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Beth and I did a sprint tri today. It was a lot of fun. Got to see John Seasholtz and Patrick Shaw there as well.

I was happy with my results–13th out of 135 in my age group. 87th overall, with a total time of 1:13:15. I had guessed I could do 1:15, so it was nice to beat that.

Swim split: 0:14:04 159th overall
T1: 1:51
Bike split: 0:33:56 93rd overall
T2: 1:17
Place after bike: 90th overall
Run split: 0:22:07 177th overall

I got to draft on the swim, which was something I wanted to try out. It worked great–I found a fast guy who didn’t kick a lot and just hung on to his feet for at least half the swim. The bike felt awesome (and burned) and was my best leg vs. the field. I was in a nice back a forth with a guy on a Cervelo with Zipp wheels–he won in the end. Have I mentioned that I love my new bike? And the 5k was by far the fastest one I’ve ever run with 7:10 7:35 splits. I couldn’t believe it when I checked my watch.

It was nice to do a sprint–it was over so fast, and I got to focus on going fast rather than just surviving. I hadn’t planned to, but I may do another one this year.

Nothing like a bucolic 30-mile ride to start the day right…

I survived my second Olympic distance triathlon today. And I knocked 27 minutes off my previous time, so I’m pretty pleased.

The race was down in the shadow of Mt. Rainier, and the weather sure felt that way. It was 50 and raining as I set up for the race. I did a warm up run, but didn’t pull the bike out at all ahead of the start. I was planning on doing a full warm up, but bailed because of the weather–I couldn’t face the water before the start!

We ended up having to stand in our wetsuits at the water for 20 minutes as the race director gave instructions, and then launched 3 waves before mine. My wave looked like about 100 guys. What I didn’t realize was that this race was an official qualifier for USAT National championships, so the field was a bit stacked. The start showed the level of competition and it was a bit of a madhouse. I hung back from the initial rush, but there wasn’t any avoiding it. I’m a middle of the pack swimmer, so I ended up in the middle of the pack. Each time we came to a buoy the field pinched down and I was reminded of my basketball days, boxing out underneath.

The water was cold, but I didn’t really notice in the heat of it all. It was almost half a mile before I really got into a groove, and then the swim was half over. I faded a bit at the end, but made it out of the water in 29 minutes, which was about what I had hoped for.

The transition to bike was good. I didn’t have the wobbliness I had last tri and got onto my Felt in just a couple minutes. Then things got cold. It was drizzling, and turns out going 20 miles per hour in cold wet conditions causes your hands to stop working very well. I had trouble eating and drinking on the bike because of it. But, because it was so cold, dehydration wasn’t really an issue.

The bike was awesome! As I predicted, my new wheels subtracted greatly from my time. There were a few points with a headwind where I could tell it would have stopped me dead on my old bike. The bike was perfect–it was a bit hard to shift, but that was because my hand’s didn’t work, not because the bike didn’t!

The transition to run was smooth as well. I tried to put on my running socks, but bailed due to dexterity problems, and headed out for four laps around the lake. It was a bit muddy on the trail, but running through the woods on soft needles was nice. It was strange passing the finish 3 times, but the fourth was sweet, and I had a nice 250 meter kick that made me feel like I had something left.

As I said, my time of 2:33:00 was 27 minutes faster than my last Olympic distance. The courses were different, but I feel like they were pretty comparable, so I’m really stoked. I finished 18th in my age group, but like I said it was a stacked field…

Can’t wait for the next one!

Update: Official results are in.

I finished 87th out of 182 finishers with a total time of 2:35:32.

Rank in age group: 18 out of 25
Swim split: 0:29:40, place of 97th, 1.5K
T1: 3:15
Bike Split: 1:15:32 (19.8 mph), place of 89th, 40K
T2: 2:36
Place after Bike: 94th
Run Split: 0:44:28 (8 min mi), place of 79th, I think this leg was shortened to 9K because of weather…

I’ll be racing the Cascades Edge Triathlon on Sunday in lovely Enumclaw, Washington. My first tri this year and my first race on the new wheels. I’m doing the Olympic distance: 1.5k Swim - 40k Bike - 10k Run.

I just do triathlons to have an excuse to step away from the computer…

It’s like flying very low to the ground. Nothing like buying 15 minutes off your bike split time…

The best experience of Dreamforce 2006 was swimming in the San Francisco bay with Tucker MacLean. It was really awesome, and really cold. But, if you sit in a 180 degree sauna for 15 minutes afterwards, you almost get warm again.

That first picture is what it looked liked when we got in the water. this next one is when we got out:

We swam at the dolphin club, and surprisingly, we were far from alone:

Thanks Tucker for the truly San Francisco extreme experience!

Aluminum Man is a small triathlon on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge. I survived, finishing my first Olympic distance triathlon in 2:54:25. It was a lot of fun, and also the hardest thing I’ve done in a while!

You may know the Columbia river Gorge for it’s world class wind surfing. Turns out, it’s pretty windy there, and was at 9 am when the race started. The swim was a weird one. It was my first running start from the beach, er, mud flat. It must have been a funny sight to see 50 men running off for 100 meters in knee deep water, wondering when the swimming would begin. Finally it did, and we all had fun in the wind blown waters of the river. As I overheard one participant in the swim to bike transition, “I don’t have to worry about hydration after that swim!” I didn’t have much problem with the chop, but I guess a couple folks really had a hard time. The hardes thing for me was finding the bouys in the waves and with the final bouy right into the rising sun. I found it when I was 6 feet from it…

After 18 minutes in the water, the exit from the river was nothing like the entrance, and I moved on to the bike. This was probably the most fun 30 minutes of the triathlon. It was fun to be on the bike and riding downwind, up into the table lands above the gorge. It was gorgeious scenery–rolling hills, basalt columns, old abandoned farm buildings among amber grasses. I was having such a great time I even passed some folks, the whole time trying to hold back for the wall that I knew would come sooner of later.

At about 18 miles I began to tire. At 20 miles, we started the descent from the table lands and the crew I was riding with showed me why they all had aero setups–they blasted downhill, into the wind, leaving me on my touring bike to pedal harder down he hill than I had going up it.

After an hour and thirty minutes in the saddle (which seemed like 3) I made my way to the transition and actually had the thought, “I could stop now…”

But I didn’t, and made a quick transition to the run. the run was a 10K, which was really the longest run I’d done in months, so I knew it was going to be pretty hard. And it was. Luckily it started into the wind. I kept the cadence up and just kept it moving to the turnaround point. It’s amazing how far that seems sometimes…

On the return, I found myself slowing as my heart rate remained constant, which I figured was not a great sign. I was passed a couple times in the run, mostly by the top women, and had no hope of staying with any of them. But 1 mile from the finish I was passed by a guy that I decided to stay with and that helped me get through the last mile.

I finished 22nd among the 50 men, 4th in my age group of 11, which is where I love to be, just above average. Here’s the most unbelievable stat of the day–I was in 13th place coming out of the water. I don’t consider myself a swimmer, but I guess the Total Immersion DVD has been working. If you are interested in being a better swimmer, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

The recovery has been pretty easy. My knees were sore, but better now a couple days later. I drank about 2 gallons of recovery drink, and I think that helped. I’ll do another one. Maybe next year I’ll even do a couple…

I’m doing my first Olympic distance triathlon this weekend down in Oregon. I wasn’t really planning on doing one this fall, but things just worked out. About a month ago I started stepping up my training–not nearly to an ideal level, but not so bad keeping in mind I have two kids and a full-time job. I shouldn’t drown…

Aluminum Man is a smallish triathlon down in The Dalles, Oregon. They’ve done what a whole lot of races have done–their course is plotted on Google maps. This is just about the perfect use of Google maps. The course is very straightforward, but small budget events like this have historically been very bad at map production. Using Google maps gives them a stellar online map in minutes.

They’ve mapped the bike and the run on the gmap pedometer site.

I used to use that free service until I found favoriterun.com, which I really like. It lets you create arbitrary routes, and then log exercise on those routes, creating a running/biking/walking log. favoriterun.com doesn’t let you track Kcals per exercise, but you can’t have everything. For free. Yet.

I’ll post a short race report after the fact next week. I’ll be sticking around for Monday in the ONE/Northwest Portland office hanging with Drew and Jon and talk about process mapping. I bet they can’t wait!

Why do bike messengers have the life span of a mayfly? Check out this evidence:

Sometimes you’re just surfing the web and then you get hit by something so powerful it really affects you. Watch this.

Thanks to Chris Uy for the tip.