Sunday Ride
We got out yesterday and rode 100 miles (OK, 98.8). Infospigot tells the tale well, although he understates his role in pulling my sorry ass most of the way. Meanwhile, the evidence suggests that while we rode, Sam Thompson rested. He deserved a day off. After all, he'd run a marathon every day from July 1 through August 19. Check it out.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Old News, New Package
I guess for The New York Times it's not a story until they write it. Still, the piece in Sunday's paper on wine ratings goes not a millimeter past a dozen other such pieces I've read in the past half-dozen years. Its stunning conclusion: The 100-point scoring system used by publications and retailers is little more than a marketing tool, a crude one at that, and subject to at the very least the appearance of manipulation for profit. Duh.
UPDATE: Geez, and they even make the palette/palate mistake: "It is easy to start an argument in the wine industry by positing that many wine makers fashion wines to please the palettes of Mr. Parker, Mr. Laube and other high-profile critics." If I had a pallet of wine for every time I've seen palette confused for palate....
I guess for The New York Times it's not a story until they write it. Still, the piece in Sunday's paper on wine ratings goes not a millimeter past a dozen other such pieces I've read in the past half-dozen years. Its stunning conclusion: The 100-point scoring system used by publications and retailers is little more than a marketing tool, a crude one at that, and subject to at the very least the appearance of manipulation for profit. Duh.
UPDATE: Geez, and they even make the palette/palate mistake: "It is easy to start an argument in the wine industry by positing that many wine makers fashion wines to please the palettes of Mr. Parker, Mr. Laube and other high-profile critics." If I had a pallet of wine for every time I've seen palette confused for palate....
Worth Buying?
I've had my picture snapped by those race-photo companies at, oh, maybe 15 or 20 events. But I've never bought a picture -- usually because I've looked like a big dork. But this year at Vineman, a couple of the run shots (they also had bike and emerging-from-the-water swim shots) seemed OK. Here's my favorite. What do you think?
I've had my picture snapped by those race-photo companies at, oh, maybe 15 or 20 events. But I've never bought a picture -- usually because I've looked like a big dork. But this year at Vineman, a couple of the run shots (they also had bike and emerging-from-the-water swim shots) seemed OK. Here's my favorite. What do you think?
Sunday, August 06, 2006
'Out There'
Good story about the trickiness of open-water swimming. Story mentions that open-water swimming will become an Olympic event but, frustratingly, gives no details. However, another piece does. (It's a 10K. Whoa.)
Good story about the trickiness of open-water swimming. Story mentions that open-water swimming will become an Olympic event but, frustratingly, gives no details. However, another piece does. (It's a 10K. Whoa.)
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Numbers
Pretty cool -- a site that pulls together racing results for the masses of runners, cyclers, swimmers out there (and, of course, those of us who do all three in one day). It doesn't capture everything, and the results get real sketchy when you go back to '04 and earlier. But I bet they'll improve it as time goes on. Check it out.
(Noticed after posting this that you must register to see the results...)
Pretty cool -- a site that pulls together racing results for the masses of runners, cyclers, swimmers out there (and, of course, those of us who do all three in one day). It doesn't capture everything, and the results get real sketchy when you go back to '04 and earlier. But I bet they'll improve it as time goes on. Check it out.
(Noticed after posting this that you must register to see the results...)
Sunday, July 30, 2006
PR
No, not public relations – personal record! Doing my fifth Vineman in a row, I turned in my best time ever – 5 hours, 34 minutes and 31 seconds. The old PR, from 2004, was 5:38:23.
The difference this year? The swim. My split was 37:14, more than three minutes better than my best-ever swim, and six minutes better than my '04 swim. I kept my head down, I reached and I kept my elbows high. Still much room for improvement, but isn't that always the case.
I need to point out, as well, that this Vineman -- renamed the Ironman Vineman 70.3, part of Ironman's much-hyped half-iron series -- was not in fact 70.3 miles. Ironically. A bridge in Geyserville damaged by the floods this past winter still hasn't been fixed, we were told, so the course had to be shifted and it grew to 57.5 miles instead of the usual 56.
Overall, it was a very satisfying race. Sure, there weren't enough porta-johns before the start, causing lots of anxiety among the racers; and it sucks to finish a hard race and then have to take a school bus a half-hour to Guerneville to get your car, then drive drive the car back to Windsor to get your bike, then drive home for more than an hour, taking measures to avoid the inevitable last-weekend-in-July traffic at the raceway in Sonoma; and it would be nice if there was more shade provided at the end of the race; and the pre-race talk the day before, does it need to take more than an hour?
All that said, I realize putting on a split-transition, three-discipline event for 2,000 hardcore athletic types is a challenging proposition. And the Vineman 70.3 folks did a good job. And you really can't beat the location. Riding through all those great, beautiful wine valleys on a Sunday morning is just a treat. I think it seemed even better this year because we knew how awful it would have been had the race been a week earlier, when temperatures along the course were over 110 degrees. There was something deeply disturbing about that heatwave, coming amid all the talk of climate change, and with so much of the world unhinged (due in no small part to our country's botched reaction to the outrageous acts perpetrated against us). Or something. I don't know. I just felt lucky to be out there today, even when it began to hurt.
I will say that the National Weather Service completely mangled the forecast. The high for Santa Rosa was predicted to be 72. It was 88. But I was fortunate to go in a pretty early wave, so I was done by 12:53 p.m., when temps had probably not even hit 80. Still, I was hot and thirsty at the end after going hard the last two miles – really hard the last mile. The effort left my stomach not eager to have anything more thrown into it, but I sipped water and juice and an hour later, my appetite returned. Been eating ever since.
The numbers:
Swim (1.2 miles).….37:14.5
T1……………….….........5:45.4
Bike (57.5 miles)..2:56:06.3
T2…………………….......4:01
Run (13.1 miles)...1:51:23.7
TOTAL: 5:34:31.1
83rd/222 in the male 40-44 age group
496th/1,221 finishers (1,950 entered)
No, not public relations – personal record! Doing my fifth Vineman in a row, I turned in my best time ever – 5 hours, 34 minutes and 31 seconds. The old PR, from 2004, was 5:38:23.
The difference this year? The swim. My split was 37:14, more than three minutes better than my best-ever swim, and six minutes better than my '04 swim. I kept my head down, I reached and I kept my elbows high. Still much room for improvement, but isn't that always the case.
I need to point out, as well, that this Vineman -- renamed the Ironman Vineman 70.3, part of Ironman's much-hyped half-iron series -- was not in fact 70.3 miles. Ironically. A bridge in Geyserville damaged by the floods this past winter still hasn't been fixed, we were told, so the course had to be shifted and it grew to 57.5 miles instead of the usual 56.
Overall, it was a very satisfying race. Sure, there weren't enough porta-johns before the start, causing lots of anxiety among the racers; and it sucks to finish a hard race and then have to take a school bus a half-hour to Guerneville to get your car, then drive drive the car back to Windsor to get your bike, then drive home for more than an hour, taking measures to avoid the inevitable last-weekend-in-July traffic at the raceway in Sonoma; and it would be nice if there was more shade provided at the end of the race; and the pre-race talk the day before, does it need to take more than an hour?
All that said, I realize putting on a split-transition, three-discipline event for 2,000 hardcore athletic types is a challenging proposition. And the Vineman 70.3 folks did a good job. And you really can't beat the location. Riding through all those great, beautiful wine valleys on a Sunday morning is just a treat. I think it seemed even better this year because we knew how awful it would have been had the race been a week earlier, when temperatures along the course were over 110 degrees. There was something deeply disturbing about that heatwave, coming amid all the talk of climate change, and with so much of the world unhinged (due in no small part to our country's botched reaction to the outrageous acts perpetrated against us). Or something. I don't know. I just felt lucky to be out there today, even when it began to hurt.
I will say that the National Weather Service completely mangled the forecast. The high for Santa Rosa was predicted to be 72. It was 88. But I was fortunate to go in a pretty early wave, so I was done by 12:53 p.m., when temps had probably not even hit 80. Still, I was hot and thirsty at the end after going hard the last two miles – really hard the last mile. The effort left my stomach not eager to have anything more thrown into it, but I sipped water and juice and an hour later, my appetite returned. Been eating ever since.
The numbers:
Swim (1.2 miles).….37:14.5
T1……………….….........5:45.4
Bike (57.5 miles)..2:56:06.3
T2…………………….......4:01
Run (13.1 miles)...1:51:23.7
TOTAL: 5:34:31.1
83rd/222 in the male 40-44 age group
496th/1,221 finishers (1,950 entered)
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Ten Days in Hell
Recent high temperatures here in Napa:
Tuesday, July 25.......95
Monday, July 24........98
Sunday, July 23.......106
Saturday, July 22....107
Friday, July 21...........96
Thursday, July 20.....93
Wednesday, July 19..89
Tuesday, July 18.......90
Monday, July 17........97
Sunday, July 16.........96
Couple of notes:
- The average July high in Napa, based on 88 years of record-keeping, is 82 degrees.
- The official high in Napa is recorded at the State Hospital, about a mile and a half east of my house. It's a good reflection of the temperature here in town – as opposed to the airport, which is four or five miles south of town, a stone's throw from San Pablo Bay and thus typically 4-8 degrees cooler than in town in summer. What's confusing is that if you go the National Weather Service to find the current temperature for Napa, you'll get the hourly report from the Airport. That's because the State Hospital does not report hourly, only at the end of the day.
Friday, July 21, 2006
The Week in Review
Last weekend, Dan left me two messages that he was indeed coming over for a Saturday morning ride. I didn't pick up either message. Fiddled the early-morning away doing who-knows-what, then finally got my stuff together and was literally heading out the door when Dan arrived, in what was clearly cycling gear. We did ride: up Oakville, which my Garmin asserts is a nearly 700-foot elevation gain in just over a mile, then over Veeder, and back home, totaling about 35 miles. Good stuff. The traditional polluting of air followed, in the name of baking bread in the homemade backyard earthen oven. First two loaves: a little charred. Second two: better. All eaten, all enjoyed. And did you know the oak coals (still working on that first dismembered wine barrel) removed from the oven can serve as excellent coals for the grilling of London broil in the Weber? I lie not.
Sunday, Niko and I endured the heat together -- lots of heat lately, as is the case everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, it appears. Wait -- Moscow rainy and cold. Worse, my persistentoothachece was at its agony-inducing peak. Pain in the jaw, the eye, the temple, the horror, oh the horror. (This in addition to the tooth itself being extremely sensitive to cold.) I had to lie down for a while. But a strange thing happened. After a bike ride in the evening, Niko took a bath and I a shower and when I got out of the shower, the aches were almost entirely gone. Just for a day, but I took it.
There were more workouts -- couple of easy runs and one with some intervals, six miles with four 2:50 half-miles snuck in there, for kicks. Peter and I rode up Wild Horse Road, another steep climb, and did it twice just to make sure that stupid hill was crystal clear on the fact that we had kicked its ass. There was another ride up Veeder, the easier way, from Redwood, with Laura J visiting Napa from Chicago. And of course the usual flapping around in the bath water that is HealthQuest's pool during hot weather. Four swims in all.
That's how today ended, or at least, that was the last halfway interesting thing that happened today -- a swim, as the sun set. Why the late swim? Long story, but a key part of it all was that at 4 p.m. I had presented myself at the office of Dr. Raymond Scott DDS, MS, for the purpose of getting the roots to my No. 3 tooth (second molar on the upper right) excavated, filled and sealed. I'd had another root canal not long ago, but not on a molar and not in a situation in which the tooth was hurting terribly badly. So Dr. Scott drills into the matter and finds the inflammation in two of the four roots is a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being worst. What this meant, presently, was that the anesthetic he'd shot my gums up with wasn't really reaching all the tissue, and that's why I was experiencing piercing pain the likes of which would have had the most dedicated, virgin-eyeing Islamofascists terrorist spilling the beans completely to his freedom-loving American captors. Dr. Scott did what he could to minimize the pain by bathing the area in what I gathered was a topical anesthetic and by and by we got through it, the work was done and five hours later I feel just fine.
Must go to bed soon. Tomorrow morning I need to run, but I also need to watch Our Man Floyd in the time trial. What a Tour. Then it's down to San Jose for Mom & Dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration. Woo-hoo!
Last weekend, Dan left me two messages that he was indeed coming over for a Saturday morning ride. I didn't pick up either message. Fiddled the early-morning away doing who-knows-what, then finally got my stuff together and was literally heading out the door when Dan arrived, in what was clearly cycling gear. We did ride: up Oakville, which my Garmin asserts is a nearly 700-foot elevation gain in just over a mile, then over Veeder, and back home, totaling about 35 miles. Good stuff. The traditional polluting of air followed, in the name of baking bread in the homemade backyard earthen oven. First two loaves: a little charred. Second two: better. All eaten, all enjoyed. And did you know the oak coals (still working on that first dismembered wine barrel) removed from the oven can serve as excellent coals for the grilling of London broil in the Weber? I lie not.
Sunday, Niko and I endured the heat together -- lots of heat lately, as is the case everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, it appears. Wait -- Moscow rainy and cold. Worse, my persistentoothachece was at its agony-inducing peak. Pain in the jaw, the eye, the temple, the horror, oh the horror. (This in addition to the tooth itself being extremely sensitive to cold.) I had to lie down for a while. But a strange thing happened. After a bike ride in the evening, Niko took a bath and I a shower and when I got out of the shower, the aches were almost entirely gone. Just for a day, but I took it.
There were more workouts -- couple of easy runs and one with some intervals, six miles with four 2:50 half-miles snuck in there, for kicks. Peter and I rode up Wild Horse Road, another steep climb, and did it twice just to make sure that stupid hill was crystal clear on the fact that we had kicked its ass. There was another ride up Veeder, the easier way, from Redwood, with Laura J visiting Napa from Chicago. And of course the usual flapping around in the bath water that is HealthQuest's pool during hot weather. Four swims in all.
That's how today ended, or at least, that was the last halfway interesting thing that happened today -- a swim, as the sun set. Why the late swim? Long story, but a key part of it all was that at 4 p.m. I had presented myself at the office of Dr. Raymond Scott DDS, MS, for the purpose of getting the roots to my No. 3 tooth (second molar on the upper right) excavated, filled and sealed. I'd had another root canal not long ago, but not on a molar and not in a situation in which the tooth was hurting terribly badly. So Dr. Scott drills into the matter and finds the inflammation in two of the four roots is a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being worst. What this meant, presently, was that the anesthetic he'd shot my gums up with wasn't really reaching all the tissue, and that's why I was experiencing piercing pain the likes of which would have had the most dedicated, virgin-eyeing Islamofascists terrorist spilling the beans completely to his freedom-loving American captors. Dr. Scott did what he could to minimize the pain by bathing the area in what I gathered was a topical anesthetic and by and by we got through it, the work was done and five hours later I feel just fine.
Must go to bed soon. Tomorrow morning I need to run, but I also need to watch Our Man Floyd in the time trial. What a Tour. Then it's down to San Jose for Mom & Dad's 50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration. Woo-hoo!
Saturday, July 15, 2006
July 1, 2005-June 30, 2006
Just occurred to me that our official rain season ended a few weeks ago. It was a wet one. Huge rainy December, of course (remember the flood?), and then day after day of rain in March on into April. Here are the month-by-months, adding up to 40.70, if my addition is sound.
July................0.00
August...........0.00
September....0.01
October.........0.67
November.....2.25
December...15.48
January.........4.29
February.......3.71
March............8.41
April...............5.77
May................1.19
June...............0.11
Source: California Department of Water Resources
Just occurred to me that our official rain season ended a few weeks ago. It was a wet one. Huge rainy December, of course (remember the flood?), and then day after day of rain in March on into April. Here are the month-by-months, adding up to 40.70, if my addition is sound.
July................0.00
August...........0.00
September....0.01
October.........0.67
November.....2.25
December...15.48
January.........4.29
February.......3.71
March............8.41
April...............5.77
May................1.19
June...............0.11
Source: California Department of Water Resources
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