The Bearded Triathlete

chemicalcraig — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:15:41 +0000

An Open Letter…

chemicalcraig — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:56:44 +0000

To the old guy who stands naked under the hand dryers with one leg up on the wall in the men’s locker room in the rec center:

Please do not do this anymore. It’s disturbing in so many ways, and I can’t stop the nightmares.

Thank you.

Whats mine is yours, Right?

chemicalcraig — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:12:08 +0000

Went for a nice multisport day at the park on saturday. I packed a lunch and took a bus from Eugene down to cottage grove and then rode out to dorena lake. The ride along the row river trail is awesome. I’m used to overused/poorly maintained trails like the riverbank system or the burke-gillman, this was a nice change of pace. No one around, smooth pavement, amazing scenery through lush forests. At the lake I found a nice spot on the grass to roll out a blanket and set up all of my stuff, then hit the water. There were a few people out already and the water was fairly choppy. It was so nice just to get in and swim with no walls. I still prefer the ocean, but it was great nonetheless. Then I worked on some transitions, and a mini half-sprint triathlon.

This is where the greatness ended though. While out on the bike or run someone stole my wetsuit! Needless to say I’m pretty pissed off. I have a race next weekend and now I have to get a new wetsuit. Who steals someone’s wetsuit? It’s not like I was in the middle of a city or something. You have to travel to get to the lake, so I figured there wouldn’t be too many vagrants just cruising by. Everyone that goes there does so for a purpose, not to scope out other people’s shit. I haven’t seen it on craigslist or ebay yet, but I’m watching like a hawk. If anyone comes across a Neosport full suit, size large, with some home repair stitching on the neck, and my name and phone number written inside, contact me. Please.

The perplexing part is that they left my bag intact, including my wallet, phone, and ipods.

I ate lunch, read a little bit and caught the bus back to eugene. Despite the snafu, I’ll be doing this again in the future. It was a great day out, and at least I didn’t have to take the bus with a soaking wetsuit.

Crack kills.

chemicalcraig — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:52:47 +0000

The local long course pool has opened for the summer and it’s fantastic. It takes the same amount of time to bike there from my office as it does to walk to the dingy rec center yard pool, and it’s so much better. Eight very wide lanes of non-congested outside goodness. The only downside is that there are no speed designations for the lanes so it’s pretty much a free for all when it comes to choosing a lane. I don’t think newer swimmers realize how important it is to get in a lane with people their own speed, It’s just better for everyone. To those who are clueless about pool etiquette: stay the heck out of my lane if you can’t swim fast. You see me swimming, you know you’re not fast, yet you get in anyway. Please don’t do this anymore. Oh and to the guy whose speedo was ripped from top to bottom along his butt crack: please don’t ever wear that thing again. Or at least if you do, don’t bend over in front of everyone on the pool deck to pick up kickboards that aren’t yours. I mean seriously, how do you not know your ass crack and genitalia are on display?

After work I went for an awesome bike ride. If you know anything about me it’s that I’m a sad excuse for a cyclist. I just don’t put in the hours, mainly because I don’t know where to ride and there are only so many times you can ride the river path, dodging little kids, dogs, crazed tweakers, and drunken frat boys. I ran into a competitive cyclist I know and asked for some rides that would take me out of town. I took her advice and went on an unbelievable ride. Just a few miles outside of town I was on back country roads with good pavement, no cars, beautiful scenery, wildlife, and lots of trees. And hills. I can’t believe I’ve lived in Eugene and have never taken advantage of some of the cycling opportunities that abound. Now that I know what’s out there it’ll be much easier to put myself in the saddle and go for a ride. If you have any suggestions let me know.

Woof

chemicalcraig — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 19:24:08 +0000

I was barked at by a raccoon while running on the north riverbank trail last night. A mother raccoon with 3 babies was walking down the path when I came upon them. I gave them a shout to let them know I was coming, I really didn’t want to deal with a frightened rabid raccoon attacking my bare calves. The mother immediately stopped, turned towards me, puffed herself up and barked at me like a dog. The little ones scurried off and the mother stood her ground. I had to stop and walk slowly around her to avoid any confrontation.

So far this spring I’ve been barked at by mother geese, yes they can bark as well as hiss, as well as the raccoon. I’ve flushed mother pheasants, which can nearly induce a heart attack if you’ve never experienced it before, and been lured away from countless small woodland bird’s nests by mother birds flopping down the trail acting injured.

I’m amazed I haven’t been mauled yet.

Bloomsday 2009

chemicalcraig — Mon, 11 May 2009 16:01:52 +0000

Another Bloomsday under my belt. This is the first year I was even remotely trained, though my running in the few weeks prior to the race were less than stellar. A shoulder injury has thrown all of my training into a general funk that’s been hard to get out of. There were nearly 46,000 runners this year, an increase over last year and it showed. I started near the back of the yellow group, something I won’t be doing again. There were entirely too many slow runners in front of me. How they got in the yellow group I’ll never know, but a lot of them were walking by the first mile. I got to the starting area a little late and was waiting in line for the honey bucket when the gun went off. Oh well. I know there is a line of them at mile 2. The start was horrendous. The road was simply not wide enough to accomodate that many people. I made my way to the edge of the road and was running through people’s yards and over bushes, just so I wouldn’t have to be in the road where you couldn’t go faster than a 10:00 pace. I used the bathroom at mile 2. This is the first time I’ve ever had to stop during a race. I felt somewhat ashamed, but felt so much better afterwards, totally worth it. The crowd was so thick and slow that I couldn’t run in a straight line at a decent pace until around the third mile. Even though I wasn’t going as fast as I was able to I wasn’t weaving, starting, or stopping as much. It wouldn’t be until mile 5 or so that I could get enough clear road to go anything under 7:00 pace. I finished with a time of 53:27, my best time yet. Without the bathroom break it would be 52:00. I could do much better given a bit more space, but this is Bloomsday and that’s part of the experience.

Run for the Shamrock race report

chemicalcraig — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:35:48 +0000

Did the “Run for the Shamrock” in Alton Baker park today. I couldn’t decide whether to do the 5K or 10K, but on the bike ride over it was freezing and starting to rain so I opted for the 5K. I’m doing the Mercer Island 10K next week anyway, so I don’t feel so bad for slacking. It was a neat course, pretty much mirroring a lot of my training runs in the area, so no surprises.
Both the 5K and 10K started and ended in the same place. I accidentally lodged myself near the middle of the pack at the start and couldn’t move forward since we were so tightly jumbled together. I knew I was in the wrong place when I heard other people talking about how they’re going to shoot for holding an 8:00 mile pace. The gun went off and I spent the next few minutes trying to get around people that were moving very slowly. The trail was fairly narrow making it difficult to pass people, but the crowd eventually thinned out and I was able to start running a bit faster, but still not up to speed. 1st mile split was 6:41. This was OK, considering how long it took to get going. I really just wanted to see if I could hold my goal 10K pace of ~6:30 for the race, because if I can’t do it in a 5K I sure can’t do it in a 10K. I kept passing people well into the second mile and was able to speed it up a bit. Second mile split was 6:20, a little better. Going into the third mile I started passing people less frequently, but still had a lot of gas left. I passed my last runner with about 3/4 mile left, leaving a huge gap between me and the next guy. I picked up the pace a bit and the 3rd mile split was 6:01. I was closing fast on the guy in front of me, but wasn’t willing to push that hard. I know I could’ve sprinted to beat him, but that probably would’ve meant puking in the grass afterwards. No thanks. Finish time was 19:30, with an average mile split of 6:21. I won my age group and placed 5th overall. Looking at the results I could’ve come in 2nd if I hadn’t had such a crappy start (the winner held 5:22 splits). All in all it was a good race and gave me confidence in my ability to run a sub 40 min 10K in the upcoming season.

Faster than an Olympian

chemicalcraig — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 06:36:38 +0000

Living in Eugene is great. Where else can you run into the world’s best athletes on a daily basis? Most of my encounters happen at the UO pool, and most of the athlete’s are runners not swimmers. These guys have some of the most beautiful strides ever seen on the track, but for some reason can’t translate that to a stroke. Your swimming stroke follows essentially the same principles as your stride: keep the left and right side even, bend your knees (elbows), don’t twist too much, keep your feet (hands) in line with your knees (elbows), … But most of the time I see straight arms swinging widely and unevenly. Nick Symmonds happens to have a pretty nice stroke, not the fastest, but definitely a good base if he ever decided he’d like to get fast. He’d be a force to be reckoned with in triathlon for sure, with proper training, which I’m sure he’d have no problem with seeing as he’s one of the fastest runners around (he runs a sub-4-minute mile). His is much nicer (and faster) than, say, Andrew Wheating’s who happened to be in the pool tonight. That’s not to say Andrew isn’t decent, he’s just light years ahead in his running. It is nice to see them in the pool, though. I’m sure they’d have much worse things to say about me if they ever saw me running at Hayward Field or in Alton Baker Park.

Anyway, here’s today’s workout:

Bike:

trainer 2 hrs.
nice and mellow, woke up with a stiff knee from yesterday’s track workout at Hayward.

Swim: 4700 yd

600 warm up
8×50 drill/swim @ 1:00
4×100 scull/swim/drill/swim @ 2:00
1000 pull ~75%
100 ez
4×400 @ 5:45
build by 100, anaerobic for last 100
100 ez
6×50 build @ :50
200 cool down

Abs/pushups after swim