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.

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

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 tried a new route today, out to Iona Beach and back. It was gorgeous, but pretty windy, and constantly threatening to squall. I did the UBC/Soutwest Marine Drive loop, and took it nice and easy back on 7th. I do wish there was a good, fast thoroughfare to get from my place to UBC, and from Richmond to UBC too for that matter; stop/starting on sidestreets gets old fast.

It also makes me think about music again — playing music, what got me into playing in the first place, what I want to play now. Smashing Pumpkins and Neil Young got me into guitar, but it was the Melvins that got me into bass when I first started playing. I still can’t play June Bug right (trying to learn it way back when was what taught me the sound different between fingers and pick on a bass — thanks, Mike Amon), but damn that’s tight. They’re basically still making the sounds I want to make myself. I just started thinking today how great it’d be having a Melvins cover band, and then I realized — I’ve been listening to them for like 15 years, and I still have no idea what most of the lyrics are.

So it’s sort of coming together in my mind: create a three-or-four-piece cover band of the Melvins,  call ourselves Berthas, and find out what passes for lyrics to some songs to cover. I still haven’t settled on doing it straight-up or campy, but I kind of want to sing myself. While playing bass. Maybe I’ll sing the way I normally sing along to their music on my own — kind of mumble-howling along, catching the stray word when I can. Or maybe we’ll stick to all instrumental tracks. The world is wide open. This has to happen.

A while ago I got on a Constellation Records kick. They’re my favourite label in a whole lot of ways, and I thought I’d pick up a few albums from their current roster blind.

One of them was the Clues album. It’s great — it’s Alden Penner, previously of the Unicorns, whom Mike and I saw in a very, very intimate setting at the Charlotte St. Arts Centre a while ago (though not as Clues then). The show we saw was … well, there were only three or so people in the crowd and probably more than that on stage, and it was pretty awkward all around, but they played well and everyone had a good time. Anyway, the Clues album hits me in a whole bunch of ways Islands (led by Nick Diamonds or whatever he’s calling himself lately, also previously of the Unicorns) doesn’t. I dig the first two Islands albums, but they haven’t really stayed up front and center in any concrete way in particular. Maybe it’s not fair to compare, I don’t know, but the Clues stuff seems to be a more natural progression from the Unicorns stuff — silly, all over the place, not so hi-fi, earnest and meaningful and maybe not quite right all the way around. Anyway, it’s a keeper.

But the one that has messed me up in all kinds of ways is the last Vic Chesnutt album, and I’ve barely even listened to it. I bought this just before Christmas … and before I had a chance to listen to it, the man died. It’s weird having an album of a man who just died floating around, resting here on my bookshelf, there on my nightstand, waiting to be listened to but more importantly, somehow, waiting for the right moment to be listened to. For whatever reason, I couldn’t just bring myself to rip it into iTunes and skip through it on my daily commute.

So a few nights ago I was just sitting in bed reading, and it was time. I listened to it through once, and then again. And you know, words can’t describe. There’s GSY! alumni on the album, so at some points it sounded familiar, and warm and welcome (or scary and unwelcome, depending) for it. The instrumentation is perfect. His voice, and his lyrics, are incomparable. This is a musician I could’ve fallen in love with at any time. And now — I won’t say it’s too late, because the music’s still there, but I can’t help but mourn for something, and someone I could’ve experienced alive, and now never will. That may be overstating the case a little bit. There’s a back catalogue I can explore and enjoy, after all. But any other option is now just null, and that’s as incomparably sad as the music is beautiful.

I’m back on the marathon training plan, this time on steroids (figuratively speaking). Last year’s marathon (my first and so far only) was good, but I’d like to do better. I’ve decided to target some particular weak points to improve my running and my time: diet, weight and training, in particular.

My diet is probably pretty good given the norm in the northern hemisphere, but I really do want to cut down on the meat and cut up on on the vegetable. I also have to stop eating out so much: Vancouver’s cheap eateries and grotesque commutes make it so easy to do. But I have a great kitchen in my new digs, and I’m remembering some of the larger dishes I used to make back in the day to feed me for days at a time. I’ve also gotten into quick smoothies and such. I should also probably cut down on the beer.

I think the weight issue will solve itself given appropriate diet and cross-training + the normal training runs. I want to drop 10-ish pounds, but I’m leery of getting too scientific about it — counting calories is just not worth it to me. We’ll see what happens. I mean, right now I don’t even have a scale, so I can’t go by anything. I guess aiming for “lighter than I am right now” is a decent enough place to start.

The training … last year, I kept up pretty well with the running plan, but my cross-training was slim to nonexistent. This year, I’ve been trying to swim three days a week (in addition to the 3x runs per week); and as the weather improves, I’ll start biking to SFU 3x per week as well. The ride is easy, and it takes about as long as the bus, which I only daze out on anyway, so it’s not like it’d be eating into my day any more than an extra shower would. But I do figure on some days involving at least three showers a day. And I’d love to get some weights time in, but there’s only so many hours of the day. Ah well.

Lisa lent me Born to Run a little while ago. It hasn’t exactly changed the way I think about running, but it’s brought me back to what I enjoyed so much about it in the first place: the release, the joy in movement, running for running’s sake. I’m not a huge fan of the author’s writing style overall (or of some of his conclusions), but he won me over by the end. I have a feeling that if this spring and summer’s training doesn’t kill me, there’s an ultramarathon lurking in the 10-year distance. We’ll see how it goes; right now, the fast runs feel furious, and the slow ones are meditative (until I bonk and get stripped to the bare metal), and that’s all I can ask for.