Jingle All the Way & Massive Cupcakes

This weekend was a hodgepodge of stuff.  Because I’m super-swamped in getting the final touches on the Garmin 500 review out (currently standing at 38 pages…), I’m gonna keep this weekend recap post nice and short with lots of pictures.  Look for the Edge 500 review to be posted sometime Monday night.

There was a LOT of riding this weekend:

Friday I sorta had off (but sorta not too), and with The Girl’s birthday party being Friday night I cooked up a nice massive CUPCAKE! (it has to be capitalized to signify just how big this thing is)

There was some swimming action on Saturday as well – with the main set of 24x50m, and then another chunk of stuff totaling some 3400m of aquatic goodness.  Currently I’m only averaging one visit to the pool per week, but that’s probably about to change.  I’m still in ‘ad-hoc’ mode for workouts for the most part, with some structured stuff tossed in.

I have no pictures of the swim action…I was lazy.

Saturday also resulted in more indoor track action – which again continues to be interesting.  I find that the shorter distances (55m dash for example) are actually kinda boring.  But some of the 200’s and longer distances are pretty fun, especially the 1600m (Mile).

More time was also spent Saturday getting all the finals details ready for a big almost-round-the-world trip starting next week.  Down to just the tiniest of details left to get nailed, so then I’m ahead of schedule there. ;)  I’m the kinda person who isn’t afraid to book a full international trip 1-2 weeks out and just make it all work.

Sunday and Saturday was also filled with The Girl cookin’ all sorts of goodness.  She was working on little Christmas Gift boxes with chocolate peppermint bark and caramel popcorn.

And then Sunday night she knocked out some awesome Black Truffle Parmesan risotto with Portobello mushrooms.

Finally, last but not least – Sunday morning I ran the Jingle Bell 10K race here in DC, though just at a nice easy pace with some friends.

We sorta missed the start by about a minute, but no worries, we simply looped back across the mats and then headed on out.

A lot of people have costumes of some sort.  Regrettably I didn’t have any special outfit. Next year…

Oh – they give you little jingle bells to attach to your shoe, but I don’t have a picture of them handy.

It was lightly sprinkling at the beginning and throughout the race, but it wasn’t that bad at all actually.  Had I been really racing, it probably would have been fairly nice.

After the race I decided to bike home (in the rain) since it was only about a 40 minute ride.  It would allow me to see how well the Edge 500 performed in the rain.

And then…I watched Mall Cop – I hadn’t seen it yet, and the Netflix Instant streaming is pretty awesome on my new $99 Blu-Ray player.  Woot!  Ok…back to review writing…

Running in a Blizzard

It’s cold. Really really damn cold.

It’s now Wednesday evening, and the weather has settled down a bit (though, not above 0*F).  But, it wasn’t always that way.

(Regan National airport in DC, as I left Sunday night…my little plane is there in the window)

I left the already frozen weather of Washington DC and arrived into the college town of Lincoln, Nebraska late Sunday night.  Though, the mere act of arrival was pretty much in question up until the last minute.  They warned us as we left Chicago that we may not actually make it to Lincoln, but instead might end up in any number of other cities within a few hundred mile radius – or we may simply have to mosey on back to Chicago.

Anyway, once I arrived, the weekend’s worth of snow was drifting across the tarmac in a pretty eerie way.  Almost like watching desert sands of Dubai…but with snow instead of sand.

Monday was fairly normal from a weather standpoint.  Just light continuous snow and cold.  Generally about 10*F.  From a work standpoint I worked 17 hours, well past midnight.  So that ex-nayed any hope of getting in a workout.  But the weather forecast was starting to get interesting, here’s where it stood Monday evening:

After about 4-5 hours of sleep, Tuesday morning came around and more work ensued. As did some new information at the top of the Weather.com page:

Yes, that’d be a ‘Blizzard Watch’.  While I’ve been in snowstorms, a true bona fide blizzard is a whole different ball game.  Kinda like comparing a typical thunderstorm with a high category hurricane.  Even the local’s were saying it was gonna be big:

By mid-day, the weather wasn’t too bad really.  The snow was starting to come down, but fairly light.  This is the view from my hotel room – interestingly, those windows down below in that building to the right is a YMCA 25y pool.  I can actually see folks swimming laps from my room.

So, we continued to work away.  Given I was in a part of the building without windows – I really had no idea what it was like outside.  Fast forward towards around a late dinner time, and we started to get a better picture.  By then the forecast had been updated yet again:

We were now in an official Blizzard Warning.  Which – is what you get when you have an actual blizzard.  You’ll note the typical ‘winter storm warning’ is gone.  And now we have upwards of 14 inches of snow a comin’ – with winds at 45 mph.

When we got dinner, you can see the snow starting to come down.

Now fast forward another 6 hours to 2AM, when we finish up for the day (that’d be 18 hours after we started btw…).  Without really knowing what’s going on weather wise due to our lack of windows, we walk outside to see what our fate is.  And here’s what it looked like (short blizzard video clip):

Now, the first thing you’ll notice is the wind on the flag pole.  Absolutely haulin’.  But, you’ll also notice the snow doesn’t appear too deep.  That’s because we’re now at the point of ‘snow drifts’, which means in some areas it’s an inch deep – and others it’s three feet deep.  This is just as the winds shift the snow around.

It then takes us an HOUR to get out of the parking lot.  We got out of the parking stall relatively quickly.  But we have to make our way slowly across the massive expanse of a parking lot and shovel various snow drift piles too deep to cross.  There was a lot of going back and forth, a lot of backtracking and going as fast as possible in an attempt to simply use speed over resistance.

That’s me below…shoveling our way out of the parking space.  Note out deep the snow is behind the car’s bumper to the car’s right.  It’s pretty much above the level of the bumper.

So clearly no ‘defined’ workout for Tuesday occured.  But I spent considerable time running hundreds of yards across the Costco sized parking lot back and forth trying to scout out the best route with the least shoveling.  Then I spent a LOT of time shoveling snow.  All with HOWLING winds of 40+MPH. So, yes, I completed my run workout in a blizzard.  After getting out of the lot, we actually made good time back to the hotel…just in time to sleep for a few hours, and get back to work.

Wednesday we were able to finish up and get done by 7PM, so I was able to get out and go for a bit of a run.  Wasn’t exactly too warm out though:

I like how they put the ‘COLD’ in there.  Just in case there was any question as to whether or not –2*F was cold.

Anyways, I donned by Yak Trax and off I went:

I first swung by the football stadium.  Which is MASSIVE.  And very…very…impressive.

The picture’s kinda blurry below – I really wasn’t too thrilled about stopping at this point since my body hadn’t quite warmed up.

I then hit up some local neighborhoods for a bit.

From there I found a nice little running/bike trail and followed it.  Though, on occasion it was simply too deep for passage.  Perhaps the half-covered sign should have been my hint.  Though, I didn’t realize that until I was pretty deep.

The Yak Trax actually work best in ice and thin snow layers.  Unlike a snow show, they’ll still sink it.  But on ice – you can’t beat em’.  The best part is you don’t have to change your running stride at all.  Just simply run, that’s it!

Along the way I stopped to drop off the Edge 500.  I was trying to see how well the thermometer was working in it.  When I was holding it it was recording too high of readings.  So I found a little cubby hole near a sign (nobody else was dumb enough to be out there) and left it behind – curious if the temperature would even out.

Well, not soo much.  It was still reporting too high (based on other thermometers and the known high for the day).  Gotta look into that a bit.

I finished up my 6-mile run with a nice trot down through the main drag in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska.

All in all quite a nice run for basically 0*F out.  And it’s really not that bad once you get past the first 5-10 minutes.  The wind chill sucked at times, but most time it was calm.  Only when you got the gusts that you were muttering a lot of four letter words.

So with that, I’m back to DC on an early-ass flight tomorrow morning – in time for a nice weekend – OUT of the snow.  Just thankful my plane doesn’t look like these bikes:

See ya!

Wet and Snowy Saturday, Muddy Buddy Sunday

Since the weather first shifted towards snow on Saturday, I was pretty jazzed.  I like snow, lots of it.  And even though the Washington DC has no useful hills (Read: Nothing to ski down or chairs to ride back up), I still like the white stuff.

I spent Saturday morning waiting for the snow inside a big indoor track facility watching an indoor track meet.  Which was actually a lot of fun, more than I expected.  About half way through this endeavor the snowflakes finally started falling, and then it rolled into a pretty heavy snow dumping session.

Thus I was fairly excited to venture out into the snow and get my run on.  Coach had scheduled a track workout for The Girl, but with the track covered in snow – that seemed a bit more difficult.  So instead we decided to do it on the road with a pair of Yak Tracks.

Except…by time I drove from the indoor track (near the outdoor track) back to my little place, I found that I had dropped about 100-200 feet in elevation, and that snow wasn’t really sticking anymore.  Boo!  At least it was still trying…still snowing.

So, we went for the run anyways…without the Yak Tracks.  Here’s our Garmin’s getting ready for the run.

It was a nice 8-ish mile set of fast paced goodness in the continuous snow.  Dodging puddles and getting snowflakes in my eye.  Based on the below photo, it looks like the camera got a snowflake in its eye too.

After that I didn’t really do much.  It had been a long day.  Eventually we hit up a local Italian place in Old Town based on the recommendations of some friends.  The food was pretty good, and fairly reasonable – so all sorts of goodness there.

Post-food, we watched food.  Well, Food Inc.  You may have seen little flyers/coupons for this movie if you’ve been to Chipotle recently.  It’s a film about the American food production business and how things are grown.  Think of it as a film like The Inconvenient Truth or Supersize-Me, but for food production.  Incredibly fascinating (and somewhat disheartening) stuff.  As of this past Thursday it’s available on Netflix Instant Watch, so if you have Netflix – you can watch it right this second. 

Interestingly, the movie features an organic family owned farm just a hop away from where I often ride my bike on Skyline Drive, in Shenandoah Valley.  After looking at their site, I found that some of the places I enjoy actually buy from them – including Buzz – where I bought the cupcakes a few days ago, as well as Lavender Moon Cupcakery, where I usually buy cupcakes (when the Girl isn’t busy making them).  I’d HIGHLY recommend you check out the movie, either via Netflix or from your local Blockbuster.

Sunday Morning…

We decided that December might be a fun time for the Girl to try her hand at mountain biking (this would be her first time).  If for no other reason that pure entertainment (on my part).  Though, I’m fairly certain Coach would not be entirely pleased with our biking choice (sorry Coach!, we won’t do it mid-season).

I played around with the Edge 500 some more, this time on my mountain bike.  It seemed like a fine (and fun) place to test out some of the functionality in a more bumpy environment.  For example, how would the rubber-band mount system work?  Or how might it hold up to mud? Or what about tree cover and the GPS signal?

We also had a bit of fun again in the massive mud puddle that is in one area.  It was much bigger than last time, and this time the water was damn cold.  Given it was partially frozen when we first arrived.  On the 3rd or so loop we actually stopped and played around a few times, trying to successfully cross it.  Kinda like being kids again playing in the massive mud puddle.

Of course, the key to this puddle is pure speed.  And the first few times led to some failed attempts, either due to sliding on mud during the approach, or simply underestimating the amount of power required to push through the deep mud:

But, third time was the charm – for both of us.  The Girl however, was hilariously excited, check out this short video of her 3rd and final attempt (you may have to click to view the video).  Also do take note of her supplemental vrmmm engine sounds on the approach (may have to turn up speakers slightly) – the additional engine sounds are absolutely key to successful passage of the puddle:

It doesn’t get any better than that – either her excitement – or the simple fact I’ve got an awesome girlfriend that actually takes on the massive mud puddles as big as her multiple times…despite the fact that our toes were frozen.  And keep in mind – this was her first time mountain biking no less.  Pretty cool.

And at the end, we were both pretty well decorated in mud.  Very…very…very…cold mud.

And with that…I’m on my way now to a solidly snowy place.  Though the weather forecast has changed slightly, some days for the better, but other days..not so much:

Doh.

Catch ya in a bit…

Friday Tidbits

As part of some upcoming work travel trips I’ve been filling out a crap-ton of visa applications for different countries.  I have a list of some 31 countries, of which I’ll be visiting about a third of over the next few months. But, because I don’t know exactly which ones at this point, I have to fill out the forms for all of them.

Some of the visa forms for countries like Kenya are fairly straight forward.  But just across the continent on the other coast of Africa is Ghana.  Ghana’s form looks like it was first typed out in 1932 and hasn’t changed since – which may explain this little tidbit:

Yes folks – Quadruplicate (even Capitalized).  Apparently copy machines haven’t made it there yet.

Jordan (the country, not the basketball player), thus far seems to have the quickest form to fill out, but just a few hours north - Russia’s form is all about the details.  For example – the following:

Ummm…right.  This should be fun.  Here – I’ve got a deal for you – how about I just take a picture of my little map in the closet with all the pushpins, and then just paste it in the little box:

…and then you sort it all out…

No?  Hmm…Ok.

Though, a bit further down Russia’s form we’ve got the following:

I can’t tell whether or not they want to know this because they want to keep you out of the country, or because they want you in the country.  The ‘Please Specify” part kinda reads “Umm…just curious – which ones, we may be interested…”.

Onto other items…

Thursday the new Garmin Edge 500 cycling computer 60 day media trial unit from Garmin arrived (see, I’m moving up in the world, the last one was a 30 day unit, this time I’ve been given 60 days).  I’ll give you some first impressions after the weekend, though my usual in depth review will be a few weeks out to ensure I can beat the crap out of it put it through its paces.  Here’s a quick video they put together highlighting the top features in the mean time.  And to keep ya entertained, here’s some shots I took while un-boxing it earlier:

One new feature I noticed immediately was the vertical speed data field as well as the temperature field.  VS/h is listed below:

For those curious on the power front, all the options at first glance seem to mirror that of the Edge 705 with firmware 2.9 (i.e. can turn data averaging on/off for cadence/power).  However, after poking at it a bit more it looks like 1-second averaging is turned on automatically if a power meter is set, otherwise it’s smart recording mode.  This mirrors how the 310XT does it, which is that there is no switch to turn it on/off.  Also, according to the manual the battery life is 18 hours and will hold 180 hours of ride data before you run out (of course, most of us just download it off to our computers well before then anyways).

Anyways…

Given my destination for work next week includes a bit of snow – I’m looking forward to getting out with my Yak Trax and having some kickass runs.  And I’ll be able to see how well the Edge 500 handles the cold.

Catch ya all after the weekend…

Two

A minor milestone passed back a few months ago that I forgot to note.  Well, I didn’t exactly forget, it’s just that it was right after Ironman Canada and right before Nation’s Triathlon, so I didn’t quite squeeze it in there.  Plus, I lacked the correct culinary objects like last year to adequately express my milestone.

Better late than never, right?  In the case of cupcakes…damn straight it is.

(Peppermint and Red Velvet cupcakes, from nearby bakery Buzz in Alexandria)

As of this past September, my little ole’ blog turned 2 years old.  Since then I’ve somehow managed to write 428 posts about everything from Handling your Nuts to my Warmed Nuts to having dinner with the First Lady.  In the process I’ve had about a quarter of a million unique folks drop by to read about whatever random thoughts float through my head.  And in some cases, as a bonus item - it’s even triathlon related!

I started it simply for me, with no real specific end-state or topic goal in mind.  And now, almost two years later – I’m not entirely sure I have a real specific end-state yet.  I just blog about whatever I feel like – my life I suppose.  From your perspective as readers it’s probably like shaking a magic eight ball as to what the next post will be.  Sometimes you get hard core training, sometimes it’s a product review, and sometimes you get cupcakes.

On any given day over 50 countries show up at my blogstep representin’, with various former entities of the British Empire leading the way – US, Canada, UK, Australia – though I have strong showings from my Northern European and South American friends as well.  But apparently, I’ve managed to tick off the censors in China…as I have just about an equal number of visitors from Iran as China. :-/  My bad.

So, just for fun – here’s a few of the more random posts I’ve done:

1) The Battle of Ben and Jerry Flavors (Bonus: Effects of eating a full container)

2) Accidentally punting a pigeon in front of the US Capitol while on a run

3) Ironman Registration Slumber Party (my second ever post actually)

4) Wearing female clothing…

5) Having my laptop fly off the top of my car (and other associated fails)

Though, there are plenty of hidden nuggets in the 418 remaining other posts out there…especially for all you long time readers.

So, to all who have dropped by, subscribed or posted a comment – Thanks! – I appreciate it.  I hope I can keep on finding interesting things to write about, but based on what I can see in my little (occasionally flickering) crystal ball – we’ve got all sorts of fun coming up ahead of us.

Thanks for reading!
-Ray