Jon's Jibber-jabber

Today I completed my 6th marathon and second Marine Corps Marathon.  Coming off of a hard tri season, I didn't set any goals or expectations for is race.  I have Space Coast Marathon coming up in a month and the MCM would be a check-in run.   This year's MCM was nearly derailed by the government shutdown.  Due to the use of federal lands that were closed, if the government had remained closed the race could not have been run.   Last time I did this race it was 32 degrees at the start, so I expected it to be cold. That said, race time temperature was 41 degrees.  It was just cool enough to know the race wouldn't heat up but not too cold that it was uncomfortable.  I started slow and probably back too far.  I was well behind the 4:30 pace group at the start and I knew it would get crowded.   It is self seed at the start so you could really start anywhere.  About mile one, I noticed that I had hit the wrong button on my watch and didn't start the crono.  Instead o

So I have been bad about posting recently. I have been busy at work and my wife and I took a two week vacation, complete with a Disney cruise.   Today I completed my first half Iron distance race.  It was supposed to be a 70 (70.3 with the swim shortened to represent the 70,000 young adults diagnosed with cancer each year).  They had to shorten the bike by three miles for this year due to construction on the bike course.  I've also heard it was to meet NCAA standards on the Olympic course, which shares portions with the half.   But 67 is close enough to 70.3.  And it's a unique distance. Last year's race day conditions featured a high of 52 with rain showers.  The race staff warned everyone to prepare for cold temps.  Then came this week with its August-like tendencies.   Swim: the swim was organized in waves with a time trial start in each wave.  Basically, two people entered every five seconds.  It was probably the best thing about the day.  It gave me a chance to get out

So this post is a little contemplative. I have been doing a lot of research on cycling between buying my bike and researching the next bike purchase (for my wife). Of the three sports that comprise triathlon, cycling is the most complex. Swimming is just you. Running is just you. You can do both naked and barefoot if you really want. In order to cycle, you need a bike. It is a change of mind, coming from running, to rely on equipment in order to complete a race. For novice triathletes (including yours truly), the concept of equipment failures and the complexity of moving parts is difficult. In the beginning, it was intimidating. The more you understand about cycling, the more comfortable you become with the risks. Here I go on a little tangent. I promise I'll circle back. In epidemiology, the foundation of the discipline is a concept centered on the "epidemiologic triad" or "epidemiological triangle." Transmission of disease has three parts: host, agent,

Event: Ft Ritchie Triathlon and Duathlon Location: Cascade, MD Distance: Olympic (Sprint also available) Date: August 4th, 2013 This past weekend I participated in the Ft. Ritchie triathlon held in the Cacoctin Mountains in Cascade, MD.  Ft. Ritchie is an old abandoned military installation near Camp David and serves as the backdrop for this event.  This year was the event's fourth year.  This year, the race was sanctioned by USAT for the first time.  Cascade is about an hour and 45 minutes from Annapolis (one hour thirty minutes if I don't drive).  This would be my second Olympic distance triathlon. Swim : The swim course was in Lake Royer on the Ft Ritchie grounds.  The lake is small and is not open to swimmers or power boaters except for events.  The Olympic course was two 750m loops.  You had to run along the beach and down the pier in between loops.  The water quality was cloudy but surprisingly clean.  There was a moderate amount of vegetation, especially in more s

This past week was a race prep week for me.  I am prepping for the Ft. Ritchie Triathlon next weekend.  I should have had this post out on Sunday but I saved it as a draft and forgot to post it.  I found myself modifying my training plan a bit this week to prepare for the upcoming race.  My plan has the goal of the half-Iron in October so this upcoming race isn't built in.  Nevertheless, it was easy to modify a few of the workouts for more race specific training.  For instance, I added in more hill training to get used to climbing and shortened some of the distances since the Olympic distance doesn't require 50+ miles on the bike.  Saturday I did an open water swim with Racine Multisport.  Racine uses Lake Royer (where Ft. Ritchie is held) and they do several open water swims throughout the year.  There is no coaching or organized swim workout.  Basically, you pay around $8 and get a swim cap that allows you to swim in the lake.  Normally, the lake is off limits to swimmers.

I started a new training phase in July, incororating hills into my workouts.  Both Ft.Ritchie and Half Full are both described as "hilly" by locals. Now this being Maryland, hilly is a relative term.   I grew up in the Poconos of PA, where there aren't the mountains of Mont Vantoux or Alpes d'Huez but more than the 50 ft climbs that count as hills in MD. Ft. Ritchie (now two weeks away) does have climbs that are categorized.  I looked up the route and it had been tracked on mapmyride.com. This site categorizes climbs from GPS uploads based on similar criteria that is used for cycling events.  Ft. Ritchie has a short 3/4 mile category 5 climb and a longer 3.75 mile category 3 climb.  Knowing this, I felt it was time to try to get in as much work as possible on the hills around here. In doing that, I am trying to put together some courses that repeat some of the steeper or longer climbs in the Annapolis area.  This is pretty hard as our climbs aren't as long or

Last week, I purchased a new trunk mount bike rack.  I have an older Bell bike rack that I think I picked up at Walmart but it isn't stable for long trips or multiple bikes.  I'd been looking around for a new rack but prices are pretty steep for most good bike racks.  Neither of my cars have a hitch nor do they have cross bars.  The setup for putting a roof-mounted rack on one of the cars would come in close to $400 with all of the equipment and then the racks.  So multiply that by two for both vehicles and it is very out of my range.  A trunk mount could be passed back and forth between vehicles if I found the right one. Before I start, let me tell you that the bike rack I got last week was free.  In fact, I actually gained money on it.  Here's how it happened.  About a month ago, my wife and I opened an REI visa since we shop there frequently and could get pretty much extra dividend money with the card's cash back on REI purchases.  With our first purchase on the ca

Last week, I wrote that I'd be participating in the One Run for Boston on Friday 6/28.  Here is my recap:  I headed up to my hometown in Pennsylvania on Thursday night.  My segment of the run started Friday morning at 8:20am.  It's a four hour drive from Annapolis, so I needed to head up early.  Thursday night there were severe storms in the area along my drive.  I stayed a little longer than usual at the office to let the storms pass.  I still hit the tail end of them on my last hour of the drive, but I'm glad I didn't hit them head on.  I was worried it would still be rainy for the run in the morning. On Friday, I got up around 6:00am to get ready for the run.  Kelly, our segment organizer, sent us a message the previous day to meet at the local high school for the relay exchange at around 8am.  At about 6:30am, we got a text message from Kelly that the baton was about an hour behind schedule based on her conversation with the leg ahead of ours.  That was surprising

This week was the official start of summer.  Well, meteorological summer actually began June 1st but the solstice happened late this week.  With the arrival of summer, I typically suspend my race season.  I don't like to sign up for races in the summer simply due to the fact that it can get really hot and stormy here in the Mid-Atlantic.  I have one triathlon in August but with the water and the bike, the heat would not be as bad as running, say a marathon.  I like summer for training because the hours are long.  I can get up early and train in daylight.  When I get home at night after my hellish commute, I still have plenty of daylight to do a proper workout.  But the heat is still my Achilles heel.   This weekend I was reminded of why I made this "personal rule" of no summer racing.  The heat and humidity returned in full force.  It hasn't gone above 90F too often yet but this humidity makes it miserable even at 88F.  Training was going quite well this week for t

At many races that I attended recently (and in Triathlon magazines), I kept seeing people with drink bottles on their aerobars.  The straws from these bottles came right almost to their faces.  I thought it was rather funny.  I used to call them "lazy bottles" because I kept thinking: "wow, you can't even bend over for your bottle."  Either these people were so intense that the micro movement of reaching for a bottle would take off a precious millisecond, or they were completely lazy.  But I became curious and bought the Profile Design Aerodrink to "tri". Profile Design is a monolithic company in accessories, especially aerobars and the likes.  Most of the aerobars and non-moveable parts on triathlon bikes are made by Profile Design.  They have a wide model line up.  My cockpit setup is completely by Profile Design.  I would venture to say the Aerodrink and its different variants from PD are the top selling hydration system for aerobars out there.  I

Today is Father's Day.  I am not a father (unless you count my fur-children) but Father's day means the Annapolis Striders' Dawson's Father's Day 10k on the Baltimore Annapolis Trail.  It's not really a trail but a paved bike/run path.  This is an out and back course on mostly flat terrain.  It was my PR 10k last year.  I look forward to this race as the trail is very familiar to me since I run this portion frequently. Yesterday, I needed to do 20 miles on the bike for my training plan.  It was such a beautiful day that I decided to keep riding.  About half-way back on my course, I realized that I had a race the next morning.  In the end, I had to get back to my car regardless so I ended up doing 30 miles.  The tri bike certainly helps reduce the stress on the legs. I wasn't really sure how this race was going to go so I just ran it without a Garmin/Timex GPS.  It was pretty humid here this morning and I felt it.  The race itself was uneventful and I fin

Almost immediately after finishing Rocketman, I decided that I need a new bike.  If I intended to do an Ironman distance race in the near future, there was no way possible I could do it on my entry-level Fuji road bike.  But my wife and I had agreed that I wouldn't buy any new gear that wasn't essential (wetsuit was essential for this race) until after I did the tri in case I really didn't like it. For one week, I went to nearly every bike shop in Annapolis, Baltimore and Columbia, Maryland.  I looked at every brand possible and did some intense internet homework, reading reviews, specs, and forums like it was my job.  After much research, I went with the Orbea Ordu from Parvilla Cycle and Multisport in Annapolis.  (Side note:  I HIGHLY recommend this shop.  Great service and they carry the specialty brands that you won't find in "box stores." Or as I call them the "me too's.  They are also fitting champions with the ability to do 3D motion capture