What Marty Is Up To, Sponsored by Edward Tufte.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a little while, it’s been a busy last few days/weeks.  My training hit its peak again in preparation for the Muncie Endurathon (half ironman) triathlon on July 12, so I’ve been busy.  Several 90 minute swims, 1.5-2 hour runs and 3-4 hour rides (often with runs after them) are wearing me out!  Thankfully, it’s time to taper for the race in two weeks.

On Wednesday, Lana and I drove into Chicago to see Steve and Eva (for the first time in a long time!  yaay!), and so that I could attend a talk by the Legendary Edward Tufte, who is the undisputed king of such topics as information visualization, graphical design, and the evils of PowerPoint.  I got all four of his beautiful books, which I’ve been reading basically non-stop since I got back.  I would really like to do some research this school year that incorporates some of his ideas concerning information design into my work with music.

I’m getting into the swing of things working for Strands.  The technical aspects of my Facebook app are coming together nicely, and now I’m exploring new ideas for linking the work that’s being done over at Strands’ beta launch with the capabilities of the facebook platform.  We’ll see how it goes, but all in all, for a summer project, I can’t complain

Olympic Diving Trials Report, Day 2 (Videos!).

The final day of the Olypic Diving Trials was extremely exciting.  With both the men and women competing in the spectacular 10 meter platform finals, Day 2 saw many more awesome dives and more 10s than I can count easily.  David Boudia earned a spot on the U.S. Olympic team in the men’s contest, and Laura Wilkinson earned a spot in the women’s contest.  USA Diving is looking really good to claim some medals in Bejing in a few short months.

Videos of some of the best dives from both days can be found on YouTube–the best way to look at them is to just go find all of my movies on my profile and watch them in the reverse order that they are listed on the page.

Also, though I still didn’t get to meet Cynthia, she noticed my sign again today (this time, almost immediately once I started waving it around).  Some of the judges even noticed it, as well!  Haha.

Olympic Diving Trials Report, Day One of Two.

Actually, it was Day Four of Five, but since I only purchased tickets for the two last days that’s how we be rolein.

We drove to IUPUI (lovingly pronounced “Ewwy Pewwie”) today a full 2.5 hours early, thinking that there may either be traffic problems or road closures from last week’s flooding.  Thankfully (or unthankfully?) there were no road closures, so we had lots of time to kill before the action started.  Once it did get started, though, it was pretty amazing stuff.  Today’s lineup included the Men’s and Women’s 3m Springboard finals, and both were spectacular.  On the Mens side, Troy Dumais slaughtered the competition by almost a full dive’s worth of points, and on the Womens side, Christina Loukas was even more dominating.  Both earned their automatic spot on the United States Olympic Team (the second spot in each sport will be determined at a “selection camp” in a few weeks, from the remaining top finishers from today’s event).

Item Two on my To-Do list was to see Cynthia Potter, NBC’s Diving legendary color commentator for at least twenty years.  Cynthia has been doing the color commentating for diving on TV for many years (at least twenty, that’s as early as I can remember) and she is amazing at it.  I made a sign (see previous post) to attract the NBC camera’s attention that reflects how awesome she is, and though I didn’t get on TV today, Cynthia did notice my sign!  I didn’t get to meet her, but she gave me a wave from her TV booth!  Perhaps tomorrow I’ll work up the courage to accost her as she’s walking to her car or something.

We’ll be back again tomorrow for Day Two of Two, the Men’s and Women’s 10m Platform finals!

$8 for 18 holes? The Answer Is Yes!!

Having been inspired by the awesome play in the U.S. Open this past weekend, I decided to see what was up with my golf game again.  I went to the range yesterday, and today investigated the possibility of playing actual golf.  As it turns out, the Indiana University course has a Par-3 course that costs $8 to play (yep, $8 for 18 holes), so upon finding that out I basically ran out the door to the course, which is like half a mile from my apartment

As a super bonus, Lana was nice enough to accompany me!  Sadly, I failed to impress her with any manly shots since it was just a Par-3 course.

I learned that my iron game and my short putts are about the same as it has always been (though I have some accuracy issues with the irons), but I have lost all feel for pitching, chipping and medium and long putts.  This is not surprising, since I haven’t played more than a dozen rounds of golf since graduating high school (when I played almost daily in season).

On a different note, Lana and I are going to the Olympic Diving Trials at Indy this weekend.  Look for us on TV!  I’ll be displaying the following sign (refers to the legendary diving color commentator, Cynthia Potter, who will be in the booth for NBC, and who will hopefully pose for a picture with me):

Some Post-Half Ironman Thoughts.

I took today off. Not that I had much choice in the matter, I could barely bend my legs today, much less swim or bike anything. The most exertive thing I did today was to walk to the apartment complex pool to sit in the water for a while. Going to take a long bath once I finish writing this.

Last night, I was able to unpack everything except my bike, which I was not looking forward to unpacking, due to the torrential storms I rode it in yesterday. However, when I unpacked it just now I was pleasantly surprised to find it *cleaner* than it was when I packed it before the race! I guess it rained hard enough to wash away any of that road grime that always gets on bikes when it rains.

Starting now, my “Favorite Coach” is now my “Sadistic, Pain-Loving” coach. She has prescribed 15 hours of training over 6 days this week, including 3 hours on my birthday, tomorrow!!!! Crap!!! (Though, in fairness, I don’t think she knew it was my birthday. Though on second thought that’s probably for the better since she would have made me swim 2300 meters, bike for 2:30, and run 23 kilometers, the TRADITIONAL BIRTHDAY TRIATHLON)

Even though I ended yesterday about 1,500 calories in the hole (I figured the race burned around 5000 calories and I only consumed about 3500, including race nutrition), I still managed to gain two pounds while in Rockford.

I had a nice talk on the phone with 5% of my blog readership (i.e. my Mommy) today, who was (predictably) worried about my safety during the race yesterday! Aww I’m looking forward to seeing my Mom, Dad and Sterling in less than two months!

RACE REPORT: Half Ironman Triathlon, Rockford, IL.

Almost exactly one year after completing my first triathlon, a sprint race in Batavia, IL on June 10, I raced in a triathlon at almost four times that distance today, the Rockman Half Ironman distance triathlon in Rockford, IL. The Half Ironman (HIM) distance race is composed of a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run. The best male triathletes in the world complete this distance in under four hours. The winning male today completed this distance in around 4:20.

Last year, in the offseason, I would fantasize about just finishing a race at this distance. Coming into this race, though, my preparation far exceeded what I had imagined at the end of last year, thanks in part to some good body composition changes and the guidance of my Favorite Coach! I knew that I had a good chance of actually being able to *race* this distance, instead of just plugging away to the end.

Lana was amazing enough to get time off work to accompany me to the race. I picked Lana up from work around Noon on Saturday, and we drove through the flood-riddled waters of South Central Indiana up to Rockford. We arrived just in time to register, drop off my bike at transition, and head out to meet up with a bunch of people I met in chat rooms on the Internet.

After not getting molested too badly by my new Internet friends at the Race Director’s wonderful pre-race Pasta Dinner Slash Slowtwitch.com meetup, Lana and I checked into the “classy” Travellodge in Rockford. We were able to get some sleep and head out to the race course at 5:30am the next morning. The forecast was calling for 70-80 degrees, humid, windy and a chance of thunderstorms. Yikes.

After getting body marked, chipped, meeting my Favorite Coach for the first time in real life!! and a few visits to the toilletes, I was ready to go. I got my wetsuit on and headed out to the water.

The Rockman swim was in Olson Lake at Rock Cut State Park. Unfortunately, the lake is just a bit small for a mass start, 2-loop, 1.2 mile swim, so swimmers didn’t have a lot of room at the turn buoys. Also, looking at the top swim times I’m guessing the swim was long by maybe 10-15%. I made it work, though, and came out of the water in 42:49.

After a slow T2, I was ready to try the bike course. Having not had a chance to pre-ride the course, I had only various secondhand accounts of the course to guide me, which ranged from “pancake flat” (not quite true) to “hillier than Bloomington” (did they mean Bloomington, IL?), to “a few miles of rolling hills, then typical Midwestern rural roads” (ding ding ding!). The winds immediately started kicking up, well over 25mph at my guess. Fortunately my aero position, newly shaven legs and equipment are awesome and aero so I was able to slice right through the wind, passing many cyclists.

The first 40 miles of the bike progressed largely without incident, except that at Mile 2 I realized that I forgot to take my pre-race caffeine, which necessitated holding back on the bike just a bit, since I usually rely on the caffeine for increased power and speed on the bike. I was pushing a big gear at a relatively low cadence (85-95rpm). I was strong, relatively comfortable, and making good time.

Until it started to rain. VERY HEAVILY. This was the heaviest rain I’ve seen in years. The raindrops literally pelted my skin, and rattled my helmet to the point where I couldn’t even hear the thunder around me. Then, the wind kicked up even more, gusting to over 30mph. There was a short time I couldn’t ride in the aerobars because the wind and rain was just too much for my aero bike with a deep dish front wheel and disc rear. In spite of not really caring what happened to the race in the last 15 miles, I was able to bring the bike portion to a close in a respectable 2:57:29. I was extremely happy that I broke 3 hours, considering the tough conditions.

As per my Favorite Coach!!’s instructions, I started the run with a lot of patience. The run course was unequivocably tough, similar to the IU Mini Marathon course, with lots of short and steep climbs and ascents on roads and bike paths that wind through Rock Cut State Park. However, the weather conditions were favorable–the rain which was annoying on the bike was pleasant and cooling on the run. I knew I had to bide my time and not try to go out too hard.

I clocked pretty consistent 9:30-9:45 miles for the first 4-5 miles, then started to strengthen a bit. During the middle miles, the rain slowed to a windy drizzle, and I worked on keeping my cadence high and form strong. By the 9th mile I was running 9 minute miles and starting to actually pass a few people! I kept telling myself if I can just block out the pain in my legs for 4 more miles, then I’d break 6 hours pretty solidly. I kicked it up another gear, and was pleasantly surprised that my legs didn’t explode!

By the time I had 5k to go, I was running as hard as I could, hoping that I could keep it up to the end. I ended up running well under 9 minute miles for the last several miles, sprinted up the last hill, and crossed the line in 2:02:48, even faster than I ran the IU Mini open half marathon earlier in the year!

This brought me to a grand total race time of 5:47:08, good for 120th place out of the 450 entrants and just 278 finishers (which tells you something about the weather conditions today).

After I passed the finish line, my quads pretty much stopped functioning. I was surprised at how much pain my legs were in. After laying in the grass for about 15 minutes, some post-race food and a quick shower, Lana and I threw all of the soggy gear into the car as fast as we could. It was Pizza time. After wolfing down pizza, we headed back to Bloomington, where Majel was waiting for us!

Aside from the tough weather conditions on the bike, it was a really enjoyable race. The Race Director, Chip, did a great job of ensuring safe roads on the bike, well-stocked aid stations on the run and a great atmosphere for racing. I was especially happy that Lana came, and that I was able to make some new Internet friends.

I’m not sure when the Ironman distance will be within my grasp, but judging from how I felt at the end of the race (and by how I feel now) I’ve still got a lot of work to do to get there.

Until then, however, I’m extremely satisfied with my performance today. I guess it feels pretty good to be a Half Ironman!

Oh yeah, photos! Lana took some awesome photos today, this time with an emphasis on pre-race setup and transitions. The weather conditions didn’t lend themselves very well to picture taking once the race got going.

Rockman Preparation, Personal Hygeine Edition.

In an effort to “look the part” at this weekend’s Half Ironman, I enlisted the help of an Expert (Lana) and a razor (Vidal Sassoon) and a cat (Majel) and shaved my legs. Lana made sure I didn’t amputate myself and Majel ate the hairs out of the bathtub.

You may be saying “Yeah buddy, pics or it didn’t happen!” Well, yeah buddy, you’ll get your pics when I write my race report on Monday. Also, I didn’t shave super-close today (it was more like a “stubble run” to see if this look compliments me), the real shave will take place just hours before the race, for maximum aerodynamics and geeky-dynamics. So you’ll get the pictures when my legs are in their full glory at Rockman.

Getting Really Excited about Rockman this Weekend.

I’m going to be racing at the Half Ironman distance (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run) for the first time, on Sunday. At about 6 hours (hopefully a bit less), this race will take over twice as long as any race I’ve done. I’ll have to worry about things like nutrition (6 hours is a long time to go without calories), pacing (I can’t just go all out like in Sprints or Olympics), and the changing weather conditions (it’s likely it will warm up 20 degrees from start to finish).

However, I’ve been doing the appropriate training. I’ve completed several long rides (3 hours or more), long runs (though this has been limited by my IT band problems), and long swims with yardage of well over 1.2 miles, including a nice open-water swim with the Tri Club yesterday. My taper has been going really well, most days of my taper I’ve really wanted to go back out there for “just one more workout” (but, of course, the whole point of the taper is to feel rested and full of energy for the Main Event). And, perhaps most importantly, my weight is down to an all-time low of 142 pounds.

I’ve got a short swim and run workout today, one more quick bike workout tomorrow, and then after that it’s all rest, one quick pre-race brick, and then Lana and I will be traveling up north to Rockford to get ready for the event!

The anticipation is crazy!!!