There's No 'I' in Win

I'm having some motivation trouble right now. I should be on the trainer right now... well technically, I should have been on it for the last hour. Instead I've been nibbling away inefficiently at various kinds of work.

Aside from trying to motivate myself through a lot of self-directed swearing, here are some other ideas I've either done, or have considered.

I made chocolate chip cookies. This did NOT work.
I ate chocolate chip cookies. This worked worse than just making them.
I thought about using some kind of electro-shock device...then I had another cookie.
I worked out some potential ideas for the shock device. No cookie this time. I'm full.
I started a blog entry with an arrested development allusion.

I am a failure pie with a crust of delicious chocolate chip cookies..

All the Useless Things These Hands Have Done

I have lots of little anecdotes, unfortunately most of them are really sad. Still, there are a few that won't turn your hair white.

A few years back I worked in a small office with three other guys. A guy who I'll call Steve worked across the open air hall from us. One sunny week in spring, Steve had a full remodel of his office going. While the drywall guys were inside getting dusty, Steve decided to refinish a desk. Now, Steve wasn't the handiest guy in the world, or a guy with a lot of follow-through, and this wasn't a grand old desk that you'd normally bother to refinish. So, right off the bat the situation's a little off. There was no power in his office, so Steve ran an extension cord from inside our office out to the hallway where he was sanding the desk.

That was Steve's mistake.

It didn't take long for John, a friend at work, and I to wander over to the window to watch Steve work the orbital sander. From there, it only took about a minute before we started randomly pulling the plug on the extension cord. It was more fun than you might think. We were peeking through the blinds and basically had a silent movie playing out in front of us. We'd pull the plug and Steve would look down quizzically like a dog who lost track of his water dish, then he'd give the sander a shake or two and we'd plug it back in.

This is where things got brilliant.

One of us, we still can't remember who, had one of the best ideas to occur to mankind since putting meat in fire. "Hey, lets only pull the plug when he's holding the sander with his right hand!" It was the moment John and I were destined for, and we were ready.

We waited until he had been using his left hand for a while, then, with one of us spotting through the blinds and one of us with a hand on the cord, we waited until he switched to his right, then *ponk*, no power. He did his confused dog thing, shook it, etc. When he went to check that the sander was plugged into the cord, he switched it to his left, and the thing came back on. Steve shrugged and started sanding again. After a minute, he went to his right hand again, and *ponk*, no power.

After the third round of power failures, his ex-stripper assistant came out, and he (again, we're watching a silent movie) explained his right/left problem. She took the sander and, hey, it worked fine for her no matter what hand she used.

He took over again, and still no luck. The assistant wandered away to drink diet coke and flirt with the contractors leaving Steve alone with his problems. About this time our boss came by to figure out why we weren't actually earning our pay. Our boss was a pretty 'down to business' kind of guy, but when we explained the situation, he told us to carry on and report in when we were finished. Steve's popularity was really working out well for him.

After a few more tries Steve just gave up on his right hand and tried to power through with his left. He'd lean way into it, try all kinds of positions to ease the fatigue, but of course nothing worked. He took a break and went inside after a few more minutes and John and I went back to work. I can't remember if we left the cord plugged in or not.

He never actually finished the desk, but that's hardly our fault. There was about a 10% chance of Steve actually completing that task anyway.

Smells Like Mediocrity

Did the race yesterday and, overall, I did OK. So, of course, I'm disappointed.

There were good and bad points. The swim went very well, way better than I expected. I started wide outside and passed the main knot of swimmers in my group by the first buoy. From then on I was picking off people one at a time with a good steady pace. I managed to pass several of the slow guys in the prior age group who had a 5 minute head start.

I had a decently quick transition time, that's owed mostly to the various gadgets I bought.

Then the bike leg... and the disappointment. My average came out to less than 18mph, which means I spent almost an hour on the bike, which means I've got a lot of work to do on that. Towards the end of the ride I started getting some flareups of side aches. Those are something that I had pretty well under control during training, but not this day.

I made it about a 1/4 mile into the run before the side aches shut me down completely. None of my tricks worked to get rid of them and my pace was a little slower than a ninety year old woman with a walker. Just before the halfway point I finally burned through them and was able to somewhat run the last 1.5 miles back, but the damage had been done.

By my clock I finished somewhere in the 1:43s. Not good, but I've got a bench mark now.

Stretch Those Goals

Race day tomorrow. I'm spending tonight packing and doing some transition practice. It's a straight sprint, 800m, 25k, 5k.

Since, this is my first race on this distance, I don't have anything to really compare it to for times. So I'm just going to shoot towards the fastest time I can make and other than that, get a baseline time setup for future races.

If I finish in 1:30, then that will put me well into the top 20% (based on this course's past results). I really don't think I'll be able to that. That's a very aggressive time for my level. Still, if I make that, it will be damn good for my first race of this distance.

Sunshine and Umbrellas

I worry a lot.

Too much really. It's something that makes me good at my job, but kind of cuts into a lot of other stuff.

I should clarify 'worry'. I don't sit around nibbling my nails and rocking back and forth or anything like that. I just end up thinking about different situations and how to deal with them. The fact that these situations may be completely unlikely and years down the road doesn't really matter.

At work I've gotten pretty good about figuring when not to worry. At home, not so much. Here's a simple example - As I posted before, Daughter is pretty damn smart. I actually had a lot of text typed out describing how smart, but lets just leave that out. It seems like bragging. It suffices to say that she's damn smart.

I've got a very smart little girl who's way ahead of where she should be. So, what am I worried about? I'm worried about that fact that I've got a very smart little girl who's way ahead of where she should be.

You might be thinking, "Just enjoy it dummy." But here's the thing with that. What if she keeps up on this pace? How do you take the most advantage of that while still keeping her 'normal'. She's got me for a father, being normal is going to be enough of a struggle as-is. Does she get skipped up a grade or four? That's going to be hard on her socially. Home-schooling? Not so conducive to social-norming. Private schooling? Tutoring? Hybrid approaches?

This is all years away, and it's not the slightest bit definite, but still I worry.

Needs More Stickers

I've been meaning to post about the new bike for a while now. I went with the cheapest option, which wasn't altogether that cheap, but will allow me to look at getting some race wheels later if I need to.

















I've only taken it out on a couple rides since I've been spending a lot of time on the road bike in the trainer. The rides were good. The rides are more comfortable than the road bike was. That could be the fact that I'm switching between aero and upright positions, so the load is being spread, but I think the bike fits better. The aero position works well, though it takes some serious getting used to. You're basically laying near flat forward and steering with your elbows. Also, as the pic shows, the brakes and the shifters are kinda far apart. So if you're in aero, braking is not something you're going to do right away.


















The bike does have a really good set of components. Dura-ace shifters and derailleurs, carbon seat post fork and crank. The carbon does make a difference for the ride too. It's noticeably smoother on the road. The geometry does make a big difference on what muscles are used. It focuses on the quads very much.