Message to the TNT folks:

Hey!

Being the grand spirit poobah for the week was completely unexpected - sorry for that lame speech! I can usually do OK if I'm teaching something to folks or if I have a script. But the off the lycra-polyester-tri-short cuff impromptu stuff? Not so good at that. What I should have said was - y'all ROCK! Training with you all has been quite inspiring - not only to help me stretch to try to go a bit faster in the pool or do a couple of extra laps on the track, but it's also inspiring that there are folks out there who are committed to making a difference and having a great time while doing so. At least in my experience, it's not too often in life that you find yourself in the company of such quality people. [start geezer voice] Reminds me of my time in the corps! [stop geezer voice].

Ahem.

Also, huge thanks to all of the coaches, mentors, captains, and especially honorees for making the TNT summer season so memorable, fun, and meaningful. AND ... boatloads of thanks to Natalie for keeping it all together!

Take care, and see you all at the finish line!



And now, after a day full of poking poor little zebrafish babies in the head with tetrodotoxin, it's time for a healthy dinner of banana pancakes with peanut butter. Yes, I'm over thirty years old.

Feelin' sluggy

With all of the traveling and dorm rooms and powerpoint presentations and buses and planes and stuff, it's been hard to keep up with the training ... and the updates. With only two weeks to to to the big day, it's time to get serious here! Can't let Team Z down!

I realized today that the run portion of the upcoming event is what is concerning me most, by far. I'm finding that I think of the event as a bit of swimming, a bit of biking, and then a half-marathon. The 13-mile run is the big unknown ... and I've got to get over that. There's not any huge reason to be scared - I went for about 8-9 miles this evening and felt great. Have to stay positive.

It's time for the weekly totals: I'll have to do a two-week chunk here, as the numbers are light and the record-keeping has been a bit disrupted by traveling and packing and unpacking: 4980 yard swimming, 112 miles biking, 30 miles running. Those totals would be pretty good for one week, but alas . . .

And the monthly totals for August: 6.75 miles swimming, 356 miles biking, 58 miles running. Slacked off, compared to July!

Total totals, starting at the beginning of June: 27.15 miles swimming, 1285 miles biking, 147.5 miles running. That's a lot of pavement and non-graceful pool turns. Only a couple of days until the fundraising deadline - still a bit of time left!

Martha's Vineyard Lazathlon

Official race report - I got first in my age group!

The race started as we strolled off of the ferry in Oak Bluffs. The first stage was a 3.5 mile walk along some windy, tree-lined coastal roads, with an optional detour to a 17th century lighthouse. The T1 area was surprisingly well organized, with shiny new bikes lining the street. I hopped onto my bike and blitzed out of the parking lot as fast as humanly possible on a rental hybrid. Which isn't all that fast. I learned that a rental hybrid bike is better than no bike, but only barely. After a 9 mile ride along the beach and some lagoons I arrived the lunch stop, which was nicely situated in a grassy and shady area by the coast. After lunch, the third leg commenced, which was a mandated power nap under an oak tree.

Zzzzzz. Then it was back to biking, for another 4 mile stint to the south coast of the island - or an optional detour to Chappaquiddick to dig up some dirt on Teddy Kennedy. Because the Chappy trip involved getting on another boat, I decided to go straight to the T2 area on the beach. I made a smooth transition to my swim gear and splashed up and down the coast for a couple of hundred yards, smoothly rounding the big inflatable octopus that was the turning point, and then splashed on back. The next leg involved sitting on the sand, soaking up some sun, and checking in with the spouse on the cell phone. Then it was another transition back to the bicycle, for a fast and rolling 18 mile stretch looping back around to the finish line at Vineyard Haven, with a brief stopover at an organic farm for some mango-flavored water and a juicy cold nectarine. We were all a bit sorry to get back on the boat to go home for the day.

It was a perfect day - not too hot or humid, and many light breezes to cool you down. Finally, I have to give big kudos to the race organizers for a great day. The course was well-planned and beautiful, and the food and beverages at the rest stops were outstanding. For lunch I had a huge Italian submarine sandwich packed with many layers of meats and cheeses, some tasty ginger ale, and an enormous mint brownie chipwich ice cream sandwich. The dessert alone had 550 calories and 57% of the RDA of saturated fat to get you feeling extra peppy for your return to the bike course. Nothing like a light snack to get you all zippy and ready to go. No more powerbars for me, from now on - I'll stick with pastrami.

Feb 26th 2006 is not so far away, you know.

I've been thinking that the first picture I post here should be a dooozey. So I've been saving my picture postiness for awhile now, waiting for something suitable. I think the day is finally here. First person to comment on this post gets to pick out a name. No guarantees that we'll actually use your picked-out name, though. Unless it's really good.

Looooooong run

After finishing my schtick at the zebrafish course (you can check out the powerpoint files here if you'd like and if your bandwidth permits downloading largish chunky files), I decided against a swim, put my running stuff on, and meandered up the coast of Cape Cod. Went for fifty minutes out and 45 minutes back, with a final lap around Eel Pond to push the total running time to 1 hour and 40 minutes. Pretty impressive, considering I was struggling to go for 30 minutes less than two months ago. I think I covered around 11 miles. On Friday I hope to go for a full 2 hours, thereby covering a bit more than the 13 mile distance I'll have to run on Big Kahuna day. I hope my joints allow it! I promise to swim. Tomorrow.

Practice Triathlon

This last Saturday we had our first genuine dress-rehearsal for the big day. And by dress rehearsal, I mean full costume dress: wetsuits and all. One of my more embarrassing but funny moments from a long time ago was when I went to my very first "dress rehearsal" for my youth orchestra - I showed up to the rehearsal in my black pants, white shirt, and schmancy red plaid tie that we all wore, tied to the sides of our necks so that they wouldn't be in the way of our little violins. I couldn't figure out for myself that an orchestra dress rehearsal does not require concert dress. At least I didn't show up in a wetsuit.

Anyway. We did about a 1km swim in Steven's Creek Reservoir and then about 22 miles biking around Steven's Canyon, and a bit more than 6 miles running up and down some STEEP hills around the reservoir. Another TNT person and I inadvertently did some extra credit on the run portion - we missed the turnaround and mistakenly went up and down a fairly brutal and long hill one more time than we should have. Oops! My finishing time for the whole schmeal was just over 2 hours and thirty minutes. If I can keep a similar pace, I should be able to finish the 1/2 ironman (about twice of all those distances) under my goal of 6 hours. But I'm not at all sure if I'll be able to keep that speed up - especially on the running portion. Swimming and biking should be fine, as I was fairly relaxed on both of those. Oh, and a very huge thanks to Leigh, who schlepped my wetsuit to and from practice while I biked on down to Cupertino.

Other than the practice triathlon, the training this week was a bit lighter than I would have liked. The tradeoff was great, though, as the training shortfall was caused by lots of company staying over for the last week and a half or so. Michelle's brother Johnny stayed with us for about 10 days as he went to a video game design camp at Stanford, and his parents also visited on their way to and from a great trip to Hawaii. And just after they left, Annie and Brad were in town from Portland. We had a great day with them on Sunday, eating far too many pancakes and scrambles for breakfast, playing cards and board games, and strolling around.

And now I have to take about 10 days off of biking, as I'm currently on a plane to Boston (and after that a bus ride to Woods Hole). I'm helping out with the zebrafish course at the Marine Biological Labs for about a week, and then Michelle's flying in to check out Boston and to hang out with some groovy cousins. This will probably be good for me, as I need to focus more on swimming and running anyway. I hope the sharks don't get me at Woods Hole!

Sunday weekly totals: 16 miles running, 110 miles biking, 3400 yards swimming. Less than one month to go before the big day. There's still time to join in on the fun!

Late-day update = I'm here now in Woods Hole. After crawling off of the bus and strolling down the road to the love SWOPE dormitory, I went for a great run up the coast. There's a beautiful bike/run trail that follows the beach up North, and I had a great time loping along at twilight and early night, listening to the little waves lapping and lapping. About 6 miles: 25 minutes out and 23 minutes back. Running here reminds me of running in the Solomons, with the humidity and the lack of variety of running trails (though they're all just lovely beyond belief).

Raging Waters

Michelle's brother Johnny is staying with us for a week, so we get to do fun teenaged Bay Area things. I missed out on the classic arcade expo (aka. CALIFORNIA EXTREME 2005) on Saturday, but I did get to join up for a fun day at Raging Waters. Now my only question is, can I count the day at Raging Waters as a swim workout? All those lines and stairs have to be good for something, right? If not, Sunday was a fairly lazy day. But honestly, I think I needed a lazy day after Saturday's craziness. After biking 60 miles with the team folks, I attempted a bit of a run, about 4 miles up and down some steep rollers, and it was the hardest activity yet. In fact, it ranks up there in the top ten lifetime tough days, just behind the day I went Up and Down and then back Up again at Mt. Whitney, and just ahead of the bright-idea-cross-country-ski-dead-of-winter-twenty-below-zero-backpacking-trip-at-Lassen with Rich Briggs. Then I got to ride my bike home, for another 10 miles. For the real triathlon, I'll have to ease up a bit on the cycling portion, maybe, to leave energy and enthusiasm for running. Actually, the energy levels were fine, but my legs felt like peanut butter. What to do? In about a month I'll have to bike 56 miles and then run another 13. Ouch. Just have to hope for the best, and keep on doing the training stuff.

Late Sunday weekly totals: 3500 yards swim (light!), 134 miles bike, 12 miles run (light!). Not too bad, considering we've had company of various sorts - and all the out-eating airport-driving that implies - since Wednesday morning. I should jump on the bike right about now . . .

Wow - running!

I don't want to be hasty here, but it seems like all of the pieces are coming together. A couple of weeks ago, I felt as if I was finally learning how to swim, and since then I've been moving through the water more like an overgrown jellyfish (rather slow but somewhat graceful) ... and less like a hyperactive head of broccoli. And just in the last couple of days I've been feeling like a genuine runner-type. Yesterday I went for about 7.5 miles in an hour, and I was very surprised at the lack of effort this took. So the whole getting in shape shebang hasn't worked out so badly after all. I hope I can continue my newfound exercisey ways after the big Big Kahuna day. And fundraising is hopping - there's still time left, y'all!