Ten year anniversary trip to Bermuda

Bri and I have been talking about visiting the island of Bermuda since we moved to North Carolina, and we finally made it happen on our ten year anniversary.  We got away for four nights while my Mom came up to watch Junior Awesome. 

We had a great and relaxing time.  Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory, self-governed but still sharing the British Monarch as titular head of state.  It is entirely a first world country and not part of the Caribbean islands though most people refer to it as such.  It is basically 600 miles east of South Carolina and the nearest land mass is the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Flying here costs as much as flying to Florida or New York.  Once you're down it is more expensive than NC but on par with costs with NYC and other big cities in the US and Europe. 

We spent a good bit of time hanging out with former OSB athlete and our friend Alex, A Bermudian, and his girlfriend Sheryl.  They basically gave us a tour of the island and a trip out to a shipwreck and some of the boiler reefs off-coast.  Lots of fun.

We managed to get a few good runs in and I got a couple short swims in at Horseshoe Bay. 

Enough words: here are pictures.

 View from the lighthouse

 Bri on the beach road

 Some pretty beach, it is

 

More pretty views

 

A shipwreck

 Our cottage

 Selfie on the lighthouse

 Selfie skills

 

Dinner on Front St in Hamilton

 

 The Dolphins at the Fort/Museum on St. Georges

 Bri has a cannon

 Another lighthouse view - our cottage is on the point in center mass

 Bri's breakfast view

 Spelunking with Alex

 Caving is hard work

 A cave lake

 Surrounded by chub (a fish)

 

Off to the boiler reef

 

 I was worried they would leave us after this one

 A beach bar we cruised up to

 Beach bar view

 Long run trail - runs most of the island

 Bri - action shot!

 We ran along the harbour road on the way back

 My real dream job

 Selfie, with rock

 Bri!

 Wave action

 

Cool.

 

Accidental selfie before I put my make up on.

Bulls games

We have also been going to the Durham Bulls games.  They are great family entertainment.  Junior can mingle with his peers while Bri and I watch the game and/or mingle with ours.  The tickets and concessions are reasonably priced and there are no crazed Philly / NY / Chi town fans screaming obscenities in your kid's ears.  Peace and love, big city kids.

 The sun and some airplanes.

Also, I took Junior Awesome to get his second haircut.

 Before.

Mostly after.

 And finally, some more Durham Bulls.

 Focus, dadda.

 Cheesepopsicles smile

 Home run Bull

 At Tobacco Road

Chillin.

TOA sprint report 2014 and other things.

I had a good race and won overall at the TOA sprint at Beaverdam.  My time was 3 minutes faster than last year, where I was 4th.  Yayz!  BriGaal and JuniorAwesome were there to cheer me on.  We had fun.  Here are pictures. They're not in order but you can figure it out.

 Getting ready to high five JuniorAwesome.

 Getting off the bike. Duh.

 I swammed.

 Oops.

Overall winner Kari also gets a high five.

 Finishing up.

Then we had a big weekend of training with our crew.  Here are pictures.

 The triple brickers.

 The finished up runners of the triple brickers.

My salt loss ratio is higher than normal.

The end.  I would type more but am tired.

Sampson county supersprint race report - the best race report ever

My goal in writing this update is to take more time than the actual Sampson County Supersprint Triathlon did.

The distances are almost perfect for the time-crunched triathlete: 250 yard pool swim, 7 mile bike, and a 2(.2) mile run. If there were a local series of these that took place in open water instead of a pool, I would be all over it.  You get to be a triathlete without all the wear and tear of those silly longer events!  I'm not joking.  Seriously.

It was raining but not chilly, thankfully.  I was in charge of Junior Awesome for the weekend as Bri went out of town to support a couple of our buddies at some ridiculously hard ultra-run called Leatherwood.  It was raining and muddy and cold there.  They had water, Gatorade, and PBR at all the aid stations. Seriously.  I'm not joking.

Our superstar babysitter Miss R arrived on time and played with Junior Awesome all morning, freeing me up to do the triathlon.

Tenacious E and I arrived at the race site in Clinton, 1hr15 away from Cary, with an hour to spare, so we did not have to rush through anything.  I took a leisurely potty break and caught up on my twitter feed.  Did you know most of my best tweets are sent from the toilet?  I'm not joking!  Seriously.

After that I got my transition set up and went for a jog.  I would normally bike for a warm up but did not feel like getting all soaked as it was drizzling.  I probably ran for 13.65 minutes as a warm up and then stretched for 2.3 minutes.   I also plastered Chamois cream all over myself.  Not just my crotch, but my armpits and the backs of my knees as well.  I love the smell of chamois cream in the morning.  Smells like victory.

After I was lubed up, I headed over to the pool.  A nice volunteer was collecting people out front in an orderly fashion and said we couldn't go in to warm up.  I walked to another door and saw about 20 people in the pool warming up.  So I mumbled something about "that guy has my goggles" to the young volunteer standing at that door and headed inside. 

I proceeded to swim about 600 yards.  It might be just 500 but was no greater than 650.  2 of these lengths were swum at a faster than leisurely pace; 2 were breaststroke; and 2 were backstrokes.  I also did one length of kicking.  There were 2 other people in my lane. I am so bored right now.  I'm so happy you're still subjecting yourself to this nonsense. Please, please don't stop.

After the warm up I made my way over to where they were lining up swimmers to start off in a time trial fashion.  I was number 9.  At every pool meet, people seed themselves incorrectly.  The website says to enter your estimated 100 meter pace.  Not your best time; not your 50 meter time; not some fantasy lottery combination of numbers.  If you don't enter anything, you start at the back.  I entered 1:05, which is way faster than I can swim these days, but was still seeded 9th.  As we waited for everyone to show up, I realized Tenacious E was not there.  I told Big D, who was starting the swimmers, that the friendly volunteer out front probably still had 20+ of the first 50 swimmers waiting in a cold drizzle, while we were getting ready to get started.  He quickly sent another volunteer to fetch them.  I found this amusing on several levels.  1) the people who followed her orders did not get to warm up 2) they almost did not make it in time and 3) the number 1 fellow was not very fast, nor were 2,3,6, and 8.  4) none of these reasons are funny except that they almost didn't make it in because they were following the rules, which leads me to believe that following the rules all the time is not the best thing you can do, unless the rule is there to keep you safe and warm - which this one clearly was not.

There is only one picture in this update, and you will have to wait for it, wait for it at the end.  It is so awesome.  Don't scroll down!  Don't do it! 

So...I started and passed the girl ahead of me, a teenager who let me get by without a hitch.  it was clean waters until I got jammed up behind Tenacious E and the number 1 guy and number 3 guy I believe.  We eventually got past them and swam to the finish together, in perfect synchrony, with our shiny matching outfits.  People cheered loudly, with thunderous applause.

We exited the water.

We ran to our bikes.

We got on the bikes.

We rode the seven miles.  It was super slippery and raining hard for a fair bit.  I was very cautious on the turns but felt pretty good.  I passed 1 girl, slowly pulled away from E, and saw just 2 guys ahead of me.  Both of them are super fit but I did my best to catch them, because that's what we do; we catch the people in front of us, or experience sharp stabs of pain and agony trying.  Just do it.  Nobody ever reaches their goals taking the easy road.  Be the ball, Danny.

I did not catch them, try though I did.  Yay, for it was not to be.

I finished the bike.  I got off my bike.  I ran into transition with my bike.  I took off my helmet.  I put my bike on the rack. I thought about not putting socks on but decided to put them on.  I don't like blisters.  Putting the socks on took about 5 extra seconds.  But I did not get blisters.  Then I put my shoes on.  I was sitting so had to stand back up..  We get the point. Oh. My. God. Shut. Up.

My calves almost cramped running out of transition but I stepped gingerly and they eventually loosened up.  Things went pretty well except for an officer directing me off course for a few seconds; I realized he was wrong and went the right way.  Might have lost 15-20 seconds there.  Kept the effort up to the finish and kicked a bit down the chute.  I did my best to put a look of extreme discomfort on my face as I did this so everyone would know just how hard I worked out there.  I mean, what's the point if you make it look easy?  Pshaw.

I would go on but have other things to do tonight, like cut my toenails.  I'm not joking! Seriously.  My hands are also starting to hurt.  I almost beat the time but won't quite make it unless I come back and edit with a bunch of pictures of strangers or additional motivating quotes like roar like a lion in the heat of the silver moon.  You can check the website to read my splits.  I could type them in here but that would be so over the top self-involved given the inward looking nature of this report already.  They were 3:21 swim, 18:37 bike, 14:47 run.  Uuuh, I didn't mean to do that.  Sorry. Shit.

After it was all said and done I finished 3rd overall by just 0.4 seconds ahead of 4th.  I officially apologize to the 4th place guy for being the douche ahead of you that gets this ridiculously large 2nd overall loser trophy.

 

I mean, this thing is brilliant, but I am a grown man with a 2 year old in the house.  He already tried to open it to put his cars inside the 2nd level garage (this should be obvious to you, if it's not you have no children or no imagination). It's going in the guest bathroom, next to the potty where I can see it all the time, with Bri's All Star trophies from high school. I'm not joking. That is how we roll up in this joint.

Peace out. Word. Exhausting.

Winter camp & marathon bumps in the road

We had a nice time at our annual Florida winter training camp during the week of March 1-8.  We returned to Treasure Island and a pleasant beach house for our base of operations.  During the week we logged 200+ miles riding, 30+ running, and 10k or more swimming.  I broke 20k swimming for the week with a couple additional Masters swim team practices with the St Pete Masters club.  All in all, lots of fun.

We capped the week off with the Armadillo 5k/10k run in Oldsmar, just a few miles north of Treasure Island.  Bri won the 5k in sub-20 and I ran well for a 41:26 in the 10k.  OSB campers also had some good times considering the amount of hours we put in during the week.

During the week we also managed to sneak in a couple visits to the local breweries:

 Cycle Brewing on Central Ave in St Petersburg

Green Bench Brewing Co on Baum Ave in St Petersburg

We also got to spend a little time with my sister and her family in Orlando, as well as Bri's sister and her family (including their 3 week old baby) in Jacksonville.  My Sis & Mom watched Junior Awesome during the week, which is much appreciated!  If we do the camp again Bri and I will be taking turns as the strain of travel and being away from home and all that is a bit much for all of us.

Of course, we capped out visit in Jacksonville with a stop at the Aardwolf Brewery.

I took it very easy the following week, just moving the body around a bit in preparation for my next event: On Saturday, March 15 (last weekend) I was signed up to run the Instant Classic Trail Marathon in Pocahontas state park, outside Richmond.  This is a really nice park for running and mountain biking, if you're ever in the area and the mood. I have been training for this race with a fair amount of seriousness all winter.

Unfortunately things did not go in an ideal way, which is to say, things went really yucky, as far as racing is concerned.  On Wednesday evening Junior Awesome got ill and vomited all over himself and me.  Forward a couple of days to Friday night/Saturday morning.  I woke up several times during the night for urgent bathroom visits.  My alarm went off at 410am for the drive up.  I went to brush my teeth, and next thing you know I'm puking all over the sink.  I would have taken a picture but you can imagine. :)

At this point I would have called it a day and gone back to bed, but a buddy of mine Bobby was also planning to run; and in fact, I had talked him into doing the run with me.  I couldn't just bail at the absolute last minute.  So I sucked it up and drove over to get him.  On the drive up I was able to take in about 10oz of fluid and half a PBJ.  Better than nothing and I did not feel awful.  I didn't feel great, but that is often par for the course.  Bobby drove the last hour which allowed me to snooze a bit.  Meanwhile, Bri let me know that while she wished I felt better, she was feeling worse and to please get home as soon as possible.

We started the race at 8AM and clicked off the miles together.  I felt like it could be a decent day until around mile 5 when the body aches started getting worse.  It was a rapid downhill and I started feeling woozy/dizzy to boot.  By mile 9 I told Bobby I was going to have to drop out and to go on ahead.  At the 10 mile mark I asked the volunteers what the quickest way back to the start was. "Uh, about 7 miles, that way," the guy said.  I suppose the look of horror on my face inspired another to ask, "Want to see if we can get you a ride?"  Yes, please.   I went straight to my car and back to sleep for another hour.  Bobby went on to finish strong. 

I've got no problem forging on when tired, sore, broken down, but being ill is another thing and vigorous or prolonged exercise while ill may put you at risk for myocarditis (heart muscle inflammation as a result of viral infection), which I can definitely do without.

I came home to find Bri feeling awful and in a lump on the couch, so tookover Dad duties and visited the park and then Bass Pro Shops, which Junior enjoyed immensely.

The weekend did go well for many of our athletes in various half and full marathons around the country, though, so it was not all bad!  We also had fun cheering on the competitors at the Tobacco Road Half and Full Marathons on Sunday morning.

And we recovered well enough to finish Sundayfunday with a family trip to the Fortnight Brewery, which is a stone's throw away from our house.

So, that is that for marathons this season. I gave some thought to finding a make up race but there is too much juggling involved these days.  Onward and upward into the triathlon season! which kicks off for me on March 29 with the Sampson County SuperSprint.  I am mildly disappointed but you can't control everything, and kids make that * N to the power of Nth.  Life is good.

Carry on.