Photo: Get in Gear

I found a couple shots of me during the race. The first is right at the beginning and the second is at the end. In these big events it helps to be wearing a yellow jacket. A curious thing I noticed it that the same guy is right in front of me in both shots!

Photo: Oakdale Duathlon

In the previous post I had a photo that was not whom I thought it was. However it turns out that another shot was a guy from the company bike club. He's name is Tim Smith. He placed 7th overall which is awesome! Nice job Tim.
Unlike the previous shot this one did not need much tweaking. It's a little soft focused but not too bad. My camera did a very acceptable job on exposure in the sport mode considering it was an overcast day. I only added a noise filter and some slight sharping. The one bad thing about the sport mode was that it defaults to jpegs for speed of writing instead of RAW which I prefer.

Non Race Report

I was going to enter the Lake Elmo Duathlon today but the weather was 40 degrees, windy, with a little bit of rain. That pretty much takes the fun out of it for me because just competing is not enough, it has to be fun too. Especially when I have to plop down 50 - 60 bucks for the pleasure - in this case it would have been displeasure. I'm bummed because I was really looking forward to the race. I skipped it last year due to weather (almost the same as today) but did it 2 years ago.
A duathlon is a run, bike, run event like a triathlon but with a 2nd run instead of the swim. The distances for this one were 3 mile run, 13 mile bike, 3 mile run. In the past I completed it in about 82 minutes.
Since the bike portion went within a half mile of my house I decided to get a nice cup of Caribou coffee, park along the course, and snap a few pictures of the athletes. I was secretly hoping to see much anguish on their faces so I would feel better about wimping out. I didn't get my wish but I'm confident that I was having a better morning then they were.


I'm pretty sure that this picture is of someone I bike with at work named Tim Meyer. Very fast guy. I hope it turns out to be him. I got a nice shot.

Update 5-15-06; This turned out not to be Tim. Still a nice shot.

Surly Brewery Tour

My friend Hal and I went to a open house at a new brewery in town called Surly. They just started late last year making a couple specialty beers for bars only. I had tried at a downtown bar and really liked it. When I found out that it came from a suburb, Brooklyn Center, I had to check them out on the web of course. That's where I found that they were having a tour and beer sampling on May 12th.
The place was small but packed with people. I guess it's a hit! The owner operator, who's Dad owns the building, said that his Fathers business had never had a tour so they must be doing something right. The brand is very fun and they had great t-shirts - I had to buy one. The beers themselves have names like 'Furious' and 'Bender'. They are very flavorful beers howeverI have to say that I wouldn't spend a whole afternoon drinking them.

Ask for Surly at your favorite Minnesota pub because you don't bottle it - yet.

Ducklings

A duck had set up home in our front yard. Over the weeks she actually got quite tolerant of me checking things out. Yesterday her 10 eggs hatched! Aren't they cute! I went out this morning to see how the new family was doing and found that they were gone! I guess she figured I'd be poking in there even more. I'm glad I got these shots when I did.

Interesting fact; In Minnesota there is a 500 dollar fine for disturbing a duck nest. We take our waterfowl very seriously.

Twin Cities Marathon

I finally signed but for a marathon. I've been talking about doing it all Winter and it will be my first ever. I've done loads of 5 and 10K races over the years but always shyed aways from long distances. I signed up once before about 12 years ago but ended up overtraining and not running.
But for the last year or so I have had no cronic leg problems. Figuring that I'm not getting any younger, I decided that this is the year that I make one, and only one, attempt at a marathon.
A marathon always seems to be the measuring stick for runners. If you tell someone that you run they will probably ask you if you have run a marathon. They don't mean it but it's sometimes deflating to have to sheepish look at the ground and say "No, I haven't".

So hopefully, if all goes well, in October I can say, "Yes, I have run a marathon". After that I might have to work on that other question; "So you've done an Ironman triathlon?"

Race Report #2; Withrow Time Trail

Tuesday night was the first time trail bicycle race of 2006. I have done this once a monthly event for the last couple of Summers. A time trail is just that, you against the clock. The biggest trick is learning to pace yourself so that you don't go too fast to begin with. It's really easy to get excited and think that you can go faster in those first few miles. The total distance for this 'TT' is 13 miles over rolling country roads. The area near Stillwater, MN is quite pretty but it's hard to think of anything except your burning lungs. Each person starts 30 seconds behind the last rider so that there is no drafting. It's possible to catch that person if you are faster then them in which case you must pass them as quickly as possible. No free rides - it's against the rules. Same is true in triathlons.
The 34 minutes on the road are pretty uneventful and not that interesting to write about. Mostly I tuck into the aerobars and alternately watch the road and heart rate monitor. I managed to catch 3 riders in front of me. The race officals like to start the race with the slower riders so catching them is really no indication of being super fast. I got caught by one guy that WAS super fast. He blew by me.
I wasn't expecting to do all that great and certainly not as well as last year because I'm running more then biking so far this year. In the end I was not far off my average with a pace of 23.24 mph. My best pace ever was 23.9 mph. My friend and next door neighbor Jeff did much better at 24.62 mph. To put it in perspective, 25-30 mph is considered fast and professional racers would be well over 30 mph.
So now I've had 2 good indicators of my running and biking abilities this season. I'm quite happy with where I'm at.