Random notes from Spudman

Jason's notes

• Need to spot my line on the swim more often, hit a tree overhanging the bank with about 300 yards left to go. As a general rule, you don't want to wash ashore that early.
• This was the first time I've ridden a distance exceeding a few miles in the aero position. I noticed I had an immediate 1 MPH pace gain when moving down into the aero bars on my bike. I experimented with this numerous times on the bike leg and it held true every time.
• Finding the gear that was comfortable, then grabbing one more provided my most efficient pedaling. The additional speed outweighed the additional effort required, and seemed to be sustainable. May try adding one more gear (two from comfortable) next race to keep testing this.
• I attacked (don't know if there is such thing as an attack in a triathlon bike leg or if this term is reserved for roadies?) on the few small hills we had. In general, the riders I would pass and gap during these efforts generally caught me within 2 miles. Not sure if these efforts had any benefit as the group of 4-5 of us that finished together yo yo'd back and forth like this beginning about 8 miles into the 25 mile ride.
• I need to adjust my seat. The front was tilted a little up, which was starting to get a little frisky by about mile 10. Funny how things go unnoticed when you wait for a race to see if your aero set up is where you want it, and then how noticable it becomes when it's too late to change it.
• If a transition area is on grass, find out if sprinklers will be coming on overnight before setting your run shoes out the night before.
• Nipple chafing - hadn't experienced this since High School football days when jerseys would shred the nips on no pad practice days. The poor little guy on the right fell victim and took a few days to recover - it hurt.
• My run is brutal bad and Spudman was no exception- all the people I'd picked off on the bike (there were a lot) were back by me within the first two miles of the run. Come to think of it, I don't remember passing a single racer on the run, and there were floods that came by me. I need to spend most of my training time here, and prior to that, need to figure out a way to trick myself into liking to spend training time here.
• My wife is a serious hottie in numerous respects, hot triathlete has been added to the list. And no Annie, I'm not just saying that because you swam faster than me - again! Seriously, you're either sandbagging big time at the pool, or, well, sheesh, I have no other explanation - completely baffled on this one, smile!

Next up - Xterra in Ogden 8/16.

Spudman Recap

We had a great time at the Spudman Triathlon today - saw lots of friends and the race went great. Results as follows:

AnneMarie
Swim - 19.08
T1 - 3.36
Bike - 1:14.34
T2 - 1.45
Run - 1:03.51
Finish Time - 2:42.55
Place - 30th of 85 racers, 30.24 off winning age group time.

Jason
Swim - 19.34
T1 - 3.31
Bike - 1:04.04
T2 - 1.57
Run - 1:02.12
Finish Time - 2:31.20
Place - 98th of 202 racers, 34.57 off winning age group time.

We were hearing that there had been a fatality in one of the swim waves. It casts a pretty sober tone over the entire event when something like that happens.

More later....

Spudman this weekend, Xterra in 3 1/2 weeks - not good

I went out for what I intended to be a hard effort bike ride tonight, riding down suncrest and spending some time riding hard in the flats at the bottom of the hill before climbing back up the north side to the house. Training has been minimal the last two weeks due to demands at work (sort of a good thing given the state of banks in the current economic environment - very fortunate to be at a solid one), so was thinking I'd be fresh and have some snap in my legs. Am disappointed to say that not only was there no snap, but that it was actually a pretty dramatic lack of snap that dominated the tone of the ride. I suffered a lot without even trying to push it very hard - it felt like the last few weeks of limited workouts had cost me a few months worth of conditioning. Could be a couple of things:
1 - I'm hoping the Arby's King Size French Dip combo meal with the large Mountain Dew I'd had 45 minutes previous had something to do with it (diet has gone the way of training the last few weeks as well and I'm telling myself that the amount of blood required in the midsection to digest such a gut bomb probably caused me to go into oxygen deficit while coasting the downhill) - maybe just a bad night and I'm not really that far off my game.
2 - Not just a bad night and I'm in trouble.

Tried to think of a way to spin some kind of positive out of it for #3 - but it would be BS - there was nothing good about tonights ride or any indications I can take from it.

Hoping it was just number 1 - but am admittedly concerned right now that the pain will come at a much slower pace than I'd like this weekend.

Keeping with the crappy tone of this post - have a good friend who's been working hard to get ready for the Leadville 100 in a few weeks who suffered a hard crash this morning and broke some ribs along with battering a few other spots on his body. The guy gets up and rides home up the same north suncrest hill I'm crying about above - only in real bad shape from the crash. The dude is a bad a** and I'm pretty sure that 1 - he climbed the hill on a mountain bike with broken ribs a heck of a lot faster than I did on a road bike with a cracked ego and 2 - he'll ride Leadville with the broken ribs, and ride it pretty fast.

Annie's swimming great - am excited for her this weekend.

Mutton Bustin

Yep, that's me back in the day. Throwback weekend for me with the two girls who I tricked into thinking this was fun. Kylie and Chesney were the adventure junkies this weekend, taking on the wild woolies at the Draper Rodeo Saturday night. Kylie's a veteran, we entered her in the Muttin Bustin a couple years ago when she was Chesney's size, so this was her 2nd trip to the chutes. Chesney was easily the smallest competitor. They were required to wear the bike helmets, and opted to throw on the Disney princess elbow pads for looks - fashion before function for these girls! Kylie rode upright, using the bullrope setup to hang on. I had Chesney lay down and grab and handful of wool in each hand - shorter distance to the turf that way.

Have to admit that it's a proud moment for a dad when his little girls get a little nervous and scared about something, and make the decision themselves to take it head on. Both expressed fear in the chute (they'd watched 7-8 kids come out of the arena with mouthfuls of dirt before their turn), but neither needed any coaxing to stay on and do what they came to do.

Kylie landed hard, and Chesney got a mouthful of dirt - mainly due to me hanging on to her, smile. They were rewarded with a cowboy boot with a can of rootbeer in it, and a kiddie version of the satisfaction that comes from getting way outside of one's comfort level and passing a gut check - both got hurt a little and came up crying, and both are really proud of doing it and already asking about next year.

Little Campers

Observations from the latest camping trip.

• Although treats rank high on the motivation tactics with my kids, I was more succesful manipulating this squirrel (girls named it Pip after the little dude in Disney's "Enchanted" movie) into doing tricks with a little food in 15 minutes than I've been with my kids in the 5 years since we've had one. Perhaps a cause for some self assessment that I get a better response from the squirrels than the kids?


• Pip's best trick was running across the girls toes causing screams, running, and scattered camping furniture. Shortly after taking this photo, I snuck up behind the squirrel intending to scare it towards the girls and did he ever deliver! Scurryed right around the corner of the cooler and over Kylie's left foot - both girls were well outside of the picture frame in under 2 seconds.

• Brock is a little tank, in part due to his cheek capacity being equal if not superior to Pip's, meaning he's managed to fit at least one more cookie in his mouth than what I've got in this photo.


• Brock's cheek capacity is second only to his overall sweets capacity, which grossly outpaces actual food capacity. The 1 year old had free reign on the cookies and pop this trip, and like his Dad, revealed a tendency to get a little carried away with his newfound freedom with a good thing. His eyes were bigger than his belly and he spent his time from sundown to about midnight doing what I'm pretty sure was his attempt at calling a bear out of the woods to come and take him out of his misery. Annie says it was just a belly ache. Regardless, niether us nor the bears got any sleep until well after midnight courtesy of Brock's indulgence.

• People are different. This photo may be a little too small to see clearly, but there were two people who enjoyed this ride and one who did not. Annie like's to go fast, to the point where she pretends Kylie and Chesney are also 29 years old and have the same speed demon gene. Annie is smiling and had a fun ride.
• Kylie is 5 and is also smiling. She views Annie's speed demon gene as mild. Annie will max out at her comfort level, and the 5 year old will be screaming from the back to go faster. Kylie think's both mom and dad's risk threshold is equivalent to a 3 year old.
• Chesney had significantly less fun on this ride than Mom and her big sister. Kylie's screams to go faster are an octave or two lower than Chesney's screams to stop and let her off. The ride was inclusive of a creek crossing that included a little spray towards the riders - Chesney would tell you it was like standing 12 inches from a fire hose. She refused to ride with Mom the rest of the camping trip.
• I wasn't around for Annie's childhood, but think there's some repressed older sister tendencies in her that create that sick sense of satisfaction we all got as kids (never have quite grown out of this myself) from scaring the hell out of younger siblings or other's with inferior fear thresholds. No question in my mind that the more Chesney would scream to slow down, the faster Annie would go!
  

Pssssssssst Psssssssst

That's the sound of my tubeless setup on the Mtn Bike failing yesterday at the Icup race at Solitude. It happened coming out of the creek crossing on my 2nd lap. The Stan's sealant didn't take so had to pull off and throw a tube in, botched the pitstop a bit and only got the tube 75% inflated when the CO2 ran out. Rode hard to try and make up some time for the next quarter mile before I pinch flatted the same tire - game over.

Spent last weekend in Park City to race the sport class XC race and spend some time watching the pros - they're fast.