I share this at the risk of my genuinly good intentions being second and third guessed for the remainder of my marriage, but find it to be such an incredible piece of wisdom that I feel a duty to go public. In fact, I've already begun to think about what terms I might demand when I field the request to include this entry and it's follow ups as an addition to, and cause for the re-release of the Carnegie classic "How to Win Friends and Influence People".
It's a method by which I've been succesful in getting the girls in my house excited and rallying behind the same random priorities I may have at any given time, and it's grossly exceeded my expectations in two BIG ways this year.
My first success with this little gem of influence happened earlier this year when I started to get a little carried away with cycling - mostly mountain. Annie knows by now - tomorrow marks nine years since we got hitched, that I manage to find some new hobby every couple of years. This year it happened to be riding the bikes, in part due to some good friends up here in Suncrest that kind of gave me the bug, and also because it's provided a happy medium of fun to taper the effort I need (still) to get back into pretty good shape. Cycling can get to be expensive if you start taking it somewhat serious.
Here's the dilema - the time and money I wanted to put into this newfound hobby created a pretty selfish and onesided commitment in the context of the marriage. How could I get Annie's buy in?
Case study #2 - season opener for the Utes, and the overall kickoff to the collegiate and upcoming NFL football season. Dilema - This one also involves the daughters - how do I get them and their mom to buy in to my excitement for the fantastic weekends between now and February? Not just put up with it, but actually buy into the program and like it?
After putting in a half day at work Friday morning, we loaded up and arrived in Ogden around 3:00 Friday afternoon. We got me checked in and body marked, divied out the swag (Annie takes the t-shirt if she likes it, kiddies take stickers/tatoos/energy food, etc...), and got the girls registered for their race. Here they are in their racings digs..And they're off.... Bringing it home....You may notice that Kylie is having the time of her life. I don't have a picture of Chesney, but she came across the finish in the same condition - sobbing. I guess they don't respond well to Mom running behind them yelling "if you don't win, no dinner for you tonight!"all the way around the course. I mean, they're only 3 and 5.
That was a joke.
We coddled them when they came across the finish line and asked why they were crying - Chesney, still sobbing, says "the big kids passed me and I couldn't keep up" - how cute is that.
The medal ceremony made everything better.. Xterra does a great a great job involving the kids, Nori has been a favorite playmate for our girls the last two years, thanks to her for the special attention she gives them.
Spent the rest of the afternoon/evening letting the kids do the activities they had for them, watching the k9 challenge, taking in some race tips from a few of the pros, big spaghetti dinner with Erik, Jess, and their kids, and then an early night to bed for the kids. We stayed at the Hampton and had the traditional bed jumping contest before making them settle down. Not sure what it is about kids and hotel rooms, but it's 100% instinct to launch themselves from one bed to the other and back - even the 1 year old wanted in on the action. No question that this would have gone on for 17 hours straight if Mom and Dad hadn't intervened.
Saturday morning started at 6:00 am for me. Jumped up, grabbed a banana, some french toast sticks, and some eggs from the breakfast bar, and headed up the canyon to set up my transition areas.
The swim - I got in a little early and got maybe a 150M warm up before running my wedding ring over to Annie who was watching with the kids from nearby, no question the ring would be on the bottom of Pine View resevoir if I'd swam with it on. Wildly congested start this year, two primary goals for the first 200 yards; 1 - try to get positioned in the front 3rd of the pack & 2 - try to avoid getting your goggles kicked off while trying to establish goal 1. I was succesful with both, and got to the first buoy in what felt to be a pretty quick pace - a little too quick. Think I got a little anaerobic as I struggled between the 1st and 2nd buoy trying to recover and get back into a sustainable rythm. This became a quick problem for me, no matter how much I backed off the gas. Not sure if it has to do with the wetsuit, which was pretty darn uncomfortable during this period - felt like I was fighting it to get good, deep breaths. Rolled onto my back - that didn't work. Even slowed the pace to barely moving, which also didn't work. Ended up just sucking it up and facing reality that I was on the verge of blowing up the rest of the way in and settling into a crawl stroke that wasn't fast, but got me back to shore. You'll notice by my exit in the video that my first order of business coming out of the water was to try and recover - I was not in a hurry at that point. Lesson - I haven't learned to recover efficiently in the water - so don't go out with an effort that necessitates needing to recover in the swim leg, slower will be faster for me here. I exited T1 at 20 minutes, 8 seconds - a middle of the pack level swim, but 10 minutes faster than last year.
The bike - Had just one hiccup in the transition/beginning of the bike leg, left transition holding onto my gloves intending to put them on in the first few hundred yards. Between my wetsuit dripping on them a little and my hands being wet, the gloves got real tacky and were a serious hassle to get on while riding - ended up taking about a mile and cost me some seconds on a section where it's important to ride hard rather than fumble with trying to get gloves on. For those unfamiliar, the bike course goes from Pine View Resevoir and climbs up to SnowBasin ski resort - a solid 12 mile climb. You've got about two miles of double track after turning onto the dirt in which to get position going into the single track for the remaining 10 miles, This is critical, especially coming out of the swim in the position I was in with a lot of people in front of me. A hard effort here will net you a lot more than a hard effort once on the single track where it requires going off track into the brush to get by people. I went ahead and attacked hard right away knowing there were a lot of people to get by due to my mediocre swim. A small group of three of us formed early and we made really good progress in picking racers off in these first two miles. We crossed the road to where the single track starts, and it immediately jammed up to a pretty slow pace. This worked out well for me for the first few minutes as I needed to back off to a recovery pace. Then the process of getting around packs of riders, gapping up to the next pack, repeat, repeat, repeat began. It went at a moderate pace for the next couple of miles, and then we started the last climb prior to the downhill section where the course get's a little steeper. I began to get aggressive here, pushing the pace hard up the hill and taking aggressive lines on switchbacks, through the brush, anywhere a small hole would open to pick up a few spots in the long line of people climbing towards the midcourse descent. I felt remarkably good by the top of the hill and wasn't in desperate need of recovering on the downhill like I'd expected - this gave me some confidence going into the 2nd half of the course. The top half of the course got a little congested again, but I was able to remain aggressive the rest of the way up the mountain and spent good amount of time riding in the brush working to get by as many people as I could, and then ride as far away from them as possible. It took a while to get by the congestion, but by the last two miles, the traffic thinned out some, allowing for a good pace without having to go off trail nearly as often as the previous 8 miles to work around people. If it's your first time doing this race, it will set you up for a false sense of finish near the top. You begin to hear the microphones and music from the T2/finish line area and feel like your riding right up to it before the course, in a cruel way, turns you back uphill, only to put another mile in front of you before letting you drop down to T2 to exit the bike and begin the run. I had a close call getting off the bike, came in kind of fast and got my left foot caught in the pedal when trying to dismount - was within just a second or two from going down when it finally unclipped. Exited T2 in 1:43 having ridden a 1:23 bike split. 30 minutes faster than last year. The easiest way to knock another 5-10 minutes off my bike split will be to improve my swim split by 4-5 minutes.
The run - All the hard work on the bike was 100% defensive, purely an effort to limit the inevitable damage on the run. I came out of T2 feeling good. Melanie McQuaid, who went on to win the women's title, came by me about a quarter mile into the run, she had 2nd place about 90 seconds behind her and was putting the hammer down. Within the first 1/3rd of a mile I was cooked on the run had to slow to a fast walk, and at times even a slow walk, to avoid a blow up that would stall my race real quick. I maintained a walk to the top of the hill (brutal climb) and felt good going into the section that flattens out, winding through the trees - was able to return to a decent run pace here - but had given up a lot time and finishing places while walking. Was happy to see one, Erik Riessen, who came by at the bottom of the hill and kept a good pace all the way up it - stud. This next section through the trees flows well and you can almost pump the small rollers during your run, similar the way you'd pump a bicycle through these sections. You come out of the trees and the course turns back uphill, which put me back on the verge of another blow up and slowed me to a walk. At the top, the course turns sharply downhill, to the point where rather than trying to pick up the pace, you let gravity do it's thing and try to keep the brakes on just enough to stay in control. Rolling an ankle on this stuff would cause a serious injury due to the force your planting your feet with. I stumbled down the hill to the finish and crossed the line in 2:12 - another brutal run performance, but again, faster than last year.
All in all it was a great race for me - still see places I think I can go faster, so will continue to work, but it confirmed a lot of progress since this time last year, more than I had anticipated.
It's over, and it went a lot faster than last year! Jason's times: Xterra Sport 2007 - 3:05 Xterra Sport 2008 - 2:12
Several factors led to cutting nearly an hour off my race.
Coming into the race at 178 lbs instead of 195 lbs and in much better condition overall.
Went into last years race with minimal time having been spent on the Mtn Bike. Decided I liked it - to be brutally honest,thought I'd ridden well by nailing a 1:55 bike split, pure naivety! So, bought a good bike and spent a heck of a lot more time on it this past year, including some races. Was able to attack the bike portion of the race this year.
Think I swam a little better (not good, just better than last year), haven't seen the splits yet for this years race.
Think the run course was shorter this year? My run is still really poor, walked the same sections I walked last year, but the route seemed to be over a lot faster?
Several factors still costing me a lot of time...
Still have 10 lbs of extra weight I'm lugging around - possibly more, but gauging it every 5 lbs and know right now that there's at least 10 extra around my midsection. Am thinking I should be close to where I want/need to be at the 165-168 lb range. Cutting 17 lbs bought me 53 minutes, think the next 10 lbs will be worth no less than an additional 10-15 minutes. Want to be clear that I'm not a weight junkie. I don't count calorie intake or expenditure, exercise any restraint when something tastes good, or even refrain from my hardcore night time binges. I'm just talking about getting in good shape, a process in which my weight is maybe the 3rd or 4th indicator I look to in regards to progress. What I'm saying is that when the first 2 or 3 indicators are in line, I think I'll be about 10 lbs less than where I'm at today.
The run - not much I can say here - mine is sloooooooooooow. No good excuses just going to take a lot of hard work. Actually I just thought of a good excuse - I was a solid sprinter in HS (50.93 400M), it just became obvious to me that my body was conditioned in my early years to blow up at 401M regardless of the intensity of the effort for the first 400M which is precisely where I blow up on these damn runs! Translation for those not familiar with the metric distances - I'm cooked after the first quarter mile. Seriously, I've got a lot of suffering to inflict on myself to get these runs up to speed.
The swim - won't know until I see the split times. This in and of itself is a problem - I feel a little exposed having written above that I think I was faster this year, because in reality, I have no clue - I'm still just happy when they're over. I just know I'm yet to maintain a solid stroke for an entire race. But am getting closer - I think.
The bike - will continue to get faster here just because of the fun factor that comes with training on it.
More detailed race reports later - yes, the girls ran again....
Ok, so after having had my Stan's tubless set up fail me twice in the last month on the mountain bike - once in the Solitude race and once earlier this week, I'm trying a new concoction for the Xterra race this weekend. Here it is..
Yep, the new recipe is two cup fulls of Stan's sealant as directed, with some red glitter dumped in there as an additive. Those micro sealing particles that you can see advertised on the bottle of Stan's haven't been cutting it, so the rationale is that the glitter will serve as not so micro particles and maybe be a little more effective. It will either work and be great, or I'll have a tire that looks like it's bleeding to death.
Went for a short ride up Little Cottonwood last night with Brandon. Leg's felt good and the bike should be good to go with a few minor tweaks and the red glitter. The engine is still suspect, but I'm excited and ready to give it a good effort.
Kylie and Chesney are excited for the kid races. Xterra does a great job with the little festival they bring with them, lot's of fun stuff for the kids that make it a fun place for the family to hang out the night before and afternoon/night after the race. Check out Chesney from last years race - she's photo#6 in the slideshow. http://xterraphotos.com/07mountain/
I made the drive to Ogden tonight to pre ride the Xterra Mtn Bike course. It's a fantastic route taking the racers from Pineview resevoir up to Snowbasin ski resort where you get to stop climbing long enough to change your shoes before logging more vertical on your feet. It was a good ride tonight, took it at 85-90% of race pace and felt pretty good. The course is a good mix of rocky sections that require you to ride pretty light to avoid tire issues, fast flowing sections, short sections that get a little steeper and require a hard effort to keep pace, and a fun little downhill smack dab in the middle. The trails in good shape for the most part.
Pssssssssssssssst vs. Pssh. It happened again, got a little carried away coming back down from Snowbasin (which may be the most rewarding downhill I've ridden after a climb) and went into one of the many rock gardens on the jeep road near the bottom with more speed than necessary. These rock gardens aren't the baby head type rocks, these are really, really sharp. Probably got a little careless after getting through most of them fast and fine, working on riding light, when I hit a rock wrong and was on rim before the Stan's sealant knew there was a hole to seal up. A flat out puncture takes about 2 rotations to empty out the air in the tire. Was fortunate to be close to the car so just hoofed it the last few minutes to the car - but am kind of ticked about having to replace a $60 Specialized Fast trak SLK tire after only putting 5 or 6 rides on it.
And they're off....
Bringing it home....
You may notice that Kylie is having the time of her life. I don't have a picture of Chesney, but she came across the finish in the same condition - sobbing. I guess they don't respond well to Mom running behind them yelling "if you don't win, no dinner for you tonight!"all the way around the course. I mean, they're only 3 and 5.
Xterra does a great a great job involving the kids, Nori has been a favorite playmate for our girls the last two years, thanks to her for the special attention she gives them. 
Yep, the new recipe is two cup fulls of Stan's sealant as directed, with some red glitter dumped in there as an additive. Those micro sealing particles that you can see advertised on the bottle of Stan's haven't been cutting it, so the rationale is that the glitter will serve as not so micro particles and maybe be a little more effective. It will either work and be great, or I'll have a tire that looks like it's bleeding to death.