Quick Photo from the Finish of My 2 Miler Today

>> Saturday, June 29, 2013

Henry ran out to me and wanted a hug 50 feet before the finish line!



I had to brush him off and finish the darn race first! I think my priorities are mixed up... :)

Back with more photos and my results on Monday. I did WELL, and a lot of my wife's family raced with me!!

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Friday Funny 543: Hipsters Who Dress Like Jackie From Roseanne

>> Friday, June 28, 2013

Proving there are blogs that exist about anything and EVERYTHING, allow me to present "Hipsters Who Dress Like Jackie From Roseanne."























Call me a hipster, but I would love to wear that last chicken shirt.

More "funnies" on steveinaspeedo.tumblr.com.

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Friday Funny 542: The Summer Heat

It's been warm here lately. Not insanely warm, but because we had a cold Spring, it feels like we jumped from Winter to Summer. Here are some signs that it's a little too hot outside:



(That last one was a hanger left in a hot car.)

Click here for more funny / athletic stuff.

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Friday Funny 541: Funny Lies You Tell Your Kids




Regarding the "pee in the shower" one, I thought for a long time that if someone flushed the toilet while I was in the tub that the poop would come back up into the tub through the drain. (Our household was pretty open - we'd use the bathroom a lot while other people were in there.)

And regarding that last one, Henry will see a bottle of wine and say "MOMMY!!"

Check out steveinaspeedo.tumblr.com for "funnies" all week long.

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Henry Update, More Nasty Intervals, and Weekend Race!

>> Thursday, June 27, 2013

1: HENRY UPDATE:

Henry STILL has some small scabs on his feet from his "hand, foot, and mouth disease" that he came down with over 2 weeks ago. He hasn't been contagious for over a week, and he's been feeling GREAT this past week. We've been having a blast together so far this summer. We started having adventures down by the Mississippi River when he was sick and needed to "burn off some energy" but couldn't be around other kids (at daycare or the park). So the 2 of us would go exploring:


Watching barges.




Laughing at military helicopters flying low overhead!


Playing at Hidden Falls.


Checking out the storm damage from last weekend.
(That tree was hollow and just full of "ant mush" seen in front of Henry.)


Throwing weeds into the river.


2: MORE NASTY INTERVALS:

Coach Jen had me do some 400s yesterday to help get me ready for the road mile that I'm doing in 2 weeks. Here was her plan (which I posted more about this past weekend):



It was hot, humid, and lonely at the track at 4:45 a.m. yesterday:


75 degrees and 73 degree dew point - that's more than "tropical."

When I ran with the breeze down the back-stretch, my glasses fogged up from my breath every time I exhaled. Nasty. I was really working hard for Coach Jen. Here's what I ran:

70.4
68.0
69.8
70.6
70.4
70.0
69.9
70.3
69.93 / 400 average


I thought I'd look much, much worse when I finished. This doesn't look NEARLY as bad as I felt.


3: FIRST TWO MILE RACE THIS WEEKEND:

Henry and I will continue our father / son adventures this weekend by driving down to spend a day with all 4 Grandpas and Grandmas! My wife's hometown church is hosting their annual summer celebration called "Friendship Day." (Really. How much more perfect small-town Americana can you get?) And they are having a 2-mile road race for the first time. I THOUGHT it was just going to be Pharmie's sister and I racing...


Auntie Annie with Henry and Evie at the pool last weekend!

... but I just found out that Evie's Mom and Dad (Pharmie's other sister and her hubby), one of Pharmie's brothers and his girlfriend, and one of Pharmie's cousins are all doing it too! So I'll be part of a clan of 7 doing that 2-mile race! And it's fitting that the starting line is right out the front door of the church where we were married nearly 10 years ago:


WE LOOK LIKE BABIESSSSSSS!!!!!

I don't know the course for the race, but I've heard there's no gravel. It either must go out into the country and come back or do 2 loops somewhere in town because her hometown is tiny - just 199 people. It's roughly 3 blocks by 5 blocks. I'm hoping to be the first finisher over the age of 17 - I'm expecting to be beat by a lot of high school CC runners. I've never done a 2 mile race, but sub-11:00 sounds like a nice goal, right? I'll shoot for that. Keep an eye on my twitter page and my instagram - I'll try to post updates, but my phone gets real shitty reception "back home."

Wish me luck!

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Semi-Wordless Wednesday: the Two Faces of Spectating at a Race

>> Wednesday, June 26, 2013

I found this gem in a gallery of Trinona Triathlon photos. It's the 2 normal reactions to spectating at a race:



Spot on.

Well played, cute old couple.

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A Final Round of Great Trinona Tri Photos

>> Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Here are a few final photos from the Trinona Triathlon 2 weeks ago. Some are from a newspaper article and some are from a SmugMug gallery of Trinona Tri photos. I couldn't find any of Pharmie, but here some I want to share:


A bagpiper led the athletes to the water - it was awesome.


It was wet pre-race.


A big row of wet spectators.


A weird photo of 4 people I know: DKT exhaling, Thad practicing his stroke,
Devon breaking his neck, and Bridget shrugging her shoulders.


GRANNY'S GOT GUNS!!! I'm impressed!


One of the coolest photos from a triathlon starting line that I've seen!




There was a volunteer standing there saying "IT'S SLIPPERY - BE CAREFUL!"


Sweet shot of climbing "the bluff."


There were lots of ducks. But surprisingly little duck poop.


Captain America, ladies.


A close-up, ladies.


Awesome.


There was an awesome typo on the medals. It SHOULD say "Battle for the Bluff."
Can you see the mistake?


Amblyn (835) nearing the finish of her FIRST triathlon!!


3 of our local speedy dudes chatting post-race: Ross, Devon, and Dan.
(Ross, what are you doing with your face?)


David Thompson (DKT) on his way to his 4th Trinona win.
Click here for a post-race interview with David.


Cathy Yndestad about to win the female race (with sugarloaf in the background).


DKT getting a smooch from the "podium girls" at the awards ceremony...


... and then some awkward smiles post-smooch.

- CLICK HERE for my Time Trial race report.
- CLICK HERE for a 3-minute video of everyone climbing the bluff at the TT (from my helmet cam).
- CLICK HERE for photos of Pharmie and our friends racing the Trinona Triathlon.
- CLICK HERE for more photos from the Time Trial.

p.s. If anyone wants to run intervals with me, I'll be on the St. Thomas track tomorrow (Wednesday) starting just before 5 a.m. Coach says 400s. It's gonna be nasty.

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No Triathlon for Us Yesterday

>> Monday, June 24, 2013

I hate excuses, but yet I feel compelled to share 6 reasons why Pharmie and I opted out of doing the Rochesterfest Triathlon yesterday:

1. My rear derailleur cable broke the night before the race at 8 p.m. I tweeted for help (all local bike shops were closed by then), and Jeremy showed up within the hour. THANKS JEREMY! He worked on swapping out a cable from my mountain bike:




It looks like our clothes line is GIANT or Jeremy is a small person. But he's just on his knees.

The cable ended up being just a few inches too short, so it didn't work! My bike had 2 gears: the hardest gear in the big chainring, or the hardest gear in the small chainring. I was willing to give it a shot at the race. It was just a 10 mile bike.

2. Because my bike was broke, we planned on getting up before 4 a.m. to make the 90 minute drive to the race to hopefully find a mechanic to fix my bike. That never sounded like fun.

3. My shoes were still soaked from getting caught in the storm on Friday night. This is a totally lame excuse, but whatever. I was caught down by the river when the nasty storm rolled in on Friday night. (Between the storm on Thurs night and Friday night, there are places in the Metro that will be without power until Wednesday! We have friends just a few blocks away who have been without power for over 3 days now.) I was seriously afraid for my life for a while, and I was happy I at least had my RoadID "Shoe ID" on my shoe in case something happened to me. The rain was sheeting down so hard (and sideways), that cars were pulling over on the side streets because they didn't want to drive in it. I could only see car lights 1 - 1.5 blocks ahead of me - the wind and the rain were insane. It was like nothing I'd ever been out in.


Shoes still drying on the porch.

4. When I looked at the radar at 3:30 a.m. on race morning, it looked like this:


The race was in Rochester, and the sh*t was getting ready to move through in the next few hours.

I was still willing to give it a shot, so I loaded up the bikes:


My car with the bikes loaded on the back. I swear. Remember, it was 4 a.m.

It turns out that the race was delayed a few times because of the storm, and then I heard (via Facebook and a twitter post) that it was just a little rainy but REALLY windy for the swim and bike. Yeah, that would NOT have been fun with 2 gears on my bike...

5. We missed pre-race registration. We had to figure out what to do with Henry. Once we got that figured out (he was going to spend the night at a friend's house), we had to wait for race-day registration. So we hadn't paid yet. We heard that there were still spots open, but we didn't know how quickly they'd fill up.

6. We'd been sleeping crappy all week. We've been pooped. When I went up to Pharmie at 4 a.m., I told her about the radar picture and told her it was her call. (I was leaning towards not doing it, but I could've gone either way.) She voted for "being cozy." Done. I unloaded the bikes in the dark, and I went down to the basement bathroom to get my traditional pre-race "porta potty" shot:


Dear God... I never realized that when I redid our basement bathroom
a few years ago that I PAINTED IT (nearly) PORTA-POTTY GREEN!!! HOW PERFECT!!!

The icing on the "signs-not-to-do-the-race" cake was that when I changed out of my tri shorts and back into my FAVORITE pair of boxers (that my parents got in Mexico a few years ago) at 4:15 a.m., my toe caught the seam and TORE A BIG FREAKING HOLE IN THE LEG:



At that moment, I was convinced that all the signs were telling us that if we raced, one of us would have died. I was happy to crawl back into bed with my cozy wife and sleep another 3 hours (instead of driving for 90 minutes, paying $80 each, and racing in a thunderstorm). We woke up just before 8 and I teased Pharmie: "Hey, your race starts in 20 minutes." She sarcastically said "Well then I guess we'd better get going." We didn't get going. We had sex instead.

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