Tri Two

I competed in my second sprint distance triathlon this past weekend, and surprisingly i really enjoyed myself. Still not sure why, but i had a smile on my face for much of the race.

The most challenging part was the swim, of course. But it was challenging for more reasons than just the fact that I'm a horrible swimmer. The swim was in a bay on the Potomac River, but was relocated within the area due to excessive Hydrilla in the area. The swim was supposed to take place by running down a boat ramp into the water, but from the boat ramps, all you could see was the yellow/green of plant life clogging up the water. So instead we swam a bit down the shore and had to jump off a dock to start the race in the water. Unfortunatly, upon jumping in, it was immediately clear that this area was also thick with hydrilla, but a foot or two down from the surface. As we tread water awaiting the start, the plants were constantly entangling arms and legs below the surface. This entanglement continued throughout the swim as tendrils of leaves would wrap your arms, legs, and occasionally face in the thickest areas. All this led to my swim time actually being a minute worse than my previous race.

The bike was pretty straightforward. I enjoyed passing people on mountain bikes on nearly every uphill of the course. Some of the climbs were rather extreme, but the following descents more than made up for these struggles. I did well on the bike and set a faster pace than my past races. The run was interesting. The race site said that it was a simple out and back run, but this was not the case. The out part was there, but just after the turn-around the course took a turn into the woods. The entire second half was a shady run down gravel drives, dirt paths, and park access roads. This was a fun end to the race and kept the midday sun from being too much of a nuisance.

That is it for the triathlon season, but I can't wait for next year. I'm going to set my goal of being able to handle an olympic distance by the NYC tri, so got to keep training!

CURSE YOU METRO!!

As much as i love the metro, and am always extolling its virtues, i must say that it has let me down once a gain. My 30-40 min commute home from work today involved 2 hours to go from King St. to Braddock Rd (1 STOP!!!). Luckily i was able to get the roomie to give me a ride home once my train finally unloaded, which occured after 40 mins at king st., an hour outside the airport, and 20 mins on the way back from airport to braddock.

Last night the metro had power problems and had to close a few stations for a few hours. But they said it was an isolated incident and would investigate further. Big suprise, it all happened again today. Every train that approached the airport lost power, but they didn't stop running trains for two hours, after 4 trains ahead of mine were taken out of service! Now that i have vented i can get something to eat and try and relax tonight. I need to save some anger for work this week, they love to screw me over...

Crazy Summer

must say it was one crazy summer. Between Tim's wedding, with ridiculous debauchery, Tucker's many going-away happy hours and parties, the Virgin festival weekend, and Heather's birthday, it is no suprise that i haven't done squat at work or found the time to write in my lame blog. Check out my flickr site, the photos speak enough for the fun times.

San Diego

I was in San Diego about a month back, but didn't get around to writing anything here. But for myself, and anyone else who goes i have to share the good and bad of my trip.

Good:

• the weather, always nice and pleasant


• the Gas Lamp district, and especially the Strip Club Steak Place. I had never really cooked a steak before, but this restaurant provides the steak, the seasonings, and you get to go to town on the grill. It was fun and delicious, not to mention the speciality martini menu (i personally like the Kahlua and Baileys, with powdered chocolate).



• La Jolla, beautiful little town. Had a blast sea kayaking there.



• Pacific Beach, another good town. Had a nice bar district on Garnet Ave., where i must mention Bub's Dive, which just happened to be the local Steelers and VA Tech bar for any fans out there. Also Pacific Beach had an awesome bar called the Lahaina Beach House right on the beach. Nothing like watching sunset while sipping pitchers of Blue Moon.



• the zoo is a great way to spend the day, but i recommend the bus ride to get a feel for where everything is and save yourself backtracking up and down the big hills.


• all in all, it is everything i imagined it to be

Bad:

• the parking, don't drive anywhere because even if the traffic is light there will be no parking when you get there.


• nothing else, this place rocks

Hopefully more of my friends will have to go here for work and i can visit them :-).

4th July

Had a nice laid back fourth. Quiet cookout with only 5 attendees. Being in the American University neighborhood saved us from the worst of the sever thunderstorms that caused an evac of the mall a few hours before the fireworks, which i'm sure sucked for everyone who camped out all day for good spots. We then watched the fireworks from a downtown office building roof, thanks to a friends place of work. As when i did that last year, the mechanical towers on the buildings blocked the bottom most explosions. I need to find someone who works right on the mall sometime, and next year need to remember a boom box so i can hear the music the fireworks are set to. I did get to try out the "Fireworks" setting on my new camera, but it really needs a tripod to work well. Overall it was a laid back, easy going fourth, and not nearly as crazy as it could have been considering i wasn't going to work the next day...

Scavenging for Charity

Finally, I wasn't out of town during a D.C. SMASHED event, and boy am i glad. I had a ridiculous amount of fun. My team was me, the roomie, and his girlfriend, friends, and co-workers (kinda stunk that most of the team was his peeps instead of mine). In case you don't know, SMASHED stands for the Society for Mature Adults Seeking to Help, Educate, and Donate. The last saturday of June was the scene of their most recent escapades. This was the DC SMASHED Amazing Race Scavenger Hunt.

My team decided to go with a theme from the movie Waiting, and called ourselves "Push The Fish". We dressed up in aprons, with quotes from the movie written thereon, and wore nametags for our favorite characters. The theme went over decently well, at least with those that had seen the movie, and we were lucky to have accomplished it on such short notice. We spent the night before watching the movie twice through to get quotes and decorating our aprons.

The weather was beautiful for the event. My only complaint was that the organizer said we could only turn in 25 items at each of the three checkpoints, when in actuality we were only allowed 25 points of items. This was frustrating in the end since we wasted time collecting more than 100 points worth of items that we could never turn in.

More fun, was the tasks we needed to compete in. There were eight to choose from, and we managed to do four in the time, even doing four was difficult and required running from dupont to farragut to logan circle. We used squirt guns to shoot cups off of our teammate's head and passed around a greased up water balloon without our hands. My favorite task was in Farragut Square, where the team had to pitch a tent, then go inside while I pretended to be an attacking bear, and then take down the tent as quickly as possible. I really enjoyed the confused looks on the tourists as we did these tasks and ran down the streets. We also had some fun at a jousting task, where the roomie took a nice hit to the face from a roll of wrapping paper (hard to describe, so check out the before and after shots below).

Of course it wasn't all just racing around, we also had to by the task judges shots and beers to earn their respect and discretionary bonus points, because what is a race without a few drinks along the way ;-).

The race wasn't all fun, we also provided a public service, which is the driving source behind the SMASHED group. Their goal is not just to hang out and have a few drinks, but to raise money for charity along the way. So the 10 dollar entry free paid by all 300+ people (in 45 odd teams) all went to a charity that is associated with the Sierra Club that takes urban children out on wilderness excursions. And as an added bonus the Front Page bar provided 10 free kegs of beer (in Dos Equis and Heine Light form) as an after party for all the competitors. The beer companies were also sponsors of the event and had their own team competing and handing out bonus material.

So in the end, the day was Amazing fun and i can't wait for their next event! This time i'm going to try and get everyone i know to participate.

Flickr

Am in the process of getting all my photos transferred over. I like Flickr thus far, sucks to have to pay 25 bucks a year for the necessary storage, upload, and access levels. I really think the mapping tool is neat and i can't wait to go through all my old albums and organize and mark up the map (should keep me busy for a couple weeks :-D). My new photo link is http://www.flickr.com/photos/studentlohn/.