Race Report: Labor Day 10K in Davis
The beeping coffeemaker got me up at 5:21 a.m. and I was out the door by 5:50, heading to Davis for the annual Labor Day Race. This was my second 10K of the year, after the Kenwood Foot Race on July 4th. (I think I need to find a Memorial Day race next year to complete the summer holiday trifecta.)

Fleet Feet has a store in downtown Davis, and the race starts right in front of it, on 2nd Street. Ridiculously but per habit, I arrived a good hour and a quarter before the festivities were scheduled to start, so I had plenty of time to jog around and get loose. I timed my last visit to the porta-potties for 15 minutes before the 8 a.m. start, but then they announced the race would start at 8:15 to allow time for late registrants or something. People: Arrive on time!

Oh, and one other thing, people: If you are 70 pounds overweight and likely to walk not run, do not position yourself at the front of the 700-person start-line throng. It was amazing how many obvious slow pokes were up front. Do they enjoy getting jostled out of the way? My guess is they simply haven't given the matter a thought.

So when the boom went boom and I hit my Polar to start my clock, it was time to pick through the crowd. Wasn't too bad, after all. But still.

At Mile 1, I was at 6:37, about where I hoped (but wasn't sure) I'd be. Mile 2, as we made our way along a paved path through a long, narrow suburban park, came in at 13:19, and at Mile 3 I was right around 20 minutes.

I'm learning that in running hard at shorter distance it's crucial to stay smooth and easy, so that's where my focus was. I relaxed my shoulders and shook off my grimace and tried to maintain the pace. Over the subsequent three miles I slowed by four or five seconds per mile, but I still passed a few people and only one guy passed me: The guy wearing bunny ears. I didn't find the bunny ears that interesting, but the clumps of spectators cheering us on did, and their reactions provided a nice distraction for me.

Back downtown, we turned off B Street for the final three-and-a-half block straightaway to the finish line. The crowd was sizeable, the sun was shining, the end was near. I chased after Bunny Ears but he was kicking, too, and I didn't gain any ground. Nice to finish strong, however, and nice to see the clock somewhere in the 41:30s. Recovery took a couple minutes, and boy is it fun not to be verging into Bonkville after a race (as can be the case with marathons or half-iron triathlons). Noah's Bagels had a table full of food, and I immediately downed a quarter of an orange, half a bagel and half a banana, washed down with 16 ounces of water. Walked around a bit, watching finishers come in, then got back on I-80 for the 46-mile drive home.

NOTED ON THE DRIVE BACK: Several extremely dusty cars, most with bikes on racks on the back. Ah, yes: Burning Man attendees heading home.

OFFICIAL RESULTS: 41:35, a 6:41/mile pace and a PR; 34/342 overall; 12/66 in the Male 40-49 group.

Escape
So we made it out of Florida, six hours or so ahead of Ernesto. The irony is that despite the constant talk about impending storm doom while in Florida, not a drop of rain fell on us in two days there. Then we get to New York and, you guessed it, it was raining. Still a little damp, but for the first time in three days I have a tiny window of free time so I'm going to pull myself away from the computer and go for a run in Central Park.

Ernie on Our Tails
Cuvaison winemaker Steve Rogstad and I have an 11:29 flight out of Miami to New York this morning. About that time, the leading edge ("leading edge" -- such a TV weather guy term) of Tropical Storm-Maybe Hurricane Ernesto will be reaching Miami-Dade County. Will we get out before the deluge or get stuck to wait it out at the airport? Only time will tell, he intoned. Yesterday was strange; we tried to go about our business of meeting with wine writers, but most of them were getting ready for the storm, so they canceled. Driving around South Florida, we learned to avoid the right lane on wide boulevards -- that's where the gas lines out of the filling stations were snaking, blocking traffic.

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.

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....

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?

Ready to Ride
August 20 Tour of Napa, your pitfalls are on notice!

'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.)

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...)

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)