Tri Dad

I love collecting data.  It is a trait that was most likely instilled in me by Pokémon (go Red or go home) back in 1998.  To that end, I love sports gadgets.  I bought a Nike+ foot pod that had a special dongle to work with the iPod Nano that I had to buy to work with my new foot pod way back in 2007 or so.  It's hard to imagine a time before cell phones were good enough to work as a run tracker and music player, but that's what I had.  I remember getting annoyed about the distance never being right and not understanding why that was the case.  I liked trying to convince myself that the mile markers on the trail I ran were incorrect. My running really fell off a cliff for a few years.  It was some circular reasoning - I had some bad shin splints and as a result I didn't run, and for that (and many other reasons) I put on weight.  Because I put on weight, every time I tried to run, I would re-aggravate the shin splints.  Eventually I just sort of gave up. During that

One of the big unknowns when I had my daughter was when I would be able to train.  I held off on signing up for any significant races because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to put in the hours to be prepared for them.  Prior to The Girl, I was a very finicky about my workouts.  They had to be before a meal (or at least three hours after last eating).  They couldn't be too early (my legs don't seem to work in the morning).  They couldn't be too late (I need proper time to unwind before bed). Having a kid has certainly changed that outlook (to be fair, having a kid changes a great deal of outlooks in life). My wife suggested that I get up early to go for my runs or bikes.  I told her that was a good idea conceptually, but not so much practically.  I would set my alarm an hour early, only to waste a few minutes here or there and be left with insufficient time to get a workout in.  Or I would just not wake up at all (until my real alarm went off). Recently, though,

I definitely should have done this race last year. This race was so chill and welcoming that I'm really disappointed with myself that I didn't participate it in last year.  It would have provided such a great foundation for open water swimming prior to my first jaunt during my first Olympic distance tri. In fact, even during this swim, it took me several minutes before I felt comfortable. The race is organized in waves by swim time.  I estimated very poorly and put 30 minutes for my time.  I was not the only person that put this very general time.  Out of the 400 or so participants, I'd hazard to guess that a full third put 30 minutes as their swim time. The swim accommodated wet suits, but just barely.  The lake temperature was 77.6° and the cutoff was 78°.  In fact, the two-mile swim that immediately followed the one-mile swim that I participated in did not allow wet suits. As mentioned, there were multiple waves of swimmers.  They had the racers go over the