One Hour Swim and Smothered Pork Chops

On Sunday, I did the Team New York Aquatics One Hour Swim.  The event is exactly what it sounds like...you have an hour to swim as much as you can.  It's all in a pool, and you just keep going, back and forth and back and forth.

I had set myself a goal of doing 3000 yards for the hour.  I had no idea if this was realistic or not, it just seemed like a nice round number.  It meant sustaining 60-second 50s for the whole hour.  I knew I was able to swim that fast for 200-yard intervals, but was really nervous about having to do it for an hour.

Before the swim started, we had about 5 minutes to warm up in our lane. Each of our lanes were divided into two.  I shared my lane with a nice woman whose name I forgot.  On my second warmup lap, I crashed into her.  It wasn't just a bump--my right arm locked onto her right arm and we became stuck to each other.  Then she yelled at me, in front of everyone at the pool.  I was so humiliated.  And I knew then and there that this swim was gonna be a sh-tshow.

Twenty seconds before the swim started, I noticed that just about every other swimmer kept a bottle of water  on the deck.  I hadn't even thought to bring water.  And I was already a little dehydrated from a night of karaoke and dancing Saturday night.  This was going to be a disaster.

My first lap, I tried to keep up with the lady in my lane (46 seconds).  That was way too fast.  So I slowed down the second and third laps (51, 55).  By the fourth lap I was tired.  But after the first six or seven laps, I pretty much settled into a groove where I was between 58-61 seconds for the rest of the hour.  One exception was at the halfway point, where I decided to do one lap of breast stroke to loosen up my arms (71 seconds, followed by two fast 56 second laps of freestyle).

Peter McGrane was standing on the deck, being a great cheerleader.  Many, many, many times when I got to the wall, I heard "GO DAVE LIN!" which definitely encouraged me to keep going.  As my mind was wandering through all those laps, I contemplated asking him to fetch me a cup of water, but didn't want to lose the time.  But then I couldn't stop thinking about it, and the more I thought about it, the thirstier I became.

I stayed relatively on my side of the lane pretty much the whole time.  Two times I bumped against the the lady, but they were both minor.  I was trying to hug the lane divider the whole time, and I'm actually quite surprised that I didn't jam my fingers into it--something that I do with quite some frequency.

After about 45 minutes, I started getting a little bored.  Like that feeling you get when you're running on a treadmill and just waiting for it to end.  I found myself looking at the clock after every lap to see how much more time I had left.  I felt fine physically, but it was just a long time to swim.

Finally, I was in the last few minutes.  I was really happy that I was able to make it the whole hour.  And my very last lap was actually one of my fastest laps, 55 seconds.  And then they called time...  and I was so, so happy I was done.  The longest I've ever swam continuously in my life.  It was so great to be finished.

But my real happiness didn't come until a few minutes later, when I was able to track down my timing sheet.  It turned out, I made my goal of 3000 yards!!  In fact, I had JUST BARELY made it, with 3040--not even a single lap to spare.  Wow!  I was elated.  It was such a great feeling to know that I had done exactly what I had set out to do, to have succeeded in reaching my goal.  It also made me realize how far I've gone in swimming over the past year or so.  Just a year and a half ago, I had my disastrous Metroman swim, where I was second to last out of 190 finishers.  And now, I can go 3000 yards without a problem!

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As you loyal readers of the blog may have noticed, I've become quite a big fan of Southern/soul food (see here, here and here).  So when Jonathan came over for dinner the other night, I was happy to get to test out a new recipe on a real Southerner.  He wanted pork, so I decided to make some tasty smothered pork chops.  Yummmmm....

I cook pork pretty frequently, but I just about always make it Asian.  And it's usually mixed in with a bunch of vegetables, never just a big hunk of meat.  When I do buy pork chops, it's usually the thin variety, which I think is a better vehicle for delicious Asiany marinades.

But this time I got 1" thick chops, better for dredging, frying, and covering in creamy gravy.  Mmmm....   Since this was my first time making smothered pork chops, I decided to loosely follow Tyler Florence's recipe.  Except Jonathan used the wrong pepper mill and put in ground Sichuan peppercorns instead of black pepper, haha.  

They came out pretty good, I have to say, and only took about 12 minutes to make in my cast iron skillet.  I even liked the slight tingliness of the Sicuan peppercorns.  :-)

My go-to Southern side dishes are always collard greens and sweet potatoes, since they're easy and pretty healthy.  But I think I need to branch out into other things.  Still, they came out pretty tasty this time...  I used smoked pork neck bones (very cheap at Fairway!) to flavor the collards.

Jonathan said all three dishes tasted just like back home (except his grandmother would have put an extra stick of butter in everything).  I took that as a great compliment.  Not bad for an Asian guy in New York City.

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!