Check me out on Ironmanlive ...

Our old coach Kevin MacKinnon was in Malaysia for the Ironman there this weekend. I'm wondering if he'll make the "short" trip down to Taupo for next week. It'd be great to see him. If I do see him, I'll ask him to make a post about how bad I look when I make it to the run. Anyways, failing that, you can look me up in the "Athlete Finder" from IMNZ at Ironman Live. Also, check out my brother Jason and the my training mates from Melb. Uni training group: Michael Goode, George Skoufis, Cameron Smith, Ian Gordon and John Gestakovski, Greg Steinberg (Canadian!).

Assuming all goes to plan, here are my hoped finishing times, converted to various select locations. Of course, this all depends on a lot of things falling together.

Swim:
8.00am SATURDAY Taupo, NZ
6.00am SATURDAY Melbourne
2.00pm FRIDAY Toronto/Bloomington/Sarnia
11.00am FRIDAY Vancouver/Portland

Bike:
1.30pm SATURDAY Taupo, NZ
11.30am SATURDAY Melbourne
7.30pm FRIDAY Toronto/Bloomington/Sarnia
4.30pm FRIDAY Vancouver/Portland

Run:
5.00pm SATURDAY Taupo, NZ
3.00pm SATURDAY Melbourne
11.00pm FRIDAY Toronto/Bloomington/Sarnia
8.00pm FRIDAY Vancouver/Portland

Also, it would be great if some or all of you can shoot a text to Lynn (I have an NZ mobile SIM card when I was over there which I will give to her ... email me or Lynn for the number) as she'll have a pretty long day watching the race (and picking up the pieces at the end).

Taking votes for race suit

OK, below are the options. Lynn thinks I'm a loser for actually taking these pictures and posting them. I decide not to model them since I was afraid of what Hetti might do with the photos.

1. Team Canada suit
2. Sugoi singlet with CBD shorts
3. CBD suit that Mitch gave me (since he no longer rides Cervelo)

The race setup

8 sleeps to Ironman New Zealand.

Here are the new wheels ... Gravity Zero, an Aussie brand that is well known for the X-One hubs, which claim to have considerably quicker engagement. Lynn wasn't convinced. She would've rathered I got Zipp 404s. I bought the wheels from my bike store CBD Cycles as "used" ... they had been raced for 80km at Torquay last weekend. Nonetheless, for the ~10k that I've rode on them, they feel great .... light, aero and they make a cool whoosh sound.

Texting to North America ...

So, it appears that I can send a text (SMS, that is) to Canada for $0.25 ... actually I can probably text to anywhere in the world for 25 cents, since Lynn has sent them to India and I to NZ. That's pretty good value. I wonder how long the delivery takes. I don't remember anyone using the SMS service when I was back in Canada, but then our household was anti-cell phones at that point (well, *I* was anti-cell and Lynn was adversely influenced by me). Anyways, if anyone actually uses SMS back home, let me know and I'll add you to my phonebook. In Australia, the person calling/texting always pays (i.e. costs nothing to receive). I don't remember that being true back home. Is it?

Pissing your pants.

So, is there any other sport besides triathlon where pissing your pants is considered good practice? I can't think of any. Marathoning/Cycling doesn't count since its basically the same thing.

Training update

18 more sleeps to ironman.

Haven't made many posts lately. That's because not much has been going on, other than some massive weeks of training. So, for the most part, it has been a struggle just to get all the training in, sleep, make it to work, buy groceries, cook dinner, see the odd movie, etc. That last three weeks, especially, have been quite large, with 3 swims, 4 bikes and 5 runs ... getting in roughly 11k, 400k and 65k, respectively each week. It's all in the bank now! I'm into the first stage of the taper now. This week is only slighly less, next week is considerably less and the final week will involve a lot of sitting around. Looking quite forward to it all. Should be a fun time in NZ, with a good crew from our tri club racing, brother J racing, mom and dad and lynn and a bunch of other friends of friends cheering us on. Anyone else in NA fancy a long weekend in New Zealand?

Becalmed ...

My supervisor, who is now about 1.5 months into his 6 month stint in California (he does this every year), does not disappoint. He has a way with words, that's for sure. Had a conversation with him yesterday. He says "Mark, you sound becalmed ... (long pause) ... like a sail that has lost it's wind" ... and I agreed. No momentum. No direction. Basically, I'm spinning my wheels, thinking "is this going anywhere? am I wasting my time? is anything I'm doing useful for anybody?"

It doesn't help that the two projects I'm working on are going slowly because 1) my collaborators totally botched an experiment, saying they were being "selective" in the samples they run yet I can only use 26 of the 126 that they ran to look for things they want to look for ... 2) trying every type of analysis imaginable on another data set that is just too noisy to get anything out of. The other curious thing about my projects is that I do not collaborate with anyone at our institute. I do most of my work for a group that is on the other side of the city.

Not sure what I need. I could certainly use someone in the field to chat about stuff to. With supervisor #1 in Berkeley (read: very busy with about 100 other projects) and supervisor #2 seriously stressed out (and not really interested in my project), I'm not sure who that would be. Lynn suggested I try and get a third project, which'll give some motivation while the others are not working out. I can see now that I've been sort of spoiled with previous work places (U of T especially but also MDSP) having lots of people to talk things through with. But, this is not unlike what Lynn went through in her degree: not having anybody on a similar project to chat with. At least I don't have to teach postdocs like she did.

hawaii moved.

Not that this is really of any consequence at this point ... but ... Ironman Hawaii has been moved to after my 30th birthday. So, IF (and it's capitalized because it's a big IF) I qualify for Kona, I'd have to race in the 30-34 category, arguably among the hardest of all age group categories. Though, I guess I should be thankful that I can still qualify in 25-29.

Mango is sold.

My mango cervelo is gone. Sold it on eBay. It went for a pretty sweet price, considering I sold it with the race wheels. It was collecting dust in our apartment. So, now I'm done to 2 bikes.

Another update later. I'm in the middle of a mammoth (by my standards, at least) week, training wise.