Humility

One thing every triathlon has given me is humility. Although I love passing people in the swim with crazy expensive wet-suits, and pass people on bike's that costs well over 2x what my bike costs and passing people on the run the bottom line is that I only race against myself, which is a stark difference than most triathletes out there, including one of my main training partners Kevin.

I encourage everyone out there to think about simply racing against yourself as a benchmark. Only you know what you are capable of. For me, I am capable of much more than I have produced at the triathlons I have competed in - and for that, at every finish I feel a bifurcation between my happiness/feeling of completion and between sadness/not training hard enough.

In the end I am proud to call myself a triathlete. There is no other group of individuals out there with more generosity and great sportsmanship.

Finally, it's also nice to see Adam Zucco, a triathlon coach with this humility on his blog citing his slow times when he first started and even fairly recent failures.

Sometimes it dosn't pay to be the fastest!

Find more videos like this on OpenTri

2008 Ironman Schedule

In-case anyone missed it here is the official 2008 Ironman Schedule

Paper for Thought

Church of the Customer received 21.5 lbs of junk mail during the month of December.

In the comments, Graham does some math for us: 21.5 lbs of paper times an estimated 110 million U.S. households is approximately 1,056,000 tons of paper. If 8 trees are used to create a ton of typical (unrecycled) catalog paper, and 21.5 pounds is the average weight of unsolicited catalogs, then some 132,000 trees were used to send people junkmail during a one-month period.

First Brick

This morning I had my first brick workout. I didn't have a good light for my bike so I hopped on the trainer and succumbed to the horrible tv programing at 6:00 A.M. If there is anyone out there with embarrassing amounts of money and looking for a worthwhile cause - Please start an endurance tv channel!

Interestingly enough the last mile of my run was faster than the last mile yesterday. Sorry Kenyans and training partner Kevin - I can't just go all-out in the beginning without crashing at the end. My pace today, was great and I was happy with the brick workout and the weather as it was a nice 59 degrees.

As for other big news, I have joined Team Louisville 2008's blog so look out for my introduction which should be coming soon.

Training

I have officially started training for my Ironman with sore legs and a pounding heart every morning. I think this Nike + iPod thing is going to be my best and worst training partner as this morning I was really trying to pick-up the turnover and ended up with around the same time as last week. Owell, I will continue to do speedwork - hopefully at some point my time will start to improve.



I found this awesome race report on Ironman Louisville here

Great Quote for Monday

Jon Krakauer once wrote, "In any human endeavor, some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will consume them utterly... For some, the province of the extreme holds an allure that's irresistible... As a result of his or her infatuation, existence overflows with purpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatic's worldview; a narcissistic sense of self assurance displaces all doubt. His perspective narrows until the last remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immoderation, he experiences something akin to rapture."

Chattanooga Weather and some Motivation

This is pretty much what I looked like yesterday biking to work at 6:00 in the morning with a single-digit wind-chill factor!


Today I chose to run and was only slightly dissapointed with my 8.3 min/miles. Fortunately or unfortunately, my wife bought me the new ipod + Nike for Christmas so there is no gratuitious rounding.

Motivational Quote for the week:
Run when you can, walk when youhave to, crawl if you must; justnever give up.
- Dean Karnazes
Runner and author of
Ultramarathon Man.

BIG IDEAS for 2008

Give Peace a Chance




"Fanatic ethnic or religious or national identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our planet as a fragile, blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars."
—Carl Sagan

Everything working out...

No pun intended


Ironman Louisville is August 31st next year. I have been telling all my family and friends that I would love to take my little girl and Brittany up to Chicago afterwards to catch a game at Wrigley field and check out the option pits.

The Cubs just posted their 2008 schedule and they will be at home Monday through Wednesday after Sunday's Ironman in Kentucky.

bike parking, Copenhagen on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

bike parking, Copenhagen on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I could only hope and pray that this will be Chattanooga, TN in a couple of years!

Yogurt vs. Gasoline

Yogurt vs. Gasoline

Click here to see the movie.

I thought since Christmas Day was the busiest time of year for theatres, I would post some short films here, so you wouldn't have to fight the crowds.

Merry Christmas Everyone

Transportation Ethics

Clarence Eckerson at StreetFilms presents this provocative conversation between Mark Gorton, executive director of the Open Planning Project, and Randy Cohen, author of The Ethicist column in the New York Times Magazine and occasional commentator for NPR. As shown in this interview, Cohen is also an intelligent and articulate voice for Livable Streets.

Fun Holiday Pics

I love this headline

Higher Fuel Prices Bring CARTA More Riders
from the chattanoogan.com


"a total of 164,662 people rode CARTA buses - more than 10,000 more than the 154,327 who rode buses during November 2006."

Goals !

I'm really excited!

Tonight I'm meeting up with my best friend and we are going to talk about our goals for the next year.

I will post about all of my goals for next year in the next week or two, but one thing I have already decided is to learn more about marketing - and yes for you witty people out there - I am going to focus on some specific parts of marketing. I have been doing an enormous amount of reading lately on marketing, success, history, etc... and one of the major trends is:

Successful people know a lot people (they network)
Unsuccessful people don't know a lot of people (they keep to themselves)

So this morning I came across this great post and thought I should share it with everyone, if you want to create more buzz out there.

Another thing I'm really excited about for next year is a men's bible study I just started.

Lastly, I guess a congratulations is in-order. My friend Chris's goal was to get the same google page rank as me and he recently accomplished this as mine has been on a slippery downslope and his has been accelerate ting. But just so everyone knows, I'm really not that impressed since there are a heck of a lot of more people out there who care about internet marketing than my ironman training and my daily commute by bike!

A Tale of Two Countries

Congressman Earl Blumenauer introducing the
Bike Commuter Act on Capitol Hill last March.
(Photo © Jonathan Maus)

Bike commuter benefit does not survive Senate vote on Energy Bill

The bike commuter tax benefit — which was introduced to Congress by Earl Blumenauer last March and passed a House vote last week — has been stripped out of the Energy Bill by the Senate.

The U.S. Senate passed the Energy Bill yesterday, but not before removing several “green initiatives” included in the bill by the Blumenauer-led Ways and Means Committee.

Along with removing Blumenauer’s effort to close the “Hummer tax loophole” (which sought to end the additional tax incentive for business purchases of luxury SUVs weighing over 6,000 lbs), the Senate removed the part of the bill that would have expanded the existing transportation fringe benefit to include bike commuters.

The bike commuter provision was based on The Bike Commuter Act and would have given a benefit of $20 per month to employees who biked to work “for the purchase, storage, or repair” of their bicycles. It would have brought bike commuters in line with existing tax benefits for transit users and car drivers.

Addressing National Bike Summit attendees on Capitol Hill last March, Blumenauer said the bike commuter benefit was simply a matter of equity and it would have stopped, “The discrimination against people who burn calories instead of fuel.”

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Danish cities go high-tech for bike safety

Posted by Jonathan Maus (Editor) on December 14th, 2007 at 2:45 pm

Flashing lights when
a bike is present.
(Photo: Zakkaliciousness)

From Cycleliciousness (the “Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog”), comes word of two interesting bike safety measures.

Given that we are in the midst of making some major bike safety improvements at dangerous intersections, I thought it might be useful to take a look at new technology being considered by the Danes.

The first is being tested in Copenhagen to reduce the number of right-hook collisions between bikes and trucks. It’s what the blog’s author calls, “a new system of diode lights” (similar the one in their photo at right) that would potentially reduce bike/car conflicts at dangerous intersections.

All of this is from bikeportland.org

It's officially winter in Chattanooga, TN. At the end of my bike ride into work was a sign that said it was 28 degrees outside - which means it was around 25 degrees when I started.

The wind wasn't alive so it really only felt like it was in the mid-to-high 30s.

For all of you who prefer cycling to running - Now there are no more excuses

http://www.bikeforest.com/tread/index.php

Americans are broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive, there is something wrong with him.

Art Buchwald, "How Un-American Can You Get?," Have I Ever Lied to You?, 1966