ezra@roizen.com

2009 Alameda Farm Ball Yankees

We're wrapping up a great season of little league.  This year they had a photographer come out to one of the games and get some action shots - and he got some great shots of Tanner.

2009 Ice Breaker Tri

Raced in the 2009 Ice Breaker triathlon at Lake Folsom last week.  They haven't posted the splits yet, but overall I improved my time from my last Ice Breaker (2007) by a little over 12 minutes, from 1:49:17 to 1:37:07. 

Without seeing the splits it's tough to know exactly where the improvements  came, but I think I was able to upgrade my swim from pathetic to just quite lame, my bike from clueless to actually pretty decent and my run from pretty good to a bit better than pretty good.

My transitions were a bit slower this year.  I arrived late at the setup in the morning and had a very cramped transition spot, and frankly just didn't have it together for my transitions.

A few other thoughts on this race.  With all the twists and turns on the road course, I definitely think a road bike is the way to go on this race (over a tri bike).  I also bought a Fit2Race wetsuit and it was really, really nice and came right off without any struggle.

It was beautiful day and a really fun race.  Bambi was there at every turn with big cheer :-)

I'll post the splits and a bit more data when they're published on the TBF racing site.  If I can make it back next year, I'd like to try to fix the swimming, tighten the transitions and see if I can break 1:30:00.

Splits Update:

Swim: 336 out of 394

Bike: 124 out of 394

Run: 38 out of 394

Overall moved from the 50th percentile in 2007 to the 28th percentile in 2009.  So, pretty happy.  Shooting for 1:29:30 in 2010.

Marcus Advances!

Marcus successfully completed this morning's examination and advanced to white and yellow striped belt.  He was centered and crisp.  Thanks to Sensei Anna and Sensei Marla for guiding Marcus' journey.  See Marcus' exam below.

Alameda T-Ball Giants

The Alameda T-Ball Giants wrapped up their season today with their ninth not-loss in a row, capping a solid 0-0-9 season. 

Tanner had some great plays, in particular in game eight he had a monster inning at pitcher.

Thanks to head coach Scott Slez and fellow assistant coach Sara Judd. 

Great season and Go Giants!

Marcus' Roundhouse

I stopped by Marcus' karate class yesterday and caught him reeling off a few kicks, punches and rolls. 

Caught a roundhouse on my phone camera...better than catching one in the chin...I'm going to need to be a bit more polite next time I ask him to clean his room ;-)

Those kids are tough!!!

ICE Breaker Splits

My times from the ICE Breaker triathlon:

Overall
1:49:17 (176 out of 348)
Swim Split (including swim/bike transition): 25:43 (272/348)
Bike Split (including bike/run transition): 50:56 (183/348)
Run Split (just run time): 32:38 (72/348)

Gender/Age Class (Male/35-39)
34 out of 52
Swim Split: 44/52
Bike Split: 35/52
Run Split: 10/52

As I anticipated my swim split was a mess, my bike time was OK and I'm pretty happy with my run (avg - 8:09 min/mil).  I'm at the bottom of a huge learning curve on the swim and bike, so it'll be fun to apply the learning's from this first race to the next one.  It would've been nice to see the transition times broken out from the swim and bike splits but TBF Racing doesn't appear to provide that detail. 

Race results here.

ICE Broken

Caleb and I raced in the ICE Breaker Triathlon on Sunday.  As a first time through the entire experience I felt pretty good and I will absolutely do it again.  That said, it was tougher than I anticipated.

A quick recap. 

It might have been smart to have practiced open water swimming at least once before the competition :-)  I found swimming a relatively long distance in freezing, murky lake Folsom, accompanied by a set of less-than-polite competitors kicking me in the head to be rather, well, disorienting.  In fact I would say "vertigo" best describes the sensation.  Needless to say my swim lines were terrible, I was constantly looking up to see where I was, I burned a ton of extra energy and ended up zigzagging my way to a time I wasn't happy with (I know this without even seeing the split because I started with guys in blue caps and ended with guys in green ones - that's not normally a good sign ;-).

Even though things did feel a little better on the bike, it doesn't change the fact that I'm a serious cycling newbie.  My experience on a bike being limited to about 6 months of occasional spin classes, stationary bike once or twice a week and maybe half-a-dozen pre-race practice rides on Jan Klube's awesome loaner tri bike (which when I was standing still made me look like I knew what I was doing, but when in motion made me look like some jackass with a really nice bike).  There were a couple cool aspects of the bike ride.  The first was the course - a tight undulating track that wound through the woods and along the lake.  It was very pretty and with everyone whizzing along it was really fun.  The second was being in the presence of some seriously talented cyclists.  I had no idea as to the degree of difference between a hack cyclist and a good one.  And the first realization was that it isn't just about being in better shape (which those folks are), but it's about knowing how to ride the bike and use the terrain.

Each cyclist had to make two laps around the course, so basically all the really good cyclists had to pass guys like me on their second lap.  I actually found that part to be totally cool.  These folks (guys and gals) were always in the right gear, knew exactly how to maintain momentum up and down the rolling hills and just emitted a sense of strength, confidence and efficiency.  I, on the other hand, was braking on the turns and starting each climb from scratch - essentially clueless on how to really ride the course and use the bike. 

But having seen these folks, I get it now.  Performing on a bike requires a set of skills and a kind of intuition you acquire through practice.  As I was riding I was trying to think of the right analogy for the good cyclists.  At first I thought of horses, and maybe that analogy would have worked had the ride been more long, straight and flat - but in this case they were more like wolves.  Not the scrawny ones you see on nature shows, but the muscley ones you see in the movies.  I just got the sense that the good cyclists looked upon guys like me as easy prey and they chased us down and ate us up.  I was totally impressed.  I want to be more like them :-)

My, on the other hand, greatest moment on the bike split was *just* managing to not tip over at the top of one of the hills having stalled-out completely on my climb from being in absolutely the wrong gear.  At the last mili-second I found one extra inch of strength to turn the crank that one more time to keep upright.  I was quite proud of myself to have not ended up looking like a complete idiot, especially in front of the wolves.  As I was about to tip I could hear "aren't you the guy...???" in the back of my mind - thankfully, mercifully, I recovered.

But again, as with the swim, not knowing what I was doing on the bike not only lead to a slower time, but worse, lead to a horribly inefficient use of energy.

I thought the run would be my strongest split and it basically was.  Having struggled through the first two splits I was pretty much out of gas when I got off the bike - and transitioning from 45 minutes of hard cycling to running was like trying to turn two boomerangs into spears.  Your legs just don't like that switch one bit.  But after about two miles I started to feel like I was getting somewhere close to my normal running stride.  The only problem there was at mile three the trail had a 500 foot, straight-up, incline.  That was a real treat.  So basically the last mile of the race felt pretty normal (that's about 8 or so minutes of comfortable exercise out of an hour and forty-nine minutes of activity).

Then it was over.  That part was nice.

Overall it was a fun experience with the really big realization being that it's as much about knowing what you're doing, and thereby not wasting energy, as it is about the kind of physical shape you're in.  There were a zillion things I could have done to save energy and time (most of which have very little to do with more physical training).  The big two are gaining some degree of comfort in open water swimming and getting a basic sense of how to ride a bike (and the terrain) for speed.  My biggest gains in the next race will come from not making the same rookie mistakes on those two splits.

Jan - thanks again for the bike.
Brian - you can have your %^#@$^@ wetsuit back, it sucks!!! (just kidding - thanks bro ;-)

Race results can be seen here (I'll post the splits when they're posted on TBF's site).

T-Bone on Two

After a battery of aerodynamic models and wind tunnel exercises Tanner determined that in order to achieve optimal performance he was going to need to drop the training wheels. 

He made the big move this weekend, he's already talking about a Tour de France bid in '08.

Trying a Tri

Signed up along side Caleb for the Icebreaker triathlon in Folsom.  Special thanks to my new best friend Jan Klube for lending me his tri bike (like the one in the picture - very cool - will likely put me in intensive care) and Brian McNitt for giving me his hand-me-down Orca wetsuit.

As tris go this one's pretty short: 1/2 mile swim, 14 mile bike and a 4 mile run.  That said, I've looked at last years results and the fact that a disturbing percentage of the participants can swim a half mile in under 10 minutes is so unfathomable to me that I'm seriously wondering if there's a race of flipper-footed-humans secretly padding around among us.  Brian - does your wetsuit have propeller attachments???

It's also pretty amazing the amount of equipment and number of accessories required to participate in a reasonably prepared fashion.  You don't really think of swimming, biking and running requiring all that much stuff - but once you've factored in everything from body glide and gu to an almost absurd number of bike related widgets the shopping list gets pretty long.

I will say that it's been fun to have a bit of a challenge.  I've noticed I'm bringing my stopwatch on a few more runs and keeping an eye on the clock at the pool a little more often of late...

Will Says Go A's!

After many months of speculation and rumor about his true leanings, young Will Roizen (a.k.a. Mr. Willy) has gone public with his support of the Oakland A's. 

The announcement was made at the Oakland Zoo after staring down a mean looking warthog.

2 Hour Super-Spin

Did the two hour super-spin this afternoon.  Was fun and I felt like I had some gas in the tank at the end.  Brian - once I sort this knee thing out let's do one of your starter-tri's.  The instructor gave out some prizes and I got "most focused" or something like that - which is funny cuz since I sweat so much in those kinds of things my glasses steam up leading me not to wear them.  I generally just pick a spot on floor and stare at it for the duration - which apparently gives me a look of intense concentration - when in reality it should give me a look of intense myopia.  And let me tell you, not being able to see eliminates the one serious perk of being in a spin class in the first place! :-)

Brilliant

The LA Galaxy signing David Beckham is absolutely brilliant.  MLS should cover half of his salary for what he is going to do for them.  Very, very clever.