Blogs, Bambini, And Bonking And The Friday Top Five

Blogs:


It's not me, it's you. Really. 


Look, it's not that I don't love you, it is just that I need a better way of managing all of my fellow bloggers. Currently, I sift through ALL 170 of my dedicated followers and try to hit each of the blogs on a rotational basis. This proves tedious. What makes it tedious is that Blogger opens up this window with a link to their blog. Actually, often I can not even get a link to the blog. This is especially annoying when you would like to reciprocate the blog love you just received. Then, there are times that I get to these blogs, only to find out that they have since removed it, or they have not written a post in about three months. Still, much of the problem with not hitting everyone's blogs effectively lies in my inability to manage them. 


So!  I am open for suggestions on how to do this most effectively in Blogger. Any thoughts? Is there an effective way to make links to all the blogs that I read? I see blog menus at the top of some blogs that allow for the reader to easily click on a blog. This seems like it would take a computer science degree, or an especially large amount of time trying to figure out. 

Bambini:


Wifey and I have the best children in the world. Now, don't get me wrong. Just the other day, I was having lunch with my friend Kelly and I asked her if she ever wants to put a muzzle over her children's mouths because they drive her to the brink of insanity. I think we both agree, that while we love our children unconditionally, that we sometimes wish that our houses came with round cushioned sound proof rooms. 


However, while there is certainly a lot of insanity going around, they do manage to fill our lives with an unbelievable amount of joy and humor. Our children say the funniest things. For instance, yesterday morning, Stella looks over at wifey sitting at the kitchen table and says "Mommy.... daddy's triathlon stuff is all over the couch!"  I came home from work last week and Julian came running to the door telling me that he had a special performance that he and his sisters were going to perform for me and mommy that evening. The kiddies have two parents that are artists. They recently attended a concert that wifey and I were in in which I made a bunch of my own instruments and improvised on several instruments throughout the performance. Julian had decided that he was going to spend the day building his own set of musical instruments before I arrived home from work that evening. Check out a small part of the performance:

Bonking: 


I had a really rough run on Saturday morning. I went out for my usual 10k, but completely bonked at mile four. Like, as in, my heart rate was stratospheric. I think it was the result of: 1) Not being adequately hydrated. Imagine that. Me. Not adequately hydrated. The guy that went to the hospital twice—one of those times being personally chauffeured by my local volunteer ambulance service—over the span of five years. 2) Not enough rest. Yeah, not only had I not gone to bed early enough all last week, but I wake up far too early on account of our kids deciding that they want to make as much noise as humanly possible during the wee small hours of the morning. 


THE FRIDAY TOP FIVE:


The Friday Top Five: The Top Five Things That My Children's Generation Will Never Know:


I think every generation probably looks at the next and thinks how fortunate they are to never have the opportunity to be able to do things that they were able to experience. Those pioneer work ethic folks that grew up before the turn of the century probably felt bad for their children who would never know how to churn butter, live without indoor plumbing, and never experience the natural glow of gas lamps. Having grown up during the 1970's and 1980's, I am really a gen-exer. Thus, my list will represnt the poor taste and bias of a disillusioned generation having had to live through both bell-bottoms and Cyndi Lauper: 


5) The Adult Magazine: Look, whether for better or worse, one of the rites of passage for a teenage boy was the shame and humiliation they had to suffer going into an adult bookstore to get a glimpse, or purchase an adult magazine. With the proliferation of pornography on the internet, it seems that those days no longer exist. 


4) Vinyl: I was part of the last generation of teenagers going out to purchase albums. I always chose albums over tapes. My friends thought I was crazy, but there were two reasons for this:

1) Album art is pretty kick-ass. They either have to scale everything down to fit on a tape cover—or CD for that matter—or completely eliminate some of the material. That is lame. Album covers were sometimes provocative, humorous, or grotesque. Whatever the case, when I was a teenager, I would spend hours in a record store looking at the cover art of albums. It was my way of getting my artistic fix if I was unable to actually purchase the album, which was most often the case. 

2) You could always tape the album as soon as you brought it home. I had this crazy idea that I could tape all my albums and when one of the tapes started wearing out, then I could just record it on another tape, thus, preserving the life of my album. 


3) Arcades: Sure, arcades still exist, but not like they did back when I was growing up. Games were generally only a quarter to play. About ten years ago, a bunch of high-priced arcade/bars starting opening up in large, trendy metropolitan areas around the country selling  "points" on cards depending on how much of your hard earned money you were willing to part with. Wifey and I went to one of these places. After putting just $5 on our card, we realized that was only good for, hmmm, two games. I remember going to the mall as a teenager with a couple of dollars. That was my afternoon. It was usually a combination of Joust, Dig Dug, and Galaga. I really had to pace myself with my two dollars, otherwise I would be watching other people play for the remainder of my afternoon. I would have to comb the mall visiting Spencer Gifts, looking at posters of Samantha Fox and nameless poster models in scantily clad clothing with my friends. 


The games today are ridiculously sophisticated. When I was learning how to play Mario Kart a couple of years ago with my boys, I found the learning curve really steep. It moves fast. For the life of me, I can not understand how more people are not suffering from neurological disorders as a result of prolonged exposure to these psychedelic video game experiences. 


Nowadays, kids can sit indoors, all day on their Wii's, Crackstations, or other video gaming devices. As if nerds were not isolated enough, now nerds sit on their couch all day eating crap and playing video games, because mom and dad do not want to bother being parents. Look, I am not defending video games at all, but at least when I was a kid, we would have to stand to play them. More, we actually interacted with other nerdy kids about the best way to defeat that bad dude on the fifth screen of Kung Fu Master. 


There was recently an exhibit at the Strong Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, of on hundred old video games like Tron (my personal favorite), Pole Position, Bezerk, Defender, etc. The exhibit was so popular–especially with nerds that fall into my demographic–that they actually purchased the exhibit. Do you realize that we will be the first generation of octogenarians playing Madden?

2) Pay Phones/Phones with Cords: I will never forget the first time I realized that I had to actually bite the bullet and purchase a cellular phone. It was gigantic and had an antennae that I had to pull up. I actually remember rotary phones. 


1) Rock and Roll: The only way my children will ever understand what rock and roll is will be my me playing it and talking to them about it. There are no rock bands anymore. Seriously. Can you name one? A rock band. You know... like The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Led Zeppelin. I had a conversation with one of my classes the other day about how we are still talking about Led Zeppelin forty years later. How many bands from their generation do you think will be current forty years from now? We will look back on Maroon Five and Dave Matthews as horrible sociological experiments. The idea of rock and roll being dead brings up an even more interesting question. How will we ever experience the work of The Who again? 


In modern dance, there exists several repertory companies that keep the work of seminary figures in the modern dance world alive, such as Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Jose Limon, and Merce Cunningham. Are there going to be Rock and Roll repertory companies, or are we only going to know what theses bands sound like from video and audio performances? 


Training:


Okay, we have some unbelievable, unseasonably warm weather here in western New York. The sun has been shining all weekend with temperatures approaching the 60's!  In late November! Ah, global warming does have its perks. I start my official season training on Monday. Can not wait. Looking forward to getting the official ball rolling.


 More soon. Train Smart!

The Friday Top Five: The Five Worst 80's Artists

Remember the 1980's? I do. Skinny leather ties, John Hughes films (I was no-so-secretly in love with Molly Ringwald), leg warmers worn over jeans, Atari, and Garbage Pail Kids (wifey still has a huge mint collection of them in the basement). Those were among some of the coolest trends that transpired from an era that gave rise to the perm and copious amounts of Aqua Net hair spray. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish the faces of many of the girls in my high school because the feathered bangs and porcupine-like hairdos negated their faces. 

To be fair, there were some cool things that emerged  from  the 1980's. The 1980's were the golden years of both New Wave and Hip Hop. Bands like New Order, Depeche Mode, Elvis Costello and Art of Noise (named after the famous Luigi Rusollo manifesto of 1913) meant that nerdy keyboard players who previously got no love from screaming coeds attending their concerts, were now nerdy keyboard players that still got no love from screaming coeds, but were at the cutting edge of popular culture. It was this decade that invited a whole generation of white middle class suburban kids to wear baggy pants and imitate the subversive underground hip hop culture that was emerging by adopting the gesticulations and jargon of artists like RUN DMC and LL Cool J. The 80's ushered a new dance style of movement referred to as breakdancing. With Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo as my inspiration, I spent countless hours perfecting my moonwalk  and windmill. I am proud to say that I can still throw it down and in the same awkward way nearly thirty years later. 

There was, however, some really terrible music that emerged during this era. Listed below are the top five songs that I am embarrassed to even say I know. If these artists were never to happen, I think the musical landscape of the 1980's would be a far better place:

#5) Mister Mister: Yeah, so take those broken wings and fly the heck out of here, because that song is wickety-wack. What made this band most possibly most embarrassing was the post-Bing Crosby-crooner-like lyricism that said "I am trying to be Steve Perry, but I am just not that cool." Interestingly enough, the band members all went on to have pretty decent careers in music afterwards, writing hit songs for artists like Madonna, Whitesnake, and Rod Stewart. However, lead guitarist and bassist, Richard Page, released a Christmas EP in 2010. Christmas albums are the official death of an artist's career. 

#4) Night Ranger: This San Francisco based pop-rock band quintet's most popular radio hit was the power  ballad "Sister Christian" which peaked at #5 in 1984. They are still doing it after all these years. Nice, old guys in leather pants. Move over Loverboy!

#3) Toad the Wet Sprocket: Years ahead of their time, I like to define them as the slightly less sophisticated Dave Matthews Band of their generation. You know, really Wonderbread. I am sure that the same things that made their music attractive to scores of soccer playing teenagers in the 80's are also what make Dave Matthews attractive to this generation of musically misinformed college coeds. 

Oh, you Dave Matthews apologists, don't get me started. So many of my students ask, "Yeah, but they are such talented musicians, right?" They might be, but Yngwie Malmsteen has great facility on the guitar, but he is still embarrassing. I am not going to front. I own a CD though. 

#2) Richard Marx: Did you know that his debut album yielded four hit singles and went on to sell four million copies? Don't even pretend like you did not rock it out in your mom's minivan to "Don't Mean Nothing," and I am quite confident his "Hold on to the Nights"track made it onto that mix tape you made the girl you were going to spend the rest of your life with in ninth grade. His second album, Repeat Offender, knocked Prince off of the number one position. Prince!  Who is cool and can play his proverbial ass off! Repeat Offender went triple platinum in a number of months and eventually went on to sell five million albums. Blame it on the emergence of Gangsta' rap, but unfortunately Rick never attained the same level of success he enjoyed with his first two albums. In 2006, he appeared on the Fox television show "Celebrity Duets." Although the Fox network is known for its quality programming like Who Want to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, appearing on a Fox reality television show is kind of like making a Christmas album—the kiss of death.

#1) Rick Astley: Rick Astley falls into the category of artists whose songs all sound the same. Among the artists belonging to the dedicated club of making all of their music sound the same are ZZ Top, Dave Matthews Band, and Howard Jones. The best thing that Rick Astley has contributed to popular culture is the "Rick-Rolling" phenomenon. He defines the quintessential white man dance. 

Who are your bottom five?

TRAINING:

We have all been there as athletes. You know, those times during the year when you are trying to compress the six million things that you want to do into a 24-hour period. What is up with this rotation of the earth being so quick? I have to admit though, now that we have been dealing with 24-hour days our whole life, it makes the idea of even having a slightly longer day confusing, and possibly, downright problematic. I mean. have you considered how perfect our clocks look with five numbers nestled on either side of those hemispheres between the twelve and the six? What would it look like to have even one more hour on that clock? Yeah, clearly not right.

My training the past couple of weeks have been pretty decent. The guilt of taking some downtime and continuing to eat as if I were still training for an iron distance event has caught up to me. To be honest, I clearly have to start training my proverbial ass off again, because I am not about to give up my 3500 calorie pancake breakfast with real New York State male syrup anytime soon. I have started to Rev my engines once again and start thinking about next season. My work-induced "downtime" during the month of October has officially left me hungry for more pool time and long runs.

It is shaping up to be a beautiful weekend here in western New York. I might get out for my last November ride of the season this weekend. Almost all the way through November and still no snow!

More soon. Train Smart!

Pardon The Interruption....

Yeah, so, I am not even going to "front" (as those of who are truly in touch with our hip hop sensibilities like to say).  I have been absent. I will spare you the details, but let me just say this:

We've moved.

Have you ever moved?

Have you ever moved with children?

Moving with the bambini was like trying to herd cats.

The picture above is is a view from our deck looking out at the lake in the morning. I get to roll out of bed every morning to this spectacular view. Talk about motivation! It is just there, calling me down. If we did not have winter here eight months out of the year, why would I ever do laps at the pool? This "waterfront"—although the actual waterfront is a wee bit father than it looks—is nothing new for us. Heck when we moved into our first house eleven years ago we had a teeny, tiny retaining pond in our backyard for the the development behind us. Eleven years later

We moved twice in the span of a month. Who does that, or more importantly, why did we do this?

Well, as we were waiting to close on our new house, and start the kids at their new school, we thought it would be a good idea not to live in our van down by the river, er, or lake in this case. It really came down to wifey and me not wanting to start the kiddies in there previous school and have to move them after a month. I know it seems crazy to some, but we thought it might have been a bit more difficult, especially given the fact that our twins were starting full-day kindergarten. The amazing thing about our children is that they just rolled with everything. Perhaps it is the fact that they are so close in age, but they were barely phased by the chaos the last month. When we moved into the house we rented from one of my colleagues, the kids were outside riding their bikes around the block, immediately making new friends.

Needless to say, the month following Rev3 has been absolosmurfly insane. Thus, I am just getting into the swing of training again. My new neighborhood provides the perfect triathlon training ground as far as I am concerned. I have a brutal 4.5, 7, and 9 mile loop that have me running up hills that I literally have to pump myself up for minutes before arriving. I can not make any excuses for taking a little time off, other than the fact that I have been a bit physically and mentally spent from the pace at work. Of course, if I don't train, I get a little lethargic and am not as efficient at work as I should be. When I swim during the afternoons and head back to my office, I am incredibly productive.

Speaking of swimming, the women's swim team invited me to start practicing with them, which of course, I graciously accepted. I think they all secretly enjoy kicking my ass, but you would never know it. They are incredibly encouraging all the time. Why don't I work out with them men's team? We don't have one. Needless to say, I am currently the slowest "honorary member" on the team.

I am still "unpacking" from Rev 3 Cedar Point and looking forward to another season under the fearless leadership of Mama Bear herself, Carole Sharpless. My nephew, Nicholas seeded me this video in a torrent file a couple of weeks ago.

Our fearless team leader, Carole Sharples interview 1/2. You'll understand after seeing this double feature, why Carole is well-suited to lead a team with so many personalities—she has multiple personalities herself:

I have some other big news for 2012 coming soon. Stay tuned!

Rev 3 Race Report

Well, I had to sit down and finally write this report. I am not sure if this will be a race report or an online therapy session for me. I am still psychologically recovering form my race. I think this one is really going to take a while because I thought I was on the verge of doing something spectacular for me. A lot of friends have supported me this week by telling me "we've all been there." Unfortunately, this does not really make it any better.

Really, this is the tale of two races for me: the one until mile 10 of the marathon, and the one after mile 10 of the marathon.

I taught Friday morning. My nephew, Nicholas (who was incredibly supportive the whole weekend even as he was making his documentary film about my whole experience) came to my class Friday morning. My class ended at 11:05 and we made our way downtown to eat some breakfast before departing for the weekend.

I stayed pretty relaxed the car ride to Sandusky, Ohio—the site for the Rev3 Full race. It is about a five and a half hour car ride. The only thing that was troublesome for me about the trip is that my nephew packed the back of his Subaru Forester like he was going on an excursion across the Americas for a undetermined amount of time. He packed several cameras, a tripod, clothes for every conceivable natural disaster, and enough homemade chocolate chip cookies to make the Keebler elves envious. The ironic part is that Nicholas also has the family "vain gene" which necessitated him a black tank top most of the time. My bike was also IN the car with us, so I could not really put my set back to ever stretch out my legs. Being 6'2" has some slight disadvantages.

I ate great all weekend. By great I mean a lot of carbohydrates a lot of the time. It was as if I had died and gone to Italian Culinary Heaven. Friday night, a bunch of Trakker teammates and friends got together for some good food and conversation. I was feeling pretty relaxed. Nicholas and I got to our hotel around 9:30, put on my Recovery Pump, and decided to call it a night.

Saturday morning, a bunch of Trakkers teammates went out to the shores of Lake Erie (and do I mean erie!) to spray athletes down with "Magic in a Bottle," otherwise known as TriSlide. I had strict instructions from Coach Mary to stay off of my feet as much as possible. Luckily, my awesome teammate Kelly was there to make sure that I was diligent about this.

The Race:

Transition: 

Unknowingly, this is where everything started to go completely wrong.

I felt really relaxed. I filled up my aero bottle, pumped my race tires. I headed out to the beach with Kelly's husband, Kelly. Here we are getting ready to head out on the beach race morning. Yup, those are the pants I wore. I was warm, and I match. What can I say. MC Hammer would approve. The only thing that completely messed me up was that when I got out to the actual beach near the start, I had suddenly realized—with less than twenty minutes before the actual start—that I forgot to take all the nutrition out of my backpack and into my swim to bike bag. Not good. Needless to say, I got the nutrition in the bag. Let's just leave it at that. I am confident that there were several USAT rule violations happening that magically made my nutrition appear in my bag at transition. I put on my wetsuit and got into the water for a little swim. This is a picture of the view the entire swim:

I am not exaggerating a little bit. I could literally not see an inch in front of my eyes. Perhaps this was the reason that my heart rate spiked and I thought I might drown on the way out to the first buoy. Or, perhaps I was completely psyching myself out. I have never swam a more physical swim than this. All the way out to the first buoy, I was being hammered, pulled, dragged, kneed, slapped, and moved. Of course, I would be lying if I did not admit to moving a few bodies aside to get to where I needed to go. 

Once I got past the first buoy, it was clear sailing. I got into a rhythm and felt pretty good... I even kicked a little. A little. 

My swim time last year was 1:24:57. I definitely had a better swim. 

My bike time improved as well. Last year my course average was 19.16, and I biked a 19.26 this year.  I even biked a faster split despite the fact that I stopped during special needs to grab two water bottle—something that I did not do last year.  The bike was fine, except for the fact that about 40 miles in I suffered some unbearable pain that I had not experienced biking all season. REALLY?! Does this have to happen NOW?   The pain was shooting from what I believe is my IT band straight down to the right side of my right knee. I do not know that I would have necessarily biked any faster (although I would like to think I could have), but being free from the pain would have made the next seventy miles of the bike a heck of a lot more enjoyable. 

I did make a critical error on the bike and that was that I started drinking Gatorade more than I usually do. Even as it was going down, it is a lot more sugary than my First Endurance. I am not use to it. I had brought two bottles of EFS on the bike with me and picked up another two bottles during Special Needs, but I dropped a bottle somewhere—who knows where it is now—on the bike and was without my last bottle of EFS for the last hour of the ride. 

Okay, The End.


Dammit, there's more!

Yeah, so, again let me just state the obvious: I'm an idiot. I started out feeling really good on the run. I walked every aid station fueling up. I guess this is where I made my second mistake. I brought a bunch of EFS mix with me in my Fuel Belt that I did not end up drinking. The reason why escapes me. I guess I was feeling so good that I did not bother to do everything that I trained with that got me to this point. I was effectively changing my game plan midway through the run. I was maintaining 10:00 minute miles throughout the run until I got to mile 10. All of a sudden, I started feeling reall, REALLY nauseous. I was not dizzy, I just felt like I was going to hurl. I looked down on my Garmin and I was at mile 10 somewhere around 1:35. I knew right there that it was going to take hurling, or a miracle to start feeling better. I was optimistic that I would feel better soon. Unfortunately, my optimism did not last long. I got to mile 13 and had to sit down. My body was dehydrated and exhausted. Wonderful!  I knew my "race" was over. Then it happened. I started puking between mile 14 and 15 of the run. I thought I would feel better immediately. Not the case. Around mile 18, I sat underneath a tree to get some rest and contemplate the meaning of life. In about 20 seconds, I was surrounded by volunteers and medical staff asking me if I was alright. They took my vitals and said my blood pressure was running a bit low (100/60) and my oxygen was about 88%. I figured that had to be about right since my muscles were probably using every bit of it. They offered to take me to the hospital or to the finish line. I knew one thing. I might not have the race I intended on having, but there was NO WAY I was NOT getting a FINISHER T-SHIRT!

From that point on, I knew that this race was all about the t-shirt. I can honestly say that I have never worked harder for a t-shirt in my entire life than I did at Rev3 Cedar Point Full on September 11, 2011! The good news? I DID get that awesome t-shirt. I am now a two-time Rev3 Full Finisher, and although I did not have the race I had anticipated, or that I know in my heart I still have in me, I learned a lot this season from my coach. She should definitely shoot me for not implementing the game plan come race day though. I had a great time amongst friends, teammates, and my wonderful nephew Nicholas who spent part of his vacation with his uncle Mark. I think that was the greatest part of the whole experience. Nicholas and I got to share some really special time together. He was so encouraging the whole time we spent together.

I am retiring from Iron distance racing for the foreseeable future. I have children to raise, and music and performances to work toward. I will continue to race with nothing more than a half-Rev3 in my future. I know this sounds sick, but I will miss the training. What's wrong with me?

Since the Ironman diet is still in full effect, I think I better get out there again and start swimming, biking, and running. I just did a swim with Musselman race director Jeff Henderson. We swam in Seneca Lake sans wetsuits on Sunday morning. Holy smokes, was that water cold!  I swam fast.

Thanks to all of my Trakkers teammates and friends who encouraged me to cross that finish line... run, walk, or crawl!

Ground Control To Major Tom: Countdown to Rev 3 Cedar Point

T-Minus 10 9 days and COUNTING.

I've realized a some things:

1) With ten days left to go, I should probably book my hotel for Rev3Full Cedar Point. I am NOT kidding. This is just how I have to roll. I know... I know... how long does it take to book a hotel room? Look guys, I have FIVE kids. I might be sleeping in a tent outside on the beach before the race. The good news? The walk to the swim start will not be far.

2) I am nervous— way more nervous than I was before my first attempt at this distance. Why is that? I think it is a combination of having some sort of expectation of how I should do now after having one iron distance race under my belt, and being scared to death of how much pain I will be in at mile 15 of the run.

3) There is no substitute for sleep.

4) I have little time for sleep between now and Rev3

5) I will sleep when I'm dead. It's overrated anyway.

6) I have got the best job on the planet. Really. I came in to work the other day with this name plate on my door.

7) Blog posts tend to get less long and less funny the closer it gets to Rev3 Full Cedar Point. Some inverse relationship thing. I am not a mathematician. I don't know.

8) There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary, and those who do not.

9) I received a new t-shirt in the mail the other day. None of my friends really understood it. Even those who have raced the distance. Do they teach periodic tables in school anymore? Is it just me or is my head a little fuzzy? Must be taper week.

10) David Bowie, although very cool, androdgynous, and quite svelte in leather, has absolutely nothing to do with this blog post.

Oh, one last thing.... my CRAZY friend Alexa just wrote  a HYSTERICAL post about our Iron distance  showdown here. I have some serious reservations concerning some of the rhetoric in her post though. Allow me to unpack a little:

#1) Alexa claims that as a full-time professor I have my summers off. That could not be further from the truth. First of all, five kids does not allow you to ever have your summers off. In fact, going to work at the end of the summer is like going on vacation. Don't judge me, those of you with children know what I'm talking about.

#2) Alexa wrote a list of advantage/disadvantages to handicap our showdown. What was interesting is that she said because I am a man, I have an advantage. Her argument for this was that no matter how fast Chrissie Wellington is, she will never beat a male pro. I am not sure I buy this argument. No... no, in fact I know I do not buy this argument. First off, you can not compare elite, pro triathletes to a couple of age-groupers with real jobs and responsibilities outside the world of triathlon. Secondly, I think the REAL comparison should be AGE, which is completely ignored in Ms. Harding's post. Alexa is a at least a decade younger. Sure, you could point at kick-ass age-groupers in their 50's and 60's and say age does not matter, but it does. Not to mention, that most of them (old fast men and women) have been going faster for longer than either one of us.

#3) Alexa has got one thing right. We both can be loud, but if it were a competition, she has me beat by a long shot. We both have decent abs and we are not embarrassed to wear as little clothing as possible to let people know that we've suffered long, hard hours for our statuesque ancient Greek-like physiques.

#4) If I win, it will be the upset of the millennium. It would be like Frazier beating Ali, the Buffalo Bills winning at least one Superbowl against a superior opponent, or the coyote finally catching that ever-elusive Roadrunner. Whatever the case, I am going out there to kick-ass and have the time of my life, again!

Today is my anniversary, I am going to celebrate with wifey tonight. I've been together eleven years with my best friend. You are awesome wifey. Thanks for all of your support this year!

More from Rev3 soon!

Train Smart!

The Friday Top Five: Top Five Things I Love About Training For Rev3 Cedar Point Full

Do you know why it's Sunday and I am posting the Friday Top Five today?!  Because I am convinced my coach is trying to kill me. Honestly, I am not sure what I did to piss her off....

I think that working with a coach has has made one thing glaringly obvious this year: I had NO idea what the heck I was doing last year when I trained on my own. NOW, that is NOT to say that you can not train your proverbial ass off and race well. I really believe that for people with no time to set up workouts or, more importantly, asses the data from your workouts in any meaningful way, I would highly recommend going this route. The other problem with assessing your own data is that it is much too easy to lie to yourself about why you are not performing at a high level.

Without further adieu....

Top Five Things I Love About Training For Rev3 Cedar Point Full

5) PERSPECTIVE: Training for the Rev3 full provides perspective on what is really important. Training for the full distance is time-consuming. If I do not get my ass out of bed and up at five in the morning for a 6 hour ride, it CAN NOT happen. Why?  Playing catch with my boys, building legos with the bambini, or coloring pictures with my girls pays more dividends down the road than beating my last Iron distance time by an hour. Not to mention that staying gainfully employed means making sure I don't substitute training for say, syllabus design.

4) COACH MARY: Seeing steady progress in my swim and run are exciting. Coach Mary is the ultimate jedi-f-ing-Master. I am not sure how I arrived at this level of fitness after not running for 8 WEEKS, but I am excited that I am not hurting anymore and running fairly solid. I learned a lot this season about training, pacing, nutrition (and Coach Mary learned something about my nutrition plan.... I call it the "Olivieri Small Panini Plan, or just O.S.P.P. for short). Don't worry, I'll explain my "untraditional" nutrition plan in a future post. 

The progress has not been limited to the bike. I have done several hour swims in open water the last few weeks. I am swimming as fast this season sans wetsuit as I was swimming last year WITH my wetsuit. If that is not improvement....

After a few long rides in some rolling hills, I also appreciate how quickly my bike fitness improves. I went out for a ride on a course I have ridden a bunch of times. I was scheduled for an easy hour zone two ride the other day. Something about hitting hills makes going into that westerly New York wind a heck of a lot easier.

3) ELITISM: There is no substitute for that totally elitist, self-rightous feeling that comes after finishing an long run before seven or eight in the morning. I also enjoy casually mentioning the fact that I "just rode six hours today, now I am going to the pool with my family for the rest of the afternoon." Sure, snobbery is not attractive. If you want to truly come off as being an elitist, you have to be (or at least pretend) that you are totally aloof to the fact that you are acting like Thurston Howell. 

No one looks better in spandex than a disproportionate
Barbie. 

2) SPANDEX: Look, if I have to wear it to race, I better have the svelte, rippled physique of a seventeen year old Swedish downhill skier (even I am not sure how I arrived there with that one, but go with it). Sure, my wife makes fun of me because of my 80's aerobic attire, but if I need to wear spandex—and, boy do I ever—I might as well be in my best physical shape of the year. 

1) FOOD: Consuming over 10,000 calories on any given day is both fun and annoys the heck out of many of my friends. It is only during Iron distance training that I can somehow justify eating half of a sheet pizza, drinking a gigantic chocolate milkshake, and having a bowl of ice cream for an evening snack.





RANDOM CRAZINESS:

Building over the past couple of weeks has been both EXciting and EXhausting. I can barely log my workouts for Coach Mary because as soon as I get home from a six hour ride, my kids ask me to go on a bike ride with them. I look at them suspiciously, but then I remember that they are way too young to lay on the sarcasm that thickly.

• Yesterday after my ride, Julian asks me "...when I get older, can I have your  Kestrel so I can beat me you at Ironman.

I said, "Julian, what makes you think you are going to beat me at Ironman?" He replied, "Dad, I am really fast, and you will be older."

• I remember when going out for a 10k, an hour bike, and a 1000 yard swim seemed like crazy long distances to have to traverse. I have an hour bike tomorrow and I am like "thank goodness!"

Okay, that's all for now. Looking forward to seeing all my Trakkers teammates and blogger buddies at REV3 Cedar Point in 20 DAYS!

Train Smart!

Ramping Up For Rev 3 And Watching Rugrats Run

I had a really great build week last week thanks to the fine art of torture planning Coach Mary laid out for me. I had a great six hour ride on Saturday through some hills followed by a nice 30 minute run. All said and done, it was nearly 4800 feet of climbing. Now, I know it is not nearly as much as I would do if I lived, say, in Colorado, but it is pretty darn good for western New York.

I learned a couple of things around mile 90 of my 110 mile bike ride:

1) My sense of humor severely diminishes after mile 90.

2) I want "real people" food after 90 miles, like pizza, or a cheeseburger.

3) TriSlide is an essential part of any 6 hour bike ride.

4) My nutrition plan going into this year's REV3 Cedar Point is far better than I experienced last year. I will be consuming copious amount (at least a bottle per hour) of grape EFS.

Hopefully this will all pay off with a FUN day at REV3 Cedar Point. I am really starting to look forward to the race, despite all the craziness of trying to prepare classes for the fall semester.

I had a swim a one hour swim the other day—with another one scheduled here shortly—that I completely rocked. I mean, check it out.... my top speed was 121 mph. Take THAT Michael Phelps! Not to mention, I did over 2600 feet of climbing on my swim. That is surely unprecedented. When forced to explain how this is even possible to wifey, I told her that I would start underneath the horizon and continually swim back into shore. A canoe would bring me back out and I would repeat. Wifey rolled her eyes and said something about being an idiot. I am not sure. I really was not listening.

Last Thursday wifey and I took the bambini out for a "fun run" that is sponsored by one of the local running clubs. They offered for events for the kiddies: the 100 meter, quarter mile, half mile, and mile. Everyone wanted to try running. Below is a picture of my girls just before the race and a picture of Stella showing of her race bib.

The "race" organizers had all the events back to back. The kids maybe got three to five minutes between races to rest and enjoy their delicious popsicles. Our one daughter, Janina, ran all of the races. She won 100 meter and did pretty well in the quarter—considering she is just five years old. She must have her mother's genetics. Everyone did awesome and had such a blast. Luca surprised wifey and I by going out super fast in the 800. We thought he was going to throw up, but he managed to stride out the middle 200 yards and sail easily past the finish line relatively upright. Tonight, he is going to attempt to run the mile. Luca is as competitive as his old man. He gets distraught when I beat him at chess. He said he wants to come in first. I reminded him that these runs are not timed—they are just about going out and having fun running—to which he replied, "...yeah, I know, but I want to win the fun run." I was proud and tearful for a moment.
The first video is of the 100 meter. This was hysterical. You can see my daughter in the right hand corner in purple pass quickly past the camera, but watching Stella run is absolutely wonderful.

Heading out this weekend for another six hour ride and 30 minute run. I would like to thank Recovery Pump for ensuring that I am still able to run, let alone walk, on Sunday!

More soon. Train Smart!