Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Some alone time in the pool





    Hurricane Alex and the weather associated with it is making it fun trying to schedule some swims. Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon swims were canceled because of thunderstorms. I did get in a really good bike ride Tuesday morning. I peddled out to Shoal Creek to do some up tempo rides down Great Northern Blvd. For those who have not had the experience of the wonder and spectacle that is Great Northern well, you are the lucky ones. I know a lot of people that view that road with disdain. It is the northern most point of the Austin Marathon and it's a long, straight and uneventful road that goes nearly a mile and a half with just a slight elevation. I actually like going up there to run or ride it. I did my tempo ride down it and recovered back up Shoal Creek. After 5 loops of this and an easy ride home it added up to a 35 mile ride.
  Today was an early morning 4 1/2 mile run with Rogues newest coach, Josh Baker and his friend JP. Funny guys to run with who both have excellent running stories. I am working on a bio entry for The Rundown on Josh so this was a meet, run and informal interview kind of thing. If anyone lives or work up in the Pflugerville area, Josh is coaching an Austin Marathon training group starting mid August.
  After the run I headed over to Barton Springs to finally catch a swim in between thunderstorms. At 9 am the free swim ends. They make everyone get out of the pool and pay. Since the weather was looking ominous nobody but yours truly was there to swim laps. I had the entire Barton Springs Pool to myself for the first 1/4 mile. It was awesome. I did a 1/4 mile at an east pace and then the next 1/4 mile I did fartleks (speed play) from lifeguard stand to lifeguard stand.  Oh besides me and the lifeguards the only other thing in the pool area was this rabid racoon I saw near the shallow end. I totally forgot to tell somebody about him.

If you look closely at the pic you can see him foaming at the mouth.



Workouts were finished early in the day. Tomorrow is a recovery run with my friend Tony and hopefully another swim like this morning.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Back on track

  So i t looks like last weeks injuries are pretty much all healed up. But the scars...they last a lifetime. Haha. But seriously I am back on for this week of full fledged training. Saturday was supposed to be a 10 mile run that ended up being 12 miles. I didn't look at a map of the run before I started. There was a person at Rogue, who will not be named (Allison), announced the mile five turnaround point when it was actually mile six. Doing that route out and back gave me a 12 mile run instead of the intended 10. I'm glad actually. This way I got in a couple of extra inadvertent miles. I went home, picked up the puppy dogs, drank a recovery shake and headed to Barkin' Springs for some healing.
  Exhaustion caught up with me on Sunday so I did not force myself onto the bike. Later on in the evening I did a nice and easy leisure ride through downtown Austin at sunset. It was pretty nice.
  Today got off to a great start. I was up by 6 am and out the door by 7 for mile repeats on the track. Jealous right? I did a mile warm up at an easy pace followed by 3 mile repeats at 5K pace with a recovery lap in between each mile. I "Cooled Off" with a 1 mile easy run home. My 5K pace is around 7 minute miles. In this heat and humidity I struggled to maintain that pace throughout. When I got home I loaded the pups in the car and took off to Red Bud Isle for some dog time. They were great and I wore my swimsuit to get in the water with them as well. Oskar has been swimming since shortly after I got him back in February but I have never known Lucy to really swim. That is until today. Lucy is officially a swimmer now. Something just clicked with her today. She finally lost her hesitation and was leaping off of rocks to fetch the tennis ball. I was amazed and Oskar was in shock. No longer was he the only one fetching the ball out of the water. Lucy was paddling right along beside him over and over again. It has been a long journey to get her to this point and when I saw her leap into the water from a rock and do a doggie belly flop I knew at that moment that it was mission accomplished.
  I still have a core class in a couple of hours and then swimming with Scooby at Barton Springs.

Friday, June 25, 2010

A Good Day

  So due to a couple of recent injuries I have officially declared this a recovery week. My schedule between The Rookie and The Couples Triathlons was to build for three weeks, recover for one week, build for one week, and then race. I am just switching the last couple of weeks up and making this a recovery week, build next week and recover and race. I am sure it will work out okay. The feet seemed to have healed but since I haven't run all week I think I will just do 10 miles for my long run tomorrow.
  Today I swam a mile at Barton Springs.  It went pretty well. I felt stronger and stronger each lap. Actually it was a very uneventful swim. There weren't any injuries, no naked people and I had a good swim. This makes for a good workout but sadly a somewhat uneventful blog entry.
  The dogs are well. Oskar, Lucy and I went to Auditorium Shores this morning and they ran around like maniacs. Lucy and Oskar have really been getting along well lately. No craziness on that front either. But the day is only half over. Just another day in paradise.
  Wait I do have something. I wrote a quick bio for my friend and coach, Amy Andersen and it is on the rogue blog which can be found here: The Rundown. Check it out.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Do NOT mess with Ladera Norte

   Yesterday's bike ride was born out of an early morning discussion with my roommate about which hill is the toughest in Austin. I have run more of the difficult hills than I have biked so I needed some input on where to do some hill repeats. The three hills we talked about were Mt. Bonnell, Mesa, and Ladera Norte (translates: North Slope). While looking on mapmytri I realized all the hills were close enough to ride them all within a 20 mile loop. By the way Riff Raff does a version of this loop as a run. Are you kidding me?
  So I did three giant hills in one long bike ride but the only problem is I started at 12:30 in the afternoon in about 96 degree heat. I left from Deep Eddy and hit Mt. Bonnell first. By the time I got to the top of the hill I realized as soon as I went down the other side I was kind of roped in to finishing the other 2 hills no matter how I felt. Going down the North side of Mt. Bonnell at about 40 mph around a couple of steep blind corners and hairpin turns I decided there was no going back up this side. By the time I made it to the Mesa hill the Gatorade I had left had warmed up to a sickly temperature. I had to attack Mesa in three stages to rest in the shade and spray cold water on my head. Halfway up the damn thing I was completely spent. Mesa was way harder than Mt. Bonnell. I had no idea. I crested the top of the hill excited to fly down Far West Blvd. to cool off. What goes down must come up, or something like that. At the bottom of Far West is the dreaded Ladera Norte.
   I have built up some mental hurdles concerning this hill. The first time I ran it with Rogue a few years ago it was the first time I wanted to quit in the middle of a long run. It is a 400 foot climb for about .65 miles with a gradation of 12-20%. It is a monster of a hill and in my mind is the hardest of all three. About the halfway mark I had to stop to cool off and catch my breath. To get started again I had to turn back down hill to get enough momentum to clip my right foot in. While trying to do this I had to execute a fast left turn to avoid a truck bearing down on me. I had lost my momentum and fell on my left side since my left foot was still clipped into the pedal. It was a very low speed crash but my shoulder took the brunt of the wreck and not my bike. My right leg however used this unsupervised opportunity to ram itself along the teeth of my crank.
Those are open wounds that fit the exact shape of my bike crank if you scraped it across my leg. It doesn't really hurt and it should heal up in a couple of days. This was at mile 9.56 of a 20 mile ride. I used the last of my water to rinse the affected area and finish my ride. Luckily the majority of the ride from this point on was down hill. Like the title says don't mess with Ladera Norte.
  Taking the day off. I think.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Core and no more Mr nice guy

    No run on Monday because of the foot injuries so I went to Josh's core class at Rogue. His core class is just hard enough for me to get a good workout but it doesn't completely wipe me out like doing the core class at Jack and Adams outside on the hot asphalt.
  I left feeling pretty good so I went for a swim down to Big Stacy. I am afraid that I am retiring Big Stacy from the summer swim locations after today. Not a pleasant experience at the pool tonight. It went down like this:
I showed up after core class at about 7:15. Since it's officially summer now they only had two swim lanes open for lap swimming. The open swim area was really crowded. Lane 1 had two swimmers in it doing a series of drills qith kickboards. I was going to work on a new swim drill my friend Barton came up with that it involves some sprints so I opted to wait for a lane in which I could split it and not swim circles. Lane 2 had three women swimming already so I decided to wait. 30 minutes later two women got out of Lane 2 following a lengthy chit chat. After I stopped a guy trying ti cut in line I finally got in to swim. As I was getting in, the remaining woman was finishing her last lap, but a mother and daughter from the open water area decided to pop in and start doing some laps. Well they actually would swim a couple of strokes, stop, talk, swim a few more strokes stop, etc...Now we were back up to 3 people in the lane. I decided to just keep to my side and let them have the other. After only a couple of laps another guy jumps in about three feet from my outstretched arm to join the fun to make it four swimmers. Ugghh this was getting way too crowded. I swam down and on the way back some jackass decided to join our lane to make it a total of 5. The best part was instead of him waiting to let everyone know he was joining he just went ahead and started backstroking towards me going in the complete wrong direction. I didn't even expect him there in the first place and in the second place HE WAS DOING THE BACKSTROKE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!!!! Yeah I was about 5 inches from cracking my skull against his. At that point I was done. Forget it. It wasn't worth it.
  I was a little more than frustrated with the situation so I just quickly grabbed my stuff and headed for the exit. As I turn to go I see an old guy sitting on a bench watching the swimmers. He couldn't have been younger than let us say 80. He was wearing a black t-shirt with white lettering that read F#*& OFF. His was not the censored version. I will remind you that the whole pool area was crowded with kids and here was somebody's grandfather wearing this stupid shirt. I was at my breaking point already from the smart guys in Lane 2 so I looked at ol' granpa and said this to him as sarcastically as I could muster in such a short notice, "Oh nice shirt, idiot." I think the cherry on top of this ice cream sundae of a story is the fact that I called him an idiot. I mean really? But as a good friend pointed out, anybody wearing a shirt like that is basically inviting confrontation. So I didn't feel too bad. Also the back of his shirt read, I HATE PEOPLE. So there's that.
  I think I will be staying away from Big Stacy till summer is over.

  On a happier note the dogs got to do some playing at auditorium shores. There was an irrigation leak in the middle of the park that created this huge mud pit. Some of the other pet owners were trying to keep their dogs out of the pit. As you can clearly see we went down a different path. Lucy and Oskar seemed to like chasing the ball into the mud, I enjoyed watching them get dirty, the other dogs at the park were frolicking in the mud when they followed Lucy and Oskar. The only group that wasn't very happy with the situation were the dog owners with clean cars. Luckily for me I have given up on ever having a clean car after finding Oskar.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sidelined

Note to self: Be more careful when swimming at Barkin' Springs. I cut my left foot on a rock exactly where my foot strike is when I run. I bruised my right heel when I slipped on a rock as well. I still have a core class this evening and swimming after that but no running for a couple of days at least.

  X parks the spot. The electric tape is the only thing keeping the band aid in place. Oh well I guess the puppy dogs will get a lot more time at the dog park for the next few days.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Weekend Round Up

  I think all of this training is starting to slowly pay off. It is a little frustrating dividing your training hours between the three events because your progression in each individual event is slower than if you were training for let us say just a marathon. If you add the heat and humidity of training in Texas during the summer then it is hard to judge if you are getting any better. Well here I am 2/3 of my way through my latest 3 week build and I don't feel absolutely horrible. Actually I feel pretty good. My plan is to make slow progress for the next 4 months and when the temps drop come race day I hope to have a stellar Half Ironman race!
  After Friday's adventure at Barton Springs the weekend workouts seem a little less exciting. Saturday morning began with about 4 hours of sleep for a 14 mile 6 am run with the good people at Rogue. Warm and humid were the annoying details but the run went pretty well. I started with my friend Scooby for the first couple of miles. It was good catching up with him but he was on a different run schedule than I was. We caught up with his wife Jennifer so I traded up and let Scooby go. We scooped up Super Joe and Incredible Iva and proceeded to slowly grind out the rest of our 14 miler. It was a struggle but I felt better than my last few long runs. Running with good friends really helps too. The requisite dip into Barton Springs with the dogs was a blast and then a long nap.
  Today was an early wake up to ride with Craig, Scooby and Heidi. I rode over to Craig's house off of Exposition to get in some extra miles. I ended up doing a total of 35 miles up and down Shoal Creek, through West Campus, down to Town Lake and back. We had fun and the sprint that Craig and I did southbound on Great Norther Boulevard was definitely the most fun part of the day. Craig got to experience drafting at a high rate of speed for the first time as we leap frogged each other to the end of the road. I also got to explore a trail under Mopac I have never been on before so all in all I say it was a pretty successful day.
  Oskar and Lucy got in some swim time themselves at Barkin' Springs too and are now sleeping soundly under my feet. All is well here at the casa.
                                     This is about as close to still that I can get them to pose.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Catching Up and an Eyeful

   Wow this stuff catches up to you if you don't pay attention to it. I have a couple of days to catch up on so here we go. On Wednesday I did my brick workout at the Veloway. I ended up doing 15 miles on the bike and 4 miles running. The sets were broken up by 3 mile bike loop followed by 1 mile run and repeat. When I first got to the Veloway I did an easy loop warm up before I started the workout. When I was finishing my loop this guy passes me. Immediately it seemed kinda weird. He kept looking back at me as he was riding away. Well when I started my workout loop I wanted to go considerably faster than I did for the first loop so I could get some lactic acid buildup in my legs to simulate racing conditions. I ended up passing that guy from earlier and he instantly sped up to draft off of me. As annoying as that was it didn't compare to how obnoxious he was when we started to hit the turns. He was still right behind me and I was trying to ignore him but on a particularly sharp left turn he dove his bike into the turn to cut me off and pass me. Idiot right? Well I let him get some distance from me because I wasn't there to race Mr. Drafty McDraferton. Sure enough when I got back up to speed for my workout I ended up passing him and he did the same thing but this time he cut the turn way to close and I hit the brakes to let him go way ahead of me. I calmly let that fun guy go and finished my loop. I ran all of my miles at 5K pace slicing off about 20 seconds on my run times every loop. I was hot and tired by the end of it.
  Thursday was my recovery day with Tony on Town Lake for 4 miles. I usually take Ol' Oskar but I decided to give him a little break from the heat and humidity. Oskar, Lucy and I spent a lot of time at Red Bud Isle after that Lucy really got in an swam on her own. You could kind of watch her learning and building up her courage with each pawstroke. She was very inspirational.
  Today was my long swim and I did a mile at Barton Springs. I have forgotten that it is legal for women to go topless at the Springs. So you could imagine my surprise when I was swimming along on the second half of my first lap, I started to pass two swimmers on my left hand side and as I rolled over to breath I received quite a shock as one of the ladies was not wearing a top. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to stop for a second and gather my thoughts but I thought that might seem a little inappropriate. I also felt like if I did stop it would be the perfect camera shot for some sort of candid camera show they must be filming. So I just kept my head down and kept swimming.  About a half mile later the same thing happened with two other girls who were swimming perpendicular to me. They weren't swimming laps but just crossing the pool. They weren't watching where they were going and I barely saw the two submerged breasts in time and stopped my hand from landing right where my intentions might have been called into question. What the heck was going on at the Springs today? I had one more lap and then I got out. I figured it was good open water swim practice while trying to focus with all those distractions. Hahaha.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Practice Tri and Greenbelt running

  Blogger just added some new templates and design features for the blog. In keeping up with the spirit of my training and mental focus as of late I have chosen an aquatic theme to set the mood here. Let me know what you think. Now back to the the task at hand.

  I woke up early on Sunday morning to head up to Lake Pflugerville for a practice triathlon put on by T3. I arrived around 7 ish to park, unload my bike and gear and meet up with my friend Craig who extended the invite for the free practice. They set up a couple of racks to hang our bikes and arrange our transition mats like we would at an actual race. There was probably only about 10 of us there who were practicing and a few T3 coaches but I only caught the name Maurice who was very helpful and very nice to all of us.
  The swim course was a 500 meter loop that Craig and I decided to do twice for some extra swim practice. The water was warm and comfortable and all of the practice sighting in Barton Springs is starting to pay off. We got out of the water and headed to the transition area to gear up for the bike section. Although we weren't blazing through the transitions we weren't going slow either. It was just practice. The bike course was a 12 mile loop forming a rectangle east of the reservoir. We began and then declared we would double up on the bike as well to get a longer ride in. At about mile six in the middle of a hilly climb and a stiff headwind I shouted over to Craig that I thought one bike loop would be about right. Thankfully he agreed  and we parked the bikes back on the rack 6 miles later. A quick change of shoes and then we were off for the three mile run around the Lake. Wow was I hurting for the first mile. Even after I caught my breath I was still dragging the last couple of miles to the finish. T3 had set up a Gatorade cooler at mile two and I was so glad for the breather. We finished the morning and I can't say I took away any specific tidbits of knowledge about the event which I could recall but I can say for sure the body definitely got some work in that morning. I was E X H A U S T E D.
  Monday began early for me but for some weird reason that I don't fully understand Oskar and I weren't on the trail running until about 11:30 am that day. That was unfortunate because I think we both were suffering from the heat. We ran the six mile out and back on the Greenbelt and I let him swim four or five times but he was still not a happy puppy. I am betting that going up and down the Hill Of Life had something to do with it. When we got to Twin Falls at the end of the run we both got in and swam around for about 30 minutes to cool off. It was a nice way to end the run for sure.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Long Bike, Long Run and still a Long Weekend.

   Early Friday morning I suited up for a 40 mile bike ride from my house in east Austin to Decker Lake and back. The route around the lake is the same route for my next race and if you know Decker then you know those great big hills that go with it. I got started about 9 am and cut through some back roads to avoid streets that weren't so bicycle friendly. When I got to Decker I entered the loop on the North West corner of the course and started huffing and puffing my way around it. Around 2 miles in I realized not a single car had passed me. Was it because it was still early in the morning? Okay 10 am is still an early bike ride for me. I got my answer when I got around to the south side of the lake and noticed literally hundreds and hundreds of motorcycles out at the exposition center. I totally forgot it was the Republic of Texas motorcycle rally here in Austin this weekend and people avoid that area if they aren't apart of it. Besides the loud noise the Harley's were great. I decided to do 2 Decker loops and on a down hill on Decker Lane Rd I got up to about 38-39 mph much to the surprise of the motorcyclist that was slowly passing me. 40 miles later and I was zapped of all my strength.
   No time for napping though because Lucy and Oskar needed some play time so it was off to Barkin' Springs. They did great in the crowded waters until it was time to leave. There was a nice pit mix puppy dog that wanted to make sweet sweet love to poor little Oskar. He wasn't having any of it and was running all over the concrete slab trying to escape. The owner of the other dog and I were trying to catch our dogs when Lucy, who was not about to be upstaged, decided to dive directly into the middle of a blanket belonging to a couple of sunbathers. As she was rolling around, tongue hanging out, smiling, mud being plastered all over their belongings one of the girls was laughing hysterically while the other one was well, let's just say she was less than pleased. I had to abandon Operation Rescue Oskar in order to detain Lucy. Luckily the other dog owner broke up the tryst and I snatched Oskar and beat a hasty retreat. Although it was a slightly embarrassing moment it I laughed all the way to the car.
  Today I woke up at around 5 am for my 10 mile run with Rogue. 84 degrees and 80 percent humidity was enough to wear me out. That and I averaged about 2 minutes faster per mile for the last 5 miles. More naps, recovery smoothies, second breakfasts and first lunches later and I am ready to head to work. Woohoo!!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Big Hills and Big Fish!

    Tuesday was a fun filled morning of running hill repeats. Yes I forced myself to run hills by myself. And yes I actually kind of liked them. There is a little hill across the street from the Yellow Jacket Track that runs behind the Millennium Youth Complex on Walnut Ave. If you run up the hill and loop around for the recovery it is just short of a 1/2 mile. The hill is short but according to Map My Tri it has a 9% grade making it quite steep. So I ran from my house to the track and did a couple of loops around the track for a warm up and then started the repeats at 5K pace seven times with the ipod blaring. I have come to discover over the past few years that I tend to run on emotion from time to time and when I need that extra energy music does the trick. This makes for some good workouts but come race day I have to learn some more discipline to harness the power contained within. It's true I have run three marathons, cried at all three. Yep and I am not afraid to admit it.
    The next day was pouring down raining so I got on the trainer for a solid hour spin. Right after that I did this high intensity resistance workout I got from Men's Health (1-year). It's the same one for the guy on that HBO show Spartacus and I figured since he's ripped it must be good. Here's the link for anyone interested.
   Today was my recovery run with Tony at Dirty Bird Lake. I mean Lady Bird Lake actually. The recent rains we have had here in Austin have made Town Lake less than appealing in certain spots. There is a lot of "Stuff" floating around the shores. But after my run today I noticed some very large catfish getting it on in and around the junk near the shores. These things were HUGE. They must have been at least 8-10 inches in diameter.
   My beloved and sweet puppy dog Oskar has finally learned to escape from the back yard. I do not exactly know how he is doing it just yet. He may be crawling under a portion of the fence or he might just be jumping over. I did not think he could jump that high but it is possible he is leaping off the back of a less than thrilled Lucy. I kind of hope it's the latter.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

It's On again

    The lazy recovery week is over and the workload is piling up already. I definitely needed that week off physically and more importantly mentally but now I am ready for another hard three weeks. Emily just completed her Danskin Triathlon, and did quite well, and is heading off to Spain for her sisters wedding (GO Aud and Javi!) so my training partner for the last few months is gone. If anyone out there wants a bike/swim/run buddy I am accepting applications. Applicants must enjoy long bike rides through Texas Hill Country, cold swims in Barton Springs and dogs as Oskar may trip you on a recovery run.
  Yesterday was an hour session on the trainer doing one legged spins and quick spin intervals. A bucket of sweat later and I was at Barton Springs with my friend Barton, no relation, for a 3/4 mile swim in traffic. You really get to practice sighting at 4:30pm on a hot and humid Monday afternoon with hundreds of people swimming, cannonballing, diving, snorkeling and just plain floating all around you. It was very good practice. We were done just in time for Jack and Adams Core class that starts at 5:30. Is is an hour long painful reminder that I am not doing enough core work. Half way through the class a couple of massage therapists set up a table in the parking lot and announced that they would be doing some free work on anybody after we were finished. A couple of people actually stopped doing the class to get massages while we were still doing planks, squats, reverse crunches and what not. We had to watch their bliss through are sweat soaked eyes. Wonderful.
  Today I am feeling sore in all the right places. Woohoo!! It is currently 71 degrees with 70% humidity. Hill repeats here I come.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Recovery Week makes for boring blog.

Sorry, the title says it all but I will write about this weeks training anyways. Tuesday was a light and easy 4 mile run on the trail with Oskar. As per usual we dipped into Barton Springs (aka Barkin' Springs) after we finished. We got an early start so it wasn't terribly hot when we got done running.
 On Wednesday I met my friend Paula out at Decker Lake to ride the Danskin race course that is coming up on Sunday. She just got a bike off Craigslist and wanted some people to ride with out there. It was a nice 12 mile ride with those famous Decker Hills. Paula did pretty good on her new bike and should have a great race this Sunday. I am looking forward to seeing my friends race the Danskin Triathlon early Sunday morning.
  The next morning was a "Recovery" run with Tony and Oskar out on Town Lake. For those who have been keeping up with this blog you may have noticed my annoying penchant for using a different name to describe the same trail: Town Lake, Ladybird Lake, Auditorium Shores, downtown hike and bike. This is because I cannot decide on what name to call it and if you aren't familiar with this running trail it makes it sound like I run at a lot of different places.
   Today was some more Danskin race prep with Emily out at Decker Lake. We got out to the water and saw where the crews were setting up the bike racks and filling in the swim exit shoreline with dirt. Thank God for the dirt filler because trying to walk out of the water on all of those slippery rocks would not be fun at all.
   That is it for the past few days. Tomorrow is a 10 mile run with Rogue at 6 am so no sleep for me tonight.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Recovery Week Begins and Cap Tex

   Sundays ride was from my house in east Austin out to Decker lake and back. All in all it was a hilly, hot, humid, and hilly (did I mention the hills) ride. It was only 28 miles. I was hoping for mid 30's but I had nothing left when I finished. Let recovery week start!!
  Monday afternoon we went out to Lake Pflugerville for some open water practice. There are buoys stationed for a 500M course and I did one loop. I could have done a couple of more but I had to remind myself it's recovery week. The water was warm which helped relax me. After the loop Emily and I practised swimming over each other to mimic a group. It was a good swim.
  Memorial day is also the weekend of the Cap Tex Tri. It is held in downtown Austin at Auditorium Shores with several distances to choose from but the bulk of the participants go for the Olympic which is a 1500 M swim, 40K bike and a 10 K run. It was very inspirational to go and watch everybody and I think I might race it next year. My friend Craig who did the Rookie with me competed and did pretty darn well. I managed to capture him on film in all three sports but unfortunately the 21 mph speed he averaged on the bike made the bike pics way too blurry. So Oskar gets a shameless plug instead.


Clockwise from left: Craig Pre race, Swimming, Finishing his second run loop, and Oskar checking out the bikes.

Congrats to all the participants and next year I will be there.