Getting Back In the Saddle: Race Week!

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

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

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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.

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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.

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