It’s one week until Olympic Trials in San Diego. If you’re paying attention, you may have noticed that I’m not on the start list. A lot of people are paying attention, so I figured I would post a quick explanation of what’s going on, how the situation came to be, and what I hope to happen in the next week that will ensure I get to start the race.

Prior to the release of the San Diego start list, I was operating under the assumption that the International Triathlon Union (ITU) would be creating the start list according to the 2011 World Championship Series results. Under this method they would take the top 30 athletes interested in racing in San Diego according to their ranking on the WCS results from 2011. This was the assumption that I made based on information received from USA Triathlon, as well as the fact that the ITU website listed the 2011 rankings as their most current WCS rankings. The start list for these races is filled by taking the first 30 from the WCS rankings, then filling the remainder from the ITU points list, which is a point ranking that reflects all ITU races and extends from year to year. Last year I did very few races that contribute to the WCS ranking, so I was always planning to get in as one of the 40 athletes selected from the ITU points list. I raced early in the year and got my ranking up to the 40′s. This, I felt was high enough to ensure a start in San Diego so I stopped racing and focused on training. USAT seemed to be thinking along the same lines and they affirmed my decision. By the time the start list was created my rank had slipped ot the 60′s, but with 70 athletes on the start line and not all of the top 70 athletes in the world asking for a start it seemed safe that I would get in.

Wrong.

Instead of using the 2011 WCS rankings, the ITU chose to use the 2012 rankings. How can they use a ranking from a series that hasn’t started? Well, last year there was a race in Yokohama, Japan, which was postponed because of the tsunami. It was held a week or two after the World Championships in Beijing and at the last minute they decided to count the points toward the 2012 series, instead of putting them into the 2011 series post-finale. Now, the issue with that is that many of the top athletes didn’t race in Yokohama. Some were protesting holding a race in questionable waters, but most were just done racing after Beijing because they were ranked high enough not to need to race anymore. So while the top 30 on the ITU points list is almost identical to the top 30 on the 2011 WCS rankings, The top 30 finishers in Yokohama are very different from the top 30 on the points list.

What all that means is that instead of getting in as the first 30 from the WCS rankings, the top athletes in San Diego got in as the next 40, off the ITU Points list. The WCS Rankings drew in some athletes with very low ITU Points List rankings (as high as 180th). So the athletes chosen for San Diego were very different than expected, and the easiest way to get in would have been to race in Yokohama. It turns out I wouldn’t have even needed a very good result in Yokohama to get in to San Diego because not all of the top 30 finishers in Yokohama signed up for San Diego. Regardless, I was injured at that time, so I couldn’t have raced had I known they were going to use the race as the primary qualifier for San Diego.

Knowing that Yokohama was being used as the primary qualifier for San Diego would have changed my approach this spring, however. I could have race another continental cup and had my ITU Points LIst ranking back in the 30′s or 40′s at the time the list was created. It would have been pretty actually. I already have a Brazilian Visa and there were two races in Brazil after I got back from Mooloolaba.

Instead, I found myself in 10th on the wait list when the start list was created. As of Friday, I’m 4th on the wait list. Greg Billington is 1st on the wait list which means when I roll on I’ll be the eighth and final American.

Notice I say “when”. It’s only a week out, but I’m planning to race. I’m in San Diego now, I’m ready to race and when four people on that start list drop out – for whatever reason – I’ll be ready to go. The meeting is Wednesday, if anyone is missing, I’ll be there to take their spot. Hopefully the list rolls a bit more after this weekend. I’d like to know for sure that I’m racing as soon as possible, but I’m confident that it will move and I will get to race. So confident that I’ve invited a posse of friends and family to come watch. I don’t intend to have the biggest cheering section at the event without someone to cheer for.

This was my second year racing in the Saint Anthony’s Triathlon, which is held in St. Petersburg, Florida. Last year I entered at the eleventh hour because I happened to be in the mood to race that week. I was so impressed by the organization and presentation of the event that I committed to racing again this year immediately.

I love taking part in well run events. That’s why I keep going back to races like Nautica South Beach, New York City, Hy-Vee and any race that Bill Burke directs. St. Anthony’s Triathlon is that caliber of event, and as such it will be a part of my race schedule for years to come.

This year there were 49 pro men racing, including legends like Greg Bennett, Courtney Atkinson, Bevan Docherty, and Matt Reed, plus rising starts like Josh Amberger, Cameron Dye, and Kaleb VanOrt. The race was legitimately a world class field – far beyond the draw of talent that we normally see in a race that doesn’t help qualify for the Olympics.

Despite the intimidating start list, I came to Florida with this crazy idea that maybe I could put my name on select group of previous winners. That list, which goes back to 1984, includes names like Mike Pigg, Andy Potts, Hunter Kemper, Greg Welsh, and Matt Reed. Judging by the people have won this race, there has never been a cherry pick year. I wasn’t putting any expectations on myself, but I figured that a good race would force anyone that wanted the title from me to really work for it.

I came up 9 seconds short. That makes it seem like I could have changed a few little things and made the difference, but that would be false. I left everything I had out on the course. I had an exceptional race and there weren’t mistakes that would have made any difference in the outcome. I raced well. I raced with everything that I brought to Florida and that in itself is a victory of sorts, regardless of finish place.

The swim course was changed from previous years after a 3 year stint of weather cancellations and deaths among participants. I never had a chance to swim the old course, but the new one is not bad. We start down the beach in a deep water start, which is less desirable to a pontoon start, but better than a shallow beach start. The shallow start gives a huge advantage to the runners and people with long legs (not me). The deep water start gives the advantage to the swimmers, but tends to be difficult for the race directors to officiate. We line up between two buoys, but since we don’t really know when the gun is going off everyone is trying to tread water and keep their body’s horizontal. This inevitably has the entire field moving forward slowly and after a short time the line of men has moved well beyond the buoys. The race is still fair – everyone moves forward and nobody is silly enough to sit back while everyone around him is inching forward – but with a two or three minute delay we’ve unintentionally taken 50 meters off the swim course.

Once the gun finally did go off I found myself quickly in third position on the feet of Cameron Dye. Cam had intelligently started near Josh Amberger and was on his feet from the gun. I had somehow spaced on Amberger’s presence or I would have done the same. Josh is the guy that won all the swim primes at Hy-Vee last year and beat Cam, Potts, and myself out of the water by 50 seconds. I started to fade about 600 meters in and was glad when 2 guys came around, allowing me to enjoy a bit more draft. That straight 600-meter portion was parallel to the shore in a protected channel, it was followed by a 90 degree left turn away from shore that took us into the wind and chop of the open waters. The waves were rolling in at a cadence that really didn’t mesh with my natural stroke rate. I was being thrown onto the other swimmers around me, one second I was on a guys feet, the next he was 5 feet to one side, or in front of me, or behind me. It was brilliantly fun! I love a challenging swim and this was just enough chaos to make things interesting.

The pace didn’t slow, but I could tell that people were tiring in the chop. Josh and Cam were only holding a few meters gap ahead, but we weren’t closing it. We made two right turns and headed back to shore as one big group with only a small time gap from first person to last, and all the contenders were there.

Mounting our bikes it was Cam leading the group. I was fourth of fifth, but right in position. Now, Cam was in form today and his bike ride took off from the line. I had hoped to take the lead, but it was not mine to be had. Everything I had to put into my pedals could only get me up to Cam’s side – he never relinquished control of the race. It was obvious to me who was in charge and there was nothing I could do to change it. I was forced to contend with staggering to the opposite side of the road, giving Cam first choice of the best line, and pedaling for all I was worth to stay with him.

Right behind us, Josh Amberger was tenaciously hanging with us. He was in great position and – unlike me – he never once tried to pull to the front. He sat in 3rd and took full advantage of the flaws inherent to the drafting rules. He wasn’t breaking any rules – I know this because we had an official on a motorcycle riding right behind us the entire 40 kilometers. But there is a still a big advantage to being in the back of a group of three or more when the race follows USAT’s stagger rules. The jockeying for position in front of that person forces them to shift lines left to right and back. Every time that happens, the person in back goes through the draft zone. And if that person is staggered, but not very far back, they can be frequently passing through the draft zone of someone only a few meters (or less) in front of them.

Behind us was a group much larger than our own, and the larger the group the more this flow in the rules allows for drafting. With more people, there’s more changing of positions, more moving in and out of draft zones. I’ve been in groups like that, it’s much much easier in the back. So much so that the people who like to ride in the back will more likely coast to maintain their position in the back than risk facing the wind in the front.

So I’m definitely not suggesting that anyone was cheating, just that the way the rules are enforced, a start list of 49 guys allows a lot of people to take advantage of drafting without risk of penalty.

The three of us, Cam, Josh and myself, had over a minute on the next pack heading into T2. I took the bike prime, but only because both the other guys beat me out of T1. There’s no way I would have ridden that hard without Cam pushing me the entire way.

Now, I’ve been hearing rumors about how Josh has been training really well over the winter, and I knew he would be a bigger factor than in our previous match-ups. I also knew that Cam has been working hard on his run and that it’s been coming around. But I was sincerely floored when my surge on the run was not just matched, but countered by both Josh and Cam, in series, and that their counters left me 10 seconds behind at the first mile marker. Those guys were running really well! By two miles I was 15 seconds behind Cam and 25 or 30 behind Josh. Then I started inching back. By 5k I had caught up to Cam, and set my sights on Josh. With the turnaround at half way I also got to see that Filip Ospaly was closing the gap quickly with Tim O’Donnell right behind him. I did everything I could to pick it up, but my fourth mile was my slowest. I needed a second wind. At mile 4 I started pulling Josh back to me again and at just before the fifth mile I finally caught him. Just then, I heard footsteps and knew I’d been caught. Ospaly passed me right as I passed Josh. I went from second to second, but with Tim only a short ways back I knew I had to try to hang on. My last mile was my fastest, and I needed every second of speed. I crossed the line less than 10 seconds behind Ospaly, but TO was just 4 seconds behind me. It was a really close race!

Josh in fourth, with Cameron hanging on for fifth. Nobody had an easy time at this race. It was fun, but it was also one of the hardest races I’ve done. Start to finish I was going full tilt. So, second place is good! I have no regrets. I raced my heart out.

Next up is Olympic Trials in San Diego. I’m still on the wait list to get in, but hopefully that will change in the next day or two as we pass the deadline to drop out without penalty.

I went back to South Beach for the 4th time this year. I really like the Nautica South Beach Triathlon, which is why I’ve raced there all but one of the five years it’s been held. This year was a bit of last minute planning. I raced in the Mooloolaba World Cup the last weekend in March, giving me only a week between races that are completely around the world from each other. In 2009 I did the same double, so I knew going into it how much it would suck. Still, with about a week to go before South Beach I just couldn’t justify to myself not going to such a great race and I bought tickets. This time, instead of flying straight from Australia to Florida, I went back to the OTC in Colorado for four days, then flew to Miami two days before the race. That was a better plan than spending a full week trying to train in metropolitan Miami.

The race conditions were perfect. The off-shore breeze provided for flat, clear water like I’ve never seen in Miami. And since we started before the sun came over the horizon it was still rather cool during the race (though seriously humid). I felt flat on the swim and was suffering just to stay on Cameron Dye’s feet. Meanwhile, Javier Gomez (this guy has been ITU World Champion how many times!?) and Dustin McClarty (taker of swim primes) were out of the water 40 seconds ahead of us. On the bike I didn’t know what to expect. I just rode hard. In five minutes I caught Gomez and McClarty, though Bevan Docherty (who just ran down Lance Armstrong at the Panama 70.3) and Cameron Dye (who won this race last year) were right with me. I went to the lead and just kept hammering without ever looking back. At 20k I had 20second advantage over Gomez and Dye, and by the end of the bike I was a little over a minute ahead.  I split a personal best 51:14, though the course may have been half a Kilo short according to my Garmin. I had a good lead starting the run, but – like in the swim – I felt flat. I was hoping to run somewhere in the 32-minute range, but I ended up just over 34. Javier passed me at the 3-mile mark and there was nothing I could do to hang with him. Docherty and Dye were still a ways back, but it didn’t ease my fears. I kept the run hard and finished 2nd. Docherty passed Dye in the final Kilo for 3rd and 4th finishes, respectively.

It was pretty cool to be on the podium with Javier Gomez. He’s a legend. Or he will be. Probably the first true sub-30-minute triathlete, plus he’s one of the best swimmers in the sport and can certainly hold his own on the bike. And even more rare, he’s a humble guy that respects other athletes and carries a truly professional image.

Oh yeah, and Mr. Tanner was handing out awards. I had a million questions for him, but none were appropriate or short enough for that setting.

I won. The race course was completely new for 2012. It was in a place called the Asia Country Club, which is a golf course with condos in the middle of a moonscape of sand dunes 100km south of Lima.

The start line was about 100m from the edge of the water and it was one of those beach swims where it doesn’t get deep for a long time. The first buoy was way to the right and I started on the far left side of the line. So, I let everyone else run straight into a set coming in and I ran down the beach to the right behind them to enter the water in a channel where all the water from the set was pushing out. I was the last one in the water but was right in front once I got past the waves. I led the swim but just missed a wave on the way in. I ended up exiting behind a few people on the run out. I passed them all in T1, which was an 800m run. It was such a long T1 that they gave us boxes by the beach where we could leave our wetsuits so we wouldn’t have to run with them in the heat. That was nice. (Speaking of wetsuits, a brief shoutout to the designers at Blue Seventy, I was really impressed with the new Helix. It’s the first time I don’t feel like I need to adjust how I hold my body to accommodate for the extra buoyancy. Good job guys, that’s suit’s fast!)

I was first onto the bike and thought the guys with me would be motivated to push hard since the group was really strung out behind us. I thought at most we would have 5 guys if we hit if from the line, but the crew was unmotivated. They seemed more interested in waiting to see what other people did than to determine the race themselves. I got pissed. After a couple hard pulls it was clear that nobody wanted to make a race of it. We climbed the hill for the first time, which came about 2-2.5k into the lap. The hill was ~15% for 200m, then a false flat upwards for another 300m, then a technical descent with 4 hairpins then a hard left right into transition.

I love descending.

I stayed 3rd wheel up the climb then put it in the big ring on the false flat and put some elbow grease into the pedals. I sailed past the front of the group. Nobody was interested in my suicide mission. I wanted somebody to go with me, but they just acted like I was being dumb. (Not saying they were wrong, but haven’t you ever heard of dumb luck?) I got to the top of the descent with <5 seconds on the group and had 20 by the time I went through transition at the bottom of the hill.

2nd lap: The wind was killer for the flat section and I was pissed that nobody was with me. I tried to get as small as I could, but the officials had asked me to remove my mini-TT bars because they were too long (my own fault, I was trying to get away with more bar than is legal). I just perched on the bars, it worked well enough. The hill the second time was manageably painful.

The third time hurt. A lot. But somehow on the 3rd lap I turned my lead from 40s into 1:30.

(Thanks to Allen George, an American living in Lima who did his first Olympic Triathlon the morning before my race. He and his family cheered me on and captured a bunch of great pictures like this one where I’m starting my second climb, still in site of the peloton.)

4th lap I was sure I was popped. The kind of popped you don’t come back from. Like I was going to be walking my bike up the next hill – popped. It was hot… I really didn’t feel fit coming to this race… It hurt… wahwahwah… The nice mental boost was looking at my Edge 800 Garmin that was auto-lapping every time I went through transition. My fourth lap was roughly that same time as the first three. Fifth lap was a bit slower. Sixth was back on target and I had well over three minutes starting the 7th and final lap.  I was in survival mode. I lost a good amount of time on the final round, but still had about 2 and a half minutes over the field starting the run.

I felt completely blown. If I were a betting man, I would have said that I wouldn’t have held on. I had that bad pop song in my head, "You can go HARD or you can go HOME!!" you know the one? it just repeats that line over and over again. It’s pretty bad, but I felt like I’d put it on the line and was about to fall off the ledge. I went hard, right then, I just wanted to go home. Seriously, I was not optimistic. But then suddenly I was 5k in and I still had a lot of time and, better yet, the guys behind me had pretty much stopped gaining time on me. Or they weren’t gaining much anymore. I was lapping people left and right as well, which is always a confidence boost.

I got my head back in the game and thought, "Okay, just hold it together for 5k. Relax, run, nobody can run 5k 90 seconds faster than you." Well, maybe somebody can, but those were my thoughts at the time. I just stayed steady until about 500m to go. I knew I had it locked up so I slowed, started celebrating in the finish shoot, did a round of high fives, walked up to the line and did a BOOYAH. I raced with a lot of emotion and when I crossed that line I felt like I’d proven something. I’m not sure what it is, or to who, but that’s how I felt. I dropped to my knees like I did in NYC, only this time it was by choice. I dropped to my knees, put my head to the sky and shouted, "YEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!" Then I threw the banner down, got up, did my interview and hopped on the massage table.

Man it feels good to win.

I would talk more about the other guys in the race, I just didn’t see much of what went on. (The graph to the right helps) I know that Bowden from the UK was running with Taccone and Nogueras from Argentina. I watched them carefully on the run because they cut a huge amount of time out of my lead in the first 2k. The Argentines took 2nd and 3rd in the end. Pretty impressive running by those guys so far this year.

And yes, it’s back, my graphing of races. I wish I had lap splits, it would make this much more interesting. For those who haven’t seen these graphs before, the x-axis is the race winner, the y-axis is the time difference from the winner. Points below the x-axis are a time deficit. Each line represents an athlete, so at each point on the line the displacement from the x-axis is that athletes time difference from the leader at that point in the race. As you can see, the group was about 2:45 starting the run. The positive sloped lines over the run course are of the people who out ran me, the negative slopes are people who did not.

There has been a lot going on in my life. You wouldn’t know if from my blog, but I swear I’ve been writing it all down. Over the next couple of weeks – as my training schedule allows – I’ll be posting my adventures since I left New York at the beginning of January. Everything from my training trip in Puerto Rico with the Columbia Men’s swim team to my recent win at the Lima ITU Triathlon Premium Pan-American Cup to a training camp in South Carolina with the Hincapie Development Team and the great George Hincapie himself. Stay tuned I’ll be posting frequently. You can also check out my posts on the Garmin Connect Blog for some training specific posts and links to my actual Garmin training files.

Stay Tuned.

If you’ve been following me on twitter, you likely already know that I am working with a number of new sponsors this year. I have been so excited about each of these sponsors that while I have been waiting to confirm my partnerships I literally lost sleep. I woke up a couple of weeks ago at 3am and started browsing the internet for information on the Cervelo P5, which will be released in the next month or so. I was so excited about my new partnership with FSA that I started dreaming about how I would destroy the non-FSA brakes that have caused me so much trouble in 2011. And I’m so stoked to be signing with Hincapie Sports that I often interrupt conversations at dinner to ask what everyone thinks about my most recent idea for a custom race uniform. “What if it has a giant picture of a lion eating a shark while riding a unicycle?” These interruptions seem to be annoying to everyone besides myself, but you have to admit it’s exciting.

In 2012 I’m brining on Hincapie Sports as a new title sponsor. Hincapie makes custom clothing, and is rooted in cycling. The company wants to be a leader in the triathlon industry, and I’m hoping to help them develop their products to be better than anything currently on the market. And, while I probably won’t put any images of animals on unicycles, I’m pretty stoked to have the freedom to design a race uniform that represents me.

Over the past few years I’ve often felt like a kid on a road trip asking “are we there yet?” repeatedly. Only for me it was frequent pitches to Cervelo asking for a spot on their team. I’m not sure if it was persistence, or recent results, but in 2012 they finally said yes. And from now on I will be riding the fastest, highest quality bikes in the world. I really couldn’t be happier.

No less exciting, I am bringing on three Seattle based companies that make world class products. Computrainer, Full Speed Ahead and Brooks. In Seattle I ride by FSA, which also makes Vision aero products, and Brooks headquarters on every Saturday group ride. And the Racermate office, where Computrainers are designed, is next to the University of Washington where I was taking premed courses a couple years ago.

Computrainer is a vital part of my indoor workouts, and partnering with them means I’ll get to be featured in their real-course videos, and help them develop their products going forward.

Full Speed Ahead makes everything on my bike except the frame, and I’m looking forward to decking out my new P5 and S5 with their engineers.

Brooks not only makes great running shoes, but unlike many running companies, they actually have a lab with biomechanists doing research to improve how their shoes work. I’m really excited to get into the lab and learn what I can about my own running needs.

These five are in addition to my long term sponsors, Garmin, Blue Seventy, Rudy Project and Powerbar. All of whom continue to provide support with products that help me race faster.

2012 is going to be a really exciting season. Please check out the my sponsors websites to learn more, or contact me if you have any questions about picking a product.

Training has been going well. I spent the bulk of November and December building back into full swim and bike workouts, and running on the AlterG treadmill so that I could ease back into running on the foot that took me out of my last couple races in 2011. And all of that was terribly uneventful. There have been no setbacks, and my fitness has come back faster than I expected. So by the time the holidays rolled around I couldn’t see a reason to stay in Colorado. Instead I packed up and took 10 days in New York City with Abby’s family. There are three Olympic hopefuls in her family, which leads to a much greater understanding of “I need to go train” during the holidays. Basically I could train full time without ever feeling guilty about missing out of group activities.

One issue I had in planning the trip was in finding an AlterG treadmill for my last week of less-than-body-weight running. I checked out the AlterG website where they have a map of all the places that own Alter-G Treadmills so I started calling every place in Manhattan hoping to find someone willing to lend a hand. Two got back to me right away and said they would love to help me out. Equinox Fitness was first, which is a chain of gyms in New York that offer a five star experience. I walked in the first day and say Kiehl’s products in the locker rooms, models on the elipticals, and at the end of my run I was told I needed to hurry off so that Spike Lee could use the AlterG after me. There was a 25 yard pool, a boxing center, a TRX class was going on followed by kick boxing, and in the next room there was a cycling class lead by Robert Pennino, a triathlete who runs Terrier Tri Team on the West Side. This was the nicest gym I’ve ever been to.

The second place to offer me AlterG time, and where I ended up doing the bulk of my AlterG sessions was Finish Line Physical Therapy on 23rd and 6th Avenue. This was less of an “oh my god it’s Spike Lee” experience, but also less distracting. They gave me so much freedom that I sometimes wondered if anyone even saw me come in. From what I overheard and saw, the therapists seemed really knowledgeable. They used the Trigger Point systems and taught how to use them correctly, which I like because teaching people self-care is a big part of recovery and prevention from future injuries. I didn’t actually have any PT sessions, but if I ever need a PT with a good sport medicine base of knowledge I think Finish Line is the place to go in New York.

To the left is a picture from I ride I did with the president of the Columbia University Triathlon Club. Last summer I tried to be included in the Ivy League Championships, which was contested at the Nautica New York City Triathlon, but they left me out of the results. I guess having Columbia win the title by some 30 minutes would have been a little ridiculous.

We rode to New Jersey and did the same route of my first road bike ride in 2004 with my former college friend, Mark Backman. We go across the GW Bridge (above) then down to the banks of the Hudson. Ride north a few miles, then there’s a climb a little over a mile long. In 2004 I was riding an old Schwinn with down-tube shifters. It was so hard that I could barely get myself back to Columbia. I loved it, and that ride is what drove me to buy a road bike after graduating nine months later. Honestly, had Mark not taken me over there I don’t think I would be a triathlete now. Thanks Mark. This is your fault.

Needless to say, this time was much easier, and not just because of the badass bike that I was riding.

I swam with the Columbia Men’s Swim Team for my week in New York, which was a bit of a preview for ten days I’m spending with them in Puerto Rico for training trip. I rode around central park on my BH road bike, which I recently outfitted with some high end components from Full Speed Ahead and Vision. Then, just after Christmas I got the call I’ve been waiting for since my first day working at Speedy Reedy in 2005… It’s something so exciting it requires a post of it’s own, but I’ll leave you with this teaser photograph of Mojdeh playing with my dream machine.

This was my first week back at my normal training schedule. I’m delightfully exhausted, but the week was rather uneventful. My first ride in several weeks involved my buddy Aaron Trent helping me up a hill by letting me grab onto his jersey. What’s great about this time of year is that every workout is better than the previous. So yes, I had trouble getting up a short mild hill, but Aaron was the only witness, so if none of you tell anyone, then only a five or six thousand people reading this will know.

I also got my first flat of the off-season, which is good to get out of the way. Every year I get a gnarly flat in my first week of training, this year it was a carpenter’s nail stuck all the way through the tire and tube and into the rim of my wheel. Luckily it didn’t do any damage to the frame.

Last noteworthy event is that my parents finally made it to Colorado to visit me. It’s their first visit since I started training here other than when I was in the hospital with some crazy Hawaiian bacteria a couple years ago. It’s nice to have them here, but in some ways it makes me miss being home. Seattle is just such a great city.

I just had an incredible weekend in Los Angeles. It was the final lap of my off-season and I made the most of it. After all the fun I’ve had over the past 6 weeks, I’m exhausted! Delightfully exhausted, and really excited to get back into the grind. The trip to SoCal was prompted by Abby getting an interview at UCLA. Basically I was invited along as chauffer and activity coordinator for a weekend of fun. And it was!

Thursday we walked around Venice Beach and fulfilled our desire to smell some salty air and get our feet wet in the ocean. After that we met up with my college buddy Mark Backman for his birthday party in Hermosa Beach.

Friday morning I drove Abby to her interview, hung out at a local espresso bar for a bit, then met up with Peggy McDowell-Cramer, who you may remember as an occasional guest blogger on this site, a 16-time Ironman, and an extraordinary person who I met at my first Age Group National Championships in Kansas City. She took me to the Westwood pool and we swam together. I was just going to play in the water, but she made me do a real set. In return, I made her finish that set and go faster than she thought she could.

After the swim Peggy made me lunch and we chatted until it was time to pick up Abby from UCLA. From there we checked out Santa Monica’s Pier, rode the ferris wheel, shopped some, and had a Sushi dinner (these are all things we can’t do well in Colorado). The only part of the day that didn’t rock was the LA traffic, which is terrible.

Saturday Abby and I went to the Getty Villa museum near Malibu. There was a Picasso exhibit that showed his earlier works. It was cool to see how he started drawing classic antiquities, then slowly began to dissect his paintings as he developed cubism. The art, however, was not the reason for going to the Getty Villa. The museum itself is gorgeous!

From there we spent some time at the beach in Malibu, had dinner with Peggy and her husband Pat (I finally got to hear the story of how Peggy’s sailboat sank and she spent 15 hours in San Francisco Bay before being rescued. I wouldn’t be able to do the story justice, but I wish I’d had a tape recorder so that I could share it with you. Remarkable.)

Saturday night we went to a comedy show at The Improv in West Hollywood. They sat us in front and we ended up being a pretty big part of the show. The comedian, Ian Bagg,  struck gold, an Olympic rifle shooter, triathlete, the owner of True Religion jeans, Snoop’s agent, and a poor couple on their first date made up the front row of the audience. It was among the funniest standup comedy acts I’ve seen.

Sunday it poured the entire day in LA. We sat around and watched movies in the morning, then went to an organ concert, which was remarkable. The pipe organ at the Walt Disney center (picture on left) is a piece of art in itself. Plus, I never realized how much work goes into playing an organ. It looks like a serious workout, just the foot solo alone was impressive, but playing four keyboards, and fifth on your feet takes an incredible amount of talent. I was impressed.

Again with Disney, the concert was icing. The real treat was to see the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is a sculpture by itself. It was a great way to finish a weekend in Los Angeles. Abby and I were both craving some culture after spending so much time in Colorado Springs, and LA delivered.

Now, back to kicking my butt at swimming biking and running. I’m sick of off-season, time to get faster!

When it comes to analyzing data, I’m a total geek and my Garmin devices are total enablers of this obsession. In an attempt to share the method to my madness I wrote about how I use the data fields on my devices while I’m training. Check out the post over on the Garmin Connect Blog.