Tri Dad

  Background In 2022 I decided that I was going to step up my triathlon game.  I was going to do a 70.3 in 2023 to test the waters, so to speak, and then do a 140.6 in 2024 assuming the 70.3 went well.  The plan was to have the 70.3 be my A race in the fall of 2023 and then schedule a 140.6.  However, one of the bad influences in my life pointed me to a race-signup list that showed which members of the DIRT community were participating in which races for the year.  This particular bad influence, Jeff, plus a good influence, Andy, were both signed up for Ironman Maryland (along with a bunch more “maybes”).   I met Andy when both of our families happened to be at the same general beach area, and I got a run in with him early in my trip, which was the tail end of his trip.  However, I wanted to meet Jeff face-to-face and I thought that this would be a great opportunity not only to see some friends I interact with on a daily basis online in-person, bu...

 My daughter's school has a program that encourages father's and male figures to participate in school by volunteering.  It used to be called "Eagle Eye Dad", but has been changed to Guy to be more inclusive. As soon as communication about the program came out, I signed up on the waiting list.  The program coordinator reached out to me and I got a day scheduled.  All I knew was that it would go from 7:30-11 on a Friday.  I was hopeful that I would get assigned to my daughter's room, but didn't know what it was that I would actually be doing.   Because I wasn't sure what I would be doing, I did not tell my daughter what I was doing.  I didn't want to build expectations in her mind that wouldn't be met.  The day-of, I left a bit earlier than normal and my wife walked my daughter to school at the normal time.   I checked in at the office and started helping in the car line, which was busier than normal thanks to the rain.  I got m...

It's hard to believe, but my daughter is starting kindergarten in less than a week.  She was in preschool two years ago.  Last year we had the ability to keep her home, so we spent the time going through a kindergarten curriculum of language arts and math with her.  I guess we figured if she wasn't going to get the social interaction of preschool, she might as well get the educational benefit. Now, she is going to drink from the firehose.  Our daughter is a bit shy to start, but warms up quickly.  I am excited to watch her grow and a bit worried about the fact that we are moving out of the phase of her life where her entire worldview is moderated by me and her mother.  She will now be exposed to other kids whose families have different values than ours.  I know it's not going to be anything crazy, I mean, these are the kids of our neighbors, but I fear this is when I start realizing that I am becoming old.  Or maybe I have until middle school befo...

 With my birthday coming up tomorrow and my workout for the day already in the books, I thought it would be a fun time to reflect on what I accomplished from a sports perspective in the last year. Some things that I found particularly interesting - I biked, ran, swam, or did some other activity on my Garmin 350 out of 366 days this year.  Sixteen days off in a year - a little more than one per month.  That is an average of 66 minutes of activities per day (56 minutes per activity).  That actually seems a bit higher than I would have expected.  I do strive for an hour workout everyday, but there are definitely days where I'm lucky if I get 45.  I guess the long sessions I had more than made up for it. Of the 1540 miles I ran, 621 were indoors on my treadmill.  In fact, I ran an entire marathon on my treadmill this year at the start of the pandemic.  Living in the suburbs, I'm actually extremely lucky in that I am not restricted in my outdoor runnin...

At the beginning of April I got an email from Zwift announcing this season's Watopia Run Festival by Maurten.  They did this earlier in the year with races ranging from 1 mile to 13.1 miles.  For this iteration, they would be running those races throughout the week, but the festival culminated in a Marathon on Sunday. The timing was perfect in terms of tricking me into doing something really stupid.  You see, just a few days prior I had completed the last running route in Zwift, and I had therefore unlocked every running-related badge in Zwift (including the half marathon), with the exception of a marathon.  Prior to the event being announced, I just resigned to the fact that I would never get the marathon badge (technically, it's the "Going the Distance" badge), but that email came in and the seed of possibility was planted. I wasn't committed to doing the event.  I wanted to get the kit you get as a reward for participating so signed up for a one mile ...

One of the pieces of gear that I've wanted for a while is a power meter.  I've had my eyes on the Favero Assioma Duo, basically since it came out.  The cost/quality ratio seems to be off the chart for it - one that everybody that I read on the internet seems to think is reliable and very accurate.  Plus, it's something that I could install myself, and use on my trainer (and if I ever upgrade my trainer to a wheel-off trainer, continue to use on my trainer). Through work, for being healthy and physically active, I get a reward that I can convert to a gift card, or a specific product that the vendor's store carries.  While this particular program is new this year, I've had similar programs the previous couple of years and have used the reward to get an Apple Watch for my wife, and to put toward my Garmin 945 last year.  Since this is a reward for being active, I like to put it toward my active lifestyle.  The Assioma Duo fits the bill, and I started looking...

I've been having issues with my HRM-Tri recently where it just doesn't seem to give me results consistent with my relative perceived effort.  For example, starting out fresh on a treadmill at about 10 min/mile pace and the HRM-Tri shows my heart rate around 140 bpm.  I've been so annoyed recently with this perceived inaccuracy that I actually stopped my warmup to manually take my heart rate.  I completely stopped and took my pulse for 15 seconds and came up with a heart rate closer to 100 bpm.  All the while, my watch was showing right around 140 bpm from the HRM-Tri.  It didn't even slow down despite the fact that I was completely stopped, which is completely different from the issue that I have occasionally with the Scosche Rhythm+, which will lock on to my cadence if I'm not adequately warmed up and it's cold outside. I want the HRM-Tri to work because there are some metrics that are only unlocked if you have a heart rate strap, as opposed to an optical HRM...

I love listening to stuff when I go running.  I always go running with my phone, and for years I've been using the Sennheiser PX 100 over-the-head headphones.  They are light, open-back headphones so they let in ambient noise which is great for outdoor runs as I typically run on the street and I feel safer being able to hear what's going on around me. For trainer rides, those headphones suck.  My Tacx Vortex Smart is ridiculously loud and I need that noise blocked out, if only for my sanity.  For the longest time, I was using a set of inexpensive Anker wireless earbuds .  I wore them during my trainer sessions and they worked great.  I tried to use them when I was on my treadmill as well, but they would never stay put.  As soon as I got sweaty, they would fall out of my ears, so instead, I typically just turned the volume up really loud on the TV or on my phone, depending on what content I was consuming. Those Anker headphones bit the dust when I ...

I'm working from home today.  My "office" is a corner of the basement directly under the kitchen.  The ceiling isn't exactly soundproofed, so I can make out most of the conversation happening upstairs, and I just keep hearing my daughter asking the Google Home what noise various things make.  She especially likes hearing what noise a T-Rex makes, but gets really upset when she asks about the sound a mermaid makes. She has gotten pretty good about enunciating the "Google", and my son has started apeing her.  He understands that if you say the magic word that you can get the Google Home to do your bidding, and let me tell you, that kid has a lot of things he wants done for him.  The only thing between him and world domination is that the Google Home doesn't quite recognize "googoo" as a hot word yet.  At least not consistently (he has triggered it a couple of times). He is doing this much earlier in his life than my daughter was.  Of course, ...

I took my daughter to a college basketball game the other day for my alma mater.  I try to go to at least one game per year with her, and since she was around two, I've had pretty good luck in doing that.  There aren't many afternoon games that work with nap time, but this is one of the few that happened to work out. When I got her home, my wife asked her about the game, and the girl was explaining some of the things that went on.  My wife then asked specifically about the dancers that are there during some of the timeouts and at halftime, and the girl said, "Yes, we saw the dancers.  And then we had to pick out the ugliest one." My wife's mind went straight to the fact that I was also there with my buddy from college and his son who is about the same age as the girl, and assumed that we were ranking the dancers. I quickly interjected and explained that there was also an ugly sweater contest where the crowd had to choose the ugliest sweater.  Unfortunately...

You know the saying "she won by a mile"?  Well, for my last race, I literally won by a mile.  Actually, I did the math and it was more like 1.3 miles This is my local community's 5k/10k race.  The 10k course is two laps of the 5k course.  The turnout is pretty small - about 120 people for the 5k and 15 people for the 10k.  It's not what I would call a competitive race, but it is a really fun event with some nice people involved. I've been running this race since 2013 and I've won the 10k 5 of the last 7 years, currently on a 4-year winning streak.  Unfortunately, the field has been dwindling each year.  From 68 people doing the 10k in 2013 to only 15 this year.  It's really sad to see, and I'm afraid that they are going to discontinue either the entire race or at the very least, the 10k.  I look at the race as a time trial because the victory feels a bit hollow.  In fact, I was the first person to cross the finish line on my first 5k...

During my marathon training cycle, I found it very difficult to get the right mix of aerobic and anaerobic stress according to my Garmin watch.  I think that was partly due to the workouts I was doing, which were 90+ minutes with intervals in the middle of them.  I had trouble hitting those intervals, and I think, as a result, was not getting the anaerobic benefit.  This was a major point of frustration for me. I've been running more on my treadmill as the weather has gotten colder and my motivation for waking up earlier to get my run in prior to my wife leaving for work has diminished.  Zwift also started a Movember campaign where there are in-game rewards for using the platform for 9.9 hours during the month of November.  I'm all about fake prizes, so I've been making a point to get on. I did an hour run the other day.  I set the treadmill to 8.3 mph.  That translates to about 7:20 pace per my Stryd footpod.  That is faster than my "easy" pa...

And so, for the first time in six months, I don't have any workouts scheduled on my calendar. 6:08 am race day: Just made it to the metro. I decided to Lyft to the metro and ride in. I couldn't imagine subjecting my wife and kids to a 5 am wake-up call and then have Jenn entertain cranky kids for 4+ hours in the rain. The ride over was perfect. My Lyft driver came right on time. He commented as we were leaving the neighborhood about how crummy the weather was, as it happened to be pouring at the time. Normally I don't talk much to drivers, but I'm pretty excited about running the Marine Corps Marathon, so I told him that's where I was going. It turns out that his son has been in the Marines for 14 years. He's done two tours in Iraq as a sniper, worked down at Parris Island and is currently in Hawaii. It's just a reminder of how awesome the military is and what a sacrifice they make for the safety of the country. I made it on the first train and w...