Wallingford Plus Plus

i went for my "weekly" early-morning bike ride today with tara. since kaury was not in attendance, we decided to do a "harder" route: the "Wallingford" ride. and, if we were feeling up to it, we could tack on an extra 4 hilly miles to complete the "Wallingford Plus" ride.

15 miles out, we get to an intersection and tara asks me how i'm feeling. "let's do it!" i say. i'm feeling pretty good. we then go up a rather long hill. "OK, now we'll do the extra part." huh, i feel less OK, but i'm not about to wuss out now. i pedal on ahead and miss the turn, but realize it and turn around. as i'm stopped, i fall over, because i've "forgotten" that i've only clipped out with one foot. motherfucker. this is the second time in 2 rides with tara that i've done this. i feel dumb, and i land squarely on my elbow and it HURTS. to the point that i'm nauseous and dizzy. but on with the hill.

tara informs me there are 3 parts to the hill. i counted 2 or 4, depending on what you consider a part. but any way you tally it up, it SUCKED. i thought i was a good "climber" but it turns out i'm good at rolling undulations and not actual hills. motherfucker. plus my gears were messed up from crashing twice recently. i have never so wanted to get off a bike and walk it up a hill.

at the base of the final "part" we stop at an intersection. i am seriously ready to pass out. i feel nauseous, light-headed and short of breath. tara gives me part of a clif bar which i choke down because i know i'll bonk if i don't. i actually feel a bit better once we start moving again (thankfully there were no more major climbs/hills until the very end of our ride) and actually feel good, probably once the clif bar hit me.

side note: i bought a camelback on tuesday, after nearly shriveling up during my tri on saturday, and it is AWESOME. it's probably the only reason i made it through the ride 'cause even at 8am this morning, it was already hot and humid. mothernaturefucker.

we take a wrong turn -- or more likely, we just never knew the way we were supposed to go -- and end up on rte. 17 much farther out than we intended. that ended up being an extra 6 miles or so, for a grand total of....39 miles. which i shall here forth call the "Wallingford Plus Plus" ride. bitches.

on the way back, a group of 3 bikers turns in front of us as we're heading back on hartford turnpike road. tara whispers to me, "that guy up there is a professional!" i am excited that i am keeping up with them until i realize they are probably just coasting. we all get stopped at a light together, say hello. then the light changes and they take off up the hill. like literally leave us in their dust. i am humbled...and determined to become a better climber & biker. unless that entails losing weight or eating less ice cream. then forget it.

my knees and ass hurt...i should really bite the bullet and get my bike aligned.

oh, and i learned that kaury did a spinning class for 3 months this winter and that's probably why she was a better "novice" biker than me the first time we all went out together. not because i suck.

hmmm, i'm bored. i think i'll do a triathlon

actually, my thought process was more like, "i'm not playing ultimate this weekend. WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO DO WITH ALL THAT SPARE TIME?" such is how i came to do a sprint triathlon on my own on saturday.

i didn't even know how to spell 'triathlon' correctly before last week, let alone the distances involved in one. thanks to wikipedia, i discovered that a sprint tri, the shortest of the official tri's, is a 0.5 mile (750m) swim, 12.4 mile (20k) bike, 3.1 mile (5k) run. these all seemed short to me by themselves, but i suppose stringing them all together might be a different story.

nevertheless, i set out with the mindset that i'd go for a nice easy swim, do my "regular" 20-mile bike ride, and then see how long i could last on the run. i wasn't about to brave the long island sound sans wetsuit, and i wasn't about to blow $200 on a wetsuit, so i opted to do the swim at the yale gym. unfortunately, this meant i couldn't start my triathlon until 10am, when the gym opened on weekends. lame. and, of course, i overslept and had to prep my bike, so i began the whole shi-bang around 10:45.

SWIM: ~750m, 15min
basement pool (25m). felt fine. wasn't trying to go fast. had to share the lane with some annoying guy doing the break stroke straight down the middle of the lane. could have swum more, but didn't want to push it quite yet...

Transition: ~15min - rinsed off, changed, put on bike cleats
i neglected to consider how long it would take to transition from swimming to biking. i could have sped up the process by brining my bike clothes down to the basement pool with me, but the locker room down there sketches me out. next time i think i'll do that in the interest of time, however. not included in this time (rather in the biking time that follows), is a quick stop by my apt to drop off my "casual" clothes & shoes & bike lock.

BIKE: 20 miles, ~1.5 hours
route: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1134873
except i missed the turn onto New Rd, and stayed on Ives until Ridge, to Mt. Carmel, which shortens the route by ~0.3mi. not that anybody's counting. also stopped in the middle to fix my seat for ~5-10 min. annoying, but probably saved my ass in the end. felt good!

Transition: ~5 min - changed out of chami shorts, put on running shoes

RUN: 2.7 miles, 22 min (~8:10 pace)
legs felt like lead. could have run farther, but was really thirsty. only had one small water bottle of water on the bike ride. by this time it was after 1:00 and hot. maybe i should have stuck to the sprint bike distance...

goals for the future: work on running after biking. hydrate properly -- get a bigger water bottle for my bike, get an additional water bottle mount, get a camel back, or place water along the route.

miscellaneousness

that's really the noun form of miscellaneous, btw. i swear. oh, and "ginormous" is now officially a word in the Miriam Webster Dictionary. it's actually been around since 1940.

i just realized how boring my last post (except for the part about my grandma) must be for most of you...well everyone, in fact. i'll try to make tournament re-caps more exciting from now on. i will at least include stories about drinking.

oh i can add a few right now: we played credit card roulette at dinner saturday night. it's a thrilling experience, and THANK GOD my card wasn't picked -- MikeRo's was. except i've given him the nickname MilkShake, because between games on saturday he drank a milkshake and then had a bunch of turns in the next game and blamed them on the milkshake. weak. so dinner was on milkshake.

the hotel we were staying at had a pool, which was sooooo nice after a long hot day of ultimate. i apparently flashed steve for like 5 minutes, before bird was nice enough to tell me my nipple was hanging out of my suit. i hate swim suits. i should just stick with the sports bra & spandex "suit". functional, fashionable, and never falls off.

enough about this weekend. the real reason i am posting is to say that i caved and bought some crocs while i was up in montreal. they are one of those things i swore i'd never buy, like a cell phone or cable TV. i got a not outrageous color (gray) and walking in them is like a little mini massage all day long. and you can run in them. i know, because i had to sprint in the airport to make my flight back from chicago, and they stayed on my feet and were comfortable to run in. i won't be going on any 5-mile jogs in them anytime soon, but i feel confident that i can sprint to make planes, catch buses, or evade cops in them.

also, my grandma is doing better. she's breathing on her own, and if things continue to go well, will be out of the ICU by tomorrow.

Philly Invite & my grandma

philly invite this weekend. actually in allentown, PA which is north and a bit east of philly. but whatever, it was an easier drive for me/us, since it did not require spending as much time on the NJ turnpike.

we went 4-0 the first day, beating delmarvelous (13-5), black molly (15-13), bashing (13-6), and germ circus (13-4). sunday morning finished out pool play beating anacosta all-stars (13-5) to take 1st in our pool. straight to semi's vs. rival, won 15-8. lost in the finals to AMP 14-12. we spotted them 3 points right off the bat (1-4 them), then traded 'til half (5-8 them). we closed within 1 at 7-8 and had a chance to convert the break, but didn't. a game of missed chances, untimely and uncharacteristic errors by many, and poor decisions by others.

this was, technically, our first tournament as a real team, although we were still trying out 2 people (both of whom ended up making the team). so it's not altogether unexpected and disappointing that we were still working some kinks out. also missing hammer, mello, dan, farina & spies, so some people were "forced" to step up into some unorthodox roles: rusty as handler, bird as primary cutter/deep, miles as handler, etc. also still figuring out where people fit in: nearly all the ladies played both O & D; mikeRo, tim, seth, miles, rusty notably played both O & D for the guys. we're also still adjusting to our new lefty handlers -- different looks, spaces, throws are present. would have liked to have won the tourney, but it wasn't a complete waste of a weekend. we could have easily lost to AMP by much more, so it's good we didn't just roll over.

personally, i played fairly well. rosie was putting me in on O, which messed with my head at first. i freaked out -- "O??? that means i can't turn it over!" which was/is also my mentality on D, once we got the turn, but for some reason it affected me differently on O. i had 1 turn (a drop) in the black molly game because of it, but after that i was fine. i regained my confidence as a cutter and as an upfield thrower, and never looked back. and my cutting on O was great at times. several points i was cutting and getting the disc alot -- more so when we were playing spread or "speical sauce" when there was more space for me to cut in. also did well on zone O points, stretching the field deep -- caught a couple of scores that way, and directly impacted another one by pulling the deep deep over. also had some nice grabs: several high, one low throw i was running directly at and had to lay out for (a break from Tim), one lay-out for a fading throw for the score (a huck from Miles).

D-wise, i played OK. no D's to speak of, but had a good mark in the rival game (taking away the I/O), and played decent shut-down D other times. a guess a future goal of mine could be to play both good O (cut aggressively) and good D (position, LAYOUT). one thing at a time...

throws: i was commended on my dump throws, so that goal was accomplished! (but of course i want to continue throwing dumps well). had a couple of nice backhand break throws, and several good flicks: one short lateral for a score to Kat, one 20-yard-ish straight upfield to Steve (downwind), and one bendy short upfield throw to MikeRo around a defender.

i can still make some mental adjustments when cutting on O -- one time i was wide open, steve hesitated to throw it to me, and when he finally did, my defender had caught up and i whiffed the catch because i thought she was going to D it -- never stand, if open & not thrown to, run at the thrower in the same lane.

future goals/things to work on:
1) work on cutting from the stack.
2) make more/better deep cuts.
3) LAYOUT on D even if i don't think i'm going to get the D.


in other, non-ultimate news, my grandma is in the ICU after 2 surgeries this weekend. one was scheduled: back surgery on 2 herniated discs in her back. she was having some complications from this surgery, when she started having abdominal pain. turns out a gastric ulcer had ruptured, and she was rushed to emergency surgery. 2 surgeries in 2 days is hard on a 75-year-old body. as of last night, she is stable, but not doing great. sometimes no news is good news, and as my dad used to say, you've got to stop getting worse before you can get better, but it's still weighing heavily on my mind. she's the only grandparent i have left, and the one i've known the best. so obviously it would suck to lose her. i feel like a selfish jerk for playing ultimate and enjoying myself all weekend and not thinking to check in with my parents about her before sunday night. but i guess there's nothing i could have done except worry.

Johari Window

this is kinda cool. please visit my site and click on some words!

http://kevan.org/johari?name=K-Fred

Sandblast

after an adventure getting to chicago (which included spending the night at LaGuardia -- fuck you American Airlines!), i finally experienced the magnificence that is Sandblast.

first, the bad. (1) the beaches are less than pristine. the sand is soft enough, but laden with shards of glass. thankfully, the shards are for the most part dull and/or buried enough in the sand so as to be harmless, but i was aware of at least a couple of injuries due to glass this year and apparently jasper cut his toe 2 years ago. (2) the mexican locals will walk clear across your field, in the middle of your game. or attempt to clothes-line you with their kite string. bring scissors and extra cones or a big sideline. (3) lake michigan was experiencing an E. coli outbreak on saturday, and so we were unable to swim despite 90-degree temperatures. (4) the tourney didn't give us any water on saturday.

now, the good, starting with the good for all in general: breakfast at the fields (for which we were never early enough to enjoy), burritos from Chipotle and cheese-filled sausages for lunch, a lunch break to enjoy said food, a neat-o player pack with sun screen and other goodies, FREE BEER AT THE PARTY, the free beer is good beer, they didn't run out of the beer until midnight (when the party was over anyways), the beer was good, the beer was free, the party was good -- decent DJ & dancing, and did i mention they had free beer at the party? also, the bar the party was at had an 80's cover band playing in the main room which was AWESOME. further, clubs in chicago are open to 4am. none of this 2am which becomes 1:30am shit.

the good that was for me in particular. (1) stayed at allison's house which rocked. the house itself, her parents, the chincilla, the margarita ball, the pool table, the gorgeous lawn, the backyard, the lasagna dinner, the coffee in the morning -- all rockin'. i would move in there if they would have me. (2) got to see fred, albeit briefly, and i think he thinks we're all alcoholics longing for college. whatev. (3) picked up with Hurt Locker (mostly Madison alums, some current players, plus Skip from Sockeye) on Sunday. (4) we won the tourney = glory, beer, and free schwag.

more about Hurt Locker. it was really really fun playing with experienced players, especially Skip. we were on the same page on D -- e.g., when my girl was starting from the middle of a ho stack, he would help deep for the first cut so i could take away the under -- and this was communicated the first time by a look and words, thereafter by merely a look. we had simple plays for starting off a stopped disc. the team also had a cohesive defensive strategy, flattening out the mark to take away the huck and forcing the cutters out. and there was helpful talk from the sidelines: "it's all inside", "you're live", "no big!". they were having fun, yet were serious about playing: stayed in the shade, gave enough time to digest lunch before the next game, warmed up, etc. but also kept it light-hearted, laughing at each other's mistakes, etc. it probably helped we were never losing.

in short, i would highly recommend this tournament, glass in sand & E. coli be damned!