Some many years ago I had a brief passing thought about a photograph project. What would it be like to shoot all of the rust? It has a certain beauty. It says, well, a few different things, if you contemplate it long enough. It’s also everywhere.
And sometimes, I find myself staring at a bit of rust.
When I do, I think of that passing thought. How long would that take? And who are you kidding? How many things would rust away by the time you got back to the starting point? Saturday, when I was looking at that bridge, I wondered, wWhat does all of the rust in the world weigh?
I was staring at that bridge while my lovely bride was checking in for her triathlon. She did a half iron this weekend.
The half iron includes a 1.2 mile swim, in a river, this time. Here, she is exiting the water right on schedule.
Immediately after that, there’s a 56 mile bike ride.
She dropped her chain, and said someone swung out in front of her and ran her off the road. She was OK. At least two different people were less fortunate, and had accidents involving cars. Excellent job securing those semi-controlled roads by the race organizers and local authorities.
And after that 1.2 mile run, and well-paced 56 mile ride, she had a half marathon to wrap up the event. Here she is setting out for the run.
She had a great swim, and she was pleased with her bike ride. But she did not care for her run. Aches and pain and no shade and so on and so forth. Nevertheless, when she made it to the line, she finished with a smile.
And that’s her fifth 70.3, to go alongside her three Ironmen triathlons. And wraps up the best part of the season. I think she has one or two more runs scheduled, just for fun, but everything is for fun from here. (It should all be fun, I say. Finish with a smile, that’s what I say.)
On the way back home today, we stopped at this place. ‘
Because, look, when you tell a trusted friend you are driving through her native neck of the woods and she simply replies that you have to go eat at this place, you take the advice.
Our trusted friend was spot on with that recommendation.
Today was a long day in the car; there was a lot of reading Wikipedia to pass the time. Tomorrow, it’ll be back to work.
At the beginning of each month I do a lot of important and boring things. I create a few new subdirectories for the site. I delete a bunch of stuff from the desktop of my computer. I update a document that holds a lot of standard code shortcuts that I use.
And so on. It is all terribly exciting.
One other interesting thing that I do is update the images on the front page. The rotating photos now feature a small piece of something we saw in California this spring. Head on over to the front page to check those out. It’ll take you 54 seconds for the rotation to carry you through. We’ll be right here when you get back.
My joking complaint about triathlons is that they start too early. We need hobbies, I say, that cost less and don’t start at dawn; if they don’t require too much running, more the better.
So, last night, because the story of this day began last night, as so many of them do, my lovely bride told me that she’d signed up for a super sprint triathlon she found a half hour away. And would I like to go? Also, the race started at 6:30 in the p.m.
Since that was my complaint, it seemed only fair that I should go in support.
Super sprints are short, but I had a long swim the day before, and I haven’t run in a while, so it’s just support, and that’s probably for the better. I’ve done one super sprint, thinking, at the finish line, that I am not able to get everything going in the right direction in those short distances.
Which is a shame, since they are shorter, and I am slow.
But I am a great observer of races. I am well practiced in this area. And, of all of the races we’ve done, I don’t recall having seen one with a flyover.
She’s out there, somewhere. She’s the one swimmer among much of the thrashing. It was just a 500 meter swim, and even then, the water was shallow enough that some of the dudes just stood up in the last 50 or so and waded in.
They all looked gross. This little pond is fed by this, South Branch Rancocas Creek. And it isn’t as nice as you might imagine here. There was a fine black particulate. The Millpond mildew. Something thinner than rubber, and thicker than dust, clung to everything. Whatever was contracted from this event will be given a name in due time.
The bike leg, she said, was nice. Good pavement, fast roads.
The run was one big loop. Neither that, nor the bike ride, would wipe away that stuff that latched on to everyone in the water.
When we left, because it was an early evening tri, we timed the sunset just right. I liked it. Almost didn’t take it. But I did, and I’m glad for it.
We celebrated with Chick-fil-A. The triathlon, not that last photo.
Great weekend around here, thanks. How was yours? I did garbage duties on Saturday. I let the cats lounge on me. I floated around listening to nothing. I found the weed eater, which I used this morning. Weeds needed to be ate, and the job was accomplished in the back yard and on one side.
Now I need to get some better line, something less fragile than dried, crystalized cotton candy, so that unwanted grasses and weeds can be removed from tricky spots with a casual waving of the magic device.
I found the manual to the weed eater, too. This was useful, because I could find the page telling me precisely which size line I need to acquire. We had a weed eater guy at our old house. He solved all of these problems easily, and efficiently. Also, that gentleman knew the intricacies of a weed eater. A craftsman know’s his tools. My weed eater’s manual also had a stamp showing the build date. It was manufactured in 2012. I know, for a fact, it has been used … not very often.
Also today, I checked on the peaches, deadheaded some flowers and showed a few pokeweed plants who was boss around these parts. I rescued a frog, discovered two electric outlets that apparently don’t draw power and watered the plants. And I vacuumed.
This evening we brought the first batch of peaches in. I think I ate four in the yard and three in the kitchen today? It was a warm day, the extra hydration couldn’t hurt.
We looked up things to do with peaches beyond cobblers and ice creams. We’re going to be making a lot of peach salsa. We’ll put it on everything.
Yesterday I did a triathlon. It was a backyard triathlon. No clocks, no medals. Which is to say I timed it, it was slow, and there were no finisher medals for me, because it wasn’t an official triathlon. But I did a swim-bike-run. It was my first tri since … the 10th. The 10th of October. The 10th of October of 2015. That was a half Ironman, and a lot happened after that, so I sat out the beginning of the 2016 season to save money. After which I started a new job, and that took up a lot of time.
Sure, the really devoted find the time. Make the time. I recall reading the inspirational story of one man who was an Ironman, a medical doctor, and a father of nine. He found the time. But me, and my old split 50-60 hour schedule and no pool time had no time. Which is to say I could have made the time, but there would have been no other time. And I didn’t want triathlon training to be my only hobby.
These are the things I told myself since 2016. Now, I have a little more time. And, one hopes, more motivation. And so it was that I had, just last month, my first swim(s) in years. And also running, which comes and goes for me due to apathy. (I see people riding their bikes and think I wish I could go for a bike ride. I have never watched anyone run by and thought, Man, I wish I could be jogging right now.) And so today, a backyard sprint triathlon. (Sprint in this case denotes distance, not speed.)
Counting laps in a pool is hard. The mind wanders. You lose track. Was that 15? Or 16? So, today, I used sticks.
I swam 800 yards, moving a stick from one pile to another. Then I did an easy out-and-back 20 km bike ride. It was a decent ride. I had six stop signs, and I was conscious of having to shuffle through a run after. So I took it easy-ish, but it was fun and I was pleased.
I was not at all pleased with the run. I was not surprised by that, either.
In July of 2015, when I was eight years younger and in a different kind of shape, I did a sprint tri 15 that was minutes faster than what I did today. The week before that, I did another spring tri. (Two weekends in a row. See? I was in a different kind of shape.) In that one, I was 12 minutes faster than today. I was proud of my bike ride in that one. I had the third fastest bike leg on the course. They were roads I rode every day and, it turns out, there’s a little advantage to that.
It was a brand new event put on by our old LBS. I miss those guys, and I wish we’d had the opportunity to do that one more than once. I wish for a lot of things.
Anyway, my fastest sprint tri was 22 minutes faster than today. I can find 22 minutes somewhere, right? Right?
Phoebe says the answer to my question may be just through this door.
Through that door is the garage. And my car is in there. And it does go faster than my bike and feet. So she’s not wrong.
She still loves sitting in boxes. Good thing we’ve kept a few kitty-sized bits of cardboard around for them.
Poseidon really doesn’t want me to write anymore about Phoebe. He’s jealous of her and whatever she’s doing, at most all times.
I love when I catch him yawning. Usually it makes him look angry or ferocious. Once or twice a big yawn has looked ludicrous. In this one, I think, he looks playful.
Seems so obvious now, right? It was in the photos and everything. And if you looked up the Roosevelt story, or tried to figure out that tree joke, you would have figured it out, or given up, in short order.
We were in Milwaukee for the USA Triathlon National Championships. The Yankee raced twice. On Saturday she competed in the Olympic distance triathlon, a 1,500-meter swim, a 25-mile bike ride and a 6.2-mile run. Here are a few quick clips, where she is rocking the bright kit of her sponsor, Team Zoot:
This was her third national championship event, and she finished just barely outside the top 100. Pretty great at a national championship level. (She was 33rd in the swim and 79th on the bike. In the nation!)
That was on Saturday. On Sunday, she competed in the sprint distance national triathlon, her fourth national championship event. This particular national championship was abbreviated a bit because of approaching weather. That just made it faster and more fun. A few more clips, and you’ll see her in her coach’s team kit, Dream Big.
In Sunday’s super-sprint she finished inside the top 100, and in her individual legs she was 34 in the water, 69th on the bike and 99th in the run. And she doesn’t even like the run.
Also, she had those surgeries, and these are second and third races she’s had while still recovering from those. (She just finished the official physical therapy about 45 minutes ago.) So, it was a successful weekend of racing. Quite impressive. A lot of fun. And it was all in Milwaukee.
Here are some photographs.
This is the pier at Discovery World where they started the race. On Saturday they did a mass start by age group. So if you were a male 25-29, you started at the same time as all the other guys in that bunch. On Sunday, because of the weather and the logistics, they did a self-seeded time trial start. Four people went in at a time based on their self-reported swim times. It is in no way official or make-or-break, but it has the benefit of being slower, which spreads out the field, particularly on the bike course. This was important on Sunday because they shrank that route in a concession to the weather, but they didn’t have fewer athletes. It’s all about spreading things out. And, theoretically, the staggered time trial start does that. Also you just watched people jump in the water for hours. Discovery World sounds pretty awesome. And the front of the building will be a banner here, soon.
Here, The Yankee is coming out of the water in the Saturday race. Barely off the ramp and already making muscle poses.
And her finish on Saturday.
Here’s a big from Sunday, where she is showing off one of the medals she won.
This is really cool. This is Madonna Buder, who is known in the sport as the Iron Nun. (Yep, she was a nun, and last year she crashed on a training ride and fractured her shoulder, collarbone, and got four fractures in a rib. Nun means the one thing, but the iron part of her nickname has several meanings.) She has opened six age groups for triathlons – meaning she was the oldest in the field each of those times, starting with 50 and over. She’s also the world’s oldest female Ironman finisher, a record she’s held since she was … 82! She’s done some 45 Ironman races.
Buder was smiling all weekend, constantly. She’s a celebrity. Everyone knows it, and they all think they know her. She’s probably met all the long timers. She did her first triathlon at 55. Yep, she has been doing this for 37 years, including those 45 full triathlons and some 350 more at shorter distances. This weekend, now a fresh 92 years young, she was doing the sprint at the national championships. She’s getting a little help up the ramp and hill from the swim, which an awful lot of people did. I also saw her heading out on the bike, and she was in perfect control.
You’re intrigued now, so here are some of videos.
She was in a Nike commercial a few years ago. One of the best Nike commercials of all time. Just watch it.
This weekend we were in beautiful, bucolic Selma, Indiana, a rural community just outside exotic Muncie, which is in Indiana. And so it was that they named the event Ironman Indiana. It’s a bit of a one-off from the Ironman company. A lot of races were shut down last year. A lot of events didn’t get the chance to make money; a lot of outstanding athletes didn’t get to do their thing. So, this year, they decided “Let’s run a half Ironman and a full Ironman on the same day in the middle of a pandemic!”
We drove up Friday evening, because The Yankee was in this race. She did her packet pickup in Muncie, indoors but there was no one around. We went to the hotel(s) — and more on that in a moment. Saturday morning she got up very early and started the race.
Here she is after the 2.4 mile swim, and the conclusion of her 112 mile bike ride. Still a great big smile …
This is just outside the transition area, so she’s slowed down enough to allow us a glimpse as she’s preparing for the run.
Again, a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile run, and then you wrap up a light day’s work with a 26.2 mile run, which she’s starting here.
At some point on the run it becomes a mental thing as much as a physical thing. You’ve been out there for hours. You’ve surpassed your longest workouts. It can be tedious or boring or painful or entertaining. And as this course was a series of out-and-backs, you only saw your personal cheering sections a few times. But at least the weather was nice and mild today, and downright cool after the last of the rain had passed through. Really, it was a bit of everything, and so much of this particular course is in such a delightfully rural area that the only people you would see for long stretches of time are other athletes and the occasional aid station. You spend a lot of time in your head. A lot of time.
And yet, having done half the run, 13.1 miles down and 13.1 to go, she’s still got that big smile.
Later in the evening, having slashed through the water and ground on the pedals and pounded the pavement, the finish line.
She finished, got her medal, took the publicity photos, grabbed a roast beef sandwich and sat on a bench to collect herself with her coach and his wife. And then we carried all of the tools of the Ironman trade to the car. Then she shivered as we drove back to the hotel.
We had two hotels this weekend. The first place had to put some rooms out of order, which we’re guessing, means they overbooked. But they were nice enough to reserve us a room in a much less nice hotel across town.
The sign out front inspires a lot of confidence.
But! We got a room with a king size bed, better than we were expecting in the first hotel. This place was undergoing renovations, however, and smelled funny. It probably always smells funny.
It was a smell that was even weirder through your mask.
So we settled in there Friday. On Saturday, the desk manager says to me “Checkout is at 11.”
“No sir, it is not. The other hotel booked us for two nights.”
He had our little note from the other hotel right there on the desk. He was waiting on me.
“It says here one night.”
“Yes it does,” I said. “And the attendant there assured me this was a typo on a form letter and that our visit with you was for two nights.”
“OK, let me call them.”
“Yes, please do call them. Call Chris, the manager. Call Chris at home.
He calls, asks for Chris. Chris isn’t there, because it is Saturday on one of the busiest weekends in their town. Why would the manager of a teaching hotel be on hand?
He asks for whoever was close by. He gets put on hold.
Then the desk manager gentleman turns to me and nicely says “I know this isn’t your fault.”
I said, “And I know this isn’t your fault. I also know I have two nights with you.”
At which point he hangs up and says “They were taking too long. I’m going to make them pay for it anyway.”
Which is where I say, “And when I come back tonight, my stuff is still going to be in the room, and not on the curb, and this key is going to still work, right?”
Which is a question I asked him two different ways, just to be sure we had an understanding. And we did.
You put that out of your head for the day, but after the triathlon it’s a half-hour ride back to the hotel and you’re wondering the whole way: Is our stuff still going to be in the room? Is this key still going to work? It’ll be a whole new shift of people working in the hotel this time of night. What if Robert didn’t pass along this information, and we’re tired and hungry and cold and it’s late and we’re also sweaty? No one wants a scene in their smelly, renovating hotel, in front of people putting “cigerettes” out in the flower pots.
But the key worked, our things were still in the room. The three-time Ironman had a nice soothing shower and a snack and I said, “Since we’re safely in the room I can tell you this story now … ” which she laughed at until she fell asleep.
And on Sunday, we left exotic Muncie, got a quick breakfast and drove back to Bloomington. Sunday was a low key day spent resting and cleaning. Today was a Monday; tomorrow will be a full Tuesday.
