Cancun 70.3

I was in Cancun for the Ironman 70.3 Series race on the 23rd of September. It was a great return to triathlon after a two year break. I had a good race, not without a few snags, but also very enjoyable. I loved racing the 1/2 Ironman distance again and I had a PR in the fifteen minute range. Can't complain there!

I'm also happy to say I won the age group race right out ... first among all age groups, not just my own ... and also managed to take down a good number of elite racers, too. This kid still has it where it counts.

I'm done racing tri's for the year, however. I would've loved to race in Clearwater, Florida, at the 70.3 World Championships, but work's got me tied down to Denver. So, maybe next year. Only smiles though... it was just good to get out and race again and not worry about the elite race pressures.

IM Badgerland (Bucky, here I come...)

Yes it's true. I said I'd never (never = never ever) do another Ironman race, but I just finished registering for the 2008 Ironman Wisconsin. I can say my rational is partly that I didn't give my first attempt at Ironman distance racing a fair shake (and really I didn't), but more importantly is that I've got a number of good friends racing it and there will be memories to last a lifetime. I can't shy away from that. I'm looking forward to it, even knowing that the six-fingered man from The Princess Bride (maybe dressed as Bucky Badger?) will be out there somewhere on the run course ready to take years off my life.

This registration comes on the day after a running injury that is reminiscent of the one I had while runnung across Ireland in 2004. It would seem that my achilles heel is the vastus medialis muscle. This time around it's my right one. I began to feel an acute pain just superior and medial to the knee on my long run yesterday. I stopped to massage it and finding it very tender I decided to walk it back in. A bruise has come through, so the thought is I've got a muscle tear. Nothing like have an injury two weeks before the Cancun Half Ironman!!! Should heal up in plenty of time, though.

Outside of all this, I took my Surly Crosscheck out to Mt Falcon two days ago to test its singletrack ability. Putting aside the Look pedals, triathlon shoes, and 53-42 front chainrings / 12-27 rear cassette (Ultegra 9spd gruppo), it rode very well and had no problems. The real issue were the shoes/pedals/cleats. The cleats were getting torn up from the rocks which made it harder to get into the pedals as a result, which was hard already because they're standard Look road pedals: single-sided and require a toe flip-over. Any stop along the steep log-stepped singletrack required a patient effort to get going again. A triple up front would have also helped, but it wouldn't get nearly the "Holy-crap-is-that-guy-riding-a-double-up-this?" response I could see on mountain bikers' faces. Toe overlap was a minor issue, too, but that's life with 52cm frame and 700x45c Panaracer FireCross tires (Fatties Fit Fine). It's been a fun bike to ride, that Surly.

Off to train I don't go! There'll be plenty of that come early next year....

One Year

Three days ago I passed the one-year mark with my current company and, perhaps more importantly, new career path. It has been a decent year but lessons about corporate America have been disheartening. It is all about the bottom line, and far too many times about the short-sighted bottom line at the end of the month, quarter, or year.

My company went through a significant salesforce reorganization in March with plenty of layoffs and territory restructuring. Since then the sensation has been one of being dazed, trying to recover from a stiff blow to the head. Understaffed and underfunded, it has been tough to maintain an adequate focus on growing business when it seems all you can do is try to maintain what you've got.

After a move into a different territory I am trying to grow while maintaining that most golden of dispositions: a positive attitude. I work with some great people and they really do make a difference in my day. I am being patient and hoping that things will change, although I am learning that having patience isn't a common virtue of corporate America. Should I be any different? I still want to be.

This tail's still twitching....

So after almost three years I've dug around my laptop's Mozilla password file and managed to successfully revive my nearly three year old blog. Gotta love that (I'm sure all my IT Security friends out there are rolling their eyes). I hated enforcing password policy when I was in IT. Poo poo.

I'm now in a different line of work. Is it everything that I've dreamed of? Maybe not everything, but it's pretty darned close. I can easily say I'm happy with my work, and that's a great thing that some people just don't have. I'm fortunate. Changing careers didn't come without its costs, however, some of which I'm still paying for (I don't have the life that most early 30-somethings have), and there were a few rock-bottom points along the way. Would I do it again? Probably, but it'd be better to ask me that five or ten years from now.

I'm getting back into triathlon again, too. Next stop is Cancun for the 70.3 Series race. I'm excited. I've always liked that distance but have raced only two. My last triathlon was the Quelle Roth Challenge Ironman in 2005. The race rocked. I didn't. Shuffled on home, I did, for the last half of the marathon with the six-fingered man from the Princess Bride whispering to me how many years of my life he had just taken away (refering to the dungeon torture scene of our good boy Wesley). And while I said it would be my last, I'm seriously considering IM Wisconsin next fall. Ask me after the race about how I liked it and I'll probably say the same thing I wrote two sentences ago.

So, in and out of the comfort zone, and back to hunt another day. In the words of Paul Sherwin, "That's what you get when you suffer - you get results." Bring it.

Classic Blunders

While Vizzini would have probably mentioned it had he not succumbed to iocane powder, another one of the classic blunders is wearing new shoes in a Marathon. Yes, I will admit freely my stupidity on this one. I assumed the shoes I bought would have had the requisite cushioning my feet needed for the 26.2 miles of road leading into Milwaukee at last weekend's Lakefront Marathon. Wrong assumption. I got fifteen in and called it quits.