The Rain Day

In our efforts to get ready for Memphis in May, which has the grand daddy of all post–race buffets, Liz and I were given marching orders to attend a time trial on Sunday morning. The idea was to “get the hurt in” one last time before out taper starts. Even though the idea of getting nipped again by the local 50-year old retired Olympic cyclist on the start list sounded appealing, I would have much rather have done the Team Time Trial scheduled on Saturday with Liz. I loved the idea of having “Pony Power” (Liz) at the end of her rope, not letting her escape through back door of the pain factory because getting dropped would not be an option. This would probably have wrecked her MIM, and I probably would have had way too much fun that I wouldn’t be able to stop the Accelerade from shooting out of my nose.

Woke up that Sunday morning to the sound of heavy rain drops spattering on my window. I had gone to bed knowing that “showers” were in the forecast, and I had imagined that I would be racing in a light gentle mist in the morning. Crawled out of bed when I heard Liz banging around the coffee pot, then I dragged myself downstairs along with a nasty hang-over type headache of some sort. Sure enough, it was pouring, hard. Opened the door and I felt a chilly 40mph breeze go up my boxers as it rushed into the house. Cold too. Popped up the forecast and a big yellow blob of rainfall stretched across the entire state of Illinois. No letting up for hours. Liz looks at me and asks what I thought. No fucking way.

So Liz and I sat around, worrying about what the coach is going to say if we skip out on this. How we are not strong enough. How we are not willed enough. How we are not tough enough. I finally tell Liz that I would only race in this weather if it was a cyclocross race where we would actually be PRAYING for this kind of rain and mud to ride circles around in. TT’s are a bit different. You can’t see shit without squinting constantly and your brakes end up worthless, which is not a good thing when traveling at Mach 1. I’ve done enough racing in the rain to know that you don’t really race in the rain. You just survive. Besides, being warm and having hot coffee at the local brew house right now sounds much more appealing.

I could see the little worry light in Liz’s head turn off because now she has an out. “Chris didn’t want to go” she will tell to Jen as her excuse. “It’s all Chris’s fault. I would have gone, but Chris chickened out and I wasn’t about to go into the big nasty storm by my little defenseless self” she will say. I could see this running through her head as I sat there talking about not going. She’s going to pin this on ME!

So I did the unexpected: “Grab your stuff. I’ll put the bikes in the car because we should probably leave in the next 15 minutes. Make sure you grab a length of rope and a dumbbell to use as an anchor in case you need to brake suddenly."

There was a little squeak from Liz: “I don’t want to go.”

"What? Get your stuff. I got my rain parka and rubber boots packed already. I talked to Noah, and he'll wait for us there with his boat."

Another squeak from Liz, this time a little louder: “I don’t want to go.”

"No serious. I changed my mind. We’re going. We’ve got to get packed now to make it to registration in time. You didn’t want the disc wheel on your bike because of the 40mph cross winds, right? "

This time the squeak was now a voice: “I don’t want to go. It’s raining. I’d rather get coffee.”

I now had plausible denial-ability. Now I can say it was me who wanted to go race in the cold rain and Liz did not. Hell if I was going to drive 90 miles in the rain to end up shivering and wet in the back of the van trying to unpeel soaked lycra covered in road grit alone. I need someone to pull off that sticky jersey off my back and Liz backed out. She told me THREE times she didnt want to go! This is what I’m going to tell the coach – that it wasn’t my fault.

Now that we had gotten our blame placing out of the way and had used each other as our excuses not to go, we sat very comfortably at Starbucks. We even had coupons for free cups. The coffee never tasted better.

The One

Liz is a coffee freak. By freak, I mean she's a full on junkie. Problem is, she's a high class junkie, not one that is hooked on street corner/dark alley/ back pocket kind of stash, but the stuff you only find in the hands of the well heeled, movie stars, and in the 100ft+ yacht owners club.

I really don't know how or when all of this coffee addition started for Liz. It's a topic I have never actually thought of until now. In the triathlon world, you eventually ask someone you know how they got into the sport and why. I've been married to Liz for over 2 years, dated for 4 before that, and it only occurs to me now about the "how and why" question on a topic that has put us on the balance of life and death several times trying to acquire it.

At home we have what is a pretty fancy coffee maker that you dump whole beans into, water, flip a switch, and about 8 minutes later of grinding and bubbling, you have a steaming hot cup of brew. She claims it's a mess to clean up as there is a gazillion parts to it that all get coated with coffee dust during the grinding and then lightly steamed afterwards to a nice muddy finish. This requires her to strip down the coffee maker, cram it into the tiny dishwasher, then complain that the machine is down the next day if the dishwasher isn't run the night before. I can see her point about this though. I did try the suggestion of "Hey, let's go buy one of those cheap coffee machines like they have in my office.", which got a firm reply of NO.

The machine in our office is pretty rough. It's so old that the plastic has yellowed, rotted, and turned cancerous; flaking off plastic bits into the brew kettle as it gurgles away heating the water. The kettle itself is a Frankenstein creation, cobbled together from previous kettles that bit the dust and assembled in the middle of the night by a madman. It's also an office orphan that no one wants to take care of. On the plus side, all you have to do is plop in a filter, grounds, water, and then dump out the grounds the next time someone makes a fresh pot. This means that after Friday, there's been a good 72 hours of rotting goodness in it's basket on Monday morning. Somehow a machine like that is unappealing to Elizabeth.

Too complicated is too much. Too mundane is not enough. I did some research while she was in St. Croix and came up with a machine, so grand, so simple, that I hope to cure the conundrum Liz faces each morning when she's looking for her fix. I even asked other coffee guru's about it and got the response "that's the one". I finally ordered it a few days ago and it just came today.

Here's a pic:

It's ugly, but the premise is easy. You put grounds in, add water, flip one switch. It's a European deal and it will pretty much require a solid year of skipping Grande-Soy-NonFat-Sugarfree-Decaf-Vanilla-Iced-Mochas to pay it off. It's unfortunately no exotic Italian model with so much sex appeal that it turns you on when you turn it on. This one was created by the no-frills Dutch out of German components. When I talked to Cheryl at the office about getting it and it's price, she asked if it made Frappachinos and had a million buttons. Nope. Just the on/off switch.

Supposedly this machine makes the best coffee. It's even certified by the Juan Valdez Coffee Cartel for making coffee good enough for burros and discerning sombrero wearing men. The key component of this coffee maker apparently is the heating element. It's the same one used to start the rocket engines on the space shuttle. On it's test run, I could hear the office building's back-up generator start up when I flipped the maker to ON, so you know it's going to be HOT COFFEE.

I bought this for Liz as a surprise and hopefully it's going to make her coffee she can't complain about. There's one problem with it, so I'm going to save a special space in my office for it when it gets rejected. It's called the TechniVorm. I guess the Dutch were even shorter on name aesthetics than on looks.

Peanut Butter Duathlon

Last weekend was the Peanut Butter Duathlon, which was originally the Law Day Duathlon, which has been on the duathlon circuit in the Chicagoland area for quiet some time. The event is now tied in with the Rockford Food Pantry and is a fundraiser for it. My sister Meredith and her friend Kevin were doing the race, and I got permission from the coach to attend it as a workout. With gas at $4 a gallon, I had no desire to drive 200miles for kicks, so having them go gave me an excuse.

The original plan was to get to the event early, run the course, ride the course, and then do the race with tired legs, having company of other people to push me when I'm hurting. When we left, it was sunny and in the 50's, which was comfortable compared to the crappy weather we have been having lately. On the way to Rockford, we first saw the wind pick up to gusts that made the grass wave, let alone the grain on our fruited plains. At Rockford, it started to rain and it dropped to the low 40's. I called the coach to ask permission to skip the original plan of masochism and just kick in the survival plan. I didn't want to seem like a sissy for calling for permission, but I figure it's like a Sargent calling the Captain for marching orders.

Signed in for the race, and Meredith chose to sit this one out. With the weather the way it was, I don't blame her. You were supposed to bring a jar of peanut butter (hence Peanut Butter Duathlon) to donate to the food drive, but if you know Liz and her love of peanut butter, there was not a single jar to be found in the house. It had also slipped my mind to pick some up the night before at Whole Foods, but I wasn't going to head back out to pick it up either. Kevin and I got our bags of swag, which was jut loaded with food. I was a little stunned...if it's a food drive, then why are they giving away food, especially pretty much a grocery bag full of it? I swear Meredith at half of what we brought back to the van within 10 minutes. Someone skipped breakfast, eh?

The rain had now turned to mist and I did the standard warm-up, feeling a little too serious looking with my clothing. My wardrobe now pretty much consists of TriSports.com apparel and I was pretty much fully kitted out like a poseur at a small race. It was still cold, but I opted for a cycling jersey and shorts. No tights, arm warmers, gloves, or hat.

I like duathlons because they are mostly laid back and the people aren't as nervous at the start as they are for triathlons. I think that the majority of the personalities at du/tri's are the same, but something about getting into water notches up the tension. People feel more comfortable starting a duathlon, even though du's are predominately much more of a trip to the hurt locker than a tri.

I wanted to run the first leg with the leaders, so I pushed a little harder than normal just to extend myself and see how things shake apart in the end as a learning experience. Came in at 11:10 for 2 miles cut into grass with a little mud, so I was pretty happy with that. The course had been mostly firm with a little mud puddles and slippery sections here and there, so I was pretty impressed. I did feel a bit of worry when my arms were cold on the run, which is usually not the case. Outfit choice was not working out.

T1 was slow as cold fingers don't handle tiny helmet buckles well. Got on the bike and felt like I was grinding up a mountain with a 53/12 as my lowest gear. Pushed this for a minute and the legs started coming around. I finally got around to working and then remembered the course as one I had done 15 years ago in my bicycle racing years. Today was three loops of this course. I was wondering if I would be looping people. The question was answered as soon as I turned for the 2nd loop as people were still coming off the run apparently. By the 3rd lap, the fingers were getting colder, and the loop traffic heavier; so shifting was bad, braking was bad, holding a good line through traffic was worse. I had braked several time to wait for cars to pull over, loop traffic to move right, and I almost lost it over a slick wooden bridge, picking a bad line because of loop traffic. When the bike part was finally over, my fingers were numb, had some relief that I was still upright, and Jerome with another rider was in view behind me.

T2 was even slower than T1. What had been hard to buckle with cold fingers was impossible to unbuckle with numb fingers. To make matters worse, I knelt down to put on my race slippers, then lunged forward not thinking that the bike racks were just above my head. I whacked myself good on the eye, moving the rack and causing a big "Oooh" from the crowd. The second run was a sloppy mess. What was once mostly firm was now a trampled mess by a 120 pairs of feet, leaving behind a mud pit. To make things worse for me, I had developed a "nervous" stitch in my side whenever I get pressured during the bike/run thing. Slowed up, calmed myself down, then picked up the pace again, this time feeling way better. Tried to run quickly through the chewed up course and I wanted to go hard enough to feel the pain of the first leg. Wasn't able to get to that point and the second leg was significantly slower that the first with a split of 12:20.

In the end, it was alot of fun because I got to swap positions around constantly in this race as Jerome was fast and so was the winner. It was alot of true competition racing at this race and not an ITT it can become for me sometimes at other races. I finished in the overall and was able to donate the awards check to the food drive, which made me feel better being empty handed of peanut butter at the Peanut Butter Duathlon.

Water what?

Today I told my wife I wanted to start a blog. It's my way of getting her back for all those blogs she wrote about my basement, bedhead and saddle sores.

When I tried to create an account, blogger told me it already had my e-mail as an account. This probably means someone else has been writing the story of my life. I hope the story has been good so far.

I'm here to write about bikes, life and stuff I do. And if the wife gets sassy, I'll write about her. And her little dog.

2008 Race Schedule

May 11: Chicago Time Trial Series

May 18: Memphis In May Triathlon

June 8: Eagleman 70.3

June 29: Buffalo Springs 70.3

July 13: Rhode Island 70.3

August 17: Timberman 70.3

September & October: To be determined