Of course by we won I don’t mean we won the whole triathlon. It also doesn’t mean that we won our division either (not even close). We did however beat Dave and Ed (the other guys in the race from our department) in the overall time and really that’s all I cared about. YEA BABY IN YOUR FACE! It ended up being really close. Our ending time was 3 hours 17 minutes 40 seconds, and theirs was 3 hours 18 minutes 26 seconds. A 46 second win! Of course the overall winners of the whole event finished in 2 hours 8 minutes and 33 seconds but you know what? They got the same t-shirt and free lunch that I got. Heh.

It was really windy the whole time and it seemed like the whole damn race was going up a 30 degree incline hill into the wind. It really kicked my ass in the run. I ran the majority of the race with some chick that was just as out of shape as me up until the 4 and a half mile mark where I fell behind. I finished my run in 1 hour 4 minutes 26 seconds, and a 11 minute 32 second per mile average. Pretty pitiful. I thought we did pretty well in the canoe part of the race even though it was into the wind and it took a while to get the hang of it but we didn’t do that well in that either. We finished 73 out of 84 in that part. All in all I would say I was the weak link in the team. After the canoing was over my part of the race was done and I caught the shuttle back to the finish line with Dave to wait for Jordan and Ed to finish the bike portion of the race. I didn’t have much faith that he would be able to catch up to Ed on the bike because we were way behind. I estimated at least 15 minutes behind (actually it was a little over 20), but Jordan was a machine and passed Ed probably a half mile from the finish line. Sweet!

Anyway it was a pretty good time for the most part and I think I will definitely do it again next year (with a lot more training beforehand). I was pretty realistic on how I would do since I am in really piss poor shape but I still reached my goals on this one. First of all I wanted to finish the race, I wanted to not finish last in the run section (i was 82 out of 84, bad yes, but not last), I wanted to not finish last overall (we were 77 out of 84), and I wanted to beat Dave and Ed (Jordan pulled that one out for the team there, had nothing to do with me). The whole thing did what it was supposed to do which is get me back in the gym for the first time in 13 years. Now it’s time to sign up for the Governors Cup 5k.

Here’s a link to the final results.

Here’s some photos from the event.

(Read on …)

Wish me luck in the triathlon tomorrow morning. Weather forecast says thunderstorms and 25 mph winds. Awesome! I’ll bring the camera along and take some pictures for everyone.

Has anyone ever played this? I went to Southpoint mall for my semimonthly look around, buy nothing trip and I stopped in the hobby store to look at the models and remote control vehicles. In the back of the store they had a tournament going on like they do every time I have ever been in there. To tell you the truth I know nothing about the game at all, it’s played with cards and to me seems like an updated version of Dungeons and Dragons, except you need to be constantly be buying new decks of cards for shit tons of money to be able to keep playing. Nothing against having a hobby or anything but looking back there was extremely creepy. It’s like the whole game is just a big cover for a NAMBLA dating service or something. If I was a parent I don’t think I would allow my child to play that game if I actually went in there and saw who they were playing it with. It was just about the creepiest thing I have ever seen. It looked like a bunch of 45 year old real life Comic Book Guys smiling and chatting up a bunch of 8 year old boys. I almost took a picture with the camera phone to illustrate what I’m talking about but after thinking about it I thought it would be creepier to be the guy taking pictures of the guys chatting up the little boys. I’m sure some weird Magic the Gathering grand wizard will find this post and send me angry messages about how I don’t know what I’m talking about. My response… Why are you seriously playing a competitive game against a child? For the challenge of it? Is it because you have money and can win because you can buy the right cards and the child can’t because they can’t afford it? I just don’t see the purpose. I don’t get it.

They had some sort of arts festival going on there in the mall parking lot that I gave a quick look at as well. Lots of eclectic people in little tents selling their wares for too much money. Well a lot of it was neat stuff but way out of the price range I was willing to pay. Some of the glass works were especially nice but at $175 for a glob of glass the size of my fist… well it was just too much money. I also liked a lot of the drawings and paintings that people had.

I finally broke down and bought an iPod today. That means that the fad is over and it’s all downhill from here since I’m always last on the bandwagon. It’s not like I think that an iPod is the best mp3 player or anything, it’s just that it’s pretty much the defacto standard out there and there’s tons of accessories for it. That’s basically what I was looking for. I want to be able to throw it in a dock and play it through my stereo and control it using my fancy universal remote. I also needed something that could hold my entire audio collection which right now is right at 40 gigs. I ended up going with a black refurbished 80gig and a cheap black dock so it matches the stereo system. They lowered the price on it since they came out with some new models. I was going to get one of the new model ones but I was doing some reading and saw that they broke compatibility with 3rd party software and you can only use iTunes with them so that sealed the deal for me. I despise iTunes and use MediaMonkey since it works better when you have a lot of music and audio to sort through.

The triathlon is this Sunday… I’m not ready at all. I’ve been sick with some nagging throat and chest thing for a couple weeks now and haven’t been training. I worked out Monday before my 14 hour shift and it knocked me on my ass all day Tuesday because I was so tired. Then yesterday I couldn’t sleep because I slept too much on Tuesday. That’s what I don’t like about working nights. I cant get my body in sync like you can when you sleep at night and work during the day. I’m constantly fighting it, and it sucks. Anyway judging by the results of last year’s race and my estimated running time we are going to come in not quite dead last overall… but pretty close. I will almost certainly be dead last in the running part. I don’t think running is for me. I think from now on I’ll stick to 5k’s tops to save my knees and arches of my feet and do more of the low impact stuff like the cross country ski machine to get my heart rate up.