Some Rules Do Not Make Sense

Needless rules deeply disturb me on an intellectual level. I believe that rules and laws should serve a clear purpose. Our laws should protect the greater good of society, and not be in place to micromanage the ethics and behavior of individuals. For instance, I don’t believe that driving without a seat belt endangers anyone besides the driver, so why do we spend millions on “click it or ticket” campaigns?

Here’s another example I just came across, which is the real focus of this post. According to their website, “The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is the international independent organization created in 1999 to promote, coordinate, and monitor the fight against doping in sport in all its forms.” To clarify, “doping” is defined by Webster’s English Dictionary as, “the use of a substance (as an anabolic steroid or erythropoietin) or technique (as blood doping) to illegally improve athletic performance”. WADA’s mission is a good thing. We want everyone in sport to have an equal opportunity to compete, and setting rules for what methods and substances are allowed is vital to the goal of fair competition. Please take note of the word “improve” in the above definition, and let’s move on.

I was just placed in the random testing pool for out-of-competition testing, and in order to register I needed to complete a tutorial focusing on the methods and procedures of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA, which is the US organization created to enforce the rules of WADA). The tutorial consisted of about 45 slides, each with an accompanying video featuring real athletes talking about the topic at hand.

image In those 45 slides there is only ONE substance that is given a slide and video of its own. That substance is Marijuana. This information (which you can see here) basically says Marijuana is bad for you and can stay in your system for a long time. What I find offensive is the final point: “There are a number of negative health and performance consequences associated with using marijuana.” NEGATIVE? Then why is it banned, and why are we (the International and US Olympic committees who fund WADA and USADA) spending money testing for it? How does this fall under the mission of the World Anti-Doping Agency? I don’t use any drugs, so I never have to worry about a positive test, but I absolutely do worry that Olympic sports are wasting money testing for a substance which is described (by the testing agency itself) as having negative performance consequences. That rule is not promoting the greater good, but simply pushing morals. I’m not condoning the use of marijuana, it is illegal in the US after all, but it is the job of the police to regulate its use, not WADA or USADA. By placing substances on the banned list which are not doping agents (performance enhancing) our sports must deal with the possibility of unnecessary positive tests from athletes who are not actually doping, and that harms the reputation of Olympic sports through negative publicity.

Furthermore, why don’t the real threats to fair play have more focus in the tutorial? Why don’t EPO, Steroids or blood doping have slides? Honestly, this makes me question the ethics, reliability and intelligence of the people we are depending on to maintain the integrity of our sports.

Dog Days

iPhone_Pics 112 Crutches are the devil. Well, maybe they’re better than the alternative of hopping my way around town, but they’re certainly no substitute for the use of my left leg. With crutches, you can’t carry anything. For instance, if I make a sandwich for lunch, I either eat it standing like a flamingo, or else I lay the plate on the counter, take a step on the crutches, move the plate three feet, take a step, etc. all the way to kitchen table. My dog, who is mostly deaf and mostly blind, finds this process extremely entertaining. She positions herself in the middle of my path in hopes that I will trip or lose balance – sending my freshly prepared meal to the floor. What amazes me is that in the event of a spill, she can somehow get my sandwich into her mouth before I can set aside my crutches and bend over. The only conclusion to be made here is that dog have a sixth sense for culinary detection, and that sense has more longevity than her eyes and ears.

Stressed

The last couple weeks have been pretty quiet on my blog. I didn’t even write a full race report for Austin. Partly that’s because I read Ethan Brown’s race report and thought it was well written and pretty much covered my race as well.

What Ethan didn’t talk about in his race report is how I wasn’t able to keep up in the first part of the run because my hip was really hurting. The MRI last week showed that I have what the doctors are calling a “Stress Reaction” in the neck of my femur. It’s not a stress fracture, which is really good, but I still have to keep weight off my leg for two weeks.

Upon hearing this news, Bob Havrilak, who I stayed with in Hawaii for 8 weeks, hopped a plain to Seattle and threw me in a car with him headed for Canada. Bob knew that an athlete without an exercise fix will go nuts (depression, moodiness, and all the other signs of withdrawal from a drug), and he figured he could distract me through the first few days of it.

Wednesday morning, after a swim in Lake Washington, we headed for British Columbia, straight up I-5. About 4 hours later we arrived in Squamish, a small town near Whistler, where we were scheduled to test fly a small amphibian aircraft. Since I don’t have a pilot’s license, I just got to sit in the passenger seat, but it was my first time flying in a tiny plane like that.

After the test flights we drove back to Vancouver. On the way we picked up a hitchhiker, though he only needed to go a few miles up the road. The temporary travel companion was an Aussie who was in his final week of a six month journey all over the west coast of the US and Canada. He had spent the winter snow boarding at Whistler, then surfed down the coast to San Diego, hiked through the mountains on the way back, and was heading for Europe in the morning for another six month journey. I have to admit, the  unplanned and uninhibited life really does sound appealing at times. No structure, no limits to what the day can bring, no morning workout, or afternoon recovery… Sometimes I think that must be the ideal life – I just wouldn’t enjoy it without a purpose.

In Vancouver, Bob and I checked into a hotel and walked around searching for dinner (I was crutching around, and not really walking, but I’m not sure if that’s really a word.). I love Vancouver. The city is fairly clean, the people are beautiful and nice, and it’s different enough from the US that the people watching is more fun. Bob, on the other hand, is the type of guy who will hand a buck to anyone that asks for it. We made it a block from the hotel before he realized that we wouldn’t have enough for dinner if he kept handing dollar bills to all the pan handlers. Having grown up going to school in downtown Seattle, and living in New York City, I’ve long since learned to say, “no, sorry” without interrupting my conversation or stride. I also know that Vancouver has a decent assistance program for people living on the street, and I feel that supporting those programs is probably a better way to feed the needy (and more assuredly not going to buy drugs). Regardless, the pan-handlers ruined the experience for Bob. You can tell that it hurts him to see people suffering, and not be able to help.

In the morning we headed up to Horse Shoe Bay, just north of Vancouver, and hopped a ferry over to Vancouver Island. I stood on the bow of the boat looking for orca whales for the entire 90 minute voyage, but saw none. The purpose in going to Vancouver Island was to visit Scott Mihalchan and his wife Leah. I met Scott briefly at Adam’s memorial service in Hawaii, and once saw him hand cycling around Diamond Head. Until last week, however, we had never spent any time getting to know each other. Scott really deserves more than a mention at the bottom of a catch-up blog post, so I’m going to keep it short and write a few stories as their own blog posts.

Scott and Leah are really wonderful people. They live in Mill Bay, on Vancouver Island, which is where Scott chose to live based on the mild climate. Scott is a respirator dependent quadriplegic, with a partial fracture in his neck. He’s taught himself to use his arms and even stand. He’s also an athlete (he only uses the respirator at night), a cook, a sports car enthusiast (or maybe he just likes his own sports cars), and a hilarious person.

Up until this point on our trip I had been pretty down on having to take time off training. Scott really changed that around. And it wasn’t just because he let me ride his hand cycle up a monstrous hill (they seem bigger on hand cycles). Long story short: by the time we caught the ferry back to Washington, I was in a much better mood than when we’d left.

Peeved: White Necks – the Urban Idiots

image White Necks are the most dangerous people in the world. Everyone who has tried cycling knows the dangers of red necks on the road with their jacked up pickup trucks and tires that tower over you head. They try their best to scare the poop out of you when they come by on the highway, and will honk and yell things (i.e. “get off the road”, “nice ass”, or “WOOOOWEEEE”) out their open window. Luckily, those giant tires warn us from 5 kilometers away that they’re coming, and the drivers are actually paying such close attention to us that, while obnoxious, they’re far safer in their actions than the citified, wannabe civilized, overstressed, under-slept, all-organic idiots you find in any urban area of America. I’m referring to what I call “White Necks”. It includes the lawyers, doctors, soccer mom’s, and all types of business people who seem to think that their hurry gives them rights over the highway, and permission to risk the lives of everyone around them so they can get to their next appointment. The White Necks pose a significant threat to my life, and are the reason I feel very uneasy riding through places like Bellevue, Washington and  Miami, Florida.

These rolling threats to my life truly seem to believe that the road belongs to them. To the white neck “Share the Road” signs are in place to warn cyclists to stay away from Range Rovers.  They worry that their kid will be the last one waiting at the baseball field if they don’t break a few laws to go faster, or that the 10 seconds it might take to slow down and pass safely will cascade into a day so bad that, by calculated risk, my life is a fair gamble.

As a cyclist, the threat of the white neck is far greater than their rural counterparts. Sure, if they notice you they may honk as they go by, or give a dirty look, but most of the time these overbooked suburbanites don’t even know you’re there. Plus, you can’t hear a BMW until it’s close enough to kill you, and the text-messaging trophy wife may never even know she hit you. She’ll arrive home and think the scratch on her passenger door is from that suspicious Honda Civic with a bike rack on top that parked next to her at Whole Foods.

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In an effort to guide my posts into a more rhythmic pattern of literary excellence, I’ve decided to commit myself to writing a weekly post within each of certain themes. I’m shooting for three weekly columns (so I still have room for my random thoughts in case something particularly random and thoughtful occurs). My first category: Pet Peeves. I have plenty of them, and it opens the door to a satirical look at my surrounding and things I find particularly annoying.

Life Time Fitness

image This week I scored a 7 day trial pass to the South Austin Life Time Fitness center. It’s working out really well. They have two 25 meter pools (or at least I hope they’re 25 meters, ‘cause otherwise I’m swimming really slow), and some other stuff I don’t use. Actually, I was all prepared for a negative rant and rave due to a bad experience with the massage studio, Life Spa, but I held off a day, and LTF made it all better.

I got a massage on Wednesday when they had a $60 for an hour special. It was advertized as a “sports massage” and I asked for someone who would know how to work out really tight muscles (post-race soreness can be debilitating). I spent the hour asking the therapist to go harder and receiving a glorified back rub. They had a fancy bed and smelly oils and a bunch of stuff that I don’t care about, and a therapist that wouldn’t respond to my needs, even when asked. Afterwards she asked me how it was and I grunted that it was “relaxing”, then wasn’t quite sure what to say to the front desk when asked to pay. I went home and tried to find a massage studio, but Courtenay told me I was being a bad patron by not telling the management that I was unsatisfied. She told me I should have just walked out, but that since I didn’t I should at least write an email to Life Spa. I did, and this morning they told me I could come back in for another massage on them.

My second massage at the Life Spa was with a girl named Nicole, who is in school learning to be a Physical Therapy Assistant. She’s a small girl, but she packs a punch. It was exactly what I needed. She got in deep and broke up plenty of knots. I didn’t moan, or grab the table, like I do with Jenny (my therapist in Seattle), but I was definitely at my pain threshold – which is what a “sports massage” should be – a little pain for an hour, and then days of improved training.

Thanks Life Time Fitness!

Austin is in Texas

A few weeks ago I was thinking out loud at the dinner table, “Maybe I should drive to Austin from Oklahoma.” My sister unintentionally quoted Tom Green from the movie Road Trip, “Massachusetts is probably a 20 or 30 our drive from Oklahoma, why not just fly?” I did what any bratty little brother would do and enunciated my correction that AUSTIN is in TEXAS. At the time I had no idea the depth of that statement.

I’ve always heard that Austin is different from the rest of the GIANT state of Texas. People are in excellent physical condition, there are lots of young people, the music scene is awesome, there’s plenty of outdoor activities and groups and it’s easy to meet people. So far, I can’t contradict any of these notions. What has surprise me is the SUPERSIZED aspect of Austin, which I had noticed in Dallas and San Antonio (the only other towns in Texas I’ve been to) as well. The roads here are big, the cars are big, the freeways are HUGE, the stores are big, and the restaurant serving sizes are big too (with the exception of the servings at the Whole Foods flagship store, which had moderate servings – too big for the ladies at the table, but not big enough for the triathlete).

Most notably, however, is the Texas attitude. I wasn’t thinking too much about fashion when I packed for this trip, and when I threw in my Splish training suit I didn’t think about the fact that I would be wearing a baby blue and pink swim brief, which is about two sizes too small at a Life Time Fitness gym with the type of people who find no humor in unicorns. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed that my ASS (anti-social suit) can be a barrier to conversation with other people in the pool, but here I feel a whole new level of ostracizing energy. At least in Hawaii people would talk to me if I initiated. And last week in Oklahoma the lifeguards actually stopped to ask me about me suit, and said they thought it was hilarious (it is). Here, when I try to make eye contact or say “hello” people turn their heads as if to pretend they weren’t just staring at my crotch to find out if there was really a horn on the top of that pink horse’s head.

My home stay is comfortable. I’m with a single guy, who obviously doesn’t spend much time at home. He says he owns an internet marketing company, as well as a regular day job. Aside from the ride from the airport, I’ve actually only seen him for a 60 minute spin we did around the neighborhood. (This is actually my fault, my good friends Trish and Rory who I met through the Volcano Triathlon Team when I first moved to Hawaii are both in town, so I’ve had dinner with them the past two nights.)

Boathouse Triathlon – The Pan-American Championships in Oklahoma City – Race Report

ben2_1 Last Saturday was the OKC Pan-Am Championships. The US has not hosted this race in several years, so it was no surprise to see all the USA Triathlon representatives bubbling with excitement before the race. It’s quite an advantage to the country which hosts, because the continental championships is worth 400 points – twice that of a regular continental cup – and can significantly help athletes to bump their world rankings.

I was excited for the race too. It was my first ‘A’ race of the year, and I tend to do well when I take the time to fully rest and prepare for a race. I’m not sure I’ve done a full-on taper since the Hamburg AG Championships in 2007.

ben5_1 The weather was cooperating as well, when I arrived in Oklahoma City it was nearly 90 degrees and humid, but a series of violent thunderstorms (the tornado warning sirens were even going off) cooled it down so that on race day it was a comfortable 68 degrees.

Really, the only thing that made me nervous was the late 4pm start time. I’ve never raced so late in the day and I wasn’t sure how to eat beforehand, or what to do. It turned out to be easy – I ate a normal breakfast, a small lunch with a few Clif Bar snacks during the day, and plenty of Nuun treated water. That, combined with plenty of laying around, and by the time I started warming up I was feeling better than I would for an early race.

But enough of the prerace chatter, here’s the meat:

The swim start was off a rowing dock, which is meant to be very close to the water in order to support up to 8 men getting into a low-lying rowing shell.  There were 65 men starting, and the edge of the dock was completely submerged.  The closest swimmers to me were Hunter Kemper and Brian Fleischmann to my left. Matt Reed was way over in the leftmost position. I had some idea that I could get away in the initial sprint and try to avoid the melee that would ensue with such a large field. This, however, proved to be a pipe dream. I made it about two feet in front of my nearest competitors at the start before the men to my right started moving left (trying to get on the feet of Brian and Hunter I’m sure). When they swam over me it sucked me right back into the kicking, slapping and general battery of the main pack. I struggled for about 100 meters before finding myself in somewhat clear water to the far left.

We were to swim under a train bridge, with about six support columns and about three options for which passage to swim under. Nearly everyone took the middle, so I went left to avoid the collisions. This proved to work well, except the man to my left was not keen on staying there and he started punching to herd me over. At the first buoy I was somewhere around 10th to arrive. I was still to the far left, so I had to dive under and grab the anchor line to get around. The second buoy was a little less chaotic, and after we rounded it a gap formed behind me. To my right was Matt Reed, and Hunter had somehow made it through the craziness to the front of the pack. I couldn’t identify anyone else, but the pack was about 10 men. For the second half of the swim the pace slowed to a casual splash around the river, up until the final sprint.

Transition was unnecessarily long. We had to run to the far end, run through transition to grab bikes, then turn around and run the length of transition again with our bikes. This all took about 40 seconds (39 was the fastest transition) and was enough time to create a separation from the people behind me. Kemper, Reed, and Tim O’Donnell made it out with the swim leader, Andrew McCarthy (from Canada), then Fleischmann, Steve Sexton, Matt Chrabot and I mounted our bikes close behind. Fleishmann lost his chain on the mount somehow, fell off his saddle and high centered on the top tube (ouch!), then he swerved causing Sexton to lose a shoe. Chrabot and I narrowly escaped the situation and quickly caught on to Kemper, Reed and McCarthy, passing O’Donnell, who was struggling with getting his shoe on. Matt C went back for Tim, knowing that his firepower on the bike would help us stay away, and brought Leo Chacon up with him as well.

ben7_1 The first lap of the bike Matty Reed, McCarthy, and Chacon all refused to pull. It was a bit unusual because Reed is normally dominant on the bike. Kemper was rallying us to pull through, though he did skip a few pulls (he and Reed were mainly racing each other from the start, so Kemper had no reason to pull if Reed wasn’t). The pace line was almost entirely run by Chrabot, O’Donnell, Kemper and myself. At the first of 8 turnarounds (four laps, out and back) we only had about 15 seconds on the first of three chase groups, and by the second turnaround it was 20 seconds at most. The second lap Reed pulled a couple times, and even Chacon started to work. McCarthy tried his best, but he was hanging on for dear life. By the 20km point we had about 40 seconds, which is when Matty Reed decided to fully join in, which meant Hunter would also stop skipping turns and everything started flowing smoothly. From then on there was a continuous pace line of six (Chacon got a flat), and our lead grew exponentially to nearly 3 minutes by the end of the 40km cycling leg. The three chase packs eventually became one pack of 50, which meant the first riders of that pack hit transition nearly 30 seconds ahead of the back of their pack.

ben4_1 My goal on the run was to stay with Hunter as long as possible. I have never had any speed out of T2, and in the past I’ve had to hunt people down in the second 5k. I managed to stay on the heels of Hunter and Tim for about a kilometer before the pace became too much to sustain. Matt Chrabot went out with Matt Reed at a blistering pace, but started falling back around the same time as me. On the way back I saw that the chase pack was about a half mile behind me, lead by Ethan Brown. Victor Plata (my coach) was running around 10th position with Kevin Collington (which is still in the money), but as I ran by, Victor stopped, cheered for me, then continued to run, now in 15th place. Chrabot’s initial surge got him nearly 40 seconds on me by the 3km mark, which stayed about the same until the last lap, by which time he was solidly in 4th position, and I was solidly in 5th. Victor continued to  stop and cheer me on at every passing, and on the final lap he actually stopped at the turnaround to wait, gave me a time gap, then told me to cruise it in easy because I had a large gap over Ethan, and was out of range for 4th. I tried my best to slow it down, but it’s hard to have faith that those guys won’t catch you (I found out later that Victor was running 10m behind me so he could give me fair warning if Ethan did bridge the gap), and during a race there seems only to be race speed and walking. So I could have gone ben1_1slower, as shown in the 80 second lead I still had over Ethan by the end, where I finished in fifth place.

This is my best ITU finish to date, which is really exciting. It also moved me up to 78th in the ITU World Rankings. Unfortunately, Tim O’Donnell also moved up significantly, and he passed me to earn the coveted spot of 8th American. This likely means I will not be able to race the Washington DC World Championship Series event next month.

SEA –> OKC

image After the lynch mob started their march to my house in Seattle I decided I’d better high tail it out of there and let things cool off a bit. Off to Oklahoma City for the weekend! Now, I have never been to Oklahoma, which is good because it means nobody here wants me dead, but I had no idea what to expect. Okay, that’s a lie, I expected the same kind of thing you see in the more rural areas or Washington: jacked up pickup trucks, farmland, and cows. Not so much.

Oklahoma City has been really kind to me so far. Everyone I’ve interacted with has been really kind. The race director, who is gitty with excitement about hosting this race, even changed the swim course after Victor Plata and Hunter Kemper complained that the first turn buoy was far too close. I don’t really see the problem with 75 guys sprinting 100 meters to a turn buoy.

Our motel is a typical highway truck stop style place with outdoor halls and a freeway right next door. But it’s comfortable, and the Argentinean and Costa Rican teams are here with us. I think those teams are nocturnal because around 10pm each night I hear the Spanish speaking quickly grow louder and more frequent than the trucks passing on the highway.

Yesterday Victor and I were looking for the YMCA, but instead we found the OKC Bombing memorial. It’s a nice park, with a giant reflecting pool. I was surprised how large the building was. It’s amazing and awful to think two men created so much destruction.

Last night we were kicked off a high school track, which we had to jump a fence to get onto. It’s this beautiful facility, in a community without many recreational options, and it’s tragic that it would be closed to the public who’s taxes paid for the facilities construction. There seems an obvious connection between this type of situation and the obesity epidemic.

Anyway, tomorrow I race. I feel good, so I guess that means I’m ready. The other day at inewmed I was given a shot of “colon-izer” which is meant to replace the bacteria in my gut after a round of bacteria last month. It tasted like old stinky cheese and made me want to vomit.

Weeeeee!!! Oops…. Ouch. The Ravensdale Road Race.

image I raced a local Cat4 bike race today. While it was plenty of fun, the title of this post pretty much describes how my race went. I heard from the UW cycling team that they wanted to try to make something happen right out of neutral. It seemed like a good idea, since nobody in a Cat4 race really wants to hurt for a 40 mile race, so if a few people are up for it the pack will likely let them go away. Apparently UW was all talk, because only one of them went with me on the first hill, and we dropped right back in. The second lap I did the same thing on the first hill and managed to stay away for about 7 miles all by myself. I kept thinking someone would bridge up, but Phil Spencer (this is the second time I’ve linked to that website, but since my laptop speakers are broken, I can’t actually hear the video that plays. From the looks of it Phil and some woman are trying to convince me that decapitation would really improve the spacing between the vertebrae in my neck.) and a few other guys decided to simply tow the entire pack up to me. If the group was thinned out by my efforts, I couldn’t tell.

At this point (half way through the race) I figured that my chances for glory through breakaway were shot. I also refuse to contest a sprint, because it’s just not worth the risk of crashing before a race that matters, so I started going to the front and playing around with some tempo pace riding. It was all fun and games from there until about 2 miles to go in the race. The pace had picked up significantly, and there was a long line of guys out in front. A guy riding for Starbucks started accelerating to the left, and I saw a gap and went right. As we came up the pack was yelling something to the effect of, “jumping on the left, and another on the right”. All was well until I was passing the leader, a rider from Cucina Fresca (a team I managed to enrage last year after calling them “Cucina ‘no pull’ Fresca” for their irritating, though successful, tactics on this same course).

Now here’s the tricky part. Did he look at the Starbucks rider and come right into me, or did I bump into him?  All I know is that if I had not been passing him at that moment, The Cucina guy would not have clipped my bars and about 15 guys would not have hit the pavement. I would like to believe I was holding my line and that my fault was simply in not communicating my presence as I was passing, but either way I feel really bad about the whole thing.

So after looking back and seeing melee behind me (and that awful sound of beautiful bikes being broken) I followed the lead of the other men around me and started accelerating. We rounded the last corner and started up the first of two short climbs to the finish line (about 1500m away), I thought maybe I should just hammer from bottom, but by the time I saw the 200m sign I was fried and I fell back to about 10th-ish.

Heading back into the parking lot I heard some guys talking about this guy, “Ben Collins, he’s a triathlete, and he took down that Cucina guy, they’re talking about disqualifying him for aggressive riding.” I interjected, and asked if any of them had seen what happened – they hadn’t, but the guy that went down was apparently sure of himself that I had made the mistake. Oh yeah, blame the triathlete. To cyclists, being a triathlete is like being below Cat5 (not Cat6, but something like Cat100 or Catgoogleplex, which would indicate no chance of improvement – ever). It means you have no handling skills, will crash yourself out of a race with nobody else around, and are likely to show up to group rides with aerobars and a disc wheel. Nobody seems to care that I race mainly in Olympic style, draft legal triathlon, against cyclists that are each strong enough to race Cat 1/2. Even the local official in charge of upgrades, when I asked to be moved to the 4’s, went to her friends that race Ironman for their opinion on pack experience through triathlon (they said that in a race people are all strung out a few bike lengths apart, and aren’t really “drafting” – check out the videos on the ITU website and tell me if that’s what you see.) I digress – I already felt bad, but this news that I was being called “reckless” really made me feel bad. (To be fair, the guys with road rash and broken bikes probably felt worse – so poor Ben, right?).  It’s easy to justify in your head how you were not at fault, so in this type of situation I try to figure out what I could have done differently, ask other people if they saw what happened, and accept some responsibility regardless of what happened. I found a few other guys carrying their bikes, one guy said he was right behind the crash and didn’t think I had done anything wrong, “looked like you were holding your line to me”. Eventually, after plenty of apologies to bloody legged cyclists, I found the Cucina guy that crashed. His bike was in bad shape, he was a little bloody, but not broken. So I apologized, which I guess is all I really can do. The RD told me not to worry about a DQ. “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be anyone’s fault, sometimes crashes just happen.” I still feel badly.

I’m so excited I forgot I have a website

image Usually when I go more than a week without posting anything it’s because I’m either travelling without internet, or just so busy that I don’t have the the time or energy to write anything. Not this time, I’ve had plenty of time, just no muse.

I did a talk last week with Raise The Bar, which was exciting. There’s no story attached to that, other than having fun shmoozing with the big wigs of the local triathlon scene. I also spent a couple days in Federal Way (a town with the nicest pool in the country, but nothing else going for it) with my friend Phil Spencer. He’s been doing triathlon for way longer than me, and probably knows more about the sport than I do, but he has a chiropractic clinic he has to run (Spencer Chiropractic) which makes it too hard to win big on the international scene.

Meanwhile, my muse for creative writing took a vacation with Loren, in which he caused some oversized woman to clog an airplane toilet on takeoff (I’m actually happy not to be writing about that first-hand), placed sharp, race-ending rocks under the feet for both Courtenay and Chris Tremonte at Wildflower (say what you will about Oprah’s Secret, but can you really tell me it’s pure coincidence that two people can can room together at a race, converse for two days beforehand, have similar energies and attitudes going in, and they both suffer the same injury and have the same race. I’m not saying you can will a rock under your foot, but it’s still suspicious to me.), and Manny Ramierez is terrifying fantasy fans who will have to suspend him from their rosters for 50 games.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting at home through a series of cold spring storms wondering how on Earth I am going to be ready for the 90 degree mid-western temperatures in Oklahoma City and Austin the next two weekends. It’s sure to be an exciting month, which I’ll write about, whether or not I can find the magical words of creativity and inspiration.