Eric's Arcana and RiderX

I’m going to be riding the Livestrong challenge in June, and I’m looking for sponsors.

You can find more information here…

I got tagged on Facebook with the 25 things meme, and I thought I’d duplicate my answers here for the… well, “edification” doesn’t quite work.

Enlightenment… No.
Entertainment…No.
Education…No.

Well, anyway, here it is. It’s on this blog because that seemed the best place for it.

1. I have a inability to be brief when I write. There’s a natural length for everything, and I don’t want to edit it down. That’s why this is so long, and I don’t want to admit how long it took to write.
   
2. I have a bit of notoriety in the local cycling community because of my creation of bicycleclimbs.com, an important resource for the cycling insane. No, I haven’t climbed them all, but I have climbed the worst of them, some of them many times. Despite a considerable amount of research, no cure has been found for this affliction.
   
3. The first album I owned was “Permanent Waves”. Well, I didn’t actually own it… I had a friend by the name of Pam Purvis who had a tape deck in her car but didn’t have a turntable. She bought the album and brought it over, I bought two tapes (TDK SA90s), and then she ended up with a tape, and I ended up with the album and the tape.

   <note>
   If you’re younger than, say, me, I need to explain a bit. In the old days, you could buy an album on vinyl, or you could buy it on cassette tape. Or, on 8-track, but you had to have a nice set of boots before they’d let you buy one of those. Albums were great, except that you needed a decent turntable, had to follow an elaborate cleaning ritual, and you had to keep the volume turned down or the needle would skip, gouging a permanent wound in the vinyl.

   You could buy a pre-recorded cassettes and skip all this, except the sound was junk and because they were cheap, the tape jammed, and you ended up with a whole mess of tape sticking out of your tape deck and $9 in the hole.
   </note>

   So, there Pam and I were, sitting on my bed, listening to Rush. All alone in the house.

   It may be hard to believe now, but like a lot of guys, I had no clue at all whether girls were interested in me in high school, and this was no exception. I’m not sure what I should believe. I could be believe that I missed a chance, or I could believe that Pam was just a good friend.

   But at least I ended up with some decent music, and Pam and I kept up that particular connection for a few years.

4. I have a super power. I don’t like to talk too much about it, ’cause people get jealous, but you forced it out of me.

   The human brain is an amazing thing. Some people can do square roots in their head. Some people can recite PI to a thousand places. Others know all the presidents.

   My super power is remembering song lyrics. Not songs that I listen to, songs that I like. Songs that I would rather forget.

   Well, it’s not too far to paradise
   At least it’s not for me
   But if the wind is right we can find a way
   To find serenity
   Oh the canvas can do miracles
   Just you wait and see
   Believe me

   Yes, it’s Christopher Cross, “Sailing”, from his album of the same name, which I haven’t heard since the spring of 1982. The lyrics may not be absolutely right, but they’re pretty close.

   I knew I should have chosen “flying” or “invisibility”…

5. I’ve never been a boy scout – I just didn’t see the point of doing it, and in my school being a scout was 5 of the 10 things you didn’t do.

   However, my sisters were campfire girls back when we lived in Auburn, and I was in kindergarten, and my mom was involved, so I went to day camp with them…

   That’s right, I was a campfire girl…

6. Back when I was in high school, my mom introduced me to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, and I’ve read the book quite a few times, and seen most of the adaptations of it. The Colin Firth one is the best.
   
7. In high school and college, I drove a chocolate-brown Citroen DS19 Safari.

    
   It would be fair to say that I inherited it from my father, though with the amount of maintenance I ended up doing the first few years I owned it (new clutch, new spheres, new hydraulic pump, rebuilt rear brakes, pulled the head and had it shaved after an unfortunate overheating incident, etc.

   “Spheres, what are those?”

   Well, some Citroens use this cool hydropneumatic suspension, which gives you ride height adjustment, a great ride, sensitive power steering, and is all driven off of a 2000psi hydraulic system. Oh, and front-wheel drive.

   All that in 1960, when Detroit was still obsessed with tail fins.

   I drove the car until one day in 1986 when I was driving on the freeway and the car made a really exciting noise for 30 seconds, then no noise at all. And I found out that it was possible to embed an exhaust valve in the middle of a piston.

8. Back in the summer of 1978 I was at my neighbor Tracy’s house, and she put on a new tape that she had just gotten.

   I live my life like there’s no tomorrow
   All I’ve got I had to steal
   Least I don’t need to beg or borrow
   Yes I’m livin’ at the pace that kills

   Running with the devil…
   
   That was pretty radical stuff for somebody who had only ever listened to his sister’s music – Chicago, Carole King, maybe a little Grand Funk Railroad.

   Now, 30 years later, that’s still a great album…

9. Person I wish I’d met:

   Richard Feynman

   Not just because he’s all sciency and stuff, but because he’s an iconoclast. Or he was.

   I sometimes wish I was more of an iconoclast, but I don’t have the right shoes, nor do I know where to purchase them.

10. When I was in high school, I worked in the Everett Public Library as a “page”, which meant that I knew how to shelve books alphabetically *and* numerically. It’s an easy job, most of the people you work for are pretty nice, and for somebody who likes to read the way I do, the access to a ton of books was great.

    The library at that time had been built over decades. It had lots of weird passages, and the archives in the basement were very old.

    Being alone in the basement of a library at night is pretty creepy.

11. I was a shy kid. Or, perhaps, just an overly-sheltered kid, as the youngest of the kids and the only boy. When I got out of college and started working – at the mighty Boeing Computer Services – I decided that I wanted to do something about it.

    Boeing had a very active Toastmaster’s group, but I’m not really a joiner and that seemed pretty contrived, so I put it off (okay, perhaps I just wasn’t sure I wanted to do it). Then one day I took a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course from a guy that I worked with, and a week later he suggested that I should become an instructor. It sounded like a cool thing to do – help people to ride better, and spend some time in front of people.

    It was a really hard 10 days, but later that summer I was an officially certified instructor, and that meant that I had to stand up in front of a group of adults that I didn’t know, and try to teach and establish some sort of rapport with the students, some of which are a bit… well, perhaps, “set in their ways” is a nice thing to say.

    I found that I liked the challenge – both the challenge of teaching, and the challenge of being up in front of people.

    Years passed, I ended up at Microsoft on the C# team, and we needed somebody to do talks about C#, both to Microsoft people and to selected external customers. I did a talk, then another, then another. In one quarter, I did 30 talks.

    Well, that’s not quite true – I did the same talk 30 times. Since then, I’ve done talks big and small, from groups of two people, all the way up to around 500.

    And found that I really liked them, and can be a bit of a ham. Or a large spiral-cut honey-baked ham, in some cases. Now, I volunteer to stand up in front of groups and talk.

    Weird. Really weird.

12. I’ve seen a skeleton. Back in high school, I had a good friend, Dave, who I sometimes went hiking with. We went on a day hike up nearby Mt. Pilchuk, chosen because you can drive halfway up the mountain to start (my reason, not Dave’s…). We had a really nice hike up to the summit – really more of a walk than a hike – and the came glissading down the snowfield (kind of like skiing without skis). We got a little out of the way on the way back, and that’s when we came across it.

    The skeleton of one of the ski lifts from the old ski resort.

    What? Were you thinking of something else?

13. I commuted by motorcycle year round for about a decade, in all sorts of weather. Now I live so close to work it doesn’t make sense, so now I’m a cyclist and cager instead.
    
14. I started reading science fiction when I was 8 or 9, and I ran out of decent kids books to read. I read my way from Asimov to Zelasny (okay, it should be “Anthony”, but he’s less known and I’ve read more Asimov). I still read the stuff these days, so there’s a lot less hard science fiction out there.
    
15. Back about 300 years ago, when I was a freshman in high school, I had speech class, and part of that involved making a presentation to the class. I taught one of my friends – I think her name was Sally – to juggle, or at least the first parts of learning to juggle.

    That day, my good friend Peter gave a talk about how to make smoked fish, and then passed samples around for us to try.

    Later that day, I had soccer practice. I felt crappy before, but my coach asked me to try anyway. I lasted about 30 minutes, headed back to the locker room, and then walked into downtown Everett to wait for the city bus to get home.

    I was standing there waiting for the bus, and I suddenly found myself lying on the ground. That’s weird, I thought. I got up again.

    Next thing I know, I was lying on the ground looking up with two paramedics at me.

    After a trip to the Doctor’s office – which I promptly redecorated in the worst way, I spend a week at home on downers (barbs, goof balls, pink ladies…), recovering from food poisoning. And I was the only one who at the fish who was lucky enough to get sick.

16. I love writing comedy. I hate writing comedy.

    I’ve written enough that writing technical stuff is merely a matter of following a straight line from here to there. Write a, b, c, polish it up once, and you’re done. You can spend a lot more time on it, but it’s probably not going to get a lot better, and frankly, it’s not worth the effort.

    Comedy is different. It’s hard.

    My technique – to the extent I have a technique – is one of progressive refinement. I start with something that is vaguely interesting, and then work for ways to make it better. Sometimes this is a quick process, sometimes it’s agonizing, but eventually I get to one of three end points. Sometimes – if I can get in the right state of mind – it’s pretty good. Sometimes, an idea just doesn’t go anywhere, so I have to abandon it out on the tundra and let nature take its course. Either of those are pretty good results.

    The worst one is when it’s in between, something that I call “humorish” – having all the characteristics of humor without actually being funny. Not only is that hard to figure out (“I can’t define what humor is, but I know that when somebody trips over an ottoman, it makes me laugh”), you have a lot invested in it and you don’t want to abandon it.

17. One summer in high school, I spent some time in a band. We played at a few small things, made some money, but it never really went anywhere. I’m still happy that I did it. In my mind. In reality, I was a Teamster working at Safeway as a courtesy clerk.
    
18. My oldest sister was in swim team. My older sister was in swim team. And, when the time came, I was in swim team.  One day, we were practicing swimming under water (ie holding our breath), and I swam across and back a 6-lane pool, twice, without surfacing. And then did it again to prove to my coach that I could.

    That was my sole triumph in two years of swim team.

19. When I was about 7, I got a Radio Shack 10-in-1 kit. This kit consisted of a number of electronic components with spring connectors at each lead, a bunch of wires to connect things together, and an instruction book. You hooked 15 to 25, 12 to 24, 44 to 55, and you’d press a button and a light would light up.

    As time went by, and I moved up to the 20-in-1 kit, 40-in-1, and ultimately the 50-in-1 kit. I yearned for the 100-in-1 kit, but, alas, never got it.

    For a while I was going to be a electrical engineer. Then I got introduced to computers in my freshman year of high school, and it was all over. Software was far easier to build that electrical hardware, and it obeyed simple rules, rather than electronics component, which have very simple models and 400,000,000 complications and exceptions that you need to keep in mind to make things really work.

    A few years ago a friend of mine got me back into electronics by introducing me to microcontrollers, where you write software to accomplish what you want and don’t need a lot of hardware.

    I’m still very much hacker whenever I need to do hardware. I know how to get basic things done and a few of the rules, but I’m pretty hopeless at any complex design.

20. I like fireworks. When I was a kid in Everett, some of my friends were able to go to the res to buy the more sophisticated (ie “explosive”) fireworks, but we were stuck with the “safe and sane”.

    So, we’d buy “Whistling Petes”, and crimp them. If you crimped them at the bottom, they would whistle for a while and then blow up. Or, you could just crimp the whole thing. Many a model succumbed to the might of Pete.

    One year, I was over at my friend Todd’s house, and he had some “safe and sane” fireworks that we wanted to do something with. We made a maxi-smoke-bomb by opening up a bunch of smoke crackers (like firecrackers, but 100% quieter, 50% smokier, and 98% less fun) and crushing some smoke bombs. These went into an old metal film canister with a heavy fuse out the top.

    The first one produced a tremendous amount of smoke, covering his his whole front yard. The second one smoked for about 5 seconds and then exploded. About 10 seconds later we heard a ping as the top to the film canister landed in the driveway.

    I guess the model rocket stuff I do is a little bit like fireworks, in that you still get to smell black powder, and it’s certainly safer, but not nearly as much fun. I do have a high-powered rocket that’s about 4 feet long and 4″ around named Spot, but there are no longer any launch places near Seattle and I haven’t traveled to any launches yet, so spot had a maiden flight and then just gets to hang around in the closet.

    I don’t buy illegal fireworks simply because I don’t want the temptation.

21. I learned to program about when Steve and Steve were working on the Apple 1, so there weren’t any personal computers. I missed punch cards by a year at my high school, and, thanks to a math teacher who was ahead of his time by at least 10 years, learned to program on a multi-user alpha microsystems. When I was there, it had 192KB of memory, 4 400KB 8″ diskettes, a Z80 running at a few megahertz, 6 ADM3a terminals, and 2 DECWriter terminal/printers.

    Pretty heady stuff for the spring of 1979.

22. People sometimes ask me what my secret is for writing interesting talks. Well, they don’t, but I wish they would.

    It’s pretty simple. I figure out what the jokes are first, and then write the talk around them. Way better than trying to do it the other way around.

23. I learned to play pinball when I was about 10 years old, and have been playing ever since. About 8 years ago, I found that you could buy pinball machines on Ebay, and I bought a mid-80s pin named Bad Cats. Which lived in our basement for a while. About 3 years ago, it got exiled up to our ski cabin when I bought a fully shopped (ie restored) Twilight Zone, one of the best pins that Williams ever made, as a present for myself for a reason that escapes me. It’s a great game – lots of modes, *6* ball multiball, and great design. The only disadvantage is that pins are loud even with the sound turned down, so you can’t really play it while other people watch TV.

    A couple of years ago, a friend of mine gave me an early 70s Meteor. That joined Bad Cats up at the cabin, and, after a bunch of well-deserved maintenance, is enjoying a nice retirement.

    I think 3 machines officially moves me from “enthusiast” to “collector”…

24. If people ask me what I’m like, the term that always comes to mind is “generalist”. Okay, the term that really comes to mind is “gentleman scientist” or “renaissance man”, but that’s a bit too pretentious to say out loud.

    I have a pretty eclectic knowledge base. I know a bit about a whole lotta things, and have fairly deep understanding of a wide range of subjects. Household wiring. Woodworking. Carpentry. Aerobic training. The history of science. Astronomy. 1980s music. etc.

25. I get bored easily.

    I have friends who ride their bikes 5 days a week for the whole summer, friends who ski 90 days a year, friends who travel the country to launch rockets, friends who take photos every day.

    I like to do all of those things, but generally by the time I get to the second day of an activity, I’m looking around for something different to do. I’m not sure what it says about my perseverance, but I do think it’s means that I’m less likely to get addicted to anything.

    With one notable exception. There’s one thing that I’ve been addicted to since about 1980, but I think that she’s an exception to the rule…

1. pedals
2. cycling shoes
3. light bolts
4. alternating color spoke nipples
5. light tires
6. Higher imflation pressures
7. lighter component group
8. new helmet
9. light bike
10. intervals
11. cadence drills
12. muscle tension
13. tempo rides
14. ride in a paceline
15. hydration drinks
16. recovery days
17. electrolyte drinks
18. HR monitors
19. power meters
20. lsd rides
21. periodicalized training
22. Lose weight
23. Ride hills
24.  

For 2007, my cycling was very unplanned, but I think I’m going to try to be a bit more structured this year.  Here are my plans:

RAMROD, July 30th
154 miles, 10K elevation

The problem with RAMROD is that you need to join the lottery to try to get in, so you need to sign up for it even if you aren’t sure that you want to do it. I have a long-term goal to do this – not the 3/4 RAMROD that I did in 2007, and perhaps the stars will align here, and I’ll get in and be healthy.

STP 1-day, July 11th
206 miles, 2K elevation?

I want to do this again because I don’t want my only STP memory to be the horrible time I had in 2006, but it’s really kind of a sucky ride. Too many inexperienced people, too crowded, not very pretty, and a very long day. If I get into RAMROD, I’ll skip this…

Livestrong Challenge Seattle, June 21th

I’m going to ride this as part of Team Fatty, to raise funds for cancer research. The distance I ride will depend on how I feel and what route they choose.

Chelan Man Olympic Triathlon, July 18th
1500 meter swim/40K bike/10K run

I enjoyed the spring triathlons, but they short efforts that they require really don’t fit in well with the longer-distance cycling training that I do. My training sets me up for 4-5 hour events, not 1 hour events. This event should be closer to that length, but still be short enough that I don’t have to spend too much time training (I’m hoping that playing soccer now and then will be sufficient for the 10k run, so I’ll mostly have to do the swim part

Other possible rides:

• 7/11/14 hills of Kirkland
• Summits of Bothel
• Mountain populaire
• Something else.

A few weeks ago, I got recruited by one of my friends as a “Climbing ringer”. He was taking a group of friends up Zoo hill engaging in an elaborate hazing ritual, and he wanted me to come along because “these guys think I’m a good climber”. Given my distinct lack of form this year, I wasn’t so sure about that, but decided to do it anyway.

So, I showed up at 8:30 AM on Saturday to climb “The Zoo” (so named because of the small zoo on the lower slopes of the climb). I was pretty well warmed up.

I gave my usual introduction at the bottom – “The climb breaks into three sections. The bottom section is very steep, and don’t ride the inside of the hairpin because it’s like 20%. The middle section is the hardest, and then when you turn left that’s when it gets tough.”

It sounds a bit like a joke but it isn’t, especially if you’ve never done this kind of climb before.

At the bottom my friend (who I’ll call Brett because that may be his real name) started us off – I waited for the group to get going and started from the back.

Caught up with Brett after a couple of minutes, and we rode up through the first curvy section to the hairpin. My preference is to ride in the outside of the left lane on this because that’s the smallest slope, but we had two trucks behind us at this point, so I took the lead and the middle of the proper lane, and stood through the hairpin. I slowed down a bit to see if Brett would catch up, and then decided just to keep riding. The top of the first section flattens out a bit, and then you turn to the right for the second section.

The second section is truly masochistic. Rather than the slight gradient changes of the first section, this section. There are approximately 4000 rollers in the second section, and they get worse as you go along, with the gradient of the climbing parts going up and the height of each roller going up. I tried to keep my HR in check – in the low 160s – but on a few of them I was closer to 170, which is where I feel like I’m going to fall over and die. The last roller was especially painful, but there’s a short respite at the top of that section where I managed to recover back to 160 BPM, then I turned left onto the third section, and saw Brett perhaps 10 seconds behind me.

That’s when things get bad. The first turn through there is steep, and it’s really hard to keep riding, but you keep on riding (I did it without tacking, but have tacked in the past), until I reach the top, right as Brett catches up to me.

Brett’s climbing has improved considerably. Probably has to do with something with the 26 pounds he’s lost.

Turned around and rode down to check on the rest of the group. Passed 3 guys on the way down, one near the bottom of the third section, so I went down to look for others. Nobody there so I started up again, intent to catch the rider who was right in front of me.

Right. Try as I might, I couldn’t close the distance in enough time to encourage him, but caught him right at the top. Went off with him (and one other) to go to the gate at the top of the hill (a turnoff to the right of the summit just after you crest the top), which takes you up to an old military installation.

Came down, another guy finished, went back up to the gate with him.

Afterwards, I descended down the south side all the way to the Lake Washington trail, rode north, then up lake hills connector (not bad compared to a zoo climb) and the home.

My polar says 24:05 for the climb, which my website estimates to be 234 watts for the 1300′ of climbing.  I added another 400 or so when I redid the third section and the gate section twice.

My last ascent was 27 with my old bike (10 pounds heavier), so I’m a little happier than I thought – I’m about 4% faster even discounting the bike difference.

And the climb lived up to my billing for the newbies, who agreed when I told them “the zoo will change how you feel about hills”.

WET SUITS are not mandatory for this event. It is simply a matter of preference.

Apparently, this is a new definition of the word “preference” that I was not aware of. A different word would be more appropriate. “Survival” springs to mind.

Dramatis Personae

Eric, as “guy who is doing his second triathlon with as little preparation as possible”.

Joe, as “guy who spends far too much time on his various bicycles”. Joe is worried because he did a cyclocross race yesterday afternoon and his legs “are pretty tired”.

Greg, a friend of ours who is here to do the duathlon. His apartment is apparently sufficiently clean, but he was unable to find a place to buy a swimsuit. He made poor use of his one chance and merely said, “Hey” when we passed each other this morning, so any worries he may have had will remain a mystery.

Molly, Joe’s wife and another cyclist who I ride with on our group rides, is also doing the duathlon. Molly is “worried about how fast she will be” (dramatic foreshadowing here…).

Kim, my wife, who came along to shoot pictures (all these are hers) and revel in my suffering.

Pre-pre race

In keeping with my innovative training approach, I’ve prepared even less than the last race. I have spent a fair amount of time in the pool, but the combination of spending a week building a shed (no riding) and going to my daughter’s high school soccer games (also no riding) means that I’ve probably ridden about 4 times in the last month, instead of my usual 12. The bodes about as well as you’d expect.

Pre-race

We got there at 6AM, parked, and I went into the blazingly-lit transition area with my bike. Got marked, found my spot, set up, and headed over to the start.And stood around in the dark as the sun came up. Well, not actually came up, but the sky slowly became lighter in that way you can only find in a cloudy Seattle morning.

There was a pre-race meeting at 6:50, which was filled with important but not-very-interesting information. My wave had originally be scheduled for 7:25, but this got pushed out to 7:45, presumably due to the number of entries (aka a lot).

The elites went in at about 7:15, and we sat and watched them fly around the swim course. And tried to decide whether the waiting or the cold was worse. Standing in the starting area is a bit like being in the airport, where they make the same announcements over and over.

Our wave finally got called a little before 8AM, and we went into the pre-start holding pen. The wave before us went off, and we walked down the steps (nice) into the water. And my second-least-favorite part of the race came. No, it’s not the coldness of the water, it’s the walking out to where you can start your swim. I wear shoes all the time, so my feet are baby soft, and the bottom here is composed of golf-ball-sized rocks. It’s pretty painful to walk on.  

I stand in the back and talk with another guy who is also not wearing a wetsuit. We are trying to decide whether I am more stupid for planning on doing the race without a wetsuit, or whether he is more stupid for forgetting to put his wetsuit in the car. The race starts before we reach a consensus.

I’ve decided to wait a bit to avoid the initial thrashing – I’m wearing my contacts and don’t want to lose my goggles. My goal is to swim fairly hard to the first buoy to try to get warm and then see how I feel. Initially I keep swimming up people’s legs, and decide to hug the inner line. Halfway there I realize I’ve forgotten to turn on my heart rate monitor, so I pause and do that. The bulk of my wave is in front of me, but there are a few guys behind me. Most curiously, there was a guy doing frog kick (ie “*** stroke kick”)  lying on his back while traveling diagonally in front of me. The first buoy comes up fairly quickly, and I swim tight around it and head parallel on the shore to the south. My arms hurt, but they always hurt when I’m swimming. My theory (which is mine, and what it is, too) is that I’m accumulating lactic acid in them, and that (plus my notable lack of upper body muscle) is what’s limiting my swim speed (along with a technique that is a few decades out of date). I keep swimming. At this point I’ve passed about anybody I’m going to from my leg, but I pass a few swimmers from the wave before me. As I get near the last buoy, the chop starts to pick up a tiny bit, but not bad enough to really affect my stroke. I can breathe on either side but prefer my left, and luckily that’s on the inside.

I finally reach the final buoy, and head back in. In this case, the route isn’t straight in but angles back. The archway that I’m aiming for is square with the shore, and it’s hard to tell where I should be swimming sometimes. It doesn’t help that my goggles are fogging up, and I spend a little time zig-zagging back towards shore. And I’m fairly cold by now – not shivering, but close. I try to swim a bit faster to get it over with, and finally swim in to where it’s about thigh deep, and stand up.

And I’m unbalanced, so I take a step to balance myself (or stumble to the side, if you wish…), and put one of those nice round rocks between my big toe and second toe (between market and home). Not normally an issue, but I injured my big toe playing indoor soccer and have been doing PT for the past few weeks, and that’s precisely the motion that hurts. A bunch.

The combination of drunkenness and pain causes me to re-evaluate my evolutionary journey out of the water, and I sit back down with a fair bit of haste (ie collapse), regroup, and try again. I follow a random but roughly forward path towards the arch, take off my swim cap and goggles, and walk/jog on the concrete into transition.

Swim Time: 21:51

Wow, that’s slow. I’ve been swimming pretty consistent 1:06 50s in the pool with slow turns, and that’s about 3 minutes over what I expected. I probably swam an extra 100 going back and forth, and I don’t think the cold helped me very much, but that’s disappointing. I’m glad I didn’t know at the time – all I knew was that the swim was over and it was time for some fun. I’m 785/899 in the swim. The fastest guy did in in 10:18, and Joe swam a very nice 16:09

Transition was uneventful – I took off my swim shirt, dried my back and legs, put on a top, and put on socks and bike shoes. Many people ride without socks, which is too much pain for my sensitive feet. I grab my helmet, jog carefully out to the road (SPD-SL cleats and concrete means slow is the right idea), and get on my bike.

Transition: 4:25

That seems pretty slow, but there’s a lot of distance to cover, and I had to spend extra time telling my wife to stop taking pictures of me in transition.

I hop on my bike, and head out onto Lake Washington Blvd and head towards downtown Kirkland. Despite having put on a different shirt, I am cold. I have no idea how fast I am because I’m wearing my polar on my wrist rather than on the handlebars, so I just ride. We get into downtown, I follow 2 very slow guys through a tight corner, and we head up market and turn left into the low rent district, and then right and up the hill.

Beautiful mansions. I pass 5 or so riders on the way up but one guy on a bike with aero-bars gets by me (presumably a fast(ish) guy from the wave after me), I pass him going down market, and we turn left to head east. We roll through a few roundabouts at speed (got to like the police escort), and head towards the major climb of the race. My plan is not to hit it too hard, which I follow for all of 100 feet as I stand to pass somebody over the first steep part. I try to hold right on the edge the rest of the way up, pass around 15 people (the # of people I pass will feature prominently because the bike is where I *can* pass people), and get passed by 2 fast guys and one slightly fast one.

We cross 405 on a special police/fire bridge (annoying, normally you have to do a set of tight switchbacks to use this route), go slow at the bottom (steep and wet with crosswalk markings is not a good combo), and turn left onto Slater. I drop down onto my aero bars, and pick off several bunches of people. This section seems longer when we ride it in the opposite direction in my group, but it goes by very quickly and I work my way through a busy intersection (thank you officer…), and head towards the steepest climb. Right as I turn onto it aerobar-dude (the one I passed earlier) comes by me and pretty much stops. There are approximately 5000 riders trying to climb the hill all at once, some riding slowly, some riding really slowly, and some walking. Some may be sliding back downhill for all I know. It’s “Flying Wheels up Inglewood time”, so I look back, pull left, and ride by a bunch of groups. Nobody passes me uphill, though I’m pegged heartrate-wise and pretty much looking for a place to pull over and die when I get to the top.

So, I slow down a tiny bit, and aerobar-dude comes by again. This next section has the shoulder of the road coned off, which surprised me a bit because you only get 3-4 feet along the side. I crank up to about 90 RPM (a bit below my long-distance cadence but should be a bit faster), and settle in. My legs hurt quite a bit, which means I’m where I expect to be. I pass a few people in ones, and then come up behind a group. There are 3 people all the way over on the right, and 3 people on the left, passing. The passing folks are at about 16 MPH, and I’m around 20. I look behind, see that there’s more traffic, pull out into the car lane, and pass the group.

Which is, as Joe points out later, very much against the rules and reason enough to get me disqualified from the race.

Which I’m sure I read in the rules and had repeated to me during the pre-race briefing, but slipped my mind at the time. This is a place where my road cycling experience collides with the triathlon approach. Given the amount of traffic on that road during that time of day, there really isn’t a lot of reason to cone it at all, and by doing so all you do is put fast riders closer to slow riders and make it more likely there is an incident.

I continued that approach the whole way – if you come up on a rider *right in the middle* of the coned-off section, you can either yell “move right” (Joe’s approach) and hope it works, or take my approach, which I’m convinced is safer but happens to be illegal.

So, anyway, I fly (as much as I can fly at this point) up to the turnoff, head on a short flat, and then climb up to the high point of the race. All that is left is a screaming descent and a short flat down to the start. I’ve been looking forward to this because a) it’s fast and b) I won’t have to stop for lights, but it’s still wet and I approach it a bit cautiously. As I head around the tightest turn at about 30, there’s a women who has crashed into the center lane of the road, with an aid car and a couple of EMTs in attendance. She is sitting up and looks like she’s in pain, which I’m hoping means it isn’t too serious. I pick up a little more speed (say, 35 instead of the 40+ I’d aim for in the dry), and pass a few more people on the way down.

The last part of the bike section is a short flat. I’m in the bike lane, and an impatient motorist pulls out of a driveway in front of me, and then swerves back into the bike lane. It’s my closest call of the day but not really very close, though it impresses a woman right behind me.

I turn the corner, cross the street, and pull off and head back into transition…

Bike Time: 42:43 @ 16.86, for 261st in the group

A bit slower than I hoped (maybe I had a bit of a cold or something), but I don’t feel like I could have ridden much faster. Maybe a bit faster in the dry, but not more than a minute or so. My bike ride moved me up from 785th after the swim to 484th after the ride.

The group does pretty well. “Tired legs” Joe rode a 36:41 @ 19.5 MPH, netting him the 24th fastest bike split of the event (did I say he rides *a lot*). “No suit” Greg rode a 37:09 at 19:4 MPH, and “I’m so slow” Molly rode a 40:53 @ 17.61, nearly 2 minutes faster than my time. Molly is officially no longer allowed to mention to me how slow she is. Great ride for her.

Transition 2 is quick – hang up the bike, after moving a Cervello that’s diagonal across my space. Shoes off, shoes one, put on the number belt run out of transition grab some water, “you forgot to take off your helmet”, a volunteer informs me. He’s inside transition, I hand him my helmet and run out.

Transition time: 2:23 (Joe does a 1:50, probably the closest I come to him all day…)

Then it’s off for the run. My stomach hurts (it did the whole bike leg), and my stride is about 14″ right now. I get  to the top of the slight hill and feel like I’m going to die. A quick glance at my heart rate monitor tells me I’m right – I *am* going to die if I don’t slow down, since I’m in the mid 150s. I slow down a bit, it comes down to about 145, and I settle into the run. About 3 minutes into the run I pass Joe coming back to the finish.

The run is mostly flat, with one climb up towards the midpoint, and then a really strange coned-off course through an empty parking lot. They needed to get the distance somehow but it feels like something you’d do in elementary school. I manage to lengthen my stride a bit, but I still get passed by a fair number of people on the run. Here I can really tell that my endurance is down – I can usually run fast enough to make my unused running muscles hurt, but I can’t get there today. I come into the finish, hear Kim/Greg/Molly cheer for me, run to the finish where they cut of my tag, and run into Joe on the way out. Then it’s off to IHOP for brunch.

Run Time: 26:09, 561st.

The run is what it is. Joe did 21:23, 142nd, completing his sweep over me. Greg ran a 22:26, and Molly ran a 25:49.

Overall time: 1:37:31, 460th out of 899.

My bike was 2 minutes faster than I expected, my run pace was 3 minutes slower, and my swim was just plain slow.

Joe does a 1:18:33, putting him 68th in the field.

Closing thoughts

First of all, if I’m going to keep doing this, I really need a wetsuit. It will keep me warm, make me a bit faster, and provide ample opportunity for mishaps in transition.

Overall, I had fun on both of these, and will probably do a couple next year, perhaps moving up to do an Olympic.

Sunday morning I’m doing the Kirkland Triathlon.

It’s another sprint, running the traditional distances this time:

• 1/2 mile swim
• 12 mile ride
• 3 mile run

That’s about double what the swim was at Lake Sam, and a bit shorter on the ride.

My preparation is a little more than in the past. I’ve been swimming a couple of times a week, and have worked my way up to 1500 yards at a time. I’ve continued my approach to run training – I ran a couple of miles a few weeks ago, but I’m trying to rehab a toe injury that I got in indoor.

The swim course is in Lake Washington, which is likely to be 5-10 degrees colder than Lake Sam was.

I went out last Sunday morning and rode the bike course. The description says “moderate in difficulty with some hills”. That may sound relatively good – it’s only *moderate*. What you have to realize is that course descriptions are always written by the best people who participate in the event, rather than the average or beginning entrant. My polar says that the course has about 700′ of elevation gain in 12 miles. The group that I ride with typically does around 1200-1300′ of elevation in 20-some miles, a ride that we classify as “hilly”.

That’s fine with me – I found the lake Sam course to be pretty boring, and my advantage (relatively speaking) over other entrants is when the cycling part gets harder. The course is pretty cool. All the climbing happens in the first two-thirds, then there’s a long flat to slightly uphill section, and then a screaming 40 MPH descent back down to the finish.

The run is along the waterfront, and on pavement most (if not all) of the way. That’s good because my toe feels better on pavement than grass/dirt, bad because it’s harder on my knees.

Predictions:

I’ve been swimming consistent 1:06 50s in the pool for long distances. That puts me at 17:36. I’m going to go out on a limb:

Swim: 17:00

Given that it might rain and will be cold, I’m going to take the time to dry my back and put on a different shirt to get some protection. Probably.

T1: 2:30

Bike: I did it in about 48:00 when I rode it at a moderate pace. I think there’s a fair bit more to be had there, but we’ll see what kind of legs I have:

Bike: < 45:00

T2: 2:00

I’ll go 25 minutes if I run at the pace I did last time. Barring stomach issues (and assuming I don’t kill myself on the bike and my foot is okay), I’m going to say:

23:00

For a total time of:

1:29:30

Previously:

• Tri-curious
• Tri-ready

Today was the race.

As is typical when I’m doing something new, I slept poorly the night before, and got up at 5AM. Got dressed, drove to the start (or, to be more specific, the wife drove me to the start), where I ran into my friend Joe. I hadn’t told Joe I was entering and had hoped to run into him right before the swim, but he found my name in the competitor list and gave me considerable amounts of crap for not telling him ahead of time.

He took my bike into transition for me, and I got everything set up. Signing up at the last minute (well, not *quite* the last minute) meant I was at the back of the transition area in a place that was easy to find. We then hung around with the wives waiting for the pre-race meeting and worrying about getting cold (Joe had a shorty wetsuit, I had none). Put on my timing chip (an RFID chip that records when you go through important points). The wife used my camera to take some nice pictures, despite me setting the lens so it wouldn’t focus closer than 3 meters. There’s a gallery link at the end.

 

Our friend Greg showed up, who had *said* he was going to sign up but apparently had to clean his apartment or something and missed the cutoff.

The pre-race meeting never materialized, and we migrated down towards the water. A tentative test of the water temp showed that the water temperature was higher than the air temperature, so we stopped whining about how cold it was going to be. We waited for two waves to head out, and then waded out to waist deep for the start. I decided to wait a bit so I’d have cleaner water, so after a 5 second wait I plunged in and headed for the first buoy (big ones, not the small ones I saw yesterday). I was cold for approximately 12 seconds before I got warmed up, so all that worrying was for nothing. My guess is a lot of guys in wetsuits got too hot.

Waiting led to a slight problem. The people that were directly in front of me were slower swimmers than I was, and they were also more erratic in direction that I was. I’d catch up with somebody, slow down, angle to an open spot, and then speed up to get by. By the time I got near them, there was always a swimmer (either the original person or another) in front of me again. By the second buoy I basically gave up trying to get around them, and just swam into the shore. I swam mostly crawl except for a bit of *** stroke, and I found the head-high “approach stroke” for crawl that I learned in lifesaving class 363 moons ago to be pretty useful to sight where I was swimming to. Swam into the beach, stood up and staggered for a few steps (apparently your inner ear gets screwed up), and ran up the beach into transition (“T1”, in tri-speak).  

Swim time: 7:01.7 (since that’s the full start until the time I ran into transition, I’d be surprised if the swim was a full 400 yards)

In transition, I peeled of my excel swim shirt, cleaned the sand off my feet (no pool to rinse in…), and put my socks and bike shoes on. I pulled my jersey on, and it got stuck on my wet back. I probably wasted 45 seconds getting it on, put on my helmet and sunglasses (no sweatband or gloves), and ran out of transition. Or, tried to – because of my (required) baby blue swim cap, my heat was sweaty, and my sunglasses fogged up instantly when I put them on, so I groped my way through transition the first 30 feet or so (I’m surprised I didn’t run into a bike rack).

T1 Time: 3:11.3 (pretty darn slow…)

After you run out of transition with your bike, you mount and then ride out towards the bike course (in this case, a run out to East lake Sam, down to Inglewood and flat – pretty flat). We had a lane to ourselves (split into out and back sections by cones), and I settled into a decent rhythm. On the short run east, I took a drink of accelerade and passed a couple of guys (had to go into the oncoming lane to get around them), and after a little jog, found myself on Eastlake heading north to the turnaround at Inglewood. I picked up my speed a little and settled down my cadence at about 105 (a little higher than I’d normally ride to save my legs for the run). On the way out I passed perhaps 5-6 riders and got past by a similar number. The hard part is not to draft, though I saw a bunch of people coming back who were obviously drafting. I kept my computer on time / cadence because I wanted to go on perceived exertion (I didn’t wear my chest strap) rather than some idea of how fast I should be riding.

About half-way out, my stomach started to hurt, an indication that my level of exertion was not compatible to what I was putting into my stomach. That kept up pretty much all the way back on the bike leg, except for the last mile when I slowed down a bit. My polar says that I did 14.6 miles at 19 MPH (19.4 if you cut out the transition sections), while the official timing (which doesn’t include the time running with the bike inside of transition that my polar got) says I only did it at 18.3 MPH. Looks like somebody mis-measured the bike course.

Bike Time: 45:48.1

Back into transition again. With the exception of my stomach, I feel okay. Rack my bike (no, move over a bike so I have *room* to rack my bike), pull off my helmet, switch shoes, and fix my race number, which had gotten ripped off putting on my jersey in T1. Head out of transition on the run course.

T2 Time: 2:05

The 10 minutes or so of the run sucked. My legs actually felt okay – not peppy, but okay – but my stomach was still very unhappy with me. After the first mile it settled down, and I picked up the pace a bit. For a while I ran and talked with another guy about my age who also has a friend who is an elite (not that one, an elite triathlete, which means you get to race in your own classification, sometimes get your travel paid for, and perhaps even with some prize money now and then). We run together and talk for a while, but with about a half mile left he needs to walk, so I run on ahead. By this time I feel pretty good, so when a faster guy (I almost wrote “fast guy”, but let’s be realistic about my running speed right now) came by, I picked up the pace and followed him back to the finish line.

Run Time: 28:27.5

Total Time: 1:26:34
Age group rank: 29/38

That was a bit slower than I predicted, but the ride and run were both longer, so it was pretty close. I didn’t have any goal to be especially fast, and I think I succeeded in not being especially fast.

It was mostly fun. The bike leg had a fair amount of pain on it (I don’t typically do TT-style rides), but that was tempered by being able to ride away from people up the hills. I enjoyed the second half of the run.

The really interesting part was that I was done and it was only about 9AM. That would be on the short end of my rides, especially for an event ride (usually a century-ish one at 5-6 hours).

Lots of things could cut out time. Starting a little higher up in the swim group. Spending a bit more time in the pool. Getting more organized in transition. Practicing running.

I’m not going to decide tonight, but I think I’ll be doing the Kirkland Tri four weeks from now.

Thanks to Elden for inspiration…

Full picture set here…

Today was the race.

As is typical when I’m doing something new, I slept poorly the night before, and got up at 5AM. Got dressed, drove to the start (or, to be more specific, the wife drove me to the start), where I ran into my friend Joe. I hadn’t told Joe I was entering and had hoped to run into him right before the swim, but he found my name in the competitor list and gave me considerable amounts of crap for not telling him ahead of time.

He took my bike into transition for me, and I got everything set up. Signing up at the last minute (well, not *quite* the last minute) meant I was at the back of the transition area in a place that was easy to find. Got all set up, and then hung around with the wives waiting for the pre-race meeting and worrying about getting cold (Joe had a shorty wetsuit, I had none). Put on my timing chip (an RFID chip that records when you go through important points).

Our friend Greg showed up, who had *said* he was going to sign up but apparently had to clean his apartment or something and missed the cutoff.

The pre-race meeting never materialized, and we migrated down towards the water. A tentative test of the water temp showed that the water temperature was higher than the air temperature. We waited for two waves to head out, and then waded out to waist deep for the start. I decided to wait a bit so I’d have cleaner water, so 5 seconds later I plunged in and headed for the first buoy (big ones, not the small ones I saw yesterday).

My waiting led to a slight problem. The people that were directly in front of me were slower swimmers than I was, and they were also more erratic in direction that I was. I’d catch up with somebody, slow down and move to the side, move to pass them, and then speed up to get by. By the time I got near them, there was always a swimmer (either the original person or another) in front of me again. By the second buoy I basically gave up trying to get around them, and just swam into the shore. I swam mostly crawl except for a bit of *** stroke to move around, and I found the head-high “approach stroke” for crawl that I learned in lifesaving class 360 moons ago to be pretty useful to get a sight. Swam into the beach, stood up and staggered for a few steps (apparently your inner ear gets screwed up), and ran up the beach into transition (“T1”, in tri-speak).  I was a bit chilly for about 25 yards, and plenty warm after that (I bet many of the guys in full wetsuits got a bit overheated in the swim).

Swim time: 7:01.7 (since that’s the full start until the time I ran into transition, I’d be surprised if the swim was a full 400 yards)

In transition, I peeled of my excel swim shirt, cleaned the sand off my feet (no pool to rinse in…), and put my socks and bike shoes on. I pulled my jersey on, and it got stuck on my wet back. I probably wasted 45 seconds getting it on, put on my helmet and sunglasses (no sweatband or gloves), and ran out of transition. Or, tried to – because of my (required) baby blue swim cap, my heat was sweaty, and my sunglasses fogged up instantly when I put them on, so I groped my way through transition the first 30 feet or so (I’m surprised I didn’t run into a bike rack).

T1 Time: 3:11.3 (pretty darn slow…)

After you run out of transition on your bike, you mount and then ride out towards the bike course. We had a lane to ourselves (split into out and back sections by cones), and I settled into a decent rhythm. On the short run east, I took a drink of accelerade and passed a couple of guys (had to go into the oncoming lane to get around them), and after a little jog, found myself on Eastlake heading north to the turnaround at Inglewood. I picked up my speed a little and settled down my cadence at about 105 (a little higher than I’d normally ride to save my legs for the run). On the way out I passed perhaps 5-6 riders and got past by a similar number. The hard part is not to draft, though I saw a bunch of people coming back who were obviously drafting. I kept my computer on time / cadence because I wanted to go on perceived exertion (I didn’t wear my chest strap) rather than some idea of how fast I should be riding.

About half-way out, my stomach started to hurt, an indication that my level of exertion was not compatible to what I was putting into my stomach. That kept up pretty much all the way back on the bike leg, except for the last mile when I slowed down a bit. My polar says that I did 14.6 miles at 19 MPH, while the official timing (which doesn’t include the time running with the bike inside of transition) says I only did it at 18.3 MPH. Looks like somebody mis-measured the bike course.

Bike Time: 45:48.1

Back into transition again. With the exception of my stomach, I feel okay. Rack my bike (no, move over a bike so I have *room* to rack my bike), pull off my helmet, switch shoes, and fix my race number, which had gotten ripped off. Head out transition on the run course.

T2 Time: 2:05

The 10 minutes or so of the run was a slog. My legs actually felt okay – not peppy, but okay – but my stomach was still very unhappy with me. After the first mile it settled down, and I picked up the pace a bit. For a while I ran and talked with another guy about my age who also has a friend who is an elite (not the Halo elite, and elite triathlete, which means you get to race in your own classification, sometimes get your travel paid for, and perhaps even with some prize money). We run together and talk for a while, but with about a half mile left he needs to walk, so I run on ahead. By this time I feel pretty good, so when a faster guy (I almost wrote “fast guy”, but let’s be realistic about my running aptitude right now) came by, I picked up the pace and followed him back to the finish line.

Run Time: 28:27.5

Total Time: 1:26:34
Age group rank: 29/38

That was a bit slower than I predicted, but the ride and run were both longer, so it was pretty close. I didn’t have any goal to be especially fast, and I think I succeeded in not being especially fast.

It was mostly fun. The bike leg had a fair amount of pain on it (I don’t typically do TT-style rides), but that was tempered by being able to ride away from people up the hills. I enjoyed the second half of the run.

The really interesting part was that I was done and it was only about 9AM. That would be on the short end of my rides, especially for an event ride (usually a century-ish one at 5-6 hours).

Lots of things could cut out time. Starting a little higher up in the swim group. Spending a bit more time in the pool. Getting more organized in transition. Practicing running.

I’m not going to decide tonight, but I think I’ll be doing the Kirkland Tri four weeks from now…