W-F

Wednesday
Today was beach day. I slept in late and did absolutely nothing productive all day. After breakfast I went out to the sand to tan, in full local attire. That's right, I'm way more Euro than you ;)

Had a bratwurst for lunch, then siesta. Dinner was spent hanging out at one of the German pub-type spots, watching Stuttgart get absolutely ripped by FC Barcelona 4-1.

Thursday
I said my goodbyes to the Balearics and flew back to Barcelona. Even though it is still the low season in Mallorca it isn't hard to believe it when they say Palma's airport is the busiest in Spain. The plane landed a little early, so I had time to catch an earlier bus to Andorra, though that meant skipping lunch. The ride out from Barcelona was spectacular, the Pyrenees create an environment unlike any other mountain range I've ever seen. I arrived at Sant Julia de Loria, the little hamlet I was basing the Andorran leg of the trip around, at about 6:00. Too early for any dinner places to be open, so I went into the capital to see what this tiny country was all about.

Andorra is a unique country in several ways. It is the only country with Catalan as the official language, even though it is not the native tongue of a majority of its citizens. It is also the only nation in the world with two separate heads of state, one from Spain and one from France. Not sure what this does as far as affecting the whole legislative process, but I'm not sure any of the Andorrans really notice (or care). There are only three state maintained roads in the whole country, and they run through the valleys between the mountain giants all around, connecting the seven different villages that make up the principality.

Andorra may be small, but it is big on two things: skiing and shopping. The skiing is obvious, as Andorra's geography gives it the best skiing in the Pyrenees. The shopping is due to some crafty marketing on behalf of the government. Since the country has such a small population (≈85,000), over 60% of the country's GDP is created by tourism and finance. The lawmakers decided to play that up even further my making Andorra a tax haven. This gives the nation the lowest prices in Europe on just about everything, and both retailers and shoppers take full advantage. There is one store in Andorra for every 40 people, a staggeringly high number. French and Spanish citizens pop in and out for all manner of designer goods and trendy electronics. The shops are so concentrated that the capital, Andorra la Vella, is really more like an incorporated outlet mall than a center of government. They also probably have the nicest soccer stadium of any country to never win an international match, it's some of the only flat land in the whole nation.

Friday
This is the day I made the only big boo-boo of the trip. My whole purpose for coming to Andorra was to try out nordic skiing at La Rabbassa, the only ski resort I've seen that just does cross-country skiing. Unfortunately, it is at the very top of a windy 17km road with no municipal transportation or accommodations closer than the bottom of the mountain in Sant Julia. The only way to get up there if you don't have your own car is to take an expensive taxi or use the van provided by the resort. This wouldn't be so bad if there was someone who could actually tell me when this elusive bus was running!

Even so, I regrouped and decided that a few hours of skiing was better than no skiing at all. A lady finally told me when the next bus was heading up, so I went out there 10 minutes early and rode to the top. There was probably only one or two weeks of the season left, so no snow in the valley and not much at the top except for on the trails. I was fortunate in that I asked for a lesson in English, so that really meant a private lesson because everyone else’s lessons would be in Spanish or Catalan. My instructor was great, and it turns out Nordic skiing comes pretty natural for me. I picked up classic style in about 20 minutes and skating in less than an hour. By the time I had to leave to go back down the mountain, I had all the skiing I wanted. People aren’t kidding when they say it’s the most physically demanding sport there is. The bus ride to Girona was about 3 hours, and I just wandered around the city a little while to get my bearings.

Sunday-Tuesday

Sunday
This morning I slept in a little, but still got going with enough time to go to La Sagrada Familia right when it opened at 10:00. It's the dominating feature of the Barcelona skyline, and is master architect Antoni Gaudi's opus. Basically, La Sagrada Familia is a modern day incarnation of the great Renaissance cathedrals, all the way down to the fact that it's been under construction for over a century and still isn't finished. They are shooting for a 2026 completion date, but whenever they hit it, it will be impressive. The cathedral is massive, and a math scholar's dream. The whole thing is full of parabolic curves and double helicoid columns. To me it is exactly what the Italian masters would have done if they had access to calculus. At first I wiped it off as all being too modern for me, but then they had a little exhibit about Gaudi's nature-influenced design philosophy, and I fell in love with it. Not only was Gaudi an artist, but really an incredible engineer. Pictures will have to come later, since I left the camera-computer cable at home. On the outside, the apse (rear) and two of the three facades have been finished. The Nativity and Passion facades were each done by different Spanish sculptors, and I liked them, but I think they are both dead and am not sure who they have commissioned to do the final Glory facade.

That whole experience really piqued my interest in Gaudi, who I had not heard much of or read anything about before the trip. So I changed the plan of the day to visit his other big project, Parc Guell. This public park was originally supposed to be an upscale subdivision, but that flopped so the city purchased it and turned it into a garden/park area. The same ideas from the cathedral were carried out here, without the constraints of needing to be reverent or reserved. There are still plenty of sine waves and catenary arches, but add to that loads of colorful ceramic tilework and the result is stunning.

Those two stops used up the morning and most of the afternoon, so I journeyed over to the house of god for most Barcelonians, home of the Barca Football Club, Camp Nou. There was a Spanish league game that night against Valencia with tickets still available, but I decided that if I wasn't willing to pay $75 to see Auburn football play then I wouldn't pay that much to see FC Barcelona play either. And for all the talk about the veracity of European soccer fans, that's really the comparison I would make. It was basically the same as an SEC game in Auburn, except if Auburn was a city of 2 million people. Barca won 3-0 on a hat trick from one of their forwards, but hated rivals Real Madrid (read as: Alabama) did the same against their opponents to stay a game ahead in league play.

In the end I wound up skipping Barcelona's big gothic cathedral. I saw it from the outside and didn't read anything that said it was anything special from any of the other big gothic cathedrals in Europe I had already seen. If I was Catholic maybe, but unlike Rome, Barcelona's sights didn't really make much effort to explain the symbolism that make these places different from just some old stone building.

Monday
Monday was my last day in Barcelona, and the flight to Mallorca was scheduled for 7:15. However, I had to check out of the hostel at 11:00, so that took a little bit of sorting out. The budget airline I arranged the flight with charged €30 for any checked bags, so I just packed my backpack with the things I needed for Mallorca and rented a locker at the airport for the other bag. This was a good option, and I may do the same thing for the last leg of the trip, it's just so much easier to get around. Getting to the airport and taking care of that took most of the morning, but I decided to go back into the city and check out a few last things. I'm glad I did too, because I got to complete the Gaudi triangle, the private home he did when an incredibly wealthy patron needed a new house after marrying an even more incredibly wealthy widow. La Perdera, or La Casa Mila, was everything I had come to expect from Gaudi, this time in a residential setting. Everything flowed and curved, with every empty space oozing with class. Even the doorknobs were rethought, because the weren't so much knobs. They looked more like broken-off tree branches with holds for each one of your (or your small army of servants') fingers.

After that it was a quick ham sandwich and patatas bravas lunch in a local dive and back to the airport. The flight went smoothly and I just caught the last bus from the airport out to the string of hotels on the beach.

Tuesday
Mallorca is the largest of Spain's three autonomous Balearic Islands. The sheer number of hotels are a testament to the fact the Mallorca is the hotspot for summer vacationers. It's pretty much like Panama City for all of Europe. This also includes a large number of dance clubs that are dormant for a few more weeks until the high season begins after Easter. Right now the only real city on the island, Palma, is dominated by a veritable peleton of Lance Armstrong wannabes. Both mornings I've been here, literally thousands of cyclists (90% of them German) pour out of the seaside hotels and head en masse for the hilly interior of the island for some early season training. It isn't just amateurs here though. Before the pro season started in February, several top flight teams like HTC-Columbia and Saxo Bank had their training camps here.

You can tell the German influence on the island, both from the lighter skin tone and germanic tongue of the people and the large number of “biergardens”. I slept in late today (it is the beach) and focused on the Spanish side of things. Went for a super run out into the countryside, past the harbor and by some of the rocky parts of the beach. Then a went into town and wandered around a bit until coming cross Mallorca's own 14th century cathedral, complete with a central nave reworked by Gaudi around 1910. That led to a big late lunch and an early retirement to bed.

Yesterday was good, but I'm sure it's warmer in Brazil! It's been sunny every day, with low temps just below 40 and highs just above 55 (Fahrenheit). It looks like rain on Friday maybe, but that's it.

I've walked at least 15 miles in the last two days, and it feels like more. There are really just two "hard" days of sightseeing days left, then I can recharge in the middle of next week relaxing on the beach in Mallorca. It might be 60 degrees and windy, but I'll be on that beach!

Saturday started out with a good early morning run up to Montjuic and around all the gardens and buildings from the 1992 Olympics. Then I came back, showered, and had breakfast. After that it was back up the hill, this time via cable car. The first stop was the Joan Miro museum, one of the premier Spanish artists of the 20th century. He worked in a lot of different media (painting, drawing, textiles, ceramics) and had a few recurring themes through most of his work, usually women, birds, and stars. They didn't have an audioguide, but let's just say I didn't have to read his biography to see he had some issues with women. Still, some pretty good stuff. Then I walked over to the Olympic stadium for a closer look, and walked through the Olympic museum. Honestly, it was kinda cheesy, I mean why are Formula One and bocce ball in the Olympic museum but wrestling isn't? It was around lunchtime then, so I walked down the backside of the Mont for a bocadillo. From there I meandered over to Museu Picasso, and was thoroughly impressed. His early representational stuff is incredible, even more so when you figure he was doing all this between age 13 and 30. I liked the "out there" paintings too, especially after seeing the context of his life story and a little of the why behind them.

Today is Sunday, so it will be a day to visit some famous houses of worship in Barcelona: La Sagrada Familia, Le Catedral, and Camp Nou (if you don't get the joke, you will in the recap tomorrow).

Friday

On the flight out from Atlanta there were a lot of empty seats on the plane, including the one next to me. That let me stretch out and get some rest (I thought). Arrival in Barcelona was just before 9:00 AM CET (Central European Time). I made it to the hostel ok, but it took a little work just like the first day in Rome. From there I just decided to walk down La Rambla and get used to the public transit system. This took a lot out of me, and by 3:00 I was gassed. Until you get your bearings it takes a lot more work to get around only having one set of eyes to look for things and one brain to try and process it all (the fact that all the signs are in Catalan and only some are in Spanish doesn't help). During that afternoon I did try the quintessential Barcelonian dish- paella de mariscos. Think fried rice with fish, squid, and prawns instead of egg.

After that almuerzo I came back and took a nap until six before heading back out with renewed vigor. Got to look around in one of the big Spanish department stores "El Corte Ingles" and the highlight of the day: Mercado de la boqueria. It's a huge fresh food market, full of colors and smells and people. The only thing I bought was a Valencia orange...from Valencia! It was a good part of breakfast this morning. Today the plan is Montjuic, including all the Olympic intallations and a big castle overlooking the city and the port.

From a county with one traffic light...

This probably won't be posted until tomorrow morning, but I'm typing it out here at Gate T2 waiting on the direct flight from Atlanta to Barcelona. Current time stamp 15:15 ET March 11, for those that care about such things. I'll land at 7:40 local time in Barcelona. I guess the purpose of this entry is to explain the “why” of this trip, run down a general itinerary and give some shoutouts.

Since the school year started I had been thinking about going back to Italy during spring break. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to go somewhere new. Spain has been on the list for a while, and it's cheaper than Australia or New Zealand. The thing people ask me most is my I'm not going with a group or something like that. Sponsored tour groups are pretty much out for me, since they try to appeal to so many different types of people that I think they can water down the experience. I think back to my last Europe trip when I went to Italy with Mom and Dad. My favorite experiences there were the afternoon I went out into the city by myself and the night we ate at a little tavola calda. The afternoon I went out it was to look for a little bike shop in a part of town not especially close to any of the big sightseeing attractions. It was wonderful to be the only non-native on the bus and being totally in the background as the everyday people did their everyday things: coming home from school, going back to work from their lunch break, or heading to church for an afternoon service. The restaurant experience was just as thrilling, twisting down several alleys before arriving at a tiny spot with no cars out front (no any parking spaces) and even lacking a sign on the door! But you knew it was the right place because of the sound. There weren't many tables, but every one was packed with patrons (we waited outside 20 minutes for a table) and topped with classic red and white checked table cloths and decanters of the cheap table wine. And the food! It was the best meal of the trip, right above the chicken panini from a street vendor. So that's why I do it. For the next week and a half, I dont want to see Spain; I want to be Spanish.

I'm trying to squeeze in a lot on this trip, so I'm starting with the architecture and art of Barcelona. Then I'll hop over to the Balearic Isles for a few easy days around the beaches of Mallorca. Then it will be time to move up into the Pyrenees for what will hopefully be a great first encounter with cross-country skiing (some places got two feet of snow earlier this week!). Then I plan to end up with a relaxing two days exploring the ancient city of Girona and watching the prologue of the Volta a Catalunya bike race.

First off, thanks to Mom and Dad for helping me get prepared for the trip, and for not freaking out too much when I told them I was going by myself. Also a big thank you to my headmaster for giving me the Friday before and the Monday and Tuesday after spring break off. I'll be praying for Winshape's two teams working in Brasília this week and next week and for Dad and Samuel going to Guatemala the week after next. Boarding is about to start, so hopefully everyone will be hearing from me en España real soon!

I've Learned A Thing or Two

A lot has gone on since last posting, but it isn't all my fault. Because not that much has gone on relating to cycling. After I didn't qualify for worlds this year, I really wanted to focus in on important life stuff. So I buckled down and had my best semester academics-wise since coming to Samford and spent a lot of time getting my resume together for a big-boy job.

After graduation it was back to WinShape for one more trip around, this time as aquatics director. I had the best lifeguards ever and it was a great summer. If any camp people read this, I know it sounds like I'm sweeping this incredible three months under the rug. But you know what a great experience it is, but you also know that there's no way to adequately explain it to someone that hasn't lived it. So I'll save the digital ink since I'm kind of pressed for time anyway.

Other happenings during the summer included girlfriends gained and lost, many frogs photographed and released, and finding a job. So once camp ended I shifted 30 miles down from Birmingham to sleepy Harpersville, home of the Coosa Valley Academy Rebels. It's a really interesting situation for an AISA school with kids coming from 3 different counties, some commuting as much as 50 minutes each way. My official/paid duties (that means there are lots more) there include head JV football coach, assistant varsity football coach, head boy's varsity basketball coach, scholar's bowl sponsor, and teacher of 5 classes: 8th grade Earth Science, 9th grade Physical Science, 10th grade Biology, 11th grade Anatomy, and 6th grade Computer/Keyboarding.

Working camp prepared me for teaching and coaching better than anything else I've done, but I've still had to learn a lot. Each class or activity brings its own special mix of lessons to the table, but the middle schoolers have contributed the most to my baptism by fire in the education field. Just a few of the things I picked up:

1. I was the hottest thing in school for two weeks. Then I was replaced by Justin Beiber.
2. Animal bracelets (aka Silly Bandz) are the stuff. If you have a middle school child and he or she does not have at least 20 of these, please buy some for them now. They will be mocked mercilessly by all the "cool" kids until you do so.
3. America can no longer spell. The upcoming generation has been hopelessly ruined by spellcheck and texting. Any elementary teachers out there, please emphasize spelling in your classroom, otherwise our children are doomed to be completely ignorant of the full beauty of the English language.
4. Varsity football players and cheerleaders, be good examples all the time. Kids are watching you and want to be just like you, good bad or otherwise.
5. Parents think the burden of education rests solely on the shoulders of teachers. This is simply not true. If anything parents are more responsible for how much their children learn. Teachers are only conduits of information, parents are the mind shapers and lesson reinforcers. Even worse, many parents have also passed the buck on moral training and discipline. People don't understand that they must take owndership of their child's future, or most kids will fall by the wayside as a headstone in the growing cemetary of wasted potential.

Next time I'll attempt to reflect on football season, make some comments on the upcoming basketball season, and start getting back into shape for cycling!

In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love...of bicycles and frogs

This past weekend was a lot of fun. I got some work done on my senior biology project and headed home Friday afternoon. Just FYI, if I have any fans that are experts on gene therapy and pDNA vector detection techniques, feel free to offer your help on that. It was the first day I've driven and could really put the sunroof open. I did for just a second, but closed it up for better gas mileage. It was Samuel's junior prom back at WA Friday night so I wanted to be there to see that. Philip was home for the weekend too, so I got to see him.

Friday night after prom leadout Philip and I went out to Casey's camphouse. There's a pond out there and it's the first weekend that frogs would be out, so I went looking to collect for my vertebrate zoology class. It was still pretty early so a lot of critters still weren't active yet, but I found a turtle, either trachemys scripta or pseudemys concinna. That was nice, but I really wanted a frog, because most of the species are divided between the Appalachain foothills to the north of Birmingham and the Coastal Plain to the south, where Camden is. At one end of the pond the woods were really thick and it got really swampy, great frog habitat. I could hear them every once in a while but didn't see one in 1 1/2 hours of looking. So I just switched off my flashlight and squatted down and was gonna try to hear them first. After about 5 minutes I heard a chirping sound a little like a bird, but really sharp, not much tweet. Right there next to me was a tiny little frog (<3cm)
It looks similar to a cricket frog, but because of the continuous dorsolateral ridge and the ventral mottling Dr. Bakegaard decided it was a juvenile Rana catesbeiana.

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Saturday I rode out to Dry Forks and did hill repeats and got horribly sunburned. Upon returning there was just enough time to take a shower and watch Auburn absolutely dismantle LSU. Just a quick sidenote: Auburn got left for dead by the national media after losing to Xavier (with Rashim Barrett injured, I might add) but has been the best team in the SEC since Feb 1. No SEC team with 10 conference wins (as Auburn has) has ever been left out of the NCAA tourney, and if Auburn wins their quarterfinal tournament game against Florida or Arkansas, I think they have to get in. Still, no one at ESPN will even recognize them as a bubble team. Hopefully the real selection committee values a team's quality more than it's name, unlike those talking heads in Bristol.

Sunday morning I drove back to Birmingham. Due to the time change I left later than I wanted and didn't get back in time for church, so I used the time to pick up some groceries and get ready for the afternoon's bike race. It was the same course as the last race with and added summit finish atop Chandler Mountain. Thefield was huge at 65 riders, but the race unfolded great for me. Steel City controlled the front for the first three laps and we were flying around the course. Part way through the third lap I just sort of rolled off the front and got about a 30s gap at the hill of the back section and held it til just before the start of lap 4. It didn't stick but it was the big move that really softened up the field. The pace stayed relatively low through lap 4 until we hit the bumpy section where it got strung out and about 10 of us got a slight gap. 1k from the start line somebody went down and it gave 7 of us the chance to get away. At that moment I accomplished my goal: to make the final selection for the day. We worked together, all content to settle everything on the climb. If you have never done this climb, it's just a little appetizer of what European style mountains are like. Most American climbs are long and shallow, because our road desgners were smart enough to either make circles around the mountain or cut several switchbacks into the hillside to decrease the grade. This is in opposition to the ancient Alpine or Pyreneean roads that were originally built over animal trails and have far fewer switchbacks and can achieve absolutely ridiculous grades. Chandler Mountain follows this mold, ascending 550ft in 1mi. That works out to an average grade of 10.4%. Insane. My speed bottomed out at 3.4mph, I almost fell over there. The pure climbers took off at the first swtichback and I finished 6th, about 1min back, but just experiencing the climb and being in the mix was what I wanted. I really want to focus in on my climbing over the next few years. Even though it hurts so much, I love it more than any part of racing. Sometime when it's slow I need to do an entry just on climbing. I felt like Thomas Voeckler in the 2004 Tour de France, only without the yellow jersey.

Brazil is next week! I am so excited! Check out what Team 1 is doing this week here

What've You Been Doing Lately? (or The Epic That Wasn't)

"Epic" is a word that gets tossed around much too often in cycling circles. That ride you did yesterday, or that cheeseburger you ate after. There are few truly epic moments, events with suffering so great or circumstances so extreme that they could not possibly be duplicated by chance in another 10,000 tries. Andy Hampsten on the Gavia in the 1988 Giro d'Italia; Lemond winning the '89 Tour on the final day; Lance Armstrong winning the 2003 stage to Luz-Ardiden with a broken chainstay; those are part of the Mount Rushmore of cycling epics. The everyday cyclist can still have epics on their own scale. Clearly, Sunday could have been that day for anyone for the Alabama bike racing community. With the heaviest snowfall in a decade having graced central Alabama earlier that morning, a little taste of Thor Hushovd's Norwegian home lay before me. I fully expected to embrace the elements and race the second leg of the GSMR Training Series in Gallant Sunday afternoon, but less freeze-tolerant (and probably wiser) minds cancelled the race Sunday morning. After it stopped snowing around noon, the sun promptly came out and made for a good day to ride, and my chance at an epic experience will have to wait.

Training this week is going well so far. I did a good fartlek run Monday morning plus a 2000m swim that evening. I need to get a lot of schoolwork done, so time management is going to be key. I only got one workout in today, a hard 1 1/2 hr ride over the Ross Bridge loop, because I needed to be able to talk in case Mission to the World called to talk about opportunities next year. But the next entry for that. The graph for today's bike is below. Plan for the rest of the week is to fit swims in tomorrow and Thursday, with rides and runs in the other spots. I might head home Friday depending on how much work I can finish, but will definitely be back to do GSMR race #3 (now #2) that includes the climb up Chandler Mountain.

The Blogging Bug Strikes Again

My professor asked us to write a couple of paragraphs explaining why we run, and that acted as a substitute for the final for our fitness running class. This got the creative juices flowing again, so hopefully I’ll stick around this season and update more.
Ideally, this will follow my build up to the Short Course Duathlon National Championships in Richmond in April and then Worlds in Italy in September. For now, that’s the goal, but it is subject to change of course. For example if I don’t qualify at Nationals then of course Worlds is out. Also if I qualified for USA Triathlon Nationals at one of the other races it would probably trump Worlds. If all that falls through expect me to stretch my distance legs at a 70.3 half-ironman race in the fall. Unless my speed picks up over the next two seasons or so, long course racing is where I will have to migrate to be competitive anyway.
I also plan for the blog to have more non-tri related stuff, because I know some people aren’t really into that, and to show that there is more to my life than that. Plus my parents told me they want to know what I’m thinking and I know they read this (maybe the only ones that do), so this will let them keep a sort of handle on my day-to-day mental state.
Today I went for my first 2-hour plus ride of the season. I rode out to Irondale and eschewed my normal route to get a look at the Powerman Alabama course. Powerman Alabama is one of the 3 biggest short course du’s in the US, with Nationals and Powerman Ohio being the other two. The distances are a little whack (8k/53k/8k) as opposed to the standard 10k/40k/5k, but they make it work. The roads are nice and you are shielded from any wind for the most part, but it’s very challenging. It’s very undulating and a lot of long, steady, gradual hills. I like the short and steep ones better, but of course I have the advantage of being able to train on the actual course. It stinks that this race is only a week before College Nationals, but I turned in the paperwork for the SU tri club last Thursday and I think College Nationals will full up before we get approved. So that’s why I went out there because I will probably end up doing this race, it’ll be a superb litmus test for how well I can expect to do at Duathlon Nationals, which are two weeks later.
A question I’ve been thinking on a lot lately is what to do after college. It’s only three semesters away. If anyone asks, I always say “I don’t know” or “I’ve got plenty of time to decide” but really I just don’t want to talk to them about it. Everyone has an opinion on what you should or shouldn’t be and they won’t hesitate to tell you. And since I really don’t care what those people think I’d rather not have to fake it and act like I do care, so I just make sure they don’t get the chance. I do believe I can do a lot of things, and it will pretty much decide itself with how my circumstances work out now until I graduate. Pie in the sky dream would be to train with the Olympic team, and it’s pretty simple there: if I get fast enough it will happen, and if I’m not fast enough then it won’t. If my grades stay good (or better yet improve), then graduate school in exercise physiology would defer a long term decision but would weed out pretty much everything else. It would end up either as a personal coach with triathlon or cycling or in research, like working for Gatorade or Cannondale. Auburn, Alabama, Florida, Florida State, App State, FIU, UNC, Baylor, Houston, James Madison, plus 25 or so of other schools are possibilites. One of those that has been with me the whole time has been to teach and coach in high school. I think teaching is something I naturally do well and a biology degree would pretty much let me go anywhere I want. Plus it would give me a lot of leverage to get into coaching as well. Football, basketball, baseball, track, the sport isn’t really important. A master’s would be a need, but with a science degree I could start right out teaching and get a degree on the side or a little later. I spent some time today looking at international sports missions opportunities. That is something you have to be called to go into, but it’s also something you should continually be open to and praying about, so that if that call comes you know it and are as prepared as possible. Finally, here’s the shocker Mom and Dad, I’ve looked at the military as an option too. Navy or Army. It’s something I could do well and something America needs, now more than ever. As you can see, it’s pretty far down the list, just putting it out there, because I have been thinking about it.
Sorry for the book (1 ½ pages single spaced!), but lucky for y’all it’s 10:30 and sleep beckons. Ahh, the triathlete’s life.

A Trio of Triathlon Race Reports

An update on the racing season winding down. Callaway Gardens Triathlon was Labor Day weekend in Pine Mountain, Georgia. It was a good training day for the SECTC races because it was longer than the sprints I’d been doing. The course was contained in the park, 1000 yard swim, 30k bike, 8k run. It was a wave start so I was pretty excited, my first “real” wave start (I don’t really count the Sports Festival Tri, wave of nine). It was all the males under 40 in the first wave, so most of the big overall competitors would be in with me. The race started a couple minutes late, but the horn went off and away the 40 or so of us went into Robin Lake. It started next to the fountain and went around by the ski pavilion and then turned back toward the swim beach. I was a little worried at first because I got separated from the front pack at the first turn and felt like I was getting passed from all over. Turns out there really wasn’t a true “lead pack,” everybody got really split up after the first turn. My course navigation really started to come together this race, I didn’t have any trouble going straight at the buoys, but I still looked around way too much, didn’t trust myself! I heard the course had been marked short in years past and I think it may have been this year too. It was a no wetsuit swim and they timing mats didn’t work right, so it counted T1 in with the swim time, and even with that I was out in 14:50. I was 7th out of the water, ended up 11th fastest on the day. Transitions also started slimming down a good bit too beginning with this race, I really wish they would have gotten the splits on those. There wasn’t a chance for me to pre-ride the course the day before, so all there was to go on was somewhat conflicting hearsay: some previous racers called it flat and fast, the race map labeled it extremely technical (seven 90-degree turns). It turned out to be the most technical bike course I’ve raced so far, with those seven turns times two laps, plus two tricky short descents on roads just wet enough to be a danger. It wasn’t a great bike for me, I didn’t really get into a rhythm until a lap in, and by then 9 guys had passed me. There was no rule enforcement on the course whatsoever, not a single marshal, and I think there was a good bit of drafting going on. I passed one guy in front of me after he crashed on the slick downhill and the paramedics were examining him, looked like a broken collarbone from the way he was holding it and the tests they were doing. The run was 8k (5miles) my longest in a race. I started out great and faded some toward the end. I like out and back courses better than loops like this one was. It’s easier to gauge your pace when you know exactly how far you have to go. Finish time was 1:47:19, good enough for 26th place overall out of 231, so a pretty encouraging day going into my A races.
After my first criterium the next Saturday (a fun experience, but definitely not a style of racing I’m naturally suited for), the day of the A-race had arrived. The Music City Triathlon was the one I had circled on my calendar 16 weeks before it happened, so I was really counting on a good race. It was my first full Olympic distance (as opposed to two previous, shorter races still classified as “international distance”), and also my first race without a support crew. It started out well enough, I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the hotel was, considering how cheap it was. The problem was when I tried to find the SECTC athlete’s pasta dinner at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is a LOT bigger than Samford, and with nothing but a building number, I was 45 minutes late as a result of getting lost. After dinner it was a lonely night of college football, but it helped me get to bed early. Sunday morning I got up earlier than for most races because of the 7:30 start and awoke to chilly 55° air. There was a Waffle House right around the corner from the hotel for my usual breakfast: a waffle, country ham, powerbar, and Gatorade. They confirmed the swim would be with wetsuits, so about 20 minutes before race time I suited up into my DeSoto T1 First Wave (the nicest wetsuit in the collegiate wave!). The swim was pretty normal, it started out pretty hard but people settled into a rhythm and I did a good job of swimming my own race. There was pressure to push harder, because it seemed like a lot of people were going by, but I guess I got to the front fast because there was very few collegiate bikes off the rack at T1, must have been relay teams (they were the second wave, we were first). Actually, looking at the results, the girls had a really fast swim pace, so that could’ve been it. I had pretty minimal trouble getting the wetsuit off and again had a great T1 and T2. Now that I’ve really focused on it, transitions have really paid off, now I’m usually top 5% overall. The bike was full of rolling hills, which I think I handled well, didn’t really gain much ground on the top guys, but didn’t give up much either and felt pretty good going into the run. It wasn’t all that hilly, just two really big ones, both in the first half to really drain your energy. It was a really tough course. Only one guy passed me on the run, but it’s definitely the area I could improve most. I’m still just a middle of the pack runner, so I can’t chase down the stronger cyclists or swimmers and get into that top tier. Right now it’s like I’m just on the threshold, big gains in either/both cycling and/or running could easily make a top 5 athlete. I finished 10th in collegiate males, so I’ll take that, some solid SECTC points. Last weekend was a short notice sprint, the Weiss Lake Triathlon in Cedar Bluff, Alabama. I was expecting a small field, but over 100 racers turned up to the inaugural event, even a pro! I think most people were intimidated, but not me: I set up my transition area right next to his, full carbon frame and disc wheel and all. From the start you could tell the organizers were rookies: the map showed a run across a non-closed state highway from the swim to T1! We swam 450 yards or so from the boast ramp in a triangle. I started close to the back but quickly made my way to the front. Course navigation paid off again as I barely had to look up and came into T1 riding high and in 3rd place overall. I figured the bike course would be pretty flat, but it had a lot of rollers, somewhere in between Callaway and Music City. The bike was pretty much a replay of the AL Sports Festival, I had a great ride but still got passed by Eubanks, who is a stellar cyclist. If he could improve his swimming and adapt to a tri bike and not just use a roadie, he could be a force in the Southeast in my opinion. So I put time on everybody except the front three and came in with a real chance to run down Brandon. I saw the pro, Felipe Bastos about half a mile from the turnaround and was still feeling ok, so that was really encouraging to end up only finishing 10 minutes down from him. The run course was where the organizers really goofed. Runs should either be out and back or a loop, but this one was like a maze, with at least 25 turns. That’s ok as long as you have volunteers pointing the way, but a few intersections (usually the really obvious ones) had 4 or 5 volunteers and the rest had none, just some spraypainted arrows on the pavement. It was terrible. I made a wrong turn with about 400m left and came in the finish straight from the wrong direction, and I wasn’t the only one. There is absolutely no excuse for that. It was the same way on the bike course. Not only is it dumb to not have at least one volunteer at every turn/ intersection, it’s unsafe and unfair. Again no marshals to stop drafting. It didn’t affect me, but I met a really big pack of runners about 8 minutes behind me and it looked like an ITU race. I finished fourth overall, third amateur, so a great day start to finish. Coming up this weekend is the big one, Hickory Knob. It’s the SECTC Conference Championship, so double points are up for grabs and a collegiate wave of over 90 athletes! It’s gonna be great.

Thoughts on Lance Armstrong, Part I

Last week I started reading Lance Armstrong's first biography (birth to first TDF victory) It's Not About the Bike. A few chapters in, one big point that Lance made sure the reader understood, he races (and lives) with a killer instinct that can't be taught. Sure, he has all the physical tools, but so did every other elite cyclists he raced against. Talent has never been a direct translation to championships (just ask Macca about his history at Kona). At the toughest part of the race, Lance could work himself into such a fit of rage and power away from opponents on anger. "Rip their legs off" was the way he described his goal when he attacked. He rode with a chip on his shoulder and attacked like a brazened assassin with knife drawn.

The reason I mention this is because I know that attitude can’t be taught, but can it be learned, acquired on one’s own will? Because I think the most powerful weapon in any activity that requires being pushed to the limit is to wield absolute control over your ability. Some coaches simplify this to knowing your limits, but I think that ignores the great ones’ capacity to achieve a near second consciousness, recognizing those days when they have no limits and capitalizing these brushes with invincibility by pouring out every once of their fleeting divinity to punish their hapless, mortal rivals. Lance’s fuel came from every direction, anyone telling he and his mother they would never amount to anything, the poor kid with no Dad who sucked at football. Then it came from his pro competitors and the press. He was too brash, bullheaded and irreverent, basically too American to be a champion in this thoroughly European sport. And there was no way anyone could beat cancer and the world’s 200 best bike racers in the same lifetime.

In an applied sense, my question is this: has my lack of adversity set me up for mediocrity, never allowing me (read as forcing me) to access all my potential? My early life was the polar opposite of Armstrong’s. I grew up in a Cleaver-like seal of support. In high school I sort of tried the whole anger channeling thing with mixed results. It made me work harder, but not necessarily get better. And if things turned sour despite my best efforts, that anger quickly became self-destructive. It also becomes increasingly hard to control the on/off switch: the more you compete angry, the more you live angry, and that’s not my goal. I don’t want to hate the world, just ride like it. Also, I’m not 100% convinced that’s the only way to do it. There has to be some way to excel and still be a nice guy. There has to be.