We went to Washington on Thanksgiving to stay with my grandparents. I really don’t know why I’m not fat right now, because not only have I not swam since Wednesday morning, but I ate two HUGE dinners (first at 5pm, then at 11pm) and four servings of pie, not to mention the three servings I had the day before.
My older cousin, who plays guitar in a band, was there, so after dinner we just sat around playing guitar (the REAL Guitar Hero). I learned some cool techniques that I’ve been trying to figure out for months, and it was fun.
Thanks to the felicitous timing of photographer Tim LaBarge, I can now relive the rest of my mud-tasting experience. Notice how, if not for the bike, the mud, and the umbrellas, this would have been an almost perfect racing dive in swimming.
The mud has been described as “epic”. I disagree. I say it wasn’t mud, but a meld of peanut butter and Play-Doh with a hint of some mondo jelly and a splash of brown honey that feels like residue from the bottom of a lake.
On Sunday in Hillsboro I did my second cyclocross race, unofficially dubbed “Mudfest 2007″. Last week at Estacada, I thought I was seeing mud. Now I realize that was simply wet dirt. What we raced in this weekend, I’ve heard, put all the cyclocross races for the past year to shame.
There was about three times as much running in this race as in the last, and only about half of it was up hills. At the beginning the mud was deep enough for you to sink down to your rims; as the race went on, the mud got worse, and by the end your wheels could sink down to the hubs.
But enough with the mud. Let me take you on a tour of the course, FREE of charge (and of bike)…
You start out with about a quarter of a mile on solid pavement. Then, you turn off onto a trail of relatively hard packed mud. After a few hundred meters, the fun starts to start: the trail cuts across a ditch filled with water, which will slow you down drastically if you try to simply ride through it. (I discovered after the first lap that flying through the air is much more efficient than the more traditional method of traveling by ground.) About 20 feet later, you repeat the same process cutting across another ditch, only this time it’s uphill. You then chug over a small rise, and proceed to descend into a pit of mild Peanut Butter Mud. When you get through that, you are rewarded with a stretch of dry Gravel-N-Dirt™. But just when you start to get your speed up, WHAMMO! Two 16-inch barriers force you to dismount, pick up your bike, and jump. Not far ahead, the path takes a couple 180° curves, and then turns 90° right off the edge of a 10-inch curb. After that is several hundred meters of more mud and Gravel-N-Dirt™, which eventually takes you straight through The Lake: a ten foot long mud pit which is filled with six inches of water. On the other side of the water is an incline consisting of completely unridable mud, up which you must run. When you get to the top the path takes a curve off to the right and then to the left up a short and steep run-up, which immediately turns 180° back down into a swamp. (I almost ran into a boundary stake here, thinking it would be a good idea to ride fast down the hill. Nope.) When you get through the swamp, you ride a few hundred feet on some (almost) hard-packed ground, and then are dumped into a bowl of peanut butter, which continues for about three minutes (depending on how much you actually ride, and how much you run). The path then changes to hard dirt and, seeing a steep hill up ahead, you try to gain speed. But that is not to be, because of the two barriers at the bottom of the hill! You dismount, jump over the barriers, and run up the hill. At the top the path curves 90° off to the right, onto hard packed gravel. But after about 50 feet, you turn right again, off a cliff into the mud pit, for just long enough to throw you off your bike. With that task completed, the path curves around 180° back up the cliff (hope you’re good at mountain climbing). At the top you are rewarded with a few hundred meters of more hard-packed gravel (although I squandered my reward trying to get clipped in the whole time). But just when you think things are starting to get easier, the path takes a plunge, down, around, and down some more, right back into The Lake. After you’ve finished with your swim, you crawl back up onto pavement and dignity, where you will momentarily find the Finish line (provided this was your last of three laps).
So now that you’ve successfully(?) completed the course, let me tell you how I faired.
My first lap was mostly crash-free, with only a few splashes of mud. But my second lap was far from it: in one place, I have no idea what happened, but all of a sudden I found myself lying ten ten feet from my bike, face down in the mud. When I had crawled back to my bike, I found that my bars had been knocked crooked with the wheel, and it required adjusting twice.
Later in that lap came the highlight of my race (at least for the spectators): I was coming back down through The Lake, when somehow I managed to ride my front wheel straight into an invisible hole under the water. In slow motion, my back wheel rose into the air, up, up, up… and down the other side. I did a front-flip over the bars, face-first into the mud.
My third and last lap also had a crowd-pleaser, in the same Lake, and in the same hole: making the mistake of thinking lakes could simply be ridden through, I tipped over, 200 meters before the Finish line, and lost my shoe in the mud. Since my foot was completely numb from the cold, I at first didn’t notice, so I got up and kept riding. Needless to say, I quickly discovered that I had lost some gear, but I wasn’t about to go back into The Lake when I could be finishing the race within 30 seconds.
So, with one functioning foot, I crossed the Finish line. I can’t tell you how useless bare feet are with eggbeater pedals.
Below is a video so you can see the mud first-hand, and then some photos so you can see the mud even more first-hand! And if after that your thirst for mud is still not quenched, there’s lots more on my photo gallery.
On Saturday I swam my annual (and by annual, I mean only annual) mile race, alternating free/fly by 50’s at the Mile Open meet in Canby. As always, the best part of it was watching people’s reactions: some were amazed, others thought I was crazy, and some, I’m sure, thought I was just plain stupid.
But no matter what people thought, it was just good hard fun.
My time, 20:12, was slower than when I swam it last year, which was a 19:44. However, my fly was actually faster than last year, which is what really counts. Kate usually has me split the race into four 400’s, and then descend the fly in the 400’s. I don’t remember what my splits were last year, but this time, combining each set of four fly 50’s into 200’s, my splits were 2:23, 2:17, 2:09, and 2:08 (for my own records).
So what made my overall time slower? First, the fact that after about an 800 I started doing easy backstroke instead of easy freestyle. Why? Because (Kate told me in the middle of the race that) I could! That’s the greatest thing about these weird “freestyle” events: you can do whatever you want without getting disqualified. (Not that I’m calling “real” milers weird.)
Another thing that happened was my cap started coming off at about the 400 point. I tried pulling it back on, but it was no use: my hair was wet only on the surface, making it diabolically slippery. So I just pulled it off and threw it onto the deck. It will later serve out penance for deserting in the middle of a race.
After the meet, Adam and I headed over to Iza’s house, where we also met up with Iza’s friend Mihato, an exchange student from Japan. All of us then spent the rest of the day partying.
We started out by watching the movie Airplane while doing some serious justice to pizza + Pepsi (later that night, the Pepsi didn’t agree with my need to sleep). When that was done, we had wrestling matches and played air guitar for the next hour, the whole time listening to AC/DC on full blast.
After a while we settled down to play Chess, which ended with a certain person whose name shall not be disclosed here prematurely and unnecessarily knocking over their king.
With all the fun, this day was yet another instance of "Pain? Game!". (Mile? Party!)
On Sunday I did my first Cyclocross race, at Estacada Cross Crusade. We also brought my friend Iza, who, being an exchange student from Brazil, got to see what Oregon is REALLY like.
For those who don’t know, Cyclocross is a form of bike racing which includes pavement, wooded trails, steep hills, barriers, and other insidious obstacles.
Cyclocross attracts a lot of interesting people. We saw more than a few unicycles, and several people who hadn’t yet succeeded in taking off their Halloween costumes from the last cyclocross race. Also present was a guy dressed up as a devil with blue spiked hair, standing in the middle of the track, carrying a plastic pitchfork and a water bottle filled with beer.
The race didn’t have a set number of laps: instead, you race for 45 minutes, and then whoever finishes their lap first after those 45 minutes starts everyone’s last lap.
The course was about three miles long, so I ended up doing four laps in about an hour. The biggest obstacles were:
a tight and steep off-camber turn (on which many a foolish rider wiped out)
a stretch of swamp consisting of Grade 2 mud (sometimes referred to as Adobe Clay), which according to the linked Mud Glossary, “slows down the bike and drains a rider’s energy without apparent cause”
a steep hill covered in mud so thick that you have to get off your bike and run up, unless you have motorcycle tires
and finally, a section of six 10-inch high barriers (aka The Six Pack), forcing you to get off your bike, pick it up, and jump over the barriers
Before this I’d only done road and track racing, so having my back wheel constantly sliding around was something to get used to.
Amazingly, I only fell once, and it was more of a tip-over than a crash. Yet it was enough for me to be able to personally meet with the mud face-to-face.
I ended up taking 12th out of 33 people in the Junior category. Considering I never train in cycling, I don’t think I did too badly.
I had a lot of insane fun at this race, and cyclocross is a great way to get acquainted with bad weather, mud, and Drty Bikes. I’ll definitely be doing this again next week!
EDIT: The Single-Speed Cyclocross World Championships also took place at Estacada about an hour after we left. We didn’t stay to watch, but that could be a good thing since I heard the winners wore golden Speedos on the podium…
I woke up this morning, wondering why I was alive that hour. Ate breakfast, then somehow made it to the pool. I showed up at practice, bleary-eyed and feeling like a mummy. Then it was time to get in the water — cold and wet. Trying not to fall asleep in the warmup. Why do we always sprint the first 300? It makes the Still-Asleep Factor even worse.
We finish warmup, and I look at the board. Blugh-bralgh-har-graburm?!?
“40 minute swim as far as you can go.” I was being sarcastic yesterday when I suggested we do this!
But there was an extra catch: if we met the requirements in our 40 minute swim, Kate had a fun circuit that we’d do for the rest of practice. If not, well, good luck surviving the last hour and 10 minutes.
The requirements were this: one person had to swim at least 3700 yards in the 40 minutes; three more people had to swim at least 3500 yards; six more people had to swim at least 3300 yards; and six more people had to swim at least 3000 yards.
So our aquatic marathon begins. I start out going faster than I’ll be able to hold for 3500 yards, to make myself think I’m stronger than I am. 10 minutes go by. What the heck is Kate doing? Dancing to the music?? While we’re destroying our slow-twitch muscle fibers??? Another 10 minutes go by, and Kate blows the whistle for halfway. I calculate how far I’ve gone… oh no: 1725 yards. That’s exactly a 25 less than half of 3500! I’ll have to swim faster for the next 1775 yards.
Time goes by, people get lapped, CO2 is produced… 500 yards to go. 400 yards to go, and four minutes left! 300… 200… 100… 50… EVERYBODY STOP! 3465 yards. You’ve gotta be kidding me. I swam two miles, only to be cheated out of the last 35 yards?!
But it was not so. Kate was regarding everyone’s distance as if they had finished their last 50. I was saved. So, I’d done my 3500… who else? Two other people! And Adam went over 3700. Six more people made 3300, and the remaining six beat 3000.
–
The circuit was, as Kate had promised, great fun. In one lane there was a long rope tied at both ends of the pool, and we had to pull ourselves along the rope underwater like at a ski resort; the next lane was swimming with shoes (I was going so slow, I could almost go backwards); the next lane was just practicing dives; the next lane was swimming against stretch cords; the next lane was swimming with a drag suit, which made me feel like a space shuttle just touching down with all its parachutes deployed; and the last lane was also swimming against stretch cords.
So now I have to get up early for Monday morning practice tomorrow. I wonder what we’ll be doing this time…!
This morning at approximately 5:56am I learned how short and easy a 200 butterfly is.
My set was this (my set, because Natascha has gone off to college):
10×100 pull with paddles, free/fly by 25’s
5×250 with fins, 2x{75 fly, 50 free}, negative splitting the fly
3×600, #1 is 600 fly, #2 is 400 fly 200 easy, #3 is 200 fly 400 easy
My paddles kept falling apart during the 10×100’s, so I only got in about 2200 yards of butterfly.
The last set, with the 600, 400 and 200 butterfly, made me worry at first when I saw it, but then it actually turned out to be fun. The first 200 or so of each distance was hard, but then after that my arms just went numb, and there was no more pain! Hurray!
After practice, Kate decreed that tonight, Adam, Allison, Iza, Sammi, and I would get a treat, because we had made all the practices so far this month and done them well. (When asked to elaborate, she said that we’d have it “a little easier” than everyone else.)
Sure enough, we got our treat. She made the five of us do a 1000 kick for time (I got 16:06), but then she took out a 150ft rope and we played — you guessed it — tug o’ war. In the water.
We tried all sorts of crazy combinations, with four people tied to the rope, or people doing different strokes, but it was all great fun. Now think of all the possibilities if we had had everyone playing tug o’ war…
This post is one week overdue, but I’ll just start right off: Leopard exudes Cool from every byte, all the way down to the hologram on the packaging.
The new features for mere consumers, like Time Machine, make it worth it, but what’s even cooler (to me, being a Geek) are the new developer tools.
For over a year, I’ve been using dirty hacks in my code to make things look nice. Now, I can delete all that code, because it’s built-in!
Another awesomenitude is the new Core Animation framework, which allows you to easily include interface animation in your app. There will no longer be any excuse for a non-cool interface.
Sorry I don’t have time for a full review, because right now I’m going to play with Leopard.
Yesterday was the first day of high school swimming for my second year. I had forgotten how fun high school is: we basically did a warmup, then 10×50 freestyle @50, and then 4×200 stroke drill with 15 seconds rest, and we were done. 50 minutes.
Several people who were on the team last year weren’t swimming with us today for various reasons, some trivial (think, forgetting to get their red card) and some, er, less trivial (such as grades, or lack thereof).
But we also had some new people, including an exchange student from Argentina who is rumored to swim a 100 fly in 56 seconds. Um, long course. If this is true, I fear I may be out of business for the 100 fly at HS State, because that’s my time in yards. But that’s OK, because if our relay team can actually win this year, all that speed will have been put to good use.
After some stroke improvements from last year, and some fast swimmers on the team, I’m looking forward to what should be a good high school season.
As you are probably aware, Wednesday was All Hallow’s Eve, and ’twas not spent sitting on a couch wishing we had candy.
There was a Halloween party for all the fencers at the Salle, at which I showed up masquerading as Le Roi Edmond l’Impermeable — King Edmond the Waterproof. At said party, we discovered that zombies, kings, Romans, vampires, gorillas, cavemen, and Captain Hook, when combined with swords, are a dangerous combination.
There were various games, including bobbing for apples, a donut eating contest (which I, unfortunately, won), balloon stabbing, and Candy Corn Bingo. Then there was the Mummy Wrapping, which quickly degenerated into… well, I’ll let you see for yourself in the video…
There was also a skit performed, to which I wrote the screenplay the day before:
Note: whether by chance or by the plan of the immortal gods, the following video stops at 1:23, even though there is more after this point. To continue the video, just drag the slider a little farther until you see the rest of the video start up.
