Month of Multisporting Madness

I haven't updated this blog in ages. But during that time, I've been super busy with my multisporting adventures, I have so much to write about.  To spare all of you from having to read a million pages worth of me being on a bike and in the water, I will do my best to keep this short, heavy on the pictures, and light on the text.

Over Memorial Day Weekend, Mike, Rachel, Jeff, Joe, Aneesh and I did a repeat of last year's crazy bike ride from Newark to Asbury Park.  We took a slightly different route this year, but still, the 55-mile trip took us about 7 1/2 hours.  The route we took this year seemed a lot more rideable than the one last year, except for a 2-mile stretch in South Amboy on a busy road with no shoulder.  

Also, I did not get any flat tires this year (compared to three flats last year).  Jeff, however, did manage to get two flats on the way down.  And I had the privilege of teaching him how to change his very first flat tire.

You might recall that last year, Rachel, Mike and I were led astray by a by a friendly motorist; we were told to veer off of the Henry Hudson Bike Path onto Route 36, a scary, shoulderless, busy highway, with no streetlights in the middle of the night.  This year, we stayed on the bike path through the Highlands, and I was so happy that we did!  We were rewarded with a gorgeous and tranquil bike ride along Sandy Hook Bay, where we took the picture below:

A funny thing happened when we took that picture.  Well, actually, about 20 minutes after we took it.  As we were riding up biggest hill of the whole ride (Miller Street in the Highlands), after we were all struggling for about five hours of biking, just dying to get to the finish, Aneesh realized that he left his backpack at the scenic spot where we took the picture. Inside it was everything he needed for the weekend, his wallet, his phone, his non-biking shoes...  Meanwhile, Jeff and Joe seemed like they were miserable from all the riding, and I felt bad for dragging everyone on this disastrous trip.

Long story short, Mike biked back down to the spot where we took the picture, didn't find the bag, and kept biking, until he saw a guy literally walking away with the bag over his shoulder.  He got the bag back (minus the cash that was in the wallet), and met up with me and Aneesh somewhere in Long Branch (Rachel, Jeff and Joe had pulled ahead).

Anyways, we finally made it to Old Man Rafferty's in Asbury Park after 7 1/2 loooong hours of biking, where I rewarded myself with a nice big steak and some beers.  Yum.

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The next morning saw part two of our weekend of multisporting fun, as we all went to Rumson, NJ for the Nav-e-Sink-or-Swim in the Navesink River.  The swim was a 1.2-mile or 2.4-mile swim.  Mike, Rachel and I did the 2.4 (joined by Alison and Tom Malcolm), and Jeff and Aneesh did the 1.2, and we were cheered on by Joe and George.  I was a little nervous, since 2.4 miles is longer than I've ever swum in the open water before.  But the way the course was set up actually made it pretty easy.  The 2.4 mile swim was two 1.2 mile loops, and between each loop, you had to run a few yards on the beach (where I posed for the picture below).

Also, the turnaround point for the 1.2 mile loop was on a little sand bar, so you could actually stand up as you went around the buoy.  So the race almost felt like four 0.6-mile swims rather than a 2.4 miler.  Anyways, it wasn't too bad, and I ended up finishing in 1:20:40, which I was pretty happy with (even though I was in the bottom 15% of men.  Whatever.).

After the swim, George treated us to a lovely brunch at his home in Little Silver.  It was a great day.

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And the the next day, the five of us boys (Rachel had to leave early) took a nice 17-mile bike ride up to the northernmost point of Sandy Hook, where we took the Seastreak Ferry back into Manhattan.  That ferry ride (which only took 45 minutes) sure beat having to spend 4-5 hours biking through Newark and surrounding areas. I think I found my favorite way to get to and from Asbury!

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The following weekend, I had some more crazy sporting antics.  On Saturday, I joined some of the FRNY ladies (plus Aneesh and Giordano) to do the Spartan Race.  It was a three mile adventure race with military-style obstacles mixed in with running. We had to climb rope ladders, go across monkey bars, haul loads of rocks, scale walls, crawl through mud pits and under barbed wire, and jump through rings of fire.  The one challenge I hated the most was where we had to fill a 5-gallon bucket 3/4 of the way with gravel, and then haul it like a quarter mile up the ski mountain, and then bring it back down again.  It weighed like 100 pounds, it was hot and scary.  It was honestly pretty miserable.  But I ended up having a ton of fun hanging out with the gang (our team name was "FRNY Outdoor Carpet Munchers"...  I think the other teams might have been a little confused by our name...).  And when we finished, we all rewarded ourselves with lots of beer.  So worth it!

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And then the next day, I ran the NYRR Celebrate Israel Run.  I had really wanted to get a good time on this race.  You might remember that I had skipped the Brooklyn Half in May in order to do Reach the Beach. Although I had loved being on the RTB Team, and I wouldn't have traded it for anything, I was disappointed that I didn't get a chance to post a fast time in the Brooklyn Half at a point when I felt I was in pretty good shape.  So I saw the Israel Run as possibly my last chance to run a fast race before the summer came and the heat slowed me down .

Anyways, I ended up having a great race.  Splits were 6:13, 6:19, 6:30, 6:10, for a total of 25:12 (6:18 pace).  Not quite a PR, but only 3 seconds off of it (and that PR was from over three years ago!).  I was really happy!  After a long year of being injured, and even though I'm three years older, I'm just about as fast as I was back in 2008.  The only thing I was annoyed about was Anthony C. passing me in mile 3. That was a tough mile. I tried and tried but just couldn't keep up with him, and he ended up finishing 6 seconds ahead of me.  FRNY was the second fastest men's team in the city for that race. But, alas, I was 6 seconds short of being in the top five, so no medal for me.  :-(

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And then the next weekend, Aneesh and I went back to Asbury to the the Asbury Park Triathlon (formerly the Metroman Triathlon).  I now, officially, hate this f-cking race.

Two years ago, I did it and it was a disaster.  I was the second to last swimmer. I got lost, got scared, freaked out, everything. It was my first ocean swim ever, and it was pretty much a failure.

And then last week happened, which was even worse.  I completely choked.  I don't know what happened, I just couldn't get into the water.

They had changed the course so that it was no longer an Olympic distance.  Whereas before, the swim was a mile long, this year it was only supposed to be 750 meters.  But then on the morning of the race, they shortened it again, to about 300 meters, because the current was too rough and they didn't want swimmers to be pushed into a jetty.  So the whole swim course just involved swimming out to a buoy and turning around back.  Only about 300 meters; barely even enough to get warmed up.

But as soon as they sounded the starting horn, it seemed like the waves became huge.  I tried to get into the water, but with the waves getting bigger and bigger, I found myself unable to get out past them.  I kept trying, but then this huge wave came in and it just seemed like it was gonna crush me, so I freaked out, and went back to shore.  I saw a group of maybe 15 other guys there, standing there, also trying to get into the water.  And then this guy next to me seemed like he was becoming delirious, yelling that he lost his goggles in the wave, but they were just hanging around his neck.

I thought about keeping at it, waiting for the waves to die down a little, but they weren't letting up.  Before I knew it, people were starting to come back in from the swim.  Everyone was finishing, and there I was, still standing on the friggin beach.  That's when I decided to just screw it. It wasn't worth it. The ocean will always be there, but if I'm not in a place where I felt comfortable swimming in it, it wasn't meant to be.

I went on to do the bike course, and then the run.  When I got to the finish line, I walked around the timing mat and handed in my chip. In my five and a half years of doing races, this would be the first time that I would not finish what I had set out to do. It was disappointing, and I was embarrassed.  But, my inability to do this one swim gave me the determination to conquer ocean swimming. I knew I was going to be back, and I was going to kick some ocean butt next time.

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So, this past week, I returned to the Jersey Shore, this time to do the Long Branch Sprint Triathlon.  It was a 600 yard ocean swim, 20 mile bike, and 5 mile run.  And, I'm happy to report, I finished the swim!!! 

Swim 600y: 10:53

Bike 20M:  1:05:03 (18.4 mph pace!)

Run 5M:  34:10 (6:50 pace...including a pee break)

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And...  since a tri with a 20-mile bike ride wasn't enough for AJ, Rachel and me, not only did we bike to and from the race from Asbury Park (12 miles round trip), but then later that day we embarked on a 70-mile bike ride down the Jersey shore.

It was a very nice ride. We basically just went as far south as we could go. It was fun going through all of the beach towns along the way. From Ocean Grove with its Victorian houses; to Spring Lake with its big stately mansions; to Point Pleasant, home of the Jenkinson's Boardwalk/Amusement Park; to Mantoloking, where we rode along the Barnegat Bay; and Seaside Heights of Jersey Shore fame.  At the end was Island Beach State Park, where we had nine miles of nice riding. There were some trafficky/scary parts, like the bridge from Brielle to Point Pleasant, and Point Pleasant itself.  And the entire stretch on Route 35 was on a shoulder that really, really needed to be repaved.

But in the end we were rewarded with a nice big beach and a great view of the Barnegat Lighthouse across the inlet on Long Beach Island.

Well...actually we couldn't find the lighthouse.  I had promised Rachel and AJ a great view of the lighthouse the whole weekend, and it was nowhere in sight.  Apparently, it was about a mile further down the beach, where you can't ride your bikes to. So we didn't get to see the lighthouse. That was a bit anti-climactic.  Next time I do this ride I'm gonna bring a cable to lock up my bike so I can see that damn lighthouse.

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So my big news of the month is that I decided to register for the 2012 Ironman NYC.  Eeek! 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking, and then 26.2 miles of running.  All under 17 hours, next August.  I'm a little bit terrified....  But I don't think I've yet fully registered how much of a huge commitment this is going to be. For the moment, I'm trying not to think about too much.  But I'm going to have to do a loootttttttt of training next year....

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PS: Tomorrow is my favorite race of the year, the 30th Annual FRNY Lesbian and Gay Pride Run, with my favorite people in the world, Front Runners New York. It's going to be a great day, and I'm really excited. HAPPY PRIDE!!!

24-Hour Half Ironman

I did my first Half Ironman this weekend!  Well, not really.  But within 24 hours, I did 14-mile run, a 70-mile bike ride, and a one-mile ocean swim, all with some good friends.  I think I felt just as exhausted afterwards as I would have if it were a real half ironman.  But I definitely had more fun.

On Saturday, I did my first long run of the season.  I received a horrifying reminder last week from Mikey B that the Reach the Beach Relay was just four and a half weeks away.  RTB is a 200-mile relay race that starts on the northern edge of New Hampshire's White Mountains, and winds its way through fields, lakesides, moutaintop vistas, and many, many, many small towns, to eventually finish at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire's little slice of the Atlantic oceanfront.  A normal Reach the Beach team consists of 12 runners, each running three legs of varying distances to cover the 200 miles.  This year will be my fourth year running RTB, and my second year as part of an Ultra team ("Team FRNY Ultragays!").  The Ultra teams consist of just six runners, running six legs each.  Each runner will cover between 27 and 44 miles.  You can see why I'd be nervous that it's just four weeks away.

So I guess I need to get in shape.  The official Front Runners Long Run this weekend was 14 miles, from Rutgers Church, down Park Avenue and across the Brooklyn Bridge and back.  This route took advantage of Summer Streets, where the city closed down Park Ave to traffic for three Saturdays in August.  I thought this would be the perfect first long run of the season since the many traffic lights along the way would mean frequent breaks.  My plan was to go and hope that someone would be up for running some sloooow miles with me.

Luckily Michael O showed up and we decided to run together.  It was the perfect relaxed pace for me, and I got to catch up on all of the good club gossip that I've been missing out on.  :-)  Running with Michael is always fun because he has such great stories to tell, and it makes the miles go by so much quicker.

I'm not gonna lie, though.  This was my first long run since the Brooklyn Half, and it really felt like my first long run.  At mile 12, the two of us walked for a few minutes.  But in the end, we finished, with plenty of time for bagels at the church afterwards, and I felt pretty good.  For the next four weeks, I'm planning on beefing up my running, doing a full 6 miles (or more) on Wednesdays, and maybe even doing the Tuesday hill workouts (starting out slowly).  In four weeks, 27 miles will be a snap.

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Forty-five minutes after we left the fun run on Saturday, Rachel, Mike and I met up again--this time, with our biking gear on the Westside Highway to go on our ride to Asbury Park.  The plan was to bike down to the World Trade Center PATH station, take the train to Newark, and then bike down from Newark to Asbury Park.  Getting out to Newark Penn Station took us a little longer than expected, and we didn't really start our bike ride under about 2:45.

The first 20 miles were the worst part of the trip.  It was very urban, somewhat technical, and not particularly fun.  I suppose there's no better way, though, to get out of Newark (other than, of course, taking the NJ Transit further South, but that feels like cheating).  About 10 miles into the ride, we had a little picnic of Clif Bars and Gu in Rahway, where we took this picture:

Then we were off again.  At about mile 20, we hit one of the highlights of the ride, which was crossing the Victory Bridge over the Raritan River in New Jersey.  The bridge connects Perth Amboy to the North and Sayreville to the South.  With a 440 feet span, it has the distinction of being the longest precast cantilever segmental bridge in the country (whatever that means).  It was also the hardest hill climb in an otherwise completely flat course.

(This isn't my picture, but it's a pretty one of the bridge)

It was around this time that I got my first flat tire.  I didn't notice it pop or anything, I just felt something wasn't quite right.  Mike was riding behind me and he actually pointed out to me that I got a flat.  It wasn't really a big deal, since I had changed a flat before and I brought two spare tubes with me.  It was actually a nice little break from riding, and I got to practice changing a flat.  This was my first rear-wheel flat, so Rachel had to show me how to disengage the chain from the gears.  But other than that, it was a breeze and we were soon on our way again.

Two miles later,  I got a second flat, this time in my front wheel.  I couldn't believe it.  I had gone hundreds of miles with only one flat tire, and then all of a sudden I get two flats in 10 minutes?  What are the odds?  This time, I must have hit or run over something, because I suddenly heard a very loud hissing sound coming from below, and in a matter of a few seconds all the air was gone.  I had an extra spare tube, so again, it was no problem, and we were on our way again.

Then we got a little lost.  Our cue sheet told us to turn left on Cheesequake Road from Bordentown Ave in Old Bridge, NJ.  Well, apparently Cheesequake Road intersects with Bordentown Ave at two different locations, about a mile apart.  So that took us a while to figure out.  And then we had to renavigate because the cue sheet  told us to go on Old Water Works Road, which, we found out a little too late, was an unpaved road.  Ugh.  Fortunately, my new cell phone has a fancy GPS function, so we were not left stranded.

About 35 miles into our ride, we hit our first segment of the Henry Hudson Bike Trail.  The 22-mile trail transverses Monmouth County, New Jersey, from the marshy regions of the Bayshore to the woods and fields of Marlboro and Freehold, NJ.  Much of the trail is tree-lined, with some pretty views of surrounding wetlands, streams and fields.  By this time, it was starting to get a little dark.  It wasn't too bad, but the treetops blocked what little light there was.

Around mile 42, we made a stop in Keansburg, NJ for some pizza.  It felt good to fuel up and rest our legs a bit.

Our planned route had us switching over from the Henry Hudson Bike Path to the Bayshore Trail, a scenic bike path the hugs the waterfront of the Raritan Bay, and then across the Highland Bridge into Sea Bright (on the northern, barrier peninsula part of the Jersey Shore).  A random guy passing by in a truck told us that it was just a straight shot on Route 36 that would bring us directly to the Highland Bridge.  I'm not sure why, but we decided to take his advice, even though it deviated from out map.  Big mistake.  Before we knew it, we were on Route 36/Memorial Parkway, a scary highway with really fast cars and barely any shoulder.  Not a good place to be as the sun was setting.

Fortunately, this was about the time that I got my third flat tire.  Now, when this happened, I kind of thought to myself, "OMG, we're all doomed."  We're in the middle of a highway, 20 miles away from our destination, with no idea how to get there and I keep getting flat tires every few miles.  As I changed my flat, starting to get nervous about the whole situation, Mike looks again at the GPS on my phone.  He found a new route for us, taking us off the highway, across the Navesink River, into Rumson, and across the Shrewsbury River Bridge into the Southern part of Sea Bright.

It turned out that the new route Mike found not only allowed us to escape the scary highway, but it brought us to what I thought was the biggest highlight of the ride, the Oceanic Bridge.  The 2,712 foot bridge connects Rumson and Middletown over the Navesink River.  There's a marina by the bridge, and it all just looked really spectacular.  I wish I took a picture, but the one here gives some sort of idea.

Shortly after we crossed the bridge, we had FINALLY made our way to the Jersey Shore!  But we were still about 10 miles away from Asbury Park.  The ride from Sea Bright to Asbury, though, was a pleasant one, well lit and a straight shot down Ocean Avenue, and it's a route that we had all covered much of during the Metroman Triathlon.

As we rode down Ocean Ave, I felt energized and started pedaling stronger.  I went over a bump, and seconds later I heard Rachel calling my name.  Apparently something had fell from my bike.  Mike circled around and went to see what it was.  It turned out that my WALLET had fallen from my bag, which I had left unzipped since my flat tire about five miles ago!  Wow, I was glad Rachel caught that.  And I was glad that it didn't fall out about 2 miles earlier, when we were biking on the darker residential roads.  And I was glad that my keys, in the same unzipped pocked, didn't fall out.  Disaster (barely) averted!!

Off we go again.  As we reach Long Brach (about 8 miles from Asbury), we got ANOTHER flat!  This time it was Mike's tire, though.  I was so happy that, for once, it wasn't me who got the flat!  Since Mike had given me his spare tube, he had to use Rachel's.  Which meant that, for our last 8 miles, we had no more spares!

But finally, after 70 miles, four flat tires, and many, many, many hours, we made it to Asbury Park!  By that time, we were all completely physically drained.  But we were so happy we made it.  We were also famished.  So we biked directly to Old Man Rafferty's, where the other patrons' and waiters' jaws dropped when we told them we biked in from Newark.  We each had a delicious (and big!) dinner, topped off with two slices of their decadent desserts (peanut butter silk and rocky road cake)!  Yummmmm!  It was a great end to a wonderful, crazy and exhausting day.

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So one of us had the bright idea to do a swim race the next morning.  I don't think any of us could believe we were actually going to go through with it.  But sure enough, we all woke up at 6:15 Sunday morning to bike the 7 miles from Asbury to Sea Girt for the 15th Annual Sea Girt Ocean Mile.

To say my entire body was sore from the run and the bike ride the day before was an understatement.  I figured, though, that I could do the swim at an easy pace with no pressure.  My legs felt kind of like Jello, so there would not be much kicking.

When we got to Sea Girt, the ocean didn't seem too bad.  Alison, who lives in Monmouth Beach, also came down for the swim.  She said the water was quite choppy today.  But again, it didn't seem so bad to me.

I don't remember if I said this before, but I'm becoming quite the pro at running into the water and diving underneath the waves.  Just a couple of months ago, I couldn't make myself go under the waves at all, it just terrified me to much to have the waving crashing over me.  But now I think it's actually kind of fun.

Once we got into the water, though, it was like the waves didn't stop.  On my previous swims, we would just swim out past the waves and then the rest of the swim would be pretty smooth.  Not this time.  I finally realized what Alison meant by "choppy."  I felt like I was in a clothes dryer being tumbled around.  There was no way to escape it.  I kept going up and down, up and down, and getting pushed around by the water.  It was so hard, I couldn't swim in a straight line.  And to make things worse, there were absolutely no buoys on the course to help guide the way--only one at the start and two waaaaayyy down at the turnaround point, so they might as well have been invisible because they were half a mile away and I couldn't see where they were for most of the swim.

I honestly didn't know if I could finish it.  The field of swimmers had drastically thinned out, and I was just starting out the swim and couldn't see where the buoys were at the turn.  I tried to calm myself mentally when I realized that I would probably have to swim the whole race with no other swimmers anywhere near me.  For a moment, I got nervous, thinking that the lifeguards with with the rest of the swimmers, and I was all by myself.  It was a little bit terrifying.  And, my goggles were super fogged up, so it was hard to see where I was going.  And every time I stopped swimming to take the goggles off so I could see, I ended up swallowing a big gulp of seawater.  So it was easier to just put my head down and swim, hoping I was going in the right direction.

Eventually, some of the faster swimmers started coming toward me, which made me realize I was going in the right direction and I was approaching the turnaround.  A while later, I finally made it to the bouys, turned around, and headed back again.

But, again, there were no buoys on the course, and I had no idea where I was going, and the waves were pushing me in all different directions.  Probably 5 minutes after the turnaround, a lifeguard on a canoe stopped me.  He asked if I had already done the turnaround.  I said yes.  So he asked me why I was swimming back toward the bouys that marked the turn. I was so confused.  It took me a second to figure out what had happenned, but apparently the waves had pushed me around a full 180 degrees without me noticing it.  The lifeguard pointed me in the right direction, and sent me off, shouting out: "Concentrate on your navigation!"  How embarrassing!

I still couldn't see where that damn buoy was that marked the end.  A few moments later there was another lifeguard.  I asked her if I was going in the right direction, and she said I was.  Then I asked her if I was the last swimmer.  She laughed and said, "Not at all!"  This made me feel a lot better.  Of course, I spent the next few minutes wondering if she was lying to me, so I asked the next lifeguard the same thing, and he also said I wasn't.  By this time I had seen the buoy and was able to focus on finishing.  I could see the huge crowd of finishers gathered on the beach--and knowing that Mike, Rachel and Alison were there, I tried as hard as I could to show them a strong finish.  I heard them screaming my name as I exited the water and ran as fast as I could on my wobbly legs to the finish line.  As I ran by them, I knew they had been standing there for about twenty minutes waiting for me, but I was just so glad to get out of that water and finish.  

Of course, I forgot to look at my time as I finished, but I think it was around 49 minutes.  My slowest one-mile swim ever, and a full 15 minutes slower than my swim last week.  My place, I think, was 127 out of 145.    Still towards the bottom, but definitely not in last place.  I was happy, though.  This was probably my most challenging swim ever, and I made it.  Even better, it meant that I was done with exercising for the weekend!

Born to Tri and a Different Kind of Butt Issue

The other weekend I did the Born to Tri Sprint Triathlon, another tri in Asbury Park, NJ.  This one was a 500m ocean swim, 15 mile bike and 3.5 mile run.  It was also the same day as the NYRR Club Team Championships, which is usually a big race for Front Runners.  My running has been kind of sucky / nonexistent lately, though, so I decided to skip the race for the tri.

I went with my friend Andrew, who some of you might remember did the Jersey Shore Kickoff Triathlon with me in May.

The swim was a point-to-point swim, and the start was in the ocean (not on the beach).  I had mixed feelings about the start.  On the one hand, it meant that I didn't have to start the swim by diving into the crashing waves, a la Baywatch, which always makes me nervous.  But I also hate wasting all my energy treading water before the race even starts.  And the ocean start made the treading water even worse because the waves  kept making everyone crash into each other, and that meant getting kneed in the stomach a million times.  Very annoying.

The swim itself went very smoothly.  It was so short that it was over as soon as it started, and I was with the pack pretty much the whole time.  The bike ride was pretty uneventful, except that my bike is full of problems.  For one thing, my cyclocomputer is a piece of crap; the little sensor thing that registers how fast my wheel is spinning is held in place by just a little zip-tie, so it seems like every time I go over a small bump, it gets all out of alignment and stops telling me how fast I'm going.  Also, I've been meaning to have my bike checked out because I think there is a gear shifting problem.  When I shift from the big front gear to the small one, half of the time my chain shifts too much and falls off the gears.  Because of that, I usually just stay in the big front gear the whole time.  I'm guessing this is an easy alignment issue, so if someone knows how to fix it, please let me know.

At the end of my bike ride, I remembered advice that Chris Stoia had given me.  For about the last 20 seconds or so, I shifted my bike into the lowest gear and just spun my legs as fast as I could.  Apparently this gets your legs ready for the run by loosening them up and changing the blood flow or something.  I'm not sure I noticed a big difference, although I guess it didn't hurt.

The run for me was actually quite tough.  I haven't been running at all recently.  I was just hoping that I wouldn't have to walk--my last fun "run" the previous Wednesday turned out to be a disastrous 3-mile jog/walk (although it was around 90 degrees and humid).  However, I was happy that, as hard as the run was, I did pass a bunch of people, maybe 20 or so.  That was a good self-esteem booster.  But I did get passed by two people.  The first one was a woman.  She was fast, and just whizzed by me within the first half mile of my run.  I figured she was probably the first place woman, so I didn't really mind getting passed by her.  The second guy who passed me, though, I was annoyed about.  I passed him about 100 meters from the finish line; he looked like he was in bad shape.  But then, like 5 seconds after I passed him, he gets this burst of energy, sprints to the finish like it was a 60-meter dash, and leaves me in the dust.  I could sense that he was trying to humiliate me for having passed him.  But I didn't have the energy or desire to play his my-penis-is-so-big-because-I-smoked-you-at-the-finish game.  In retrospect, I should have just kicked his butt.

In the end, though, I was pleased with my performance.  I actually placed in the top half of my age group.  My bike and swim still need a lot of work.  But I'm getting more comfortable with both, and with practice, I think I'll see my times go down.  Here are my splits:

• Age place     14/31
• Overall place 81/273
• Swim rank     23/31
• Swim time     11:27.9
• Swim rate     1.73
• T-1           1:16.4
• Bike rank     16/31
• Bike          42:41.5
• Bike rate     19.7
• T-2           0:50.4
• Run rank      11/31
• Run time      22:45.4
• Run pace      7:15
• Total time    1:19:01.6

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I mentioned in my earlier post that a group of us Front Runners spent the weekend at Derek's parents' house in Lockport, NY for the 100-mile relay.  What I forgot to mention was all the tasty food Derek's mom cooked for us.  Mrs. Petti is a whiz with the Crockpot, and had prepared for us a bunch of delicious slow-cooked dishes, including a tasty barbecue pulled pork.  It was so good that it inspired me to make my own.

I had never made pulled pork before, but the recipes online all made it sound really simple.  (1) take a big-ass piece of pork, (2) cook it for hours and hours, (3) shred it, (4) add some barbecue sauce, and (5) cook it a little more.

So, I started by going to the place I always go to whenever I want a big-ass hunk of meat, Western Beef.  Despite its name, they also have every cut of pork imaginable.  I ended up getting a pork shoulder (also called a "pork butt".  It was about eight pounds of meat.  For under 10 bucks.  Wow.

When I got home, I discovered that my eight-pound butt was about four pounds too big for my crockpot.  So I broke out my ginormous 22-quart stock pot, the only thing I had that it would fit into.  Other than a chopped up onion and some bay leaves, I pretty much filled up the pot with water, threw in the butt, set it on simmer, and just forgot about it for the next six hours.

Six hours later, the meat was pretty much falling apart.  It was soooo tender.  The skin was barely any firmer than Jell-o.  (Despite being tempted to turn the skin into some tasty Chinese deliciousness, I ended up just throwing it out.  So sad!)  The meat pretty much shredded itself.  

With the meat shredded, and the bones and skin disposed of, my pork butt was able to fit in the crockpot for one final cooking, this time slathered with lots of barbecue sauce.  I cheated, and just used sauce from a bottle; it was fine.  But now that I know how easy it is to make pulled pork, and how much of the taste depends on the sauce, I'm going to make my own sauce the next time I make it.

I paired the pork with some homemade coleslaw--another first for me, but it was so easy!  Shredded cabbage and carrots, mixed together with a dressing of vinegar, lowfat mayo, salt, sugar, ground celery seeds and dry mustard.  Also, I had some cheesy grits, which were just grits boiled with some and parmesan cheese (I think chedder would have been better, though).  It turned out to be a great barbecue meal, which was almost as good as Mrs. Petti's.

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This past Sunday I did the Ray Licata Memorial Swim in Long Branch, NJ.  It was a one-mile ocean swim.  I'm becoming quite comfortable with ocean swimming now.  

The swim was pretty uneventful except for one thing: before the swim even started, I almost wound up breaking my nose.  It happened right before the race, as I was trying to get into the water for a little practice swim.  Just as I was getting in, and before I realized what was happening, a huge wave started coming right at me.  I hesitated, not knowing if I should stand or dive underneath it.  At the last millisecond, I decided to go underneath.  But it was too late.  I'm not sure what happened next, but the wave came crashing down on my head and before I knew it I had kneed myself in the face.  Ouch.  I seriously thought I broke my nose.  It hurt!  And I was bleeding a little bit.  But the shock, numbness and blood soon subsided.  Amazingly, I did not freak out about the waves after that.  Instead, I turned around, faced the waves, and went right in.

Still, not very fast, though.  I finished the one-mile swim in 34:59, which placed me 193 out of 225.  One of these days, I will break out of the bottom 25%.  Or at least the bottom 15%.

One nice thing about the race was that I ended up seeing and meeting a bunch of Team New York Aquatics people who were also doing the swim.  Afterwards, we all went to Chat & Nibble, one of my favorite breakfast spots in Asbury Park, where we celebrated our achievements with a nice cold bottle of Veuve Cliquot!

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This Saturday I'm planning a 65-mile bike ride from Newark to Asbury Park with Mike and Rachel.  We're going to stay overnight and then on Sunday morning do a one-mile ocean swim in Sea Girt, NJ.  Let me know if you'd like to join us!

Hot hot hot half.

My apologies, dear fans of Running to Dinner, for not updating you with my adventures in running and eating. I took a little time off from the blog after the Boston Marathon, but I've been doing plenty of running and eating over the past month.  I'm doing my first Olympic Triathlon of the year this weekend, so I wanted to finish this entry beforehand.  However, I didn't really succeed, and now I'm sitting in the Executive Inn in Pemberton, NJ the night before the Presidential Lakes Triathlon with a bunch of Front Runners who are about to go to sleep, so this is kind of an incomplete entry.  Anyway, the following are some of my latest running/multisport activities.

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About a month ago, I did the Long Branch Half Marathon in New Jersey.  It was two weeks after Boston, and my body was still tired from the marathon, so it was pretty much just a fun run.  The Half is just the first loop of the New Jersey Marathon, and I figured it would be good to cheer on the Front Runners doing the whole thing (Timmy, Alison, Jerry and Steve).  I went down to Jersey the night before the race with Kieran, who also did Boston two weeks prior.  Kieran and I were both experienced NJ Marathon runners--he did the full last year and I did the half last year.  This year, though, the weather was forecasted to be in the 80s, so I was nervous.

The start of the race was right along the Beach in Long Branch.  There was a cool ocean breeze, and it really felt like a pleasant, albeit slightly warm, day.  That didn't last long.  Less than half a mile into the race, the course turned inland and the breeze went away.  The temperature just started skyrocketing from there.  By mile 3 I was barely doing 8 minute miles and just wanted the whole thing to be over.  I was walking through the water stops (which had warm water and Gatorade, yuck!) and slowing down the go through garden sprinklers that residents along the route set up for the runners.  I was miserable.  And I felt like the entire world was passing me.  I don't remember much about the rest of the race, except that Jim McCarrick came down from Queens to cheer us on, and it seemed to take all of my might to muster up a wave to him as I hobbled by.  I must have looked like crap.

The next thing that I remember was around mile 11.5, when the course turned onto the boardwalk for the final stretch.  Ahhhh....  it's amazing how different the temperature was right by the ocean.  Somehow the light breeze helped me make a little bit of a kick towards the finish, and I ended up passing a few people along the way.  Still, it was ugly, and my final time was 1:42:43, my slowest half in years.  As I write this, though, a month after the race, I am just noticing that out of the 330 men in the 30-34 age group, I came in 19th, which means top 6%.  Not nearly as bad as I had thought...  I guess it helps to put everything in perspective.

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The following week, Jeff and I went on a bike ride.  Jeff mapped out a route from my place to Orchard Beach in the Bronx, about 25 miles each way.  I liked the idea of biking to the beach, so I was excited.  The ride started without a hitch, but then at around mile 8.5, just before getting on the Macombs Dam Bridge, I hit a pot hole and got a flat tire.  I remember hearing a "pop" as I hit the pot hole, but it didn't register to me that I got a flat.  It wasn't until a minute or two later when I had to get off my bike to walk it across the bridge that I realized my front wheel was completely flat.  D'oh!

Fortunately, I brought a spare inner tube with me.  Unfortunately, I didn't bring a pump.  Nor did I have that little adapter thingy that fits a normal air pump to one of the skinny road bike wheel valves.  Ughhh.  Long story short, Jeff and I had to make a detour to Target where I bought an air pump.  Everyone at the store was staring at me when I ran inside because I had my biking shoes on and they were click-click-clicking so loud on the floor as I ran around the store.  But in the end, I got the pump, and figured out how to change the flat tire all by myself.   And it didn't take too long either.  And I learned a valuable lesson: always carry a portable little air pump, because an inner tube is not going to inflate itself.

So off we went again.  The rest of the route we had planned was adventurous, but not quite as fun as we had hoped.  There was a lot of biking in traffic, which was scary.  Then we were on Pelham Parkway, which despite what Google maps says is not very bike friendly, unless you enjoy dodging cars on a highway.  Then we got a little lost, and did some trail biking by the Pelham Bay golf course and horse stables.  Then we ended up in a really nice neighborhood which big houses and lush lawns, which I had no idea existed in the Bronx.  And then finally, after about 25 miles, we made it to the beach.  Of course, we dipped our feet in, and brrrrr the water was cold.  By this time, due to the flat tire, getting lost, and the non-bike-friendly trails that we took, we were already several hours into our bike ride.  It was exhausting.  So, understandably, we cheated on the way back.  About two miles away from the beach was the Pelham Bay subway station.  We took the 6 train back.  It felt good to sit down.  :-)

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The following week was my first triathlon of the season.  Jeff, Andrew, Timmy and I signed up for the Jersey Shore Kickoff Triathlon in Toms River, NJ.  It was a sprint distance, consisting of a 0.3 mile swim in the Barnegat, a flat 10 mile bike, and a 5k run on the picturesque Berkeley Island Point.  

Nothing too eventful to report here.  The swim was so short it seemed like it was over almost as soon as it started.  I didn't really get into a rhythm until 2/3 of the way into the swim, and by that time, I only had about 3 minutes of swimming left!  Funny, I almost wished that the swim was longer.

Here are my results (rank is out of 139 finishers):

Place: 63
Name: David Lin
Bib No: 115
Age: 34 [they record your age at 12/31/10... I'm still only 33!]
Gender: M 
Swim Rnk: 83
Swim Tme: 9:25.5
Swim Rate:  1.91


T1 2:50.0
Bike Rnk: 72
Bike Tme: 35:35.0
Bike Rate:  17.2


T2: 0:55.1
Run Rnk: 22
Run Tme: 22:03.1
Run Pace: 7:07
Total Time: 1:10:48.7

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Here's a pic from the Brooklyn Half a few weeks ago.  I started it out with Mikey and Daniel, running it as a fun run.  Towards the end I started speeding up again.  1:40:08.

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So as I said up at the top, tomorrow morning I'm doing the Presidential Lakes Triathlon in New Jersey.  Jeff, Kyle, Peter and Mike are here with me.  I'm actually really nervous about this one...  I'm remembering how incredibly exhausted I felt after the Jersey Shore Sprint Tri last month, and realizing tomorrow will be twice the distance (triple the swim)!  We checked out the course today and the swim seems reaaaalllly long.  Plus, I literally have not biked a single mile since the last tri.  And to top it off, my butt has been acting up over the past two weeks...  I went to a hill workout with the club and have  been having discomfort in my butt/hamstring ever since.  

I'm also starting to wonder whether my exercises with Dr. Degis are possibly making things worse.  I decided to make another appointment with Dr. Jordan Metzl--who I saw way back in October and who told me I just had a "weak butt."  I've gotten a million medical opinions since then and I feel like nobody has been able to just tell me what's wrong and fix it.  So it's a little frustrating.  And so, I'm very concerned about the Tri tomorrow.  As of now, I'm trying to just calm my nerves a bit...we're all sitting around watching Law & Order on TV to wind the night down.  Hoping that tomorrow, I will have a good, safe, smart race.  I'll let you know how it goes (I promise it won't be another month before my next post!)