Well, that was a quick summer.

There were many highlights, and most of them seemed to be sport-related. Drafting for the first time ever on another rider; Lisa getting a sweet new road bike, and riding with her (even if it’s only been a time or two so far); finishing my first 1.5k competitive swim (and doing horribly, but still doing); getting refitted and generally falling in love with my bike all over again; biking up Mount Seymour all in one go, no unclipping and in less than an hour; and last but certainly not least, coming in first in my age category at my hometown tri while competing as an individual for the first time.

In a way, out of those highlights the actual goals seem arbitrary.

When I biked up Seymour the first time, a few years ago, I did it on a crusty, broken down road bike with flat pedals and a backpack full of beer and sandwiches, and it took me many stops and walking the last 100m to do it. I don’t even know what my “time” was, but let’s say it was somewhere around 2hrs and leave it at that. So when I did it the second time around, on my light, stiff, fast and fixed-up new(ish) road bike, I was of course going to come out ahead time- and energy-wise. I didn’t have a set plan, I just wanted to get to the top of the mountain faster. Of course, a hill is still a hill, and when I reached 1/3 up I was wondering when it would be appropriate to take a break. I told myself not till a certain lookout I remembered from before, not realizing how close tot the top it was, and when I got there, I couldn’t help but just try going for the whole thing in one shot. And that was that — 1100m up with zero breaks, and feeling pretty good. So good, in fact, that I briefly entertained the thought of riding Mount Cypress, before heading home (and bonking on the way).

Likewise, the triathlon. My first goal there was to do well, but I hadn’t really defined what “well” was. Under three hours? Maybe finish with a 42-ish-minute 10k? Not totally humiliate myself on the swim? I had never done a full tri before, so I had no idea what my time would or should look like, but towards the start-date it really started not to matter.

A long story short: towards the beginning of June, when it was apparent that I really wasn’t getting enough training in to do “unbelievably” well (whatever that should be), and when it was obvious that that just wasn’t something I should hope for in my first tri, with no previous experience, my attitude then shifted: suddenly, I wasn’t racing to compete, or to beat a time, or to hit a pace, or whatever — but racing for fun. Of course, it helped that I was racing with (and against!) my sister, in her own first tri as well. And it helped that she was good at aspects of the sport I was bad at, and vice-versa. Basically, I took whatever competitive baggage I seem to normally bring to these things, threw it out, and ended up doing it for fun.

Racing for fun was fun, and as it turns out, profitable: we both ended up winning our age categories, and did well across the board.

Even during the tri itself, my goals seemed to shift. At one point during the bike, I felt so strong and had passed so many people that I when I hit a gap I very briefly entertained the thought that I was in front, only to find out at the bike->run transition that I was … well, near it enough for horseshoes and nukes. During that time I thought I could win it all. During the run, when I had run out of absolutely every ounce of energy I had, I thought about throwing up, stopping, DNFing, calling in sick, whatever it would take. At a water stop I even stopped and forced a kid to give me a high-five “for luck”, giving me a chance to catch my breath. I wondered about maybe stopping and waiting for my sister, who was just behind me, so we could cross the finish line together. If I had actually seen her nearby at that point, I probably would have — and she would’ve probably said keep up, or step aside. It was our own, individual thing we were doing there, even as a family.

She smiled more than I did, especially during that last 50 minutes.

It’ll be interesting to see how future tri’s go, especially the Yarmouth one. I’m hoping that the just-for-fun aspect sticks around, but at the same time I have a baseline performance level now, and I’m looking forward to taking it more seriously.  A fall plan has formed, involving Master’s swimming, weights, and “fun” (low-pressure) running/biking. I want to get my 10k consistently under 40 minutes, and just get my biking consistent in general. Endurance is also a key, and running long will help that.

I think it’s when January hits that goal-setting will be increasingly important: arbitrary goals are good initially, but I’m also interested in what it feels like to make a plan, and then nail it. So the December holidays will likely be spent not only making merry and all that but drawing up a plan for 2011. One or two significant tri’s (including the Yarmouth one) and hopefully a whole bunch of lower-pressure tri’s, runs, and road races. I can feel that it’s going to be a good year, all over again.

(… or CMD-R; or F5; what you will. Anyway.)

I’ve decided to give this blog a bit of a shakeup/facelift. It’s been my personal blog space for a number of years now (back into 2005, by the timestamps), but my heart, and maybe more to the point my professional interests just aren’t into keeping that personal a blog any more. Part of it is the new(ish) social deal online — Facebook, even Twitter every six months or so, suffices most of my conversational needs. Part of it is wanting my thoughts and conversations to appear somewhere else besides online.

Well, some of them, anyway.

I’ve decided to refresh the site as a more professional-personal website, if that means anything. There’ll be a bit more CV, maybe a bit less drunken rambling. I’ll still post what I’m interested in, but it’ll be within certain specific contexts: bands; bike swim run; library/cogsci/OSS/OA/programming. Probably fewer posts (not that there have been a lot lately), but hopefully more substantive.

In the course of redoing this site (which is still obviously in progress), I’ve come across an interesting fact: most of my friends in my old blogroll (remember those?) have essentially stopped blogging. In a lot of cases, the blogs themselves no longer exist. BUT of the band whose web sites I’ve listed (either as a friend, contributor or full-fledged member thereof), most are online, and more to the point, are making music. So the blogs get taken down, but the bands remain.

I do want to give the blog site a bit more of a tune-up theme-wise, and I’ll be adding a few new features here and there (as well as some professional pages, etc.). I’ll also be changing the web site in general to point immediately to this install — more of an overall web site, less of a blog portion of same.

Finally: if you happen to be a person who was part of the old blog life here, and want access to the old stuff, let me know and I’ll hook you up to the archive. Otherwise, welcome to the new blog, mostly the same as the old one, except sanitized for your pleasure.

J

One of my roomates is a bike fanatic: she has 8 or so bikes stored in the back room, and a huge amount of gear and knowledge about making older bikes work. Vancouver’s bike scene, or at least the one I’m privy to, values older working bikes over newer, flashier models — bikes that you put a bit of time into to make your own. I’m on the fence about this, and I’ll tell you why.

On my roomate’s advice I bought an 82ish Benotto on Craigslist. Looks remarkably like this one, except without all the love and care; I got it for $200, which was definitely a good price, but as another friend of mine could attest, it depends in what you have to spend afterwords to get the thing working.

(This brings up another point: if you have a bike you acknowledge as a beater, you won’t pay any attention to it and it’ll get you where you need to go. You buy a bike you want to make special, and it starts doing funny things like blow tires and need total fork replacements.)

So I buy the bike, and decide to work out the kinks and learn a little bit along the way. Learning is fun, right? Well, yeah. But learning can take a long time — sometimes weeks, and cost lots of trips to MEC and Bike Doctor down the street (thank Christ they’re just down the street — especially since my bike was *ahem* out of commission for so long) and money paid.

I’m thinking of starting a new non-movement.

“Information is not knowledge.”