Remember how I said yesterday that I’d probably have to do that Set the next day? Well, I did. So did James, Amber, Erica, Crystal, Tori G, and maybe some other people — almost half the group. Our set was this:
3×700’s @ 1:14 base
3×500’s @ 1:11 base
3×300’s @ 1:08 base
The people who did this on Monday actually did 900’s instead of 700’s and 600’s instead of 500’s, but we also had to do it in morning — as in, asleep.
Fortunately, evening practice was a lot easier: our dryland consisted of laying out in the sun for 45 minutes and doing 30 seconds of flutter kick every now and then. Welcome to the Summer.
I did a triathlon in Corvallis today, which was 750m swim, 20k bike and 5k run. By some stroke of luck coincidence, it happened to fall on Memorial Day — the day on which Kate had planned to make us do 30×300’s. For the time being, I’ve been saved by the triathlon. (But I’ll probably have 9000 meters waiting for me tomorrow anyway…)
The Corvallis swim team was practicing when I showed up. Judging by how more than one of them asked why I was there, I don’t think they really knew there was a triathlon going on at their pool.
I normally give about 70% effort in the swim leg, but today I went 85-90%, to gain some extra time on everyone else. It seemed to work — I ended up lapping people. In long course.
The bike route was harder than in Canby. If Canby was hilly, this was mountainy. I don’t think there was a flat stretch anywhere on the whole route. I averaged about 17mph, which is funny because I don’t think I was ever actually going that speed — the whole time it was either 11 or 35. But I did get up to 42mph at one point!
The run was also harder than last time — it was probably because of the hills on the bike. My quads started cramping up at the end, but I still had enough left to sprint the last 100 feet. After all, it’s how you look that matters…!
With a 1:15:27, I finished 1st in my age group (15-17), and 10th overall out of 115 people.
We all showed up at Chemawa today, only to discover that they had locked the doors on us. So we all carpooled to Willamette to go swimming. Kyle, Nathanial, and I rode with Kirsten in her Jeep, and we watched from a safe distance as Amber turbo’d her way down the freeway. Fortunately, we all made it to our destination in one piece, but since we had to wait for enough room to clear up in the pool, Kate took the oportunity to destroy our abs for 20 minutes.
She gave the Morning Practice Folks the option to go home after abs, since we had already swam this morning. All of them did, except for Adam and me. Because we’re studly like that.
This weekend was the CAT Open, our second meet of the season, in Corvallis. I swam the 200 free, 50 free, 100 butterfly, 400 free, 400 IM, 200 butterfly, and 100 free, in that order. We also had a 400 free relay and a 400 medley relay.
For my 400 IM, Kate told me to go out so easy in the butterfly that it would feel like I’m going to flop my race.
So I went out even easier.
To compare: Andrew only beat me by one second, but my butterfly was three seconds slower than his.
Note to self: take your butterfly out controlled, but not idiotically slow.
For my own records, these were my 400 IM splits:
34.9
39.5 1:15.4
42.0
42.0 1:24.0
46.6
47.1 1:33.7
37.3
35.5 1:12.7
5:25.29
We did pretty well in our 400 medley relay (with Adam doing back, Kyle doing breast, me doing fly, and Andrew doing free): we dropped 13 seconds off our time, and took 4th place overall.
I’ll be going to Anaheim, California in late September, because Robbert and I will be putting on a web seminar at a big swimming convention.
I don’t know much about the convention, but I’m told that Olympians usually show up, and that there will be… a banquet!
The only catch is that I’ll have to wear a tie and a long-sleeved shirt, which is questionable… (All who just can’t see me in a tie, post in the comments!) But I might be able to find something of the likes in the recesses of my drawer.
As I was browsing through my old blogs today, I realized I’ve inflicted five blogs upon ye readers since December 2004. I decided to list them here just for the heck of it (and for mine own reference).
First blog, December 2004 - May 2005, powered by iBlog
Second blog, May 2005 - May 2006, powered by Blogger
Third blog, May 2006 - August 2006, powered by Wordpress
Fourth blog, August 2006 - March 2007, powered by iWeb
Today I did the Gator Grinder triathlon in Canby, which was 500m swim, 12mi bike, and 3.1mi run. I took 2nd in my age group, behind a 19 year-old franken-tri, and my time was about 1 hour, 8 minutes.
The bike course was full of hills and sharp corners — yummy. I charged down every hill, and as a result I got the following uphill free.
Also the bike-to-run transition was a lot easier than it was last time; it didn’t take me a whole mile to get used to running, like it did before. It might be because the last time I went for a bike ride, my dad made me go running afterwards…
I uploaded a video of my bike dismount, for its radness. Also notice the cheesy ’70s music playing in the background.
We had another party at Willamette today after evening practice, to celebrate our triumph over Evil Geysers Under The Floor. This time it was for the whole team, instead of just the Seniors, and we ate pizza and did crazy relays.
In the first relay, which was a 200 free, Raymond and I asked Kate if we could be a two-man team instead of four. She said yes. And we beat everybody.
OK, about 80% of “everybody” were little kids, but not all: there were a few parents swimming (hey, stop laughing!), and one of them was actually kind of fast. He is (or was) a world-record holder in masters swimming.
At the end of the party, Adam, Raymond, Sammi, and I raced Kate in a 100 free. She threatened that if she beats any of the boys, they’ll have to do a 500 butterfly. We all beat her, even though we had already done two and a half practices today!
The server I was using for my blog up until now was a Titinium PowerBook G4, which I had drafted out of communal use. But I have two ancient computers sitting in my room that have nothing to do, because, to put it bluntly, they’re too slow to do anything.
But wait — serving web pages is an easy job (as long as it’s not something like this). So I cloned the TiBook’s hard drive onto a 120GB external drive, and then connected that to an iMac G3 with 400MHz processor and 384MB RAM. Yes, a 400MHz processor and 384MB of RAM. It’s doing fine.
Since it’s an iMac (therefore, all once piece), it’s easy to move around the house if need be. And if it completely and totally blows up leaving nothing but a blob of melted plactic behind, I have everything stored on the external drive, so all I have to do is connect it to a different computer.
That said, this is what’s giving you my blog right now:
