swimming


17
May 14

A race, a game and a cookout :: A fine, full day

This morning we ran the Ft. Benning Reverse Sprint Triathlon. It is a short course, featuring a 5K run, a 20K ride and a 450-meter swim, in that order. Here we are after the finish:

tri

This is the first triathlon we did last year, making this the first time we can compare times to previous efforts on the same course. I have a few things to be pleased with here.

The run is almost perfectly flat, and there are a lot of soldiers in the race, so they dominate the run, of course. You see them at the start and somewhere on the bike course or in the pool, if at all. So I’m not running with those guys, but I pulled away from a few people in the run. In fact, I didn’t get passed at all. My time was still slow, but I shaved a great deal off of last year’s run.

The bike is a super-fast ride with only two real rollers to think about. I was pleased with the ride last year, and I did it in three-and-a-half minutes less time this year. When you look at the average speed I was on the upper-end of average riders and almost break into the fast rider speeds. Only one guy dropped me here, and I’m not sure how. I looked down at my gears on that first roller, looked up and he was gone. I didn’t see him again until I passed him in the last 100 meters of the pool.

The pool was an improvement for me as well, if only because I was barely swimming last year. Remember, I was still dealing with shoulder problems and couldn’t even pretend to freestyle. I was disappointed in my swim today. The lanes were crowded for the first half of the short swim. Meanwhile, it takes me almost that entire distance to get warm anyway. I also had some energy excuses. (I even came up with a phrase for the latter, the red line of regret. I could have redlined the thing. I should have. Then I wouldn’t have regretted what I left in the pool because I was a little tired and winded. I could have been faster, but I didn’t overcome the red line of regret.)

Overall, my time was 17 minutes faster than last year’s race, which was very slow. This year’s was merely slow. But that’s a fair amount of improvement, with plenty of areas in which to continue to grow.

I’m bummed that I won’t get to do that race again for another year now. I want to measure these performances against another effort.

Today was senior day for Auburn baseball. Here the mother of one player and the grandmother of another shared a big hug and a kiss on the cheek of celebration. They’ve been coming to these games for four years. They’re going to miss each other.

baseball

They are sweet ladies.

Here’s another one. This is Morgan Jackson, Bo Jackson’s daughter. We’re buds:

Morgan

This was the last time we’d see the team on the field this season:

baseball

My new Aubie gimmick — no one steal it! — is the Aubie selfie:

Aubie

Another of Aubie, relaxing with the ladies.

Aubie

Auburn lost the game, 8-1, bringing their season to a close with a 28-28 record (10-20 SEC). But the friendships are the thing: parents of five different players came to say goodbye to us today and then we had a cookout tonight with the nice group of people with whom we sit. That’s not a bad season at all, captured in one sentence.

After the cookout we picked up the traditional post-triathlon celebratory ice cream:

ice cream


5
May 14

They’re cured

Two weeks ago I had a picture of a grounds crew pulling up the old FieldTurf at Seibert Stadium at Samford. Today they are putting down the new material:

SeibertStadium

The old stuff lasted for nine years. It has been interesting to watch them roll and shake and shovel and unroll the new stuff. Plus you never have to mow it.

I wonder if they can come to my place next.

Class today. We talked about advertising and someone showed this clip of Mad Men:

I always wonder why Don didn’t write “They’re cured.” I mean if everyone else’s cigarettes are poisoned and you’re selling comfort, security and happiness …

We watched this video, which students showed in this same class a year or two ago. It always blows peoples’ minds:

Oh, and there’s another one:

I had the Whataburger today that I didn’t have on Saturday. I swam a mile this evening. Let’s call it speed work since I kicked some and I was out of breath a lot.

Things to read … because when you read you can catch your breath.

And your weekend? 2 local girls raise thousands for brain tumor research

We’ve talked about this at conferences and in our visions for the future. We now live in the first part of the future. The ‘Holodeck’ Arrives in Newsrooms. How Will VR Influence Storytelling?

This is troubling. Survey: Most says journalism is headed in the wrong direction:

The reporters, editors and producers who put out the news every day are less satisfied with their work, say they have less autonomy in their work and tend to believe that journalism is headed in the wrong direction, according to the initial findings of “The American Journalist in the Digital Age.”

This is an inevitable move. Publishers go it alone with their own video hubs. But that isn’t the only answer, as we discussed in February: What to do when your video is winning social media, but it’s a copy that’s getting the clicks? The answer is pretty easy: be a lot of places.

Have you noticed someone has been writing Twitter obits since the platform was born? Twitter is not dying

No Regrets for the Founder of Tumblr After Yahoo Sale:

When Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion a year ago, it sent a ripple of excitement — and anxiety — through the tech industry. Would Yahoo and its recently arrived chief executive, Marissa Mayer, breathe new life into Tumblr? Or would Yahoo smother the start-up, as it did after acquiring popular young services like GeoCities and Flickr?

So far, the worst fears have begun to dissipate. Tumblr, a microblogging platform, has more than doubled its staff to 220, and its audience continues to grow, up 22 percent in the last year, according to the metrics company comScore.

5 Social Media Facts Every Marketing Professor Should Know

10 mobile marketing statistics to help justify your budget

U.S. businesses are being destroyed faster than they’re being created:

The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That’s the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978.

Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study — 2009, 2010 and 2011 — businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first. Overall, new businesses creation (measured as the share of all businesses less than one year old) declined by about half from 1978 to 2011.

The authors don’t mince words about the stakes here: If the decline persists, “it implies a continuation of slow growth for the indefinite future.”

This a neat feature about archeology going on at terrible sites in American history. And they managed to only work Abu Ghraib into the piece twice. ‘We did this to ourselves’: Death and despair at Civil War prisons


30
Apr 14

The month’s workouts

Here’s what I did this month. The red is on the bike, as you can see. The dark blue is obviously running and the light blue is in the pool. The purple is one night of walking around New Orleans. It felt like we walked a lot, so I mapped it and, what do you know: we’d walked a lot. The sport line near the end of the month is from my lake swim.

calendar

It doesn’t seem like enough, somehow.

I do not know what is happening.


27
Apr 14

West Point Lake Olympic triathlon

Today I swam 1,500 meters, rode 40 kilometers and ran 10K. This was my first Olympic distance triathlon. I finished it.

The Yankee gave an excellent list of post-race thoughts on her experience on Twitter

So I thought I’d give it a try as well. Here they are for the site, with a bit more elaboration.

First of all, here’s the finish line. My beautiful wife took this picture just before I crossed it. You’ll notice the crowds have gone. You can imagine why.

Finish

In the lake thoughts: “Can’t breathe. Don’t drown. Why can’t I swim? Don’t drown.”

We rented wet suits. This race was still wetsuit legal because we have had exactly one week of spring and the water just hasn’t warmed up much yet. We’d intended to go to an open-water swim practice last week, but the morning that was held the weather was chilly to cold and getting in water didn’t seem all that appealing. Today, in her aquabike and my triathlon, we tried them out for the first time. She really liked hers. Mine, it turns out, tended to constrict my breathing. I’m not the best race swimmer in the world anyway and I’m almost always in a beautiful, clear-bottomed pool. Put that, brown lake water and a new breathing experience together … well, I wasn’t the last one out of the water. But it was close.

I had a nice chat with one of the lifeguards who was paddling along as I worked my way to the end of the swim, though.

Here’s the swim route. Nine buoys, 1,500 meters, a big loop:

swim

On-the-bike thoughts: “I am the best bad rider out here!”

All the serious cyclists were far ahead. I swept up a lot of people who struggle in the cycling portion of the race. No one passed me, so I found myself making up some ground, in a virtual way. I always cheer on others I pass who are working hard. We all need it from time to time.

This route, which features about 1,000 feet of climbing, starts at the star at the bottom left of the map below, goes up and to the right near the airport and then sprints back down to the water. You come back up from that park and then turn right to head home. As I was heading toward that park The Yankee was coming to the turning point to head back to the start/finish. (She’s a much better race swimmer and had an early time trial start time.) We waved. I thought I might be able to catch her. Nope. She was moving.

bike

Running thoughts: “I still have to run!? … Why did it take three miles for my calves to unclinch? … Those two ladies cheated!”

No one passed me except for the woman who admitted to taking a short cut and the other one who might have also shorted herself at the turnaround. She would have caught me anyway.

Look closely at the run route. We ran from Georgia into Alabama. And back:

run

Olympic tri finish line thoughts: “Go strong … Don’t look at the clock. Smile! Where is the water? Give me all of the water!”

Being happy at the finish is important. This was my first Olympic-distance triathlon and I’m not really in the shape I want to be in for them. My swim was bad, my bike was OK and my run left a good deal to be desired. The ride, which will always be my favorite part, was weird. I’d been telling myself for days that I wouldn’t save anything after the ride because the run was so flat. Who needs legs for that? And then my swim was so bad I spent the rest of the race wondering if I should conserve my legs for the run or just go. I never did resolve that issue, and I think it showed in both the bike and the run as far as energy levels and how my legs felt.

But! I was outside, doing something fun, enjoying a beautiful day and trying to be healthy. I don’t even feel miserable at the end. I feel surprisingly good, and that’s not just the endorphines talking.

I do not know what is happening.

We found a training routine last year that says on race day you get to bask in the achievement. We read “bask” to mean ice cream. And so it has been that we’ve probably had the worst food day of the year. But I found a website that told me how many calories I burned and, suddenly, that became the most official site on the Internet, because it says I burned a lot of calories.

Goals for the day: Don’t drown. Check. Don’t get swept up in the water (they have a time limit on the swim). Check. Don’t have any mechanical problems on the bike. Check. Finish. Check. Don’t be last. Check.

The Yankee, meanwhile, finished second in the women’s division of the aquabike – a swim/ride race of the same distances I did today. She finished third overall. Because she is awesome.

And now I’m an Olympic-distance triathlon survivor. Coming up next is a sprint triathlon, which is considerably shorter, but no less fun.


23
Apr 14

Spring finally sprung, and it’ll last for at least several days

Walking from here to there on the Samford campus. Specifically from my office to the pool, which is inside this building. It looks a bit like autumn in this shot, doesn’t it? It still has had that slight coolness in the air, too.

SUcampus

It has felt cook like that for some time, at least until this week, which is a late arrival here. It finally feels as if spring has arrived. And that’ll just be a brief pause before summer weather, I’m sure.

Anyway, swam 2,000 yards this evening, which is 1.14 miles. I’m a bit pleased with how the swimming has come along. I’m still not going to go anywhere fast, but I’m becoming perhaps a slightly more technical proficient swimmer and my cardio is improving.

I do not know what is happening.

Things to read … because some things you do need to know about in life.

The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World’s Richest

Mobile Continues to Steal Share of US Adults’ Daily Time Spent with Media

NIH expert to address Alabama’s rising infant mortality rate in lecture at Alabama State University

Veterans languish and die on a VA hospital’s secret list

NATO jets scrambled after Russian planes fly into airspace: Reports

AP: Spell out names of states in stories

Gus Malzahn talking smack at a bingo event. I’m starting to like this.

His post-bingo interview is very coach-like, of course. Sounds like he was coming off the practice field.