Making shirts for Intervarsity week of welcome at the university. Partly for fun and partly so people know who to talk with when they’re cruising around the butterdome.
I had to learn Illustrator to make these… It’s certainly a useful skill in my mind.
Here’s the photo of the day… well probably the photo of the week… They shut down a 4 lane divided highway for Ironman Brazil today. Now I guess it’s not the only time that a big highway gets shut down, but I saw these two pictures and got pretty stoked. My race is 4 weeks away, whoa momma, my race is 4 weeks away!
So the world has changed a little bit in the past number of days here. Mark Zuckernuts has set himself out on a course to get pretty rich pretty quick, and all the world has got to do is sit on their collective lazy asses and soak up all the instant gratification any company in the world wants to spoon feed to your LCD.
So if you’ve not read any news in the past few days the story is that someone has moved towards open source with something that worked, and wasn’t broken. He’s well aware that other people are going to make loads of dough from his invention but it’s not tough to calculate that he is going to be making loads more than that, he’s set to become a bit of a mogul with respect to managing the average net user’s use of internet applications.
Facebook.com is a website that has about 20 million users, half of whom visit the website every single day. It’s owned by some kid who is pretty smart and has done a few cool things with his time. His website was one version out of about a million social network sites, the appealing difference was that there is a bit of control over what information gets disbursed to the masses and is short on:
Besides not having anything wrong with it, Facebox didn’t offer much to the world ahead of any of these other websites. You can keep tabs on what other people are doing with their time, find out what your friends talk about when you’re not around, and get a gauge on who’s interested in who… etc. (along with a few not so creepy things, like sharing photos and discussing triathlon gear, nutrition and race strategies)
Now Facebook will allow companies to piggyback on their framework in such a way that caters to users as they please. It’s kinda like building the google toolbox, the msn/hotmail world or the yahoo system from a different slant that sets Zuckerturd up to make a killing on advertising. It’s a self categorizing advertisement distribution tool, and as far as I’m concerned advertising seems to be the best way to make money with the internet at the moment unless you want to run a real business and sell stuff, but who really wants to put out that kind of effort?
I loaded up my bike with all the goods to head down to Calmar and come back via spruce grove… I was aiming in the 120-140 km round trip range. I got out onto the street and the wind was blowing something fierce, the humidity was round-about 99% and it was less than 10 degrees. I went for a lap of the block and headed back inside, my knuckles were freezing. I dropped off the helmet grabbed my bottle holder waist belt and headed out the door on foot, expecting that I’d be able to stay a heck of a lot warmer if I wasn’t on a rainy range road getting slammed by the elements.
Hold on before you throw around the word pansy because this didn’t turn into any short run. Starting out from near the High level bridge I ran through the river valley all the way down to Fort-Edmonton park, I then ran up the hill and crossed over to Brookside. I dropped down to the Equine center and then ran south down Whitemud ravine. Stopped at Rainbow valley to fill up the water and headed into the south-whitemud trails. I did all three prongs of the trail system there and headed back north, filling up water and making my way back past the equine center, up the hill into Belgravia and back to the house. Amounting to somewhere around 34 clicks with a grand-total time of 3 hours 13 minutes.
The website for the Marda Loop Justice Film festival has been updated. All the old information has been moved to a separate set of pages and which “year” of the website you are viewing is toggled by a small drop down box present among the rest of the links in the sidebar. To check it out visit: JusticeFilmFestival.ca
The first trip to to Calmar for this summer went well. To check out the route if you’re unfamiliar with the outlying areas of Edmonton visit This Map of the route. It totals around 96 km, I always thought it was 100 but I guess I did some extra screwing around last time I did it which easily could have added those 4 kms. Oh, and in case you were wondering the Calmar Bakery is closed on Sundays, so if you want a partner to ride to Calmar I’ll do it on some Saturday next time.
I averaged 30.6 km/h until I reached the Devon stopsign when I checked my watch. I didn’t get another split until I was home which was 28.4 km/h but I’d made a couple stops so it doesn’t reflect the fact that I was much speedier on the return than on the way out, the wind helped a bit but I think more importantly I caught a couple roadies in my sights as I passed Rabbit Hill Baptist Church and nailed a 30 minute aero set to catch them by the time I got to the Ellerslie 4-way stop. I was probably about 34-36 km/h for that stretch which came around kilometers 70 through 80. I felt good but ran out of water there so had a thristy little ride back through the river valley.
Here’s an interesting website to take a peek at. Kenny Souza was 4th at RAAM in 2006. The website documents his trip, it’s got some cool pictures and neat stories.
If you’re interested in hearing a bit more about what he felt about the experience (the website documents from the perspective of his crew) check out an interview with him on Compeditor Radio from the end of June last year.
So, following the race last weekend I stuck together a nice stack of workouts this past week I’m down 5 lbs from last Sunday morning (that’s more than hydration on any account) but I’m feeling good, A long ride and short run Sunday and I’ll take a quick break early next week, (just swimming). That should set me up for a very big bike volume long weekend.
Highlights:
I also picked up some new shoes from the sidewalk sale at the Running Room. They’re New Balance 1023, supposed to be high mileage trainers, They keep me a bit more on the ball of my foot than the Asics (GT2110) that I’ve also got. I figured I might as well buy them now because they’re a good deal, I don’t know if I’ll wear out my Asics first and then swap over or go with both at the same time, giving my feet a change once in a while…
My garden is done with the planting for the year, the interesting part is over and now it’s just watering it before I leave for school and pulling weeds and eating. Not all that bad if you ask me. Two afternoons and two evenings and I went from a hay field to a decent (I wouldn’t say beautiful) little veggie patch.
I’ve got enough lettuce to reach my salad quota for the year, likely more beets than I’ve eaten in my entire life. Enough zucchini to make a dozen chocolate cakes and still eat it every day for supper for a month. And probably so much swiss chard to make me hate swiss chard enough to never plant it again. Why, you ask? Well those seed packages come in discrete quanta and I’m not going to pay money for anything I’m not going to plant. That would just be silly right?
The season has officially begun… and I’m super pleased with how things went. This morning at quarter to six I was up and at it eating and drinking (about 940 kCal) and out the door to make it to transition just as it opened, I drank another 100 kCal while booting around the race site. I got what I considered the very best spot on the lot.
It wasn’t the first spot taken, because people always want to run less distance with their bike shoes, but I was planning to mount with the shoes clipped in (see the picture) and I generally don’t have any trouble running with my bike. I went for the closest spot to the bike finish and run start.
I quoted a time of 14:30 for the swim, I figured best to underestimate by a few seconds (I was confident that I could swim sub 15) so that I would be stretched my people in my lane. It turned out that we had an old slow dude in our lane and a really fast teenager. So, a bunch of passing needed to happen and I jumped from the pool in a time of about 15:10. Including time to the mat (~100m with walk on deck): 15:38. (place 52/116)
T1 went alot smoother than last year when I got my race number stuck to my back because it was paper and I was wet… go figure. It was bound to be chilly racing at just a bit past nine in the morning. I opted to go for a cycling jersey with sleeves, admittedly not the most aero top I own but that’s okay. I wore arm warmers (which are tough to put on, I did most adjusting on the bike) and a skull-toque. The race number was on a belt.
I opted to go with shoes in the clips and fixed the left shoe (mount side) to the quick release with a small elastic which would break as soon as I started pedaling. I did a flying mount and had my feet in without much trouble. I was pretty impressed that it still worked with freezing cold and wet feet, I hadn’t practiced like that for comfort related reasons.
The bike course is 4.5 5 km laps, amounting to 21.6 km. I started out with a good spin to get loosened up but after about 400m I dropped the hammer. I maintained aero the whole time except for a 200m stretch that was classified as a “no passing zone” because of all the potholes and all the weaving that everyone was up to to stay out of them. I got caught behind a mountain bike twice in the section so I sat upright and got a good drink and stretched the legs a bit while waiting to get through it (automatic DQ if you pass, they did enforce it, poor guy).
The course includes a deadly hill (well 4 deadly hills I guess), Last year I was out of the saddle from the bottom and was quick but had a tough time on the top half where it kinks up and gets steeped just before you reach the summit. I elected to stay seated until the kink, at which point I geared up and sprinted out the really steep section. That’s how the pros did it in the ITU race last summer and it works well, your heart rate jumps anaerobic, but you reach the crux of the hill with speed and I think that makes a big difference. (Probably wouldn’t select this strategy for my 1/2 IM but it works for short races where “AET” doesn’t spell “DEAD”.
I was out of my shoes with a bit more than 100 meters to go and rode into T2, flying dismount and run with my bike. I was very impressed with my speed through T2. Time for T1 & Bike & T2: 39:57 (place 15/116).
The run course was flat and I thoroughly surprised myself with a blistering run considering I’ve been off my left foot for most of the last 2 months after Neil helped me destroy it. I started out with a 4:30 pace as I knew I needed to get my legs and wasn’t sure how the foot would feel going out. I stuck to that pace for less than a km and picked it up. I felt tight in my hip flexors (not enough aero riding yet this season, so they got tight on the bike is my guess) for the first 3 km and after a drink halfway I felt amazing and put a smile on my face. I hammered out the last 2 km and managed to feel destroyed at the finish line, which was one of the goals for the day. Time for the run: 20:18 (place 20/116).
Overall my time was 1:15:52. I placed 21/116 overall and 7/21 in my age group.
Anything I’d change? I did everything right based on my conditioning as far as I can tell. I need to practice aero because it’s rough on the body to ask 40 minutes of hard effort in that body position when you’ve been riding the rollers without much concern for good aerodynamics. It’s only going to be more important to practice this for longer distances this season. Unfortunately besides moving somewhere it’s impossible to get much practice before a race that comes this early in the season. I might be best off if I decide to go with arm warmers to just get them on my wrists while I’m still wet and then bike till my arms are dry and then pull them up. This doesn’t really get you warm very quickly but it would have prevented me from having damp arms all race. I don’t know which is the better decision though.
