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.