Sleepless in Seattle

The title reflects more the memory of how it constantly rained during the "Sleepless in Seattle" movie, not that I have been particularly strong (3-5h/night) in the sleep division either...
I love the northwest... I want grow old here, and I am happy that whimpy Californians and Floridarians move back to where they came from when they cannot deal with the cold and wet... but every once in a while I break down too and feel a little whiny myself, and wish back the time when I lived in Berkeley... in 6 months it rained 3 times there... for a combined 5h....

March has been bad, bad, bad... and somehow the only good days we had were midweek days, so every saturday, like clockwork its the same weather....


Yup, that one...

Training has been going really well considering that I am about three months away from the big race... still a lot of work especially on the bike and the swim, but I am getting there...
Today after a desperate overhaul on my bike by Performance, I rode 62 miles in the rain, this ride called "The son of the last dirt trail", its from Kissing the Trail, a great mountain bike guide from John Zilly. Boy it was cold and the trails were wet! I forgot my goretex booties at work and therefore could not feel much of my feet (except for a dull, cold pain) for the most part of the 5h ride.. except for in the shower when the skin and flesh started to warm up... that is one painful feeling like thousands of ants crawling around...

The ride encompasses Tolt Pipeline Trail, Puget Power Trail, Farrell McWither, Redmond Watershed, Told McDonald, Snoqualmie Valley Trail and East Lake Sammamish Trail and can be modified at will, but my version is about 100k with 3000ft of climb and its 60% fireroad, 30% singletrack and 10% road... not bad, when its DRY!! Spring is around the corner and I have got to say that its the most desperate I have ever been for warm/dry weather.. maybe due to not having taken time off through the winter since I ran HURT100...


Dirt deposits in the patented "Love Channel" on my MTB saddle... seriously, that is the official patented name...!! Behind the bike is my super fuel... powered by Clif!

Connecting the dots...

Things are slowly coming together on the Gigathlon race I am doing this summer... for those who dont know what the heck I am rambling about, its a 900 mile/105'00 feet elevation gain multisport event (swim, cycle, run, MTB, inline skate, each discipline every day)...
http://www.gigathlon.ch/
Too bad that they only have it in German or French but here is the course..

And the distances/el.gains..

Trainig has been going great, and I am swimming a ton theses days, so really the preparations are going as planned... to make it easier, I have been very lucky to get some major sponsors for my race, among them Clif Bar , who apart from making sure I will never go hungry also is providing major sets of race jerseys.....

K2 skates also just came through big and provided me with superb race and training skates, and Yumay some as well to be able to train together... Yumay has exceptional skate and swim skills... the two things I need badly, what a lucky coincidence...

The radical 100... after my first training the only thing left to worry about is how much it was going to hurt when I wipe out at 17-18 miles per hour....!

Fresh off the press I also am getting great support in the swimming category, where Blue Seventy is providing me with the Triathlon Wetsuit of the Year! The Blue Seventy Helix was used by Tyler Patterson in his amazing 55 mile swim (37h) last year, and Tyler is teaching me the ropes of how to swim fast and long...., its amazing the amount of support I am getting from everyone here in the northwest....

The helix... aint it pretty?... and fast!

Paddle Schmaddle

Aaron is doing a weird american move Roger does not get but smiles anyways...

After I made my mad decision to take part in a 900 mile, 105'000 foot elevation gain triathlon this summer, I stopped paddling, one of my favorite pasttimes last year... and been swimming like mad (well not really, like 3 times a week but that s a pretty mad thing for me, not particularly excited about the slowest sport in the world!). Anyhow, after the Cap Forest Ride yesterday I decided to meet up with AaronVdV who has made some nice recovery advances lately and is limping faster than ever.. and paddling faster than ever too.. ! So we went out to the Northwest Outdoor Center and paddled out to 520 and along the floating bridge to the other side and back... good being out there again, and planning the season with our new MerGeo.com captain!

MTB @ Cap Forest

Last weekend I rode at Capitol Forest with Glen, RVG, JVG, Aaron Rinn and his buddy Chad. Met up at Krispy Kreme in Tacoma the usual DART fashion, about 15-30 minutes late but in good spirits! Then headed down to Cap Forest. Originally planned on doing the Capitol Peak 50 mile running race course on the bike but our tight schedule, lateness, and some minor bike defects, plus the fact that there was massive snow on Capitol Peak, all slowed us down, but we still ended up getting in a good chunk of biking, about 26 miles and plenty of vertical, which is not hard to find out there!

Glen's car is in desperate need of hydration! Will nuun help? :)

Gotta first get to the trail!

Started off in dreary rainy weather and got to experience what Cap Forest is like in the winter.... WET! Had to cross a big stream and bike up 1500 feet to start with, so after a quick cold footbath the bodies got warm immediately... the ride was a sufferfest in the best of good-pain way... wet, difficult, lotsa climbing and difficult singletrack descending, and at the end a steep climb up to Capitol Peak, which we got about 2/3 up until we hit heavy snow....

Biking in the snow is fun... and difficult.

Boy was it wet!

DIRT, DART!

Yeah well the hardware suffered too...

No words necessary...

it was fun but difficult to ride in a foot of snow, and Glen needed to be back in the city so we called it a day... an awesome day with great bikers... what else would I want on a rainy day!

Raise the roof for Colinoooooooooba III

Colin celebrated his 46th birthday in style this past weekend.... with the 3rd annual Colinoba! This mix of streetscramble, adventure race and drink fest is a classic already now, and hordes of AR buddies participated, namely DART, missing link, Manny's, Trioba, Double Trouble, Dr. Strangelove, Robin, etc....


Colin with his very stylish flamingo theme glasses....


Superheroes on speed... missing DART


Prerace meeting....

The jist of it is find CP locations all over the city as you are running around with a digital camera and an empty big beer bottle, take lots of funky pictures according to rules and instructions, and drink at least three pints in three pubs/bars across the city (also specified)...... I could explain more but let me just make it easy and wrap it up for you... fun, awesome training, great friends.

RVG, JVG and Jerry won the thing, I raced with John, a coworker of Colin's from Boeing and we got 2nd, just seconds behind Jen and Rick Jerabek, but noone cared too much about the results, everyone was out there to have oodles of fun.... pictures courtesy of RVG....!