Off to India

I have been requested to travel to Bangalore, India for work. Right now my trip is planned for 11-may to 25-may.

I'm bittersweet about this. Annoyed that I have to drop everything and plan a trip to India, but India could be a pretty cool place to see.

Helena Sports Hall of Fame

The 1991-Helena High Boys Track Team, which won the State Championships in '91, was elected to the Helena Sport Hall of fame. As a member of that team, obviously, I will also be in the Hall of fame.

In case there is anyone other than my family who read this, I was a Pole Vaulter on that team. (Odd Tidbit for you, but at teh time I was in High School only 17 states allowed pole vaulting at the high school level...)

Helena Sports Hall of Fame

The 1991-Helena High Boys Track Team, which won the State Championships in '91, was elected to the Helena Sport Hall of fame. As a member of that team, obviously, I will also be in the Hall of fame.

In case there is anyone other than my family who read this, I was a Pole Vaulter on that team. (Odd Tidbit for you, but at teh time I was in High School only 17 states allowed pole vaulting at the high school level...)

QOTD

I guess this not really a Quote of the Day, but more a paraphrase of a book I am reading and also song lyrics. But both quotes I like quite a bit.

"Faith: easier to give, but harder to take than life"


Now a summary of song lyrics (by Carus)

"Yesterday's History.
Tomorrow's a mystery.
But, Today, is a gift.
That why its the present."

MW-MTB Club Race 2

Today, was club race number two at the Manly Warringah Track in Arcadia. It was a nice date, high 70's sunny. This was the track of my first race, way back in february. This time around was much more pleasant result. I competed in Novice again, and I dropped about 3 minutes per lap off my previous time. In fact, my time today (based on my HR monitor) would have won the first race, unfortunately, I got 2nd. David Chambers (a fellow team TRuDGe member) got third. As much as I'd like to finish the season running Novice at MW-MTB, I think I will start racing C Grade (I might sneak in one more novice to see if can win a race :)...

Two other guys from the office were there, so there is starting to be a Mountain Bike Sub-culture at DB. Which is good to see.

I still don't train intensely enough, to push myelf as hard as I did today, but I guess it is a mattter of baby steps.

I'll post the official results when the are available.

Tri Results

well, my first wasn't too bad. I finished, which is the most important thing. I messed up my own personal "splits" tracking when compared to the official results, so I spent most of the day thinking I did very well, only to see that I did average (when compared to the entire field).

My official time was 44:12.

The official splits were
Swim: 7:18, Bike 24:09, Run: 12:46

The official distances were 400m, 8km, 4km.

What I think the distances were...
300m (maybe 320), 6km, and 3km

The swim and swim-bike transition were by far the most difficult part. I did not help myself out by going off-course and swimming probably an extra 50-60m. (so I turned a 300m swim into a 350m bugger!!)I'm not the worlds strongest swimmer, and it is by far my weakest leg, and also tires me out the most, so I did not need to make it more challenging by adding on more distance.

WHen I got out of the swim and started running towards my bike, I thought I was going to throw up, partly because of all the salt water I swallowed, and partly because I swam a good 70m further than I needed to, and much harder than I planned. (which is a round about way of saying I did not swim enough prior to the race...)

Anyway, I clocked my swim at 8:40....which was bizarre since the official results were 7:18, and I clocked my cycle at 11 :12, then a 4 minute transition befor the run, and I clocked a 13:minute run. So I figured out that all transition times were tacked on to the bike leg, and 8:40 lap time, was really my transition time, I had missed my actually swim leg.

I had clocked 11 mins actually on the bike, and I know I can do better than 2 min per KM pace, (made me wish I had a road bike, as I htink I could have dropped some more time if I wasn't on my mtn bike).
I just wish the bike had been like 15km, as I would have been able to make up for my weakness in the water.

The transition to the run wasn't bad, a little slow getting out of my biking shoes, (damn laces) which is why I guess people cycle in thier running shoes for sprints.

The run was hard, but I wasn't srue where finish line was, so I just basically kept a pace. I think I could have pushed more at the end, but I was unsure how much further I had to go. But a 3km in under 13 minutes I"m pretty happy with. 5min per KM is the bench mark I use for solid run times, if you can keep this up it works out to be a 25min 5km, which I think is solid. I"m pretty happy with my run.

All in all, with how (little) I had prepared I'm pretty happy with the results. I think I'd like to do another one, ( a little longer so that I can feel like Id id a "real" tri)...but at the same time, this was longe enough to be hard work.

Another Endurance Event...

My life as an edurance athlete as taken another baby step forward....I am signed up to do a "Super Sprint" Corporate Triathlon on Sunday April 17th. The course is around Mrs. Macquaries Chair near the botanical gardens right on Sydney harbour, so that should be cool. A Sprint is supposed to be 400m Swim, 15K bike, and 5k run. But this Tri has a course distance of 400m Swim, 8km Bike and a 4 k run. So it is pretty short, even for a Sprint. IF you look at last years results, you'll see that even these distances have to "longer" on the map than in reality, so I would say it probably closer to 300m Swim, 7.5k bike, and 3.75k run. But hey it is a Triathlon none-the-less.

I'm alittle disappointed because I'm not sure if I'll ever do another Tri, so it would have been nice if this one were proper distances.

How I got signed up...basically there was couple teams form the office, one of the persons on a one of the teams had to drop out, so I got sucked in...thats it. No great dramas.

If you want to checkout the race info you can go here

Dirtworks 100k Results....

Here are finishing times for Team TRuDGe

Grant 27th of 30 - 139th overall (of 174)
Dave 28th of 30 - 140th overall

Rohan 73rd of 93 - 142nd overall
Tyler 74th of 93 - 143rd overall

Rohan and I are the over 30's so we were in a different category (veterans), which is why we are "of 93"...

Here is the link
to the Dirtworks page, there is a link on there for the full results.

67 Kilometers is a very long way

Today I finished the Dirt Works 100k, They had 2 main events the 100k, and the "half", but the half ended up being 65 km...but more on that later.

The race was in St. Albmans, which is like 95 km north west of sydney, on the Hawkesbury river, a very nice area.

I got roped into to this event, by my teammates on Team TRuDGe (my working week mtn bike race series team)

aside: I'm exhausted so this will not be very well written, as I just want to put something down and go to bed. I also expect it to very random and jump all over the place.

It was a very challenging event, I rode with my teammates from TRuDGe, and we basically had a riding time of 4 hours 50 minutes, but our elapsed time was a shade over 6 hours. Which I am very happy wiht. I'm actually just very happy that I finsihed, it is a long freaking way. I'm certainly haven't been training for endurance events, so this was tough.

The "half" course was basically 2 laps, one 27km long and second loop 29km long, but the second loop puts out on a road like 9 km from the finish line so you have to ride back into to town.

The first 27 km weren't so bad, I think that is about my comfortable limit. I fully discovered the true power of GU today, I'm pretty sure that is the only reason I finished the last 40km.

There was WAY to much walking for my particular liking. I'd say our of the roughly 5 hours of cycling time, 2 hours was pushing my bike up hill too steep (and long) for my to ride, or walking down really sketchy downhill bits. On my second ride, I was really sick and tired of pushing my freaking bike.

The last 5km were by far the most uncomfortable, and it was basically just riding on the side of a paved road, but by that time, my butt and other under bits were getting sore/numb, my feet were starting to go numb, my legs were tired, and I was pretty much ready to be done, especially since the road was not interesting to ride along.

The reason I rode 67, is that David (a guy on my TRuDGe Team) basically made a wrong turn and had to back track, so we did an extra 2km.

I also wish they would not call it the "half' since it is really 2/3!~!!!

All in all, it was fun, probably equivalent to a 1/2 - 3/4 marathon, but I'm pretty happy with myself that I finished it, especially since I've been mountain biking less than 1 year.

on that note, I think I'll head to my couch to lie down for awhile...

Blues Fest Act List

I'll try to write more of my thoughts about the Blues Fest later, but Byron is a georgous spot and the music festival was a blast!!! highly recommend it to anyone.

Here is a quick run done of hte acts I saw.

Thursday
Dave Matthews Band - This was absolutely awesome, could be the best show I've ever seen from dave.

Friday
The Frames
Violent Femmes (Awesome, probably my surprise of the festival...)
G.Love and Special Sauce
Jack Johnson

Saturday
Ash Grunwald
Cubanismo
Guy Davis
Eric Bibb
Bo Didley (still a great performer for 77 yrs old!!!!)
Michael Franti & Spearhead
(Also stepped in on John Lee Hooker Jr.)