

T-1: 1:37.9. 5/20 AG; 31/255 Overall.

Bike

The ride out of T-1 was a little more than a mile and a half of straightaway—straight into the morning’s wind. I got down in the drops and felt okay, but I didn’t have quite the pop I’d’ve needed to really lay the law on a super-short ride. At the end of the straightaway, there was a little climb into a left-hand turn, and a guy passed me on a very nice time trial bike. No biggie; at this point I think I was in 6^th. The next piece was rolling, into a little left-hand turn that led downhill, and then we were onto the flats. By this time, we were three miles in, and I was starting to feel a little better. With ten more miles, I’d have turned in a nice ride. Anyway, we turned right into a golf course, and I gunned it, chasing down a 14-year-old kid—obviously one of those well-rounded high school swimmers I alluded to in the opening—and found myself alone on the open road.

Unfortunately by the time I felt strong on the bike, there was only about a mile and a half left to ride. I chased down one more guy, catching him just as we dismounted into T-2. By the time I entered T-2, I think I was 4^th.

5.5-mile ride: 15:56.5 (18.7 mph according to my bike computer). 7/20 AG. 26/255 Overall.

T-2

Racked my bike, quickly but carefully changed shoes (yeah speed laces!), and dropped my helmet and shades. I ran out of T-2 pulling off my gloves and stowed them in my jersey pocket. Y’know, I actually planned that.

T-2: :50.7. 11/20 AG; 60/255 Overall.

Run

I came out of T-2 even with the 14-year-old high school swimmer that I’d passed on the bike. That kid was having a good race, and I told him so. His answer was dismissive: he put on a burst of speed and tried to drop me. I let him. In fact, I slid in behind him and let him pull. I’m not sure how much drafting helps in running, but we were running into a headwind, and I try not to be any stupider than necessary when I’m racing. I felt strong, and folks cheering on the sidelines called out that we were in 3^rd and 4^thoverall respectively. That worked for me.

It worked even better when it turned out that the kid had shot his wad trying to drop me right out of T-2. I passed him about ¾ of a mile into the run, this time for good. At this point, I was in 3^rd overall and starting to dream of glory.

See, this is why I hate running. Yes, I’ve been running more. Yes, I felt strong and actually passed somebody on the run. No, I’ve not been running enough to hold serve against real runners of my own age and ability at the end of a triathlon.

They finally caught me with about ½ mile to go. Maybe five guys, all running decisively enough that I could tell right away that I wasn’t gonna have the burst to hold them off, especially when we made it to the final turn and started running in loose sand. Agh! That sucked! Whatever dreams I had of sprinting to the end died in the quagmire right then and there.

2.2-mile run: 16:10.3 (7:20.9/mile). 12/20 AG; 48/255 Overall.

2011 Westport Kiwanus Triathlon: 45:26.6. 3/20 AG; 11/255 Overall.

I crossed the line in 8^th, but of course, there were two more heats behind me, and it looks like three of the guys back there were faster than I was. Well, there are some really good 40-something triathletes in Connecticut; finding that out does not constitute learning. Still, I finished in the Top 3 in my age group, and that’s cool, and if you discount the one relay finisher ahead of me, I was in the Top 10 overall. Nothing to complain about there.

The course was substantially different this year than last year, so I don’t know how much there is to be gained by comparing the two races, but on the one part of the race that was the same—the bike—I was about 30-seconds faster than last year. Like I said, that ain’t bad.

Sally’s Race

You might remember that this was Sally’s first open water triathlon. I’ve been working with her on her swimming for the past six months or so, and I was anxious to see what she could do here. Still, I’ll admit I was nervous when I saw the size of the swells Sunday morning. I thought it was tough; I was afraid Sally was gonna panic.

Well, Sally came through in fine fashion. She even said she didn’t think it was all that hard.

If you’re wondering, Sally finished the swim in just over 21-minutes; rode the bike course in 18:48, and ran right at 20-minutes even. She said she must’ve passed fifty people on the run, and frankly, I don’t doubt it. She’s a fantastic runner. Her total time was 1:00:47, putting her 10/27 in her Age Group and 155/255 Overall.

That ain’t bad at all.

Next Up: Hartford Half

And that’s all for the season.

We switched over to a pure runner’s workout schedule two weeks ago, and as I said earlier, the Hartford Half is our next thing (hopefully), coming in mid-October. Personally, I hope that putting in a full season of pure running work will show up a bit next year, but that, of course, relies on my being able to stay healthy, which is something that I’ve not been able to do for that past two off-seasons. I keep having knee, back, or hip problems.

Hopefully yoga and a focus on running form will help this time. I guess we’ll see.

Football Saturday

2011-09-10T16:19:00.000-04:00

The girls started a new session of swim lessons this morning. Sally and I went with 'em and swam ourselves, though we didn't do much because we've got a race tomorrow. It's Sally's first open water triathlon, the Westport Kiwanus Triathlon. It's not much of a race--half-mile swim, 5.5-mile ride, 2.2-mile run--but since the swim is, for once, the long part, Sally's been freaking out a bit. Still, after watching her this morning, I'm convinced that she'll be fine. She needs to get control of her nerves, but she's got enough swimming and enough just base fitness to handle it, but nerves are always tough.

Anyway, after swimming we went for lunch at a little Chinese/Japanese place, went to Bob's Sports, went to the local liquor store, and then got some groceries. Not a bad little morning. The cool thing about living in CT--in the shadow of NYC--is that the local liquor emporium had an actual sommelier on staff... even at noon on a Saturday! Needless to say, we ended up spending $160 on various wines and beers, including the Peak's Organic IPA, the new Sierra Nevada Hefeweizen , and American IPA from Thomas Hooker breweries, and several others along with a half-dozen bottles of wine. So, bottom line, we're all set for football for a while.

Got home, and what do you know, the Army team was on TV. So I grabbed a beer and sat down to watch it. They were playing San Diego State, and truth: I was planning to turn it off as soon as it got out of hand. I thought the Auburn/Mississippi State game looked a little tastier. But, y'know, the Army game actually wound up being pretty compelling. Army lost by 3 points in the Fourth, but... what do you expect? Still, it was a fun game.

Now I'm down and watching Tennessee vs. Cincinnati. Fun game so far. Both offenses look pretty good, but neither defense has much going on. Right now, it's 14-14, and if I didn't have a race tomorrow, I'd go for beer #3.

Hope you're having as much fun as I am.

TV TV!

2011-09-08T18:14:00.001-04:00

Lately Sally and I have been watching this show called The Glades using Netflix’s streaming service, and I gotta say that I’ve been digging it. If you’ve never seen it, it’s another Sherlock Holmes knock-off, this time done as a police procedural set somewhere in the Everglades, with our resident “Holmes” played as a former Chicago homicide detective exiled to rural Florida following an affair with his boss’s wife. In typically Holmes fashion, the lead—here named Jim Longworth—is a borderline anti-social misfit, though The Glades’s producers have altered the formula somewhat by making him a decided ladies’ man rather than playing him as asexual the way that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the producers of the TV Show House tend to do.

In any event, I’ve been loving the show’s first season despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it so closely follows in Conan Doyle’s footprints, footprints that’ve lately become a well-blazed TV trail. I mean, how many misfit TV detectives are out there right now? Gregory House is the most famous, but I think Castle, Lie to Me, and at least a couple of CSI franchise shows also follow the format, and it’s a good bet that a number of shows from the new season will, too. But who cares, right? I mean, I love the Sherlock Holmes stories, and I’m happy enough that for once a sizable number of folks seem to agree with me.

Anyway, after The Glades ended, Sally and I wound up tuning into the GOP primary debate for a while. I know I said I wasn’t going to, but in the end, we decided that we wanted to see the spectacle first hand. So we watched as some of the minor candidates walked through a bit on school reform and then watched all of them tackle the question of immigration and border control. To my mind, what we saw went something like this:

Questioner: Immigration reform is a big issue. How would you tackle it?

Rick Perry (going Macho): I’d deploy the U.S. Army to screen the border with Mexico, and I’d throw all those illegal dirtbags out of the country, pronto! They’re takin’ U.S. jobs.

Mitt Romney (vainly trying to sound tougher than Perry): We don’t need the Army. We can do it with technology! We can build a fence—

Questioner (in disbelief): You want to put up a 2,600-mile fence?

Romney: Absolutely! With TV cameras and satellite coverage over every square foot. And guard dogs! And… and… and… sharks with frickin’ laser beams! We have the technology! We CAN control the border!

Newt Gingrich (slaps forehead): If you build a fence, Mitt, the illegals will just bring a ladder. Why, when I was in Congress back in 1986… and Ronald Reagan… 20 million illegals already in this country, and many of them already have families…

Questioner: Okay, Ms. Bachman… Let’s say the fence is up. What do you do with the 20 million who’re already here? Do you break up their families and deport them?

Michelle Bachman: A fence!

Rick Santorum: Yeah! A fence!

Questioner: But what about the families, Ms. Bachman? What do you do with them?

Bachman (slams table with clenched fist): I said a fence! With guard dogs!!!

Questioner: *sigh* Back to the original question, Mr. Cain.

Herman Cain: We don’t need no damn fence! We got laws in this country. We just need to ENFORCE those laws!

Jon Huntsman: No. What Newt said was right. And Ronald Reagan! And don’t break up those families…

Rand Paul: Fuck that fence! Employers should be free to hire whoever the fuck they want, and if Americans are too stupid to get the jobs, then fuck them, too. I mean, a fence?! You wanna know why they want a fence? I’ll tell ya. They don’ wanna keep illegals out. They want to keep Americans and THEIR MONEY in! Mexico’s growin’ twice as fast as America right now. Pretty soon, all our jobs and all our money’ll be headin’ down there. And THAT is why they want to build a fence! It ain’t to protect jobs. It’s to protect them so’s they can keep gettin’ at YOU and your MONEY!

So. I’ve read a few summaries of the debates, and most of them said that Romney came off pretty well. I didn’t see that myself. For my money, Rick Perry was the only Alpha Male up there. I mean, his idea of deploying the Army to screen the border with Mexico is ludicrous on its face—and yes, he did really say that—because it would take the entire army deployed 100% full time to successfully screen a border that large, and even then it’s an extremely iffy proposition. But the way he said it, well, the man delivers his lines with conviction. Watching him debate, I find that I can believe that he really does go jogging with his pistol on.

On the other hand, I thought Romney came off stiff and awkward, Huntsman seemed the non-entity that he is in the polls, and New Gingrich looked like he was—easily—the smartest man in the room. To put it another way, Gingrich was Gandalf to Perry’s Aragon and Romney’s Boromir. Rand Paul at least came off as Samwise Gamgee—wise and tough in his own way—but poor Jon Huntsman was Pipin, Gandalf’s “fool of a Took!” while the rest were such complete non-entities that they didn’t even make it out of the Shire.

Gingrich won’t get elected, and I don’t want him to, but with the possible exception of Rand Paul, he’s easily the most well-informed on the issues, and he has something interesting to say about each and every one of them. His defense of school choice via vouchers was well thought-out and concise (full disclosure: I loathe the idea of school vouchers), and his story about Ronald Reagan’s attempt at comprehensive immigration reform back in the 1980’s not only managed to name check the party’s patron saint, it also brought up a pair of excellent points about illegal immigration. First, you can’t tackle the issue of immigration solely by securing the border, and second, there are a lot of long-term illegals in the U.S. who’re established members of our society. Breaking up their families to throw them out of the country would be both inhumane and economically stupid. Meanwhile, Newt’s finer points seemed to escape everyone but Huntsman and Rand Paul, and even Huntsman could only add that he thought that Newt was basically right. I mean, Newt was obviously right, but no one else besides Paul and Huntsman even try to answer intelligently. They all just stood there rattling their swords and trying to act tough. In that, Bachman was actively ludicrous and Romney came off like Doctor Evil-light. Paul’s answer, the strict Libertarian answer, was interesting theoretically, but as with a lot of what he says, for me it’s not realistic in the real world. I just don’t know how much I believe that government is really trying to hold people in! That’s a little too Orwellian for me.

In any event, I read a few debate summaries this morning to get a feel for the rest of the action and came away disappointed by the lack of depth to the coverage. Still, my favorites came out of Slate and The Guardian. Check them out if you’re interested.

Or you can just wait for the next debate. They’ve got something like six more scheduled for later in the fall. And maybe that’s why the coverage of this particular debate was a little light. The newspapers didn’t want to burn all their matches in one shot. Something to that, I think.

Notes 9/7/11: Presidential Football Preview

2011-09-07T18:32:00.000-04:00

· It’s not like I thought he could win or anything, but having just read a breakdown of his campaign on Slate.Com, I’m now more convinced than ever that Jon Huntsman’s presidential campaign is dead in the water.

· While we’re on the subject of politics, I’ll tell you that I downloaded Mitt Romney’s 59-point plan for fixing the country today, but that I haven’t had a chance to read through it yet. That said… how many other people are go get and actually read this thing? I mean, I’m planning to skim it and offer a synopsis as best I can, but the thing is LOOOONG, even for a political junkie/college European History major like me. Ugh.

C’mon, Mitt. For a smart guy, releasing this huge tome was an awfully DUMB move. Nobody reads anymore, big guy.

· Last thing on presidential politics for the day: The big Republican debate is tonight. You’ll recall that that’s the one that Speaker John Boehner protected by refusing President Obama’s request to speak to a joint session of Congress about a prospective jobs and public works proposal. Thus, we had the ugly spectacle last week of Obama’s request to speak to the nation being denied by Congress so that it now conflicts with the first game of the new NFL season. And I think most folks who pay attention recognized this as a rather transparent attempt by the White House to simply overshadow the Republicans. So although I don’t usually like Boenher a lot, I thought his response here was the right one, really the only one he could give. That it happened to embarrass the Hell out of the President was simply a nice bonus

If you’re wondering, I don’t plan to watch either the debate or the speech on Thursday, mostly because I find it easier to read the synopsis in the New York Times the next day. Politicians tend to use so many words to express so few actual ideas after all, and the Times’s summaries are usually both fairly complete and inclusive of some context when necessary.

Still, the debate might get interesting. It seems that everyone in the field now has a vested interest in tearing down Rick Perry while Perry himself looks more and more like the only guy in the race with an actual clue about how to run a successful campaign. Personally, I’m expecting fireworks. With any luck, either the stage itself will spontaneously combust, or they’ll scrap the format altogether and let the candidates go straight at it, Thunderdome style.

· I’ve been working a little around the edges with my friend Alan Evans on a potential new comic project. There’s not much to it yet, but I’ve enjoyed the chance to work on creative writing a little bit.

· Finally, Tennessee Titans football starts this Sunday. With that in mind, here’s my really, really quick season preview:

Game	Prediction
@ Jacksonville	W
Baltimore	L
Denver	W
@ Cleveland	W
@ Pittsburgh	L
Houston	L
Indianapolis	W
Cincinnati	W
@ Carolina	W
@ Atlanta	L
Tampa Bay	L
@ Buffalo	W
New Orleans	L
@ Indianapolis	L
Jacksonville	W
@ Houston	L

If you’re wondering, that’ll put the team at 8-8. Not a bad record, all things considered.

Of course, there are games in there that could easily go either way—Cleveland, Indy (depending on the state of Peyton Manning), etc—but I think you can count on winning a game or two you think you might lose and losing a game or two you ought to win. So… 8-8. That’s my official prediction.

That’s all I got. See ya tomorrow!

Wrong Link!

2011-09-06T20:16:00.001-04:00

Don't know if any of you tried to listen to MCM Radio off the link I provided yesterday, but if you did, you might've noticed that it was the wrong link! Oops.

Here's the right one:

Listen to internet radio with MCMJimmy on Blog Talk Radio

BTW, the Titans play the Jaguars this weekend, and what with the Jags deciding at the last minute to cut ties with QB David Garrard today, this suddenly looks like a lay-up to start the season. I hate to say that, but man... what a wacky decision.

Cutting your QB less than a week before the first real game? Folks that's something that only dysfunctional organizations do.

Tennessee Titans Season Preview

2011-09-05T07:47:00.001-04:00

Okay, so I was gonna write up a little season preview thing for the Tennessee Titans this season. But I've not been following the team all that closely this preseason, and quite honestly, I have no idea what to say. So I'm gonna let my friends Jimmy and August from the Music City Miracles blog do it for me.

Enjoy!

Listen to internet radio with MCMJimmy on Blog Talk Radio

And BTW Jimmy (if you're reading this), yes, I've been meaning to donate to the show. But I'm under the impression that you guys are set for the season. Do you still need money to keep it going?

First Saturday in September

2011-09-03T11:19:00.001-04:00

Okay, so yeah... I took yesterday off in order to take the kids out to Six Flags, but as it happens, Six Flags was closed when we got there. And that sucked. But we went to the Hartford Science Center museum and ended up having a pretty nice day. Not exactly the day we'd planned, but I can't complain.

Training for the Hartford Half-Marathon seems to be coming along. Ran a touch over 8-miles last week and a touch over 9-miles this week, and I felt pretty good doing it. As I posted on Facebook, my first half hour or so felt pretty good. Then I struggled from, say, the 45-minute mark until I got to about 55-minutes or an hour. Call it 15 minutes of suffering. After that, I kind of broke through and settled down and actually managed to pick up the pace a little. Ended up making it back in 1:21:59--right at a 9-minute/mile pace. Which is not bad at all for me for a run of that length.

If you're wondering, the Half is on October 15th. So with a race next week--the Westport Kiwanus Triathlon, a mini-sprint that's also the last multi-sport event of the season--bottom line, we've got four training weeks and two rest weeks to go before the race. It seems like we're on track in terms of mileage, but I'd like to get in at least one 10+ mile run without injury before we actually sign up for the race.

And... Sally and the kids are home. Have a great weekend!

Aug. 31, 2011: A Few Notes

2011-08-31T20:24:00.003-04:00

· I’m back in the office today after being out in the field helping (a little) with restoration work after Hurricane Irene. If you’re wondering, there were 850+ folks out of lights in Scarsdale yesterday at lunch. By the time I left last night, we’d cut that to just over 250, and we’d (finally) managed to open all the roads—even the back streets. This morning, there was something like 180 folks out, and the official projection has everyone back in service by midnight tomorrow. I understand that folks get frustrated with being out of power, but all things considered, I think the response to this storm has been pretty good. Considering that Westchester County got hit by an actual hurricane, it’s incredible to think that everyone in the county will have their power back in less than a week.

· I get depressed about the Republican Party from time to time, especially when they let the fringe wackos take the lead. The parts that I like the least are the nativist parts, the parts that want to go back to the “good old days”, especially when you consider the specific parts of the way-back-when that they want to bring back. I hate it when they pine for segregation, look for ways to screw the little guy, and bottom line, protect the interests of those that don’t need protecting. Do we need to make some hard choices? Yes. Of course we do. But I don’t think it’s too much to ask for shared sacrifice, and I think it’s idiotic to have the desire to dismantle government as a platform for seeking higher office. “We promise to do less for you” is not a compelling slogan.

I bring all this up because I think it’s worth asking who Republican voters are. Because right now, the country is quickly trending away from being majority white. So with a little simple math, we can see that the Republican Party will probably cease to exist as a viable national entity some time within the next twenty years if it can’t find a way to appeal to folks besides upper class white folks, southern white folks, and evangelical white folks. And right now I don’t see it.

Folks (of all kinds) will eventually vote themselves unlimited amounts of bread and circuses if you let them. To avoid that, what you have to do is to find some way to include them in your vision for the future; you have to give them a stake in the continuation of the status quo. You have to find some way to spread prosperity around—proactively—rather than simply offering a message that says, “We’re gonna step back and hope for the best.” That message, that, “we’re gonna do less so our affluent constituents don’t have to pay as much in taxes,” that message right there is poison. Maybe not at the party primary level. But compared to the rest of the country, compared to the way the country as a whole is actually trending… that message is a slow, creeping death that only lacks time and patience from the opposition in order to ensure their rivals’ complete destruction.

It makes me sad that there’s no vision at the national level besides, “Fuck you, we’re gonna keep what we have.” I think you’re going to find that, nationally speaking, that doesn’t have much resonance.

· It felt good to ride into work this morning. The upside of being forced off the bike for a few days was that I had fresh legs. I kept wanting to get up and climb out of the saddle. That was nice. Tonight I’m hoping to go for a little run and basically start getting back into the swing of exercising. It probably sounds stupid to say this, but I’m insanely excited about it.

· Also back in full swing after a few months of low-ebb? My D&D game, The Sellswords of Luskan.

If you’re wondering, the Sellswords are currently down in the depths of the Underdark, fighting the lichdrow Asterlix and his hordes of undead minions. See, Asterlix sold his soul to Asmodeus, the King of Hell, for an insane amount of arcane power. But then he used a ritual to turn himself into a lich, thereby denying the devil his due. So now Asmodeus wants revenge. Only problem? Glasya, Asmodeus’s daughter, hired the Sellswords to fetch Asterlix’s soul before Asmodeus’s own agents had a chance to collect on their master’s debt. Got it? So if the Sellswords collect the soul, then they’re making an enemy of the King of Hell. Not generally a healthy think to do. On the other hand, if they don’t deliver on their promise to Glasya, then their leader Jaeron loses his own soul to Glasya. That’s the price of failure when you make deals with the Devil.

Bottom line, my Players are Damned if they do, and they’re Damned if they don’t. Either way, it think they’re screwed. Bwhahahahahaha!

· For the curious: I use the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for SoL, and the reason is that it saves time. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) publishes several pre-generated campaign setting for exactly this reason. I mean, yeah, I do like the FR novels. They are by far and away my favorite vice. But even more importantly than that, using an established setting saves me having to explain the obvious to my Players. And it saves time in world-building, which you lets me focus more on things that are actually important—like story and plot. Every minute I can avoid spending on some meaningless triviality (i.e. “What’s the name of the King of Hell?”) is a minute I can spend worrying about the next complication my Players will have to deal with in the story. And bottom line, I think that plot complications are a lot more important than coming up with weird names for widgets, especially since the term “widgets” is already perfectly acceptable, and we all already know what it means.

· My friend Alan Evans is working on a new story, and frankly, I envy his motivation. I really do. But I can’t seem to write anything that isn’t Sellswords-related, and that Sellswords stuff seems to be enough to keep my creative side at bay. I don’t know what that says about me besides maybe that my writing doesn’t have any potential commercial applications, and that the condition seems to be terminal.

*sigh*

I wrote a novel for the same reason that I run Olympic triathlons: I wanted to prove to myself that I could. But now, having done it, I have little or no interest in doing it again. What else can I say? I guess I just don’t have the Great American Novel in me. All my mother’s hopes and dreams for one are gonna come to nothing.

· Last thing: I’m taking Friday off, so that Sally and the girls and I can head back to Six Flags. You may remember that we’d planned to go on Sunday, but (obviously) we had to postpone because of the hurricane. Well, now we’re back on , and if luck is on our side, this time it’ll be even better than it would have been last weekend!

Slow News Day

2011-08-30T16:28:00.003-04:00

The most exciting thing I can come up with is that Justin and Jessica are apparently back on again. They don't look so comfortable on those bikes, though. *sigh* When will folks learn to adjust their seat heights?

Storm Recovery

2011-08-29T07:51:00.000-04:00

Well, Irene has come and gone, and the good news is that we're still here. We don't have power or water, and in fact, it seems like the storm hit Connecticut much harder than it hit some of the other surrounding communities, but we survived in one piece and without damage to the house, so I suppose that's about all I can hope for.

Personally, I got called in to work on Sunday morning to start helping with storm recovery. Right now, I'm the municipal liaison from my company to the Town of Scarsdale, NY. That's kind of a normal thing for me in the aftermath of a big storm. Anyway, the town seems like it's in decent shape. I mean, they've got some power outages to be sure, but the damage doesn't seem to be nearly as bad here as it was last year during the big snow storm. And for that matter, Connecticut seems to have been hit a little harder than this area as well.

So anyway, that's where I am and what I'm doing.

Waiting for the Storm

2011-08-27T17:16:00.000-04:00

Went for a long run this morning--8 miles!--and since then Sally and I have spent the day getting the house ready for the hurricane. So far, the track of the storm has been all over the place, but when I looked this morning I was basically horrified to see that the projected eye of the storm was gonna go right through my neighborhood! Yikes!!! Things are looking a little better now in that the storm seems to have veered maybe thirty miles to the east, and it seems to have weakened a bit as well, but still... here we are, sort of waiting for the worst.

If you're curious, here's the National Weather Service's Hurricane Tracker. I find it sort of addictive, but then again, I'm right in the path of the storm.

Full-On Panic!!!

2011-08-26T18:41:00.000-04:00

Well, New York has now descended into full-on panic mode. Mayor Bloomberg announced a mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas in the City, and they’re gonna shut down the subway and the rest of the mass transit system starting on noon tomorrow. Which is kind of unbelievable. I’ve been here through some pretty spectacular stuff, but this is the first time I can ever remember an actual, pre-meditated transit shutdown. Folks who have to get in to work tomorrow—which is a goodly amount of folks, at least in my company—are starting to think seriously about how they’re gonna get in, and frankly, I’m getting concerned about the Monday commute.

With that said, I’m personally lucky this time. My boss and one of my co-workers are gonna man the fort tomorrow, so I can stay home with my wife and kids. And that’s good because the storm track shifted to the east overnight. Now, instead of making landfall in Queens, the damned hurricane is looking to cut a swath through my front yard!

Argh. I’ve been through a few hurricanes before, and so far none of them has been a big deal, but I ‘ve not got a good feeling about this one. This one looks like it could be pretty bad.

In other news, Tennessee Titans RB Chris Johnson continues to hold out, and I’ve started to think that he might fool around and miss the whole season. In the first place, he seems to value himself well beyond what the market dictates, and then too, I’m not sure he’s accurately appreciating the amount that his skills could atrophy if he sits out a year. And more to the point, I’m having trouble imagining who’s gonna sign him two years from now if he indeed decides to sit out and wait for that ever-elusive mass payday. Bottom line, it’s getting to the point where I don’t think Johnson’s holdout is helping him anymore, but with that said, he seems like he might be the kind of guys who’s stubborn enough and determined enough to hurt himself in order to hurt the team. And that’s a Hell of a shame.

I’m no fan of CJ’s agent, BTW. I kind’a doubt that CJ is getting good career advice at this point.

Finally, while we’re on the subject of football, the Jets and the Giants are playing a preseason game tomorrow afternoon, immediately before the hurricane hits. By that time, mass transit to and from the game will be completely offline, so the game promises to be an utter zoo from jump. Personally, I can’t wait.

Have a good weekend!

Batten Down the Hatches!

2011-08-25T18:37:00.001-04:00

New York is all aflutter today about the hurricane. In fairness, it looks like dear ol’ Irene is about to head directly through Queens. In fact, the current track has the eye passing within two or three blocks of my friend Zahid’s house.

As you can probably imagine, I’ve spent the day analyzing the zillion and one things that can go wrong in our fair city’s electric system when a hurricane hits. Been kind of an interesting day in that respect. We’ve been dusting off old contingency plans, going back through old notes and historic flooding maps, and basically trying to figure out what’s the worst that can happen and then what’ll happen after that if worst really comes to worst. Needless to say, I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I talked to Sally today and convinced her to buy some bottled water, some batteries, and various other odds and ends. According to Stratford’s hurricane map, our particular house shouldn’t have a problem—at least not with storm surge flooding—unless we get hit with a Category 4 storm. Frankly, I can’t even imagine how that could happen. Irene is a fairly big storm now, but as she moves north, she’s expected to lose strength because the water will start getting colder. Here’s hoping.

Of course, the flipside of that is that this area tends to get a lot less wind than, say, coastal North Carolina, meaning that we have a lot more old growth trees, which are in turn a lot more susceptible to even much lower force winds. And then, too, with a higher population density, the odds are a lot higher that a falling tree will take out somebody’s power lines… or their house! A tree can’t fall in a vacant lot if there aren’t any vacant lots.

In any event, folks tend to be prepared for the disasters that they’ve seen recently. In New York, we take terrorism very seriously, but until this week, it’d been something like 50 years since we had an earthquake and at least 20 since we’ve seen a hurricane. And even then, that last hurricane wasn’t a particularly big storm. So, I’d say folks are at least a little freaked just because of the sheer novelty of the event. Yes, we have Nor’easters with some regularity, but there is a BIG difference between 40+ mile per hour winds and winds that are fully hurricane force. But, you know, we’re still not quite as far gone as they are in New Jersey where the governor has already declared a State of Emergency and begun talking publicly about mass evacuations. But, you know, time may show that he was right to get a jump start on the madness. Who knows?

Assuming that we don’t have any major problems with the house or our cars or anything, perhaps the biggest impact on our family will be our planned trip to Six Flags this weekend, which we’ve had to postpone a week for the obvious reasons. Of course, the kids still want to go and all, but I doubt the park will be much fun with rain blowing sideways at 40+ miles per hour. Beyond that, Sally and I have also had to move our half-marathon training plans around a little, though in fairness, I’m too worried. Or, rather, I’m still sore enough from the tri last weekend that I’m not ready to start upping my run mileage drastically. I hope to get out for a long run on Saturday morning before the craziness starts, but beyond that, this weekend’s looking like a wasted week in terms of PT.

There’s not a lot else to report. Hopefully you guys are all having a good week.

Notes: 8/24/11

2011-08-24T19:39:00.000-04:00

· I know it’s hard being a stay-at-home mom and all, but I still get jealous sometimes. After all, Sally declared this week her “stay-cation” week while I’m still working the same as always. So far Sally and the girls have gone to the beach, the aquarium, and the movies, and it’s only Wednesday. I’ve no idea what they’re doing tomorrow and Friday, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be something that’s a little more fun than double-checking New York City’s bulk power system outages and deciding on a minimum cost-effective generation mix to meet the city’s electric load given those outages and the predicted weather and business climate.

Not that I don’t like my job. I like my job a lot. But, I mean come on! I LOVE the beach.

· The Indianapolis Colts signed quarterback Kerry Collins today, and speaking as a Titans fan, I gotta say that I am DELIGHTED. I mean, I like Collins and all, and I think he’s probably about the best option that was available to the Colts this late in the pre-season, but with that said, I’m super-eager to watch as Colts fans finally experience the kind of misery that my Tennessee Titans have known for the last few years. I don’t wish Manning any ill in the long term, but it sure as Hell won’t break my heart if he misses about four games this season and then looks rusty when he finally does come back. Personally, I think it’d be nice to throw some of those Colts bandwagoners off the back of the bus and ground that franchise in a year or two of mediocrity. Might breathe a little life into the rest of the NFL and let some of the national media focus on some other, newer stories for once.

· Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry has taken quite a bit of personal credit for the number of jobs created in Texas in the last few years, claiming that this proves that the combination of small government, small business, and voodoo economics that advocates has been working in his state. Unfortunately—for him and for the rest of the country—the reality is that most of those new jobs have come as a result of increased Federal spending in Texas, mostly in the form of incoming military personnel and/or support personnel and the business growth naturally accompanies incoming military personnel and their support structures. So, bottom line, Rick Perry would be shit were it not for Fort Hood.

· Hey! We had an earthquake! In New York City!!!

I totally felt it. In fact, my initial reaction was fear that some asshole terrorist had finally succeeded in setting off a nuke downtown. That’s one of my recurring nightmares, if you’re wondering.

· Finall, a question: if I throw out my old commuting bicycle helmet and start using new racing helmet for commutes, does that then mean I can then justify going out and buying a new $200 racing helmet for next season?

And that’s about all I got. Hope your week is going well.

Litchfield Hills Triathlon 2011 Race Report

2011-08-23T19:10:00.002-04:00

The infamous Litchfield Hills Triathlon was a couple of days ago now—Sunday, August 21, 2011, to be exact—and for the third year in a row, I competed. Two years ago my wife Sally and I did it as a mixed tag team with me doing the aquabike portion and her running. Last year, I just entered the race and then ran it solo, the second of two Oly’s I did that year. 2010 was kind of a breakthrough year in that way. But every year is different, and this year one of my goals was to not feel quite so married to triathlon as I’d felt last year. So I only put one Oly on my schedule this year, and really, I only did that because the fine folks at the Hartford Marathon Foundation they sent me a 10%-off coupon.

Is that the right attitude to take into a race? Who knows? I haven’t been training any less this year than in past years—quite the opposite, in fact—but I’ve had less of a focus on competition. And overall, I think I’m both fitter and a little more mentally sane, so maybe there’s something to it. In fact, all things considered, I think my approach to the season has been something of a life-saver. If you read this blog regularly, then you know that my mother died in April, and that my grandfather died a week and a half ago. So it’s been a tough year personally in many ways, ways that I’m still struggling to understand. I’ve spent a lot of time lately taking refuge in the simple acts of swimming, biking, and running, and honestly, I don’t know if I could have survived without that outlet. With that said, against a backdrop of grief, the idea of scoring a PR in any given race is a lot less important than it probably would have been otherwise.

Eh. To tell the truth, I’d have scratched this race if I hadn’t spent $80 entering it. I was very close to my grandfather, and his funeral was only last Saturday. If I’d had my druthers, I’d have spent the past weekend doing a simple long bike ride followed by an afternoon of watching cartoons with my kids. But since I’d already committed to the race, I didn’t want to back out—and lose my $80 for nothing—especially since I’d already put in a full season’s worth of training. Physically, I knew I was about as ready as I was gonna get. Plus, it’s not like there’s a substitute race next month or anything. You can find sprints pretty easily in Connecticut, but I can only think of four Olympic distance races in our state, and one of those others was held the same day as Litchfield Hills. Thus, scratching the Litchfield race meant not just skipping a single event but actually missing a whole season’s worth of Olympic distance racing. I didn’t want that. When Sally and I talked about it the night before the race, I told her that, bottom line, I didn’t care how I did in terms of time, but that I wanted to run a smart race and finish strong. What I didn’t want to do was to push hard early and then wind up in triathlon purgatory during the last half of the run. Heh.

Pre-Race

One of the things I’ve learned this year is how important yoga is to my pre-race warm up. With that in mind, I set my alarm clock for 4:30 and made sure to get to the race site early. The race itself was scheduled to start at 7:30, so I made sure to get there by 6:00, giving me a full 90-minutes to check in, get set up, do maybe 25 to 30 minutes of yoga, and then head down to the water to actually warm up. I loaded up my bike and my bag and all my various water bottles the day before, and for once, all of the pre-race stuff went strictly to plan. I was done with set-up by 6:30. I spent maybe 20-minutes doing yoga in a field beside transition, and by the end of it, I felt pretty good. It was nice not to have put a lot of pressure on myself to perform well, especially for a race that was basically the culmination of an entire season’s worth of training. I mean, I wouldn’t necessarily choose to make Litchfield an “A” race if there was a better race to focus on, but with only one Oly on the schedule and with the Fairfield Triathlon cancelled this year, Litchfield became my season’s de facto focus. Like it or not, it was the hardest thing I’d put on my calendar.

In any event, I got down to the beach at around 7:05. I stretched, set aside a gu (with caffeine!) and a cup of water, carefully placed my flip-flops at the exit of the chute at the endpoint of the swim, and then got in and swam. After that, I got out, downed my gu and my water, listened to the final race instructions, and at last we were ready to go.

Swim

They changed the swim up a little this year. They made the race an in-water start, moved the first buoy down about 400 yards to the left of the race’s start-point, and unhappily, they let the women lead off in the first heat of swimmers. The net effect of these changes was to add maybe 200 yards to the total swim course and to make the middle of the swim leg of the race into an absolute zoo. For me specifically, I had to fight through the usual scrum at the start of the swim followed by a second, even wackier scrum starting right around the first turn as I and the rest of the male swim leaders caught up to the slowest of the ladies. So, bottom line, it took me a solid 12 or even 14 minutes to get out into open water, and by that time, I felt like I’d been thoroughly tossed around.

Still, I felt pretty decent when we started. Right from the start, a little group of guys took off and swept me up in their wake, and believe me, I was more than happy to let them pull while I drafted. Unfortunately, the fastest of those guys burned out about 100 yards short of the first turn—right about the same time we reached the stragglers from the women’s heat—and I was left on my own for the remainder of the race. But I’ve done a lot of open water swimming lately, and despite everything, I felt reasonably comfortable. In fact, I felt fast and light and happy right up to the last turn. From that last turn, I confess that the beach looked small and far away. Still, I made it in eventually, grabbed my shoes and the shirt I’d worn down to the start, and started running up the hill to T-1.

Roughly 1-Mile Swim: 22:11 (Approximately 1:25/100 yds). 1/21 Age Group; 7/249 Overall.

If you’re wondering, that’s about 3-minutes slower than I was on this course last year. I know I’m swimming better this year than last year—for example, last year I was 14^th out of the water at this race; this year I was 7^th—so I’m guessing that this year’s swim course was between 200- and 250-yards longer than it was a year ago. I didn’t measure it with a GPS, of course, but I’d put money on it being within 100 yards of exactly a mile.

T-1

Practically the hardest part of the Litchfield Hills Triathlon is the run up from the lake to Transition. It’s about a quarter mile climb up a loose gravel road, and what makes it worse is that there’s still a lot of race left, so you don’t want to muscle it. You just have to breathe deep and let it come to you.

I made it—eventually—grabbed my stuff, decided not to wear socks, grabbed my bike, and ran down to the road to start the bike leg.

T-1: 4:46. 7/21 AG. 81/249 Overall.

Bike

In past years, I’d have told you that the hardest leg of this race is the bike leg. There’s a 2-mile climb at the end of the bike, and it’s a bear. But I’ve been riding a lot more this year, and I’ve been riding a lot more hills and intervals this year, and to be honest, I really didn’t think the bike leg was all that tough this time. In fact, I really, really enjoyed the ride. I felt light and fast the whole way, descending like a rocket on the dry roads and climbing strong when the roads turned up. Having come out of the water 7^th, the folks that passed me were mostly the strong bikers of the race. And yet, even then I found myself reeling them back in on the climbs. I’m a heavier guy for a triathlete; catching folks on climbs is not normally my best thing. Doing it this time felt like a major victory and a validation of the way I’ve been riding this season.

As I climbed the last hill, I actually thought, “Wow! That’s all?!” At that point, I knew how far I’d come since last season, and I was elated.

24.5-Mile Bike: 1:14:34 (~19.4 mph). 10/21 AG; 86/249 Overall.

T-2

My legs hurt coming off the bike, so I walked most of the way up the hill from the road before finally jogging into T-2. After that, I dropped my gear, changed shoes, and took off my shirt. Then I took a second to stretch my hamstrings before taking off for the run. The clock said 1:42 as I left T-2.

T-2: 1:17. 6/21 AG. 94/249 Overall.

Run

I thought, “Wow. As long as I don’t completely implode here, I’m gonna finish with a terrific time.” Famous last words.

Look. It’s not called Litchfield Hills for nothing. The run course is insanely hilly, and I run like shit anyway. You come out of T-2 and immediately drop down all the way to the lake before climbing back up the gravel road from the beach to transition. From there, you climb another little hill, and it’s steeply rolling the rest of the way… down, down, down, and then up, up, up. Rinse, repeat, and then do it again.

So anyway, I made it to Mile 4 before I imploded, but when I finally cracked, I cracked wide open. Actually, even before that, I’d had a wicked side-stitch, and all things considered, at that point, I just did not want to be there. I’d done the two legs that I enjoy, and I’d done them well. Moreover, I’d put in a solid 2:15 worth of hard effort, which is about all the contiguous training that I ever have time for. So when I hit the Mile 4 water station, I stopped—briefly—to suck down a full cup of Gatorade and to try to get my shit back together so that I could finish strong. But as God is my witness, I could NOT make myself start running again. It just wouldn’t happen. And when I finally did start going again, my chest constricted like I was having an asthma attack. Ugh. I don’t know if it was all the cut grass in the air or the heat or simple dehydration, but that ended any thoughts I had of somehow finishing well.

*sigh*

Eventually, I started jogging the downhills and the flats and walking the uphills, losing—I think—around 10 minutes off of what was to that point probably the best race I’d ever run. And do you know what? I didn’t even care.

6.2-Mile Run: 1:05:10 (10:30/mile). 19/21 AG. 201/249 Overall.

I finally crossed the line at 2:47. Not the sub 2:40 I’d thought I was gonna put in there for a while but still… that’s not a bad overall time or anything. It’s a Hell of a lot more respectable than I’d thought it was gonna be while I was out on the course.

Litchfield Hills Olympic Triathlon: 2:47:55. 10/21 AG; 101/249 Overall.

If I didn’t exactly put in the kind of performance I’d wanted—i.e. smartly paced with a strong finish on the run—it’s still true that my overall time wasn’t really the point. I ran my race, I did some good things, and I lived to tell the tale. I’m content. Considering that I was ready to scratch at the beginning of the week, I guess that’ll have to do.

Going forward, it’s clear that I’ve got some things to work on. For one thing, I spent the last year focused on riding. Now, I think it’s time to become a better runner. I need to be able to run easier and run longer. And then, too, I’m not nearly ready to end my season yet. I don’t want to end it this way, distracted and half-grief-stricken, not wanting to race. I didn’t last week when I was down at my grandfather’s funeral, and I still don’t. There’s no reason to. I’m still in shape, and we have at least two and a half months of decent weather left before it starts getting cold. I wish that somebody in Connecticut would organize an International Distance Duathlon for some point in October or November, but in the absence of that, Sally and I are gonna try to run the Hartford Half-Marathon on October 15^th. I’ve never finished a half before, and I suspect that that’s something I need to do if I’m ever gonna improve as a runner. In the meantime, we still have the Westport Kiwanis Triathlon on September 11^th; that’s a race I really enjoy, and it’ll be Sally’s first ever open-water tri.

In the larger scheme of things, I think I might take a break from triathlon next year. If the Hartford Half goes according to plan this fall, I might make the Fairfield Half one of my “A” races next summer and then do a couple of long charity rides on top of it. Maybe do the Tour of Litchfield Hills and some local ride that supports cancer research. That’d be appropriate, I think.

The races I’ve enjoyed most this year have been the ones where time wasn’t a pressure. Going forward, I’d like to find a way to focus on that a little more and just spend time trying to enjoy the ride. As I’ve said before, triathlon is a journey, not a destination. This year in particular, that has become a poignant thought for me. I don’t want to focus quite so much on where I’m going and what my time will be when I get there. It’d be nice to spend a little more time enjoying the time spent trying to get there.

Sci Fi Reading Recommendations

2011-08-20T14:26:00.004-04:00

My friend Zahid just finished Orson Scott Card’s classic sci fi novel Ender’s Game, and after we talked about it, Z asked me for a couple more sci fi book recommendations. I sent him the following list:

1. My favorite current author is Richard K. Morgan. The Altered Carbon trilogy is probably the best sci fi that’s been published in the last decade. Also, Z, you’d like Market Forces.http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_14?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=altered+carbon&sprefix=altered+carbon

2. David Brin is probably most famous for writing The Postman. I really liked Kiln People, which is a detective story set amidst an exploration of modern labor markets.

http://www.amazon.com/Kiln-People-Books-David-Brin/dp/B0000DK4HM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313676513&sr=8-1

3. We talked about Robert Heinlein. He wrote Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Puppet Masters. I recommend them in that order, followed by Friday.

http://www.amazon.com/Starship-Troopers-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0441783589/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313676600&sr=1-1

4. Ben Bova is another famous sci fi author with a strong background in actual science. I liked Jupiter and Venus. There are bunches more that are worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/Jupiter-Novel-Grand-Ben-Bova/dp/0812579410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313676693&sr=1-1

5. You can’t really put a list like this together without including Isaac Asimov. Foundation is wonderful. After that first book, I think the series kind of falls apart, though.

http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Novels-Isaac-Asimov/dp/0553382578/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313676811&sr=1-2

My “one to grow on” is the Codex Alera series from Jim Butcher, my favorite fantasy writer. Butcher is more famous for his urban fantasy series The Dresden Files (which was briefly a TV series on the Sci Fi channel), but Z, I think you’d enjoy the Codex Alera a bit more.

http://www.amazon.com/Furies-Calderon-Codex-Alera-Book/dp/044101268X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1313676912&sr=1-1

And that’s my list. Enjoy.

What Do You Do with Your Money?

2011-08-19T18:29:00.002-04:00

Around the office this week, we’ve been talking about the economy. One of the persistent questions that’s come up lately is this: Where can you put your money?

Right now, nowhere looks like a safe bet. In stocks, you’ve got a kind of triple whammy coming: the specter of European debt default, an imminent downturn in the domestic economy brought on by super-cuts to domestic governmental spending, and rising domestic inflation at a time when the Federal Reserve has just promised to keep interest rates low for the next eighteen months. And, oh by the way, unemployment is stuck at around 10% and starting to look like a permanent national fixture. Any one of those things would be bad. All three of them together are, well… you’ve seen the stock market lately, right? I mean, it’d probably be a decent time to invest in high-quality value stocks if you’ve got some money lying around, and you can confidently call the bottom of the market. But calling the bottom of the market is a lot easier said than done. For example, if Greece really does default and thereby drags down some of the big European commercial banks with it, well, I mean, there are market bottoms and then there are market bottoms. NPR’s Marketplaceclaimed that something like that wouldn’t just pull down Italy, Ireland, and Spain. A default that big would likely destroy France, too. And probably the rest of the Euro-Zone as well.

I dare say there are some big American banks with exposure to at least some of that soon-to-be-toxic European debt, too. It really is quite a nightmare scenario.

Regardless, even if the worst doesn’t come about, I think that personal investors can be forgiven for looking at some other potential investments besides stocks. At a minimum, it seems likely that American and European demand for consumer goods is likely to tail off even further over the course of the next year or two, and I know that at least for me personally, I’d just as soon not ride that wave down into the abyss. Maybe there will be some few profitable companies (Apple, Proctor & Gamble, various utilities, etc.), but even those seem likely to be over-bought. And even a good company is a bad investment if you overpay for its stock.

So what else is there?

Well, unfortunately, the bond markets are affected by the same forces that are affecting stocks, albeit in different ways. Bonds are ostensibly safer than stocks, of course—at least, you’re more likely to get your initial investment back in any case—but they’re hardly risk free. In fact, lately the risk of default has been a real risk. Moreover, with interest rates as low as they are now, bonds really don’t pay. At all. The Federal government right now is selling Treasures with roughly 2% yields. That’s unbelievable! If you believe that inflation is higher than 2%—and you’d be a fool not to believe that—then bottom line, you know that the government is actually making money by borrowing right now. Or, to put it another way, right now folks are so scared of what’s coming that they’re actually lending to the U.S. government at a loss! And this less than a month after we almost defaulted!

So bonds are out. In fact, they might even be worse than stocks right now.

That leaves commodities, of course. You can buy gold or oil or pig futures or whatever the Hell else catches you fancy, I suppose. Around here, we’ve been talking about gold and oil, but my colleagues and I agree that gold might be in a bit of bubble right now given its current valuations and that while oil is probably not a terrible investment, it’s still not exactly safe, either. I mean, we are talking about a significant potential drop in consumer demand in the U.S. and Europe, after all. That seems likely to send oil lower, at least in the short term and on a rather unpredictable timeline, and if there really is a serious contraction in the U.S. and in Europe, all those Asian countries that depend on exports to the West to drive their economies are gonna suffer, too—probably even worse than we are. And that’ll drive down demand for oil even more.

So. What do you do? You can’t just sit on your money because inflation will erode its buying power, even if you put it in something like a CD or a money market fund. Those things pay less than Treasuries. But none of the major investments look particularly safe, either. No matter what you do, you’re looking at the risk of some serious losses in the next 18-months, even if you don’t do anything!

It’s a tough issue. If I had the answer, trust me, I’d have opened with it.

Hell, part of me thinks that the government ought to raise taxes now just because all the other uses for the world’s ambient capital are all so awful. Nationally speaking, I think that might actually be the least-worst solution. All the other alternatives seem to lead to even more unjustified asset price bubbles and ultra-low risk premiums in return for capital investment. Frankly, that’s a game I’m getting a little tired of playing.

Eh. Come to think of it, I think Warren Buffet said that this week, too.

Feeling Better & Getting Ready to Race

2011-08-18T19:22:00.002-04:00

I’ve been feeling a little better since I woke up yesterday morning, and thanks for asking. It was a lot of traveling Friday and Saturday, and by the end the work day Monday, I was dead tired. That probably affected the tone of my last post as much as anything, and I can well imagine that folks don’t come here to listen to me bellyache about my family problems. It’s been a downer around here lately. I know. In any event, I’m still sad, but I feel like I’m getting my feet under me slowly but surely, and that’s a good thing. My back is still real stiff from being in my car a bunch over the last weekend, but I’ve got a chiropractic appointment this evening, so maybe that’ll help. It’d be nice if it did.

Still and all… it’s kind of hard to focus. I’ve got a race this weekend—the Litchfield Hills Olympic Triathlon. My hardest race of the season. And right now, honestly, I’d be just as happy to skip it and go for a longer, more relaxed bike ride on Saturday morning. For me, triathlon has always been more about the journey than the destination, and in this case, I’d just as soon keep on riding. But “the hay is in the barn” as they say, and so I’m committed to at least showing up and going through the motions this weekend. I mean, how bad can it be, right?

Heh. Don’t answer that.

Olympic triathlons are relatively short events in the multi-sport/endurance sport world, but they’re not really my best thing. They start with a one-mile swim, progress to an approximately 25-mile bike ride, and end with a 10K run. And, bottom line, the first 2/3 of that is totally fine, but I tend to suffer during the last half of the run. My personal sweet spot for races is more along the lines of a 60- to 120-minute affair, which is basically anything from a 10K run by itself at the low end of things to a standard 5K-25K-5K duathlon on the high side. In fact, I seem to do the best at races that are either just under an hour or just under two hours. Don’t ask me why. It doesn’t make sense to me either that I get a little second wind at about the 90-minute mark, but it’s happened consistently enough that I know that it happens. Either the race is short enough that I can gut it out in one burst of continuous effort, or it needs to be long enough that I can settle into a pace, work my nutrition plan, and then get into some solid up-tempo work in race’s later stages.

In either case, the steady, long-distance aerobic thing isn’t really my deal, though. My best thing is working just outside my comfort zone, gutting it out at speed rather than going long and steady. That was the way I swam, and it’s the way I race today, too. An Oly, meanwhile, is about a two hour and forty-five minute affair for me, depending on course conditions and whether or not I’m on my game. That’s a little bit long for up-tempo work for all but the very best endurance athletes, and it’s certainly a little long for me, especially that run leg. Bottom line, I know it’s gonna hurt.

I don’t really think I’m gonna set any kind of personal records this weekend. What I can do, though, is to try to run a smarter race than usual, to stay well within my aerobic capabilities for the first two legs of the race, and to try to go without crushing myself to hamburger before the run leg is even half way finished. So my goal this weekend is to race smarter, not harder. And who knows, maybe that’ll turn out to be faster, too. But I know that if I think about going faster via strategy, that’ll have me putting in too much effort early on.

So… I’m gonna try to race comfortable this weekend and then just see where I am when I get to the run. At a minimum, hopefully that’ll make the race a less miserable experience than it was last year, anyway.

Vacation: Swimming, Hiking, Biking, and a Funeral

2011-08-15T18:30:00.000-04:00

Vacation was pretty great, if you’re wondering. We drove up to Green Lake in Maine and rented a little cabin on the beach. Green Lake is about thirty miles north of Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, and it’s utterly remote. No phone, no cable TV, no Internet. No town to speak of. Barely any cell coverage. Hell, even our water was pumped in straight out of the lake itself. We weren’t quite in the Middle of Nowhere only because, truth to tell, you had to drive half an hour just to get to Nowhere from where we were staying. It was like falling off the edge of the world out there.

In truth, it was terrific. We swam a lot, took the kids out on kayaks and on the cabin’s canoe. I ran twice and rode hills once on my road bike. Went for two open-water swims. Finished reading a book and then read another one. Went hiking a couple of times with the kids and the dog. Visited a lobster hatchery and then went out to eat lobster rolls in one of the area’s many lobster shacks. Took the kids out on our trail bikes and trail-a-bikes. Climbed mountains, took pictures, and basically did what anyone would do when they have a chance to spend a week out at the edge of the world. It was great, really.

The only thing bad that happened during the entire week happened on Wednesday. I got the call letting me know that my grandfather had died. All things considered, we were fortunate that the call got through. Reception was spotty at best. But it did, and he’s gone, and as usual, there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.

I don’t really feel like eulogizing my grandfather here, but I will say that he was a great man, and that his death, while not completely unexpected, came as a nasty shock at the end of what had to that point been one of my best days ever.

I got up Wednesday and road hills on my road bike. After that, we loaded up the trail bikes, the trail-a-bikes, and the kids and headed for Acadia. We spent the day riding hills on the park’s carriage roads—an intense experience when you’re pulling a 60-lb girl on a trail-a-bike, especially if you’ve already ridden hills on your road bike earlier in the day—and I loved it. I mean, I loved every second of it. Hannah and I rode hard up Day Mountain, and I taught her to climb out of the saddle. Then we stopped, took pictures, and waited for Sally and Emma to catch up before descending as a family back to sea level and then climbing again up to the next part of the park. After three hours, we broke and had lunch and then headed back to the cabin, tired but euphoric. The girls swam when we got back while Sally and I kicked back with some beer. I told Sally, “This is one of the Top Ten days I’ve ever had.”

And then Cindi called to break the news.

My grandfather, Pa Pa Dan, was a tremendously important part of my life. I realized after he was gone that he’d been the sole source of consistency in my life, and having him gone is a weird and unmooring experience. I’m gonna miss him. I do miss him.

He got diagnosed with small cell lung cancer about a month after my mother died at the age of 87. He’d never been in the hospital, and he didn’t want to go this time, but he knew he was sick and didn’t want to get sicker. As it happens, he didn’t have the flu (like I thought) or pneumonia (like his daughters thought). So, I mean, we knew that he was in a fight. It’s just that it looked like it was a fight that he was winning. But then he went downhill suddenly on Sunday and died a few days later. That surprised everyone.

We tried to enjoy the rest of our vacation as best we could, but it was tough after that. There were moments that were great, but the cloud of grief hung over it, and when we left on Friday—a day early—it was with equal parts sadness and relief. We enjoyed hiking and biking and being away, but I also wanted to attend the funeral and pay my respects. That trip loomed over the back half of our week away.

The funeral was Saturday, and I flew back home Saturday night. I don’t have any more family in Tennessee, and frankly, I didn’t want to stay there any more without them. I’ve always felt like at least half a Tennessean, but I don’t guess I am anymore. I can’t imagine why I’d go back now.

Going on Vacation Tomorrow...

2011-08-05T20:22:00.000-04:00

The title says it all. I've no idea if I'll be able to post, but if I can, I will.

Here's today's Friday Hair Metal is White Lion's "Little Fighter." Enjoy!

Home Movies

2011-08-04T17:47:00.000-04:00

I got bored at today's meeting. So I made a movie of myself on my laptop. Enjoy.

Debt Deal, Part 2

2011-08-02T18:42:00.000-04:00

Now that the deal is struck, and I've had a chance to read through it, I think I'm kind of warming to the debt deal. Reality is, I think, that the government is so amazingly dysfunctional, that we actually need these so-called crises to spur us to any sort of action. So we cut a trillion now, and if a true bipartisan deal isn't reached by Thanksgiving--a likely failure given the lowered stakes--then we cut another trillion-and-half across the board. Entitlements, the military... all the sacred cows get the axe. I kind of love that. I actually think that that kind of insane craziness is what's necessary to install some fiscal responsibility in our Congress.

The only thing that really disappoints me in all of this is Obama. Man, he caves under pressure every time. Yes, he got Osama, but besides that, he has been a complete and utter pussy as a President. I mean, he may well get my vote next time around, but boy oh boy, that will be by far the best of a bad set of options.

Debt Deal

2011-08-02T05:39:00.002-04:00

Well, it seems like the debt deal is finally going to get done, and as it happens, the price turned out to be massive cuts to defense and Homeland Security spending. Republicans got to cut at least $2.5 trillion in federal spending, and Democrats got to take a substantial part of that from a combination of defense, non-defense security, and foreign aid spending. Which means, I think, that the war in Afghanistan is over. It may take some time to wind it all down, but bottom line, there’s no one left in Washington who still cares enough about it to give it—or the Army fighting it—any funding.

As far as the American People are concerned, I think the real import of this event will take some time to sink in. Americans are not by any means the most subtle or intuitive people on earth. They are easily fooled by even the meanest form of political or economic bait-and-switch, and lately, they’ve been coerced on all sides into voting against their own economic interests through an increasingly brutal use of so-called “values” wedge issues. The facts of this particular bait-and-switch are that today’s Republicans drape themselves in the flag and image of Reagan while running full-speed away from the real man’s actual legacy. Because while it’s true that Reagan was basically a supply-side economics guy, he was far, far more of a pragmatist than is today’s Republican Party. People forget that Reagan raised interest rates *a lot* to get inflation under control in early 1980s. He also raised taxes in his second term and didn’t apologize for it after the fact. So while it’s true that he believed in “trickle down” economics, he was neither insane nor overly dogmatic about the way he governed. He increased spending when that was needed, notably on defense but also on other issues.

Today’s Republicans don’t care about any of that. They care about dogma more than facts, and they’re willing to wreck the country just to make the other guy look bad.

I just can’t get behind that.

It’s frustrating to me, a registered Republican, because I feel like there’s no one left to speak for me in the Capitol. No one seems to care about actually balancing the budget. No one seems to care about how the country’s actually running. The Republicans only want to eliminate tax revenue, and the Democrats only want to increase social spending. They care about the execution of the dogma more than about the actually effects of their actions. And it’s so bad right now that they can’t even come to a simple compromise anymore, even in a time of crisis. Somebody’s got to win and someone’s got to lose, and the other guys can never do anything right. With nihilists in Congress, it’s become a dangerous proposition.

People just don’t seem to get that some spending cuts are actually de facto tax increases. For example, if the Federal government cuts funding for schools, sure the schools can lay off some teachers, increase class sizes, and use old text books, but they’re also going to have to raise property taxes—at the local level—to make up for the new shortfall in Federal spending. Likewise, I think if more Americans knew the real effects of coal-fired power plants, we’d have a lot less crying about spending on the EPA. The real cost to unregulated industry is increased asthma rates—paid for via increased Health Care spending—as well as higher food prices due to damaged aquifers, fisheries, and the like, and a general need to clean the water before you use or drink it. That process of cleaning water is not free. It is, in fact, quite energy intensive. Along the same lines, utility bills are not technically a tax. And since greater energy spending is technically an increase in consumer spending in lieu of a tax—albeit one that makes neither good economic nor social sense—it’s more palatable to today’s meathead Republicans, the actual effects of the policy be damned.

Once again, I’d be curious to get the thoughts of some of my classmates on this. I mean, they’re the ones who’re really gonna get screwed here. Is this enough of a betrayal by the Right to make them rethink their personal politics, or have they not yet read the fine print?

Schenectady, New York

2011-07-29T08:48:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-28T08:10:00.002-04:00

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

2011-07-26T17:11:00.002-04:00

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

2011-07-24T12:59:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-23T06:51:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-20T18:23:00.001-04:00

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!

2011-07-19T18:22:00.002-04:00

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

2011-07-16T18:30:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-15T18:19:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-14T18:23:00.001-04:00

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

2011-07-13T19:41:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-12T20:51:00.002-04:00

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…

2011-07-11T18:21:00.001-04:00

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

2011-07-10T07:27:00.004-04:00

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...

2011-07-09T20:14:00.001-04:00

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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

2011-07-08T18:28:00.002-04:00

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!

Assorted Mad Science

2011-07-07T18:52:00.002-04:00

ABC News ran a story today on obesity rates in the US. And, y’know, I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. Apparently, Colorado is the leanest state in the nation, but even then, it’s 20% obesity rate would’ve made it the fattest state in the nation a mere fifteen years ago. Meanwhile, a full 34% of the population of the State of Mississippi is not just fat, it’s obese. With all of that comes a massive increase in heart disease and diabetes nationwide as well as a host of other health problems in addition to the simple ugliness that I think most Americans see when they look at obese folks. And personally, I’d think that it’d be that that’d get most folks off their fat asses and into some kind of diet or exercise program. I mean, who the Hell wants to look fat?

We could probably argue about the causes of obesity, but I personally believe it’s most caused by diet and dietary laziness. Look, it’s a serious pain in the ass to eat a consistently healthy diet, and it’s more expensive, too. And I don’t expect that folks are gonna adopt my new and improved diet in record numbers any time soon, but I do think they’d get something out of making an effort to prepare their own foods and eat a big green salad with every meal. And that’d cut their expenses, too.

For me, personally, I’ve quit eating pretty much anything that’s processed or made with processed ingredients—for example, anything containing “enriched” flour or any food that’s no longer its natural, God-given color (like white rice)—but I think you can get by with just trying to stay away from obvious crap. But I guess that people just can’t do it. They like their Twinkies and their soda and their fast food, and they don’t give a crap if it’s gonna kill them or not.

I find that sad, but I don’t know what else to do about it besides writing about it here.

***

I think it’s weird that people are surprised or somehow outraged that “Captain America: The First Avenger” will be titled merely “The First Avenger” in Russia, South Korea, and a few other overseas markets. How else were these guys supposed to market the movie overseas? Frankly, I doubt that French or Italian audiences have much of a taste for a “Captain America” movie, either, but I can well imagine them wanted to watch some Nazis getting their asses kicked. That’s just good marketing.

***

I noticed that Elizabeth Smart is ABC News’s new go-to girl for personal abduction stories. Is it wrong to point out that she looks hot now?

***

Finally, here’s the obligatory video of today’s stage of the Tour. I was rooting for Thor Hushovd, but sadly, he didn’t quite get there. Eh... at least he’s still in yellow.

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Today's Finish

2011-07-06T20:26:00.003-04:00

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The Army's Next Big Fight?

2011-07-06T18:17:00.002-04:00

I don’t know if anybody who’s still in the Army ever reads this blog, but if you do, I’d be curious to get your thoughts on an article from Slate, The Army's Next Big Fight: Protecting its Own Budget from Panetta and the Pols.

Personally, I find myself more than a little split on the issue. On the one hand, the Army has been ridiculously over-extended these past ten years or more, and that needs to stop. I have little doubt that some serious rest, reorganization, and planning for the future are in order if our Army is to survive and succeed in the foreseeable future. But then again, the country is broke. I mean, really broke. So broke that a few more years like this will see in a potential Greek-style debt crisis, and I don’t think anybody wants that. We’re already laying off teachers and cops left and right, and that’s bad enough, but trust me, it can still get a lot worse.

What’s difficult, I think, is that there’s no clear focus for the Army going forward. Fighting terrorism? I mean, as a New Yorker I’m all for it, but doing it with tanks doesn’t look like it works very well. Frankly, fighting terrorism seems like a mission you give to the CIA and then let them task the Army for help on a case-by-case basis. And what’s more, we might get in some place with the Army and stabilize the situation, but what we’re not doing well is then setting the conditions for success and/or withdrawal. From the outside, the Army looks like a medical first responder. Yeah, we can get in there and stop the bleeding and get the patient stabilized initially, but that’s only a temporary fix. We still need to get the surgeon to come in and make permanent repairs before closing up the wound with sutures so that the patient can actually heal. Right now, it looks like the best we’ve done is to stick on band-aids and then train replacement paramedics in how to hold them in place without actually addressing the causes of the bleeding.

I don’t say that this is the Army’s fault, but as a national security apparatus, the track record just isn’t there. Korea? Yeah, there’s still a Korea. But then, we still have troops there, too. Vietnam? We won every battle, but the country fell anyway because the government was corrupt. Nobody wants to die for a corrupt government. Iraq? Yeah, the situation has improved, but I don’t think you can make the case that it’s actually better than it would have been had we merely continued the 90’s policy of Containment. And in any event, the Arab Spring might make the point moot. Afghanistan? Well, the good news is that we got the bad guy. The bad news is that I’m not sure how much that has to do with the effort to stabilize the Karzai government, which at this point looks a lot like the old government of South Vietnam, at least in terms of efficacy and corruption. Hell, you’ve even got Pakistan there as a modern day Laos, giving shelter to the enemy as he invades on mountainous goat trails. If there’s any good news, it’s that we’ve at least now got a leader with the balls to bomb across the border, even if it risks the feelings of our so-called allies.

None of which answers the question of what the Army’s role is going to be after the wars end. It seems clear that the country is headed for more engagement, but with that said, I cannot fathom that the electorate would vote for another war unless something really unexpected happens. And maybe that’s what the Army’s role is—to be prepared for the unexpected. But what does that look like? And what can we afford for it to look like?

I guess my real question is this: is there an understanding in the Army that the current way of things is unsustainable, or are we committed to going the distance regardless of the country’s current realities, no matter what?

Weekend Update: 4th of July Edition

2011-07-06T05:34:00.001-04:00

Hey! Hope you guys had a good weekend. I certainly enjoyed ours.

The Tour’s been pretty good so far, no? My daughter Emma and I watched all three stages over the weekend, and I gotta say that I loved it. Usually, the first week of the Tour is kind of a snoozy affair, but thanks to all the crashes, this year even the first stage was exciting. And I thought yesterday’s sprint stage was just awesome. Just watching the teams navigate those tiny French roads at breakneck speeds to try to set up their sprinters is unbelievable. I suppose that if you don’t yourself ride, you might not appreciate the beauty and power of it, but I personally find it awe-inspiring.

Haven’t seen today’s stage yet. I know that Cadel Evans won it in a photo finish over Alberto Contador, but I’ll have to find time to play it back on the Versus website before I actually get a chance to see it happen.

Speaking of bike-riding, my own riding went about as well as can be expected over the weekend. You may remember that I’d planned to do a long brick with intervals on Saturday, but then I decided that I’d rather ride actual hills than pretend to ride hills via interval work. Anyway, I rode reasonably well for about 25-miles, until I ran over a broken bottle and slashed my rear tire… at which point, I discovered that the little nub for my C02 cartridges was missing. So I ended up having to call Sally to come get me before I could get home and go for my run. Not the end of the world, but also not the most efficient way to run a brick, either. By the time we got home, it was hot, and I did not feel like running. I did eventually slog my way through 2.5 of my intended 3-mile run, but it wasn’t my finest hour, I can promise you. Still, it was decent training, and running when your tired is a necessary evil of triathlon. Not my favorite necessary evil, to be sure, but an absolute requirement of the sport nonetheless.

Sunday was more of the same. I’d planned to run somewhere around 6.5-miles and ended up going around 5.5—again, running tired. What else is there to say about it? It sucked, but that was kind of the point. I wanted to train as hard as I could without actually risking an injury or putting myself in the position of needing to take more than a single day off to recover. I did that.

Monday turned out to be that day off. I’d sort of expected that it might be, and by Sunday night, I was sure. If nothing else, I really wanted to sleep in at least once over the weekend. We did eventually go to the beach, and I put in maybe 300-yards of rough water swimming, but that only took a few minutes and barely counts as exercise. It was good to get warmed up and to remember what it feels like to have to spot buoys, but beyond that, it was, well, just a day at the beach with my family.

Meanwhile, my nutrition experiment went pretty well. I made all manner of in-race nutrition packets, recovery drinks, and healthy-smoothies over the weekend, and I think that they helped. I mean, my legs are tired today, but I’m not sore. I take that to mean, in part, that I’m recovering a little better than normal, probably thanks to simple proteins ingested immediately after my workout. That’s good.

I also learned a few things about sugars. For example, the good thing about the racing gels that I made is that since they’re basically just crushed dates and agave nectar, they contain fructose (fruit sugar) instead of corn syrup or refined sugar, and fructose burns a little slower than do pure glucose or maldextrose. In practice, that meant that my homemade racing gels provided a better, more stable energy platform than actual Gu-brand gels do. Which is to say that when you take a Gu, it’s like ingesting rocket fuel. You burn really bright for about 15 minutes, and after that you start to taper off, until you crash at around the 45-minute mark. At which point, you better take another gu. With the fructose gel, I never got that “rocket fuel” sensation that you get from a Gu, but I also never had that “let down” feeling, either. It was just a steady a stream of continuous energy that kept me working right at the threshold that I wanted to maintain. The fructose is also a lot easier on the stomach and doesn’t seem to require quite as much water as the gu’s do for digestion. In any event, I was pleased with the way I performed while using the new gels, and I plan to use them soon in a race. We’ll see how that goes.

Last thing of note for the weekend is that I did, in fact, manage to get out to see Transformers this weekend, and boy… what a dumbass movie that was. Actually, I have a feeling that the movie itself wasn’t dumb so much as the editing was. Which is to say that it looked to me like Michael Bay and company probably shot about 4-hours worth of movie and then had to cut it down to a bare minimum in order to hit a reasonable running-time. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed the new Transformers movie—a lot. It was way entertaining. But the third act was a mess, and there were truck-sized holes in the plot. And I think those could have been fixed—easily—with the addition of maybe a half-dozen scenes. But there was just no time. They just tried to do too much, and as it was, there wasn’t enough screen-time left over to get it all in.

So that’s pretty much it. We grilled Saturday and Monday, went and saw the fireworks on Sunday night (after the movie), and had some friends over for dinner last night. A good time was had by all.

It was a good weekend and a full one, and I’m happy. Tired but happy.

How was yours?

Photo Finish!

2011-07-05T21:05:00.001-04:00

Not a lot of time here tonight, but if you've got a chance, check out the photo finish of today's stage of the Tour de France: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/43639414.

That's about as cool as it gets.

Happy 4th of July!

2011-07-04T17:15:00.002-04:00

Conan Trailer!

2011-07-02T19:27:00.000-04:00

...not that I've seen the new Transformers yet.

Friday Mad Science: 4th of July Weekend Edition

2011-07-01T20:10:00.000-04:00

I hope you guys are psyched up for the long weekend. I know I am. Not only does the Tour de France start tomorrow, but this is also one of the key training weekends of my triathlon season, and we have the big Town of Stratford fireworks display Sunday night. I might even get a chance to see the new Transformers movie this weekend, although talking to Sally last night made that seem rather less likely than I’d thought it was earlier in the week. That said, there’s still the Transformers Marathon on Hub on Monday, I’ll be firing up the grill on Saturday night, and both my girls want to play Wrath of Ashardalon this weekend, so no matter what, it looks like I’ll be doing most of my favorite things all three days. And really, that’s all I can ask for.

On the Tour de France front, the best pre-race read I can recommend right now is the Podium Café’s Five Storylines article. Of the five storylines, by far the most interesting to me is whether or not Alberto Contadorcan successfully defend his title barely more than a month removed from having raced and won the Giro d’Italia. I remember rooting hard for Bradley Wiggins last year, but then he pretty much looked like crap after having raced the Giro, and after I thought about it, it kind of made sense. So if Contador can now defend his Tour crown once again, this time after having just taken the Giro, then that’ll really be something.

With triathlon… Long weekends can be tricky. There’s no telling how the body’s gonna feel after that second day of long workouts, and on top of that, there are always family pressures that get in the way. Those can easily minimize time spent out on the road or otherwise out of the house. So let me tell you what I’m planning, and then we can circle back around on Tuesday and see how I did.

· Saturday: Long Ride/Short Run (Brick). I’m gonna ride for about two hours tomorrow morning and then run for maybe a half an hour. Distance-wise, I’d like to go about 30-miles and 3-miles respectively, but the time is really more important to me than the distance. I want to prepare my body for the duration of an Olympic triathlon-type effort. Plus, I want to get in some long interval training on the bike to continue preparing for the climb at the end of the Litchfield Hills Triathlon. I know I can finish the race because I’ve done it twice. The question now is: how well can I do?

· Sunday: Long Run & (Very) Short Swim. I need to put in at least one long run this weekend, and I’m thinking that the best time for that is gonna be Sunday morning, either before or after church. I’d also like to swim this weekend, but I’ve no idea when that might occur. We’ll probably head to the beach early on Sunday before the fireworks, and in that case, I’ll do a little rough water training then. Distance-wise, I’ve already put in two pool workouts this week, so all I really need to do this weekend is to hold my form and remember what it feels like to sight buoys in rough water. That won’t take more than ten or fifteen minutes. On a side note, Sally’s entered in her first rough water triathlon in September, and I’d like to see her swim some in the Sound before then. If she swims well, I might encourage her to enter the Ocean Beach triathlon with me later this month. But before I do that, I want to satisfy myself that she can actually do the swimming she’d need to do safely.

· Monday: This is where it gets tricky. Ideally, I’d like to get back on my bike and do at least 25-miles or so of simple aerobic riding. No intervals, nothing fancy. I just want to put some more miles on my legs. That said, a lot can happen between now and Monday. Minor injuries, exhaustion, and familial demands all might derail my plans for Monday.

· Nutrition: As if all of that wasn’t enough, I’m also testing out some new nutrition and recovery science this weekend. For Father’s Day, Sally gave me Bredan Brazier’s book Thrive, The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life. I don’t have any plans to convert to veganism, but I am trying to change my diet to get a little leaner and a little healthier. Because, bottom line, I’m too fat to climb well. And I know I have climbing in my near future. This weekend specifically, I’m going to be experimenting with Mr. Brazier’s homemade energy drink and gu recipes as well as with his recovery shake recipe. We’ll see how that goes. In-race nutrition and post-race recovery are two of the biggest challenges that triathletes face, so if this works out, it’ll help a lot.

***

This week’s Friday Hair Metal selection is Tesla’s “Love Song”. I heard it on Hair Nation last week, and I’ve been itching to stick it on here ever since. Enjoy!

So that’s my weekend. What’re you guys up to?

We Walk the Same Line

2011-06-30T17:20:00.001-04:00

By request, and because I've had a Hell of a long day.

A Quick Rant About Statistics and Reality

2011-06-29T19:09:00.002-04:00

Slate carried a real gem today: You Can't Measure America's Grit: Hatred of sabermetrics comes to business and politics. There were several great quotes, but my favorite is reprinted below.

KFC president Roger Eaton is lashing out at New York City regulations that require restaurants to post calorie counts on their menus. "KFC's Famous Bowls and Big Box Meals are so much more than the sum of their ample calories and saturated fats," Eaton explained in an impromptu speech at one of the chain's Manhattan locations. New York's disclosure laws, the fast-food executive continued, ignore more subtle health factors, such as the impact of saying grace before you dig in and the salutary effect of eating in a booth.

—New York Post, July 6, 2011, as quoted by Slate.com.

I’m not usually much of a stats-guy when it comes to sports, but these guys have pretty much proved to me that you can tell almost everything you need to know about anything from statistics. You might hate it, but the truth is that the numbers don’t lie.

When did America become so anti-intellectual, anyway? I swear, ever since George W. Bush refused to stop saying “nuke-u-ler” instead of nuclear, it’s like I don’t have a country anymore. Have I changed that much, or have people just stopped caring about facts and instead started buying wholesale into their own personal delusions? Even my church has been off on a rant lately about “new Earth creationism” and how there couldn’t ever have been any real dinosaurs because there aren’t any dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible. Ugh. Try explaining that one to a six-year-old would-be paleontologist.

Honestly, it’s crap like that that’s been destroying my faith these last few months. And I don’t mean my faith in America; I mean my actual, spiritual faith. I want to believe, but it’s just so damned hard when you have these guys who refuse to believe in something as simple, mundane, and obviously factual as the existence of dinosaurs. We found the bones! How is this even a question anymore?

Enough.

Today’s gonna be one of those days when I’m glad my neighbors don’t read this blog. It’s Wednesday afternoon, and here I am wrestling with my faith. What’s the world coming to?

Tuesday Stray Voltage

2011-06-28T20:18:00.000-04:00

· My favorite commentator over at the Podium Café has a story out about five riders she wants to watch in this year’s Tour de France. It’s a pretty good list and a decent primer for folks looking to get a handle on who some of the players are in this year’s race.

· I ran some intervals last night. I ended up going about 3.5-miles with a set of 5 x 2-minute Fartlek intervals as the centerpiece. Despite being sleepy all afternoon yesterday, I felt great when I was running. Ended up averaging just under 7:45/mile—pretty good for me. I’ve been doing a lot of aerobic work lately, so last night was mostly about working the upper range of my heart rate reserve as well as sharpening my running form a bit. I think I accomplished that.

· Transformers: Dark of the Moon is off to mixed reviews. The Republic liked it. Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News not so much. Eh. As I type this, the movie is at about 35% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. That ain’t too good.

· Though I cringe as I type this, I find myself agreeing with Justice Clarence Thomas over Antonin Scalia in the recent Supreme Court ruling that overturned a California law banning the sale of extremely violent video games to minors due to concerns over Freedom of Speech. The majority of the court unfortunately ruled with Scalia in saying that video games are a form of speech, and that their sale cannot therefore be banned by the State of California. Which is fine. Except—as Justice Thomas points out—that the rights of minors are not the same as the rights of adults. Thomas then goes off on a rant about 17^th and 18^th century parental morality that I think we can safely ignore, but his base point—that banning the sale of games to minors does not ban their access by minors because parents can still purchase said games for their kids so long as they consent to having their kids view them—is valid. Bottom line, parents make choices for their kids every day. That’s just part of the deal. And just the same as I wouldn’t want some asshole to try to sell my kids pornography without my being aware of the attempt, so too I think I’d like to know about the attempted sale of violent video games as well. Honestly, so long as parents are legally responsible for the actions of their children, I don’t know how you can reasonably restrict their ability to control their children’s access to media. Either parents are responsible or they aren’t. The distinction is not that hard to make.

· I mapped the bike course for the Litchfield Hills Triathlon on MapMyRide.Com today. If the site is to be believed, there are two Cat 5 climbs on the route. The first is at the 14.5-mile mark and lasts just over a mile with an average 2.9% grade. I cannot personally remember that one. The second climb is at the 21-mile marker, and it lasts for basically the last two miles of the ride with an average grade of 3.4%. I will tell you that the beginning of that climb is by far the easier part while the ending is much steeper. It’s probably close to 6% at its worst. Anyway, I saved the course map if you’re interested. Lots and lots of people read my race report for that race, so I assume that those same folks would probably like to see what they’re in for when they get out there on the course this year.

· By comparison, 6% is a relatively benign climb for the Tour de France. At the Tour, they’ll average 9% or more for miles. Which is just unbelievable if you ask me. I can’t even imagine climbing something like that.

· Last thing: we had a dip in readership last week, but it seems like things have picked back up since Sunday night. Still, the comments have fallen off a cliff. So. If you see something you like around here, by all means, please feel free to leave a comment—even on an older post. That helps me know what’s working here, and honestly, I think it makes it more fun for everybody.

Monday Sleepy-Time Blues

2011-06-27T19:58:00.002-04:00

It was a great weekend, but between Six Flags on Saturday, a full day of house-chores on Sunday, and swimming Sunday afternoon, I can’t stop yawning today. Sally says she going out with her friends tonight to see Bridesmaids, so I suppose that means that I’m going to go to bed super-early. Whoopee!

Actually, I really am looking forward to getting some good sleep tonight. *sigh* It’s like one of those, “You know you’re a grown-up when…” moments.

One of the things I did this weekend was to sit down with Hannah and Emma and start teaching them the differences between Wrath of Ashardalon and the full 4^th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. I only mention it because they made first characters who are basically exactly like they are. Hannah made herself a dragonborn paladin, a holy warrior of virtue and renown, dedicated to the fight for truth and justice. And yes, that describes Hannah to a “T”. I often think she’s going to wind up in seminary. Emma, meanwhile, made herself a changeling vampire—a dark and deadly little creature who looks cute and cuddly but who’ll rip off your face if you let her get too close. This from the same girl who, at the age of six, insists that she will never have children because she doesn’t want them to interfere with the important work she plans to do as a paleontologist.

What can I say? Sometimes life is wacky.

If you’re wondering, Sally and I still presumably need to make characters if this idea of a family campaign is ever actually going to get underway. Sally says she’s going to play a wizard. That leaves me with the Leader role in our little family group, but I’ve not decided exactly what flavor of leader to make yet. I was leaning towards playing a bard, but now I’m starting to think maybe we could use a warlord instead. It seems like this group might be a little light without another strong melee character.

***

Six Flags was fun. We rode roller coasters, and my kids loved them. We took some pictures, too, which you can see below. We even ended up buying Season Passes. So, bottom line, I don’t know exactly when we’re going back, but we ARE going back, hopefully sooner rather than later.

That said, after we got home Saturday night, I was so tired I felt like I’d been poleaxed. I went to bed at eight! And I still woke up feeling exhausted on Sunday!

Eh. I gotta start pulling myself together. My Rest Week is over. It’s time to get back on the horse. I’ve got less than two weeks until the Greenwich Point One Mile Swim and four weeks until the Amica 19.7 Triathlon at Ocean Beach. It’s time to get hot!

*yawn*

Have I mentioned how sleepy I am?

A Few Family Pictures

2011-06-26T07:44:00.001-04:00

Hannah & Emma at the Hall of Justice

The Whole Super-Family!

Sally, Hannah, & Emma at Easter

The Girl Scouts parade on Memorial Day

Friday Mad Science: Rest Week Edition

2011-06-24T18:34:00.001-04:00

Now that it’s Friday of Rest Week, I can begin to see just how necessary that rest really was.

I typically train on a four week schedule: three weeks hard, one week easy. It’s a little different than the way I trained as a swimmer—when we used to train eight or ten weeks hard and then three or four weeks easy—but at age 38, I find the four week schedule to be much more sustainable over time than a more hardcore approach would be. It’s a lot easier on my body and a lot more conducive to the demands of real life. Among other things, overtraining the way that young competitive swimmers do tends to make me grouchy, and nobody like a grouchy daddy. Last week was actually Week 4 for me without a Rest Week, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that I started to notice decided grouchy tendencies in myself late in the week.

Still, it can be tough to diagnose overtraining by degrees of grouchiness especially because I think most athletes will want to treat emotional issues and general irritability with more training rather than less. I dealt with my father’s death by taking up triathlon, I’ve been dealing with my mother’s death by riding my bike more and basically doubling down on the triathlon lifestyle, and along with all of that, my usual self-prescription for any issue of stress or emotional difficulty is pretty much always the same thing— swim, bike, or run. Exercise gives a mental and emotional break from stress, and it gives an endorphin rush that helps, too. And over time, you feel better when you exercise, which in turns makes you more resilient to stress. So exercise is all good. It’s even a little addicting, and it can therefore be quite difficult to realize when you need to back down. The dedicated athlete does not typically respond to a sub-par workout by saying, “Obviously I need to start taking it easy.” No, a more typical response by far is, “Man, what is wrong with me? I need to start kicking it in the ass! Come on, let’s go!”

This is why it’s good to have a plan. This is why it’s important to stick to that plan.

I wasn’t feeling particularly tired last week. I had maybe two sub-par workouts. Truth be told, had I simply gotten some sleep, eaten right, and planned my next set of workouts a little more carefully, I might’ve worked through it. Probably would have. But I would have kept getting grouchier and grouchier, and eventually, I’d have put myself at risk for an overuse injury. This is part of the challenge of training for an endurance sport.

Was I overtrained? Probably not, at least from a technical standpoint. For example, my resting heart rate wasn’t elevated. But I was getting tired, I was getting grouchy, and as I’ve said before, it’s not like I’m on scholarship here. And I was tired. We can see that just by the fact that here it is Friday, and I’m only now starting to feel better. I’ve got to be Daddy, Engineer, and Triathlete. Bottom line, that takes balance.

Anyway, I’m feeling better now. I’m gonna swim a little tonight, and then Sally, the kids, and I are all heading up to Six Flags: New England tomorrow for a day of rollercoasters, Batman, and Johnny Rockets. Frankly, I can’t wait.

***

Alright, so you might’ve noticed that I’ve been putting up a bunch of YouTube videos recently. I’ve been doing that basically because I’ve been trying really hard to have some kind of new content on the site every day, but I don’t necessarily have time to write a full blog post every single day. So on the days when I’m basically swamped, I tend to just go to YouTube, grab something cool, and throw it up there. You can feel free to watch or not, I don’t care, but I want you to have a reason to check the site every day, and if the possibility of an interesting YouTube video is enough to make that happen, then, well, I’m not too proud to use the tools that are available to me.

With that in mind, I’ll also mention that our new Honda Pilot came with satellite radio installed, and as you might imagine, I’ve been listening to nothing by Hair Nation ever since.

So. Like “two great things that taste great together,” I’ve decided that what we really need around here is a new feature called Hair Metal Friday.

Today’s installment is Great White’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy.”

Just Passing on a Little Congratulations...

2011-06-23T20:06:00.001-04:00

Now... tell me that movie isn't gonna be awesome.