A small home improvement project

When I was shopping for my new townhouse, one feature that I wanted was “a rooftop deck with a nice view.” Somehow this morphed into “a rooftop deck with a nice view that could support a hot tub.” When I found this rather awesome place on Capitol Hill with a large rooftop deck, I asked the builder whether the roof could support a hot tub. He said no.

I don’t like “no.”

I like “what would it take to make X happen.”

So being a bit of a geek, I turned to the internet. Specifically, I found Kevin Bauman’s rather thorough post about what it takes to install a large aquarium, from a structural engineer’s point of view. Armed with this newfound knowledge, I went back to the builder with a proposal. He offered to talk to his own structural engineer and agreed to have the modifications built into my rooftop as a condition of the sale. Win.

While shopping for tubs, I quickly decided that a used tub would be a *much* better value than a brand new tub. At first I thought of getting a free tub from a friend who doesn’t use theirs… but I started wondering about mechanical reliability and about delivery and realized that a reconditioned tub from a dealer would be a much better choice. I shopped around for awhile on Craigslist and talked to a few dealers. I also checked out some new tubs in a showroom. I eventually decided on a well-kept Hot Springs Sovreign, as it had the right combination of appropriate size, insulation, and expected reliability.

Next up, I needed to figure out how to get a tub onto the roof. The stairways aren’t particularly wide, and each has a 90- or 180-degree bend. The building suggested that I get a few guys with ropes and sticks, and that I drag it up the side of the building. My dad suggested a block and tackle with some pulleys, but we weren’t sure how we would counterweight the crane arm. So I found a few guys on Craigslist who deliver hot tubs for a living and learned that they often hire a crane service.

I talked to four or five crane services before finding a guy who would/could take on my job. His truck was small enough to avoid the trees and power lines near my house, but wasn’t big enough to reach all the way to my rooftop. My townhouse is the third one in from the street. So I asked the builder about craning the tub onto the first house, and decided to hand-carry the tub over from there.

I drew up the awesome diagram to the left, took a picture of it with my phone, made a few annotations in MS-Paint, and sent it to each of the crane guys. You’ll note that there are two half-ways to navigate on the way, and that we have an 8.5’-wide section and a 7’-wide section. The hot tub is 6.'5’ wide by 8’ long by 31” deep. Fun times. Luckily I have enough good friends and tasty beer to make such work feasible.

So… house, check. Tub, check. Crane, check. Awesome friends, check.

After one last-minute reschedule from the crane guy, we had everything lined up to go this past Saturday. I was pleasantly surprised with how easily we go through that part.

On Friday I tried to reserve a good parking spot for the crane by moving my roommate’s car. I also borrowed a few construction cones:

The first Really Exciting Moment was when the crane truck arrived, with the tub on the flatbed:

After getting the truck in place, the crane guy attached the hook and lifted the tub off the flatbed:

The tub was hanging a bit lopsided, so we set it on the sidewalk and rebalanced a little:

The next Really Exciting Moment was when the tub cleared the railing onto the roof:

We “caught” the tub on the roof and carefully placed it onto the roof, with maybe an inch to spare on each side. Then we carried it over the first railing, turned it onto its side, and slide it on carpet & towels to my railing. Yes, I forgot to ask the Hot Tub Guy to bring one of his dollies. He had so many of them at the showroom…

A hearty THANK YOU to Aaron, Zach, Dave, Susan, Ellick, Ted, Stephanie and even Peter (although he napped during most of the hard work). With ten friends helping out, the tub didn’t even feel all that heavy! Although if you ask Zach, that’s b/c I wasn’t carrying my fair share of the load.

Finally we carried the tub over the last railing and moved it into position on my rooftop. It was time to celebrate with a few beers!

The next step was to get the electrical setup finalized. I’d had the builder’s electrician run 220V 40A wiring up to the roof b/c that’s what was readily available from the stove circuit. 50A would have been better, but we’re going to try running the tub in 110V 20A mode for awhile first, as 220V requires $500 worth of extra hardware on the roof. Anyways, the Hot Tub Guy’s uncle is an electrician and he showed up in the evening to finish the wiring job.

Meanwhile we filled the tub up with water so that we could plug ‘er in once the wiring was ready. The tub takes about 24 hours to heat up with the 110V circuit, so we had to wait through Sunday night for the tub to warm up. I am almost home now and ready to test the tub myself, but my roommate tells me that the tub was nice and toasty at mid-day today:

San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island

After a fun-but-slow day at Monroe, it didn’t take much effort for Andrew and Lauren to convince me to jump into this past Saturday’s ITU race in San Francisco. I’ve raced there five or six times before and I <3 Tri-California.

I was a bit disappointed to swim in the back group at Monroe, so I actually swam five times in the two weeks between races – two hard swims with Dave in Lake Sammamish and three easy pool swims in three different cities/states – w Rusty & Lauren at the Bellevue Club, alone at Highland Park pool in Pittsburgh, then w Kenny, Andrew and Lauren at the Cal Berkeley pool before the race. Still not a lot of volume, by any means, but more than I’d been doing!

I didn’t get any real biking in as I spent much of the two-week interlude traveling to see my sister in Pittsburgh. I did ride around town a bit on an old road bike that I borrowed, and I went for two easy runs. Mellow training.

So, on to How It Went Down:

Swim: Before the race I told myself that I should still be a mid-pack swimmer. I was correct. I swam relaxed/fluid/strong most of the way and exited the water 31st out of 50, in a group of about 15. There were twenty athletes ahead of our group and 15 behind our group, so it is safe to say I was in the middle. I was happy to see Manny Huerta next to me as we exited the water, as he’s had solid World Cup swims before and I hoped that his presence meant that we were in a decent position.

T1 was uneventful, except for running about 10 meters past my bike and having to double-back for it.

Once onto the bike, Manny and I easily got into a group of 8 or 10 riders that was forming ahead of us. After negotiating the first few corners, I went to put my left shoe on and disaster struck. I got my foot about halfway into the shoe and then accidentally unclipped the shoe from the pedal. Now I had the shoe half-on my foot but not firmly attached to anything. It is hard to fix such an issue while riding! Somehow I managed to get the shoe back onto my foot, but I lost my group. I dug deep and caught up to a smaller group of riders, only to have issues getting my other shoe on, too. The little things… so I lost another group and tried to ride smart/steady/relaxed as I knew there were still plenty of riders behind me.

I rode with a few different groups over the last 5 laps, and found that I didn’t have much margin for error out there – likely a sign of low bike fitness. If a guy ahead of me hit a traffic cone and flipped it up in the air, I lost the group. If we caught a sketchier rider and he disrupted our cornering and rotation, I lost the group. Lame. It was almost like I was looking for excuses out there. Gotta work on that.

T2 was interesting again, as I apparently threw my helmet into the wrong bin. The official tried to help me and yelled after me, but I had a hard time figuring out what I’d done wrong in the heat of the moment.

I was happy to not have debilitating leg cramps on the run (yay! better nutritional prep this week!!) but I was disappointed to have a bit of stomach discomfort for the first 6-7km. I just couldn’t push the pace that I wanted. This was actually a rather familiar feeling, and this tells me that I have something very specific to work on during my preparation for future races. Who cares what kind of open 10K you are capable of running right now if your angry stomach or crampy legs won’t let you run. If I make it out to Myrtle Beach in October or to the mythical South American Double in January (Vina del Mar and La Paz) then I should do a bit more analysis into what drinks, concentrations and timing are causing such issues. I went with a rather straightforward approach at TI, but it looks like I need to tweak that approach.

After the race, we had a fun evening in Berkeley with some of the athletes and friends. I left SFO with a bit more inspiration to increase the priority of triathlon training within my busy life, and to put on a more impressive showing at one of the fall or winter races. We’ll see what life brings!

Monroe Pan American Cup

This past Saturday I had the privilege of racing in front of friends and family at the ITU Monroe Pan American Cup. Thanks to everybody who came out to watch the race – dad, mom, Bob, Katie, Andrew, Aaron, Zach, Vaibhav, Dave, Dave, Jen, Tracey, Kalpita, Peter, and anybody else who I’m not thinking of right now!! It was awesome for my friends and family to finally get to see one of these races in person.

I knew going in that my fitness might not be quite what it has been in past years. I’ve intentionally de-prioiritized spending time on triathlon training as I’ve focused more on my work at Microsoft and on getting GeekFit off the ground and on being there a it more for my friends and family. That said, I knew that my combination of high-intensity work at GeekFit, lower stress about training, more recovery time, more sleep, occasional hard efforts in all three disciplines and the “home crowd” could allow me to have one of my best races yet.

So how did it go down?

Swim: I got out well, but then faded rather quickly and settled onto some comfortable feet. I tried to “swim smart” and only made one bridging attempt, when the guy ahead of me lost the guy ahead of him. I was slightly disappointed to have exited the water in the last group, but I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that there were guys near me to ride with!

Bike: my hamstrings were *immediately* a mess on the bike. I struggled to get my first shoe on and gave up trying to get the second. I bridged to the three guys ahead of me and finally caught them 2-3km into the race. Then I tried to let my legs recover enough to allow me to hold my right leg in the 12 o’clock position and get my shoe on without inducing a hamstring cramp. Our group of four became five and then seven and eventually eleven. We worked well together at times and not-so-well at other times. My legs came back a little and I was able to surge when needed, but I never really felt “strong” on the bike. With a lap to go I started thinking about making my usual “1km to go” move to set up a good T2, but I blew it. Another guy went first and I thought about following but just ended up on the front of the group. Then I slipped to the back as I tried to get out of the wind. So I entered T2 last in my group. Fail.

Run: I knew that my run fitness was very good coming into this race. I PR’ed in the 5k back in March and I’ve had some strong track workouts. I immediately started passing guys from my bike group and was feeling good until about the 1km mark. Then my quads started twitching a bit and I knew that I could be in trouble. I tried to drink as much water as I could at each aid station, but my gait was getting roughed up by the cramps and I lost a bit of speed. I loosened up around 3km and was ecstatic. It was time to show off my running legs! I resumed reeling in the guys ahead of me… for about 500m… then my race might as well have been over. My quads locked up so badly that my “run” was now more of a shuffle. It wasn’t pretty. At one point I even tried to walk. I was almost resigned to DNF-ing… but then I shuffled a bit longer and my legs sort of loosened up. I tried to just cruise the last 5k in order to not lock up again, but I was very disappointed to see how many guys I coulda/woulda/shoulda been able to run down with even a halfway decent run split. In fact, I probably could have snuck into the top twenty and the top half of the race, which would have been very encouraging.

All of this told me that I still have enough fitness to be worth a trip to San Francisco for the San Francisco Triathlon at Treasure Island. It took me awhile to get this entry posted so I’m actually on the porch at my homestay right now. Kenny Rakestraw and his roommates were gracious enough to put up me, Andrew Lockton and Lauren Goss all at the same time. We’re gonna rock it on the island tomorrow! Whoop whoop!!

Fremont 5k & Briefcase Relay

My friend Zach convinced me to join his Fremont Briefcase Relay team this year. For those of you who aren’t from Seattle, the Fremont 5k is a popular Friday evening 5k with a beer garden. But the unique part of the event is the 5-person “briefcase relay,” where you each run 1k while wearing work attire and carrying a briefcase. The briefcase must contain five cans of food that you’ll donate to Solid Ground’s Hunger Action Center after the race.

It didn’t take much convincing to get me to jump in, especially since Zach’s team won last year.

We assembled a solid line-up two weeks ahead of time, but the competitive juices didn’t really start flowing until Zach ran into Carl Winter from Club Northwest at the Wednesday night track workout and Carl started talking smack about his team! For the next 48 hours everybody got psyched!!

The race was very close, with two lead changes and less than five seconds separating the top two teams for nearly the entire race. Zach handed me the briefcase with a decent-but-not-comfortable lead and I dug deep to bring us home.

Our official time was 15:24 and the CNW guys were second in 15:31. Both times were faster than the previous course record of 15:38, set by Zach’s team last year.

Three of us attempted to run the 5k race after the relay. We were all rather thrashed from the relay, but I still managed to find decent enough legs to run a 16:22. I passed two guys in the final 100m. I never thought of myself as much of a sprinter/kicker, so that part was pretty cool!

The winning relay team gets to take home the coveted “Slug Cup.” Click/zoom on the picture below and you can see the ceramic slugs crawling up the base of the trophy. Slug Cup plus Beer Garden equals learning how much beer a Slug Cup can hold!

If you didn’t get to join us in the beer garden or at any of Seattle’s finer bars after the race – keep your eyes peeled, as the Slug Cup will likely be making a few appearances over the course of the next year.

A terrific idea

Sat 23 April: My good friend Andrew Lockton calls me up to reminisce about one of our favorite races – the Avia Wildflower Long Course Triathlon. Over the course of the conversation, we realize that I don’t have any major plans for the upcoming weekend. Uh oh…

Sun 24 April: I email the good folks at Tri-California to verify that I can still register as an Elite this close to race day. I know that it is poor form to do so, as races like to promote the size and awesomeness of their elite field… but they were still gracious.

Mon 25 April: after a rather productive day at work, I check with my boss about taking Thursday and Friday off

Tue 26 April: I register for the race and cash in a free ticket on Southwest

Wed 27 April: I ride my TT bike for 20 minutes in order to make sure that there are no glaring mechanical issues. I’d been on this bike once since the 2009 Scott Tinley’s Adventures race. I had a long email thread with five friends about whether I’d be better off just riding my road bike at Wildflower, in order to be more comfortable. But in the end we decided that racing is racing and I should bring my fastest bike for that race. Possibly a mistake in my case.

Thu 28 April: fly to San Jose. My bicycle makes it there with me but somehow my suitcase does not. I decide that “Plan B” is to race in a Speedo. Luckily Andrew hasn’t left his house yet and is able to bring some extra clothes for me, too.

Fri 29 April: shakeout ride & run, race meeting, and a perennial favorite: the Elite Introductions. Julie Moss and Bob Babbitt ran the show this time

Sat 30 April: Race Day

As soon as I got away from the San Jose airport and into the rolling hills, I knew I’d made a great decision. The beautiful scenery always brings back a lot of memories of good times on the Tri-California circuit.

I had no idea what to expect on the swim or bike, but I hoped that my run would be solid. I’ve been doing my GeekFit workout regularly to build strength and aerobic capacity within my muscles, and I’ve done just enough swimming to maintain some feel for the water… but my volume was *way* down from previous years. I’d done eight or ten hard bike rides so far this year whereas in past years I’d do at least that many each month. Only my run volume is comparable to past years – mostly at a social pace, with a long run and a workout maybe every other week, on average.

Race mornings are pretty much automatic for me at this point – my bag is already packed, I instinctively know how much warm-up I need, I can socialize a bit while still being one of the first athletes into the water for swim warm-up.

Swim: I surprised myself by getting out quickly and sitting near the front of the race as we approached the first turn buoy. Things broke up a bit more over the first 1000m but I swam smart and tucked in behind another guy for the second 1000m rather than continuing to swim side-by-side. I was pleasantly surprised to exit the water in roughly 12th place.

Bike: I tried to build into the ride and to just enjoy myself. I stayed in aero on the flats & downhills but wasn’t shy about sitting on the tops for the many climbs. I didn’t worry about trying to keep up with riders who passed me. I just tried to enjoy the ride. Andrew caught me around mile 37 and we rode side-by-side until Nasty Grade, cracking a few jokes as we rode. We were totally out-of-contention at this point. I’d never rode side-by-side in a race for this long before, and it was a fun change of pace. (BTW- such positioning is completely legal in races that are following the USAT Elite rules.)

 

Run: I really hoped to light up the run after running 16:01 for 5k on the track back in March… but my legs and back felt *terrible* in the first few miles of the Wildflower run. The felt so bad that I thought I might DNF. But I managed to work through the tightness and crampiness and soreness and settled into a good pace, picking off a runner about every half mile for the first 4-6 miles. My quads *hated* any uphills or downhills, but I was smooth and comfortable on the flats. Sadly this course has lots of hills! I was probably running low-1:20s pace through 11 or 12 miles, but Wildflower veterans know that the last mile is steeply downhill, and my legs blew apart on that descent. I had to shuffle backwards at times just to make progress, and I got passed back by an athlete who I’d passed four miles earlier. Argh… But eventually I limped over the finish line and was done!

I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my friend Jesse Thomas managed to win the race, with Clayton Fettell taking second! Jesse and I volunteer together on the PROTA board of directors and Clayton and I took part in a memorable after-party for last year’s Ishigaki World Cup.

All in all…

• It was great to be out there racing again.
• It was great to catch up with a bunch of friends.
• It was great to be one of the few Seattlites to get a sunburn on April 30th!
• It was great to find that my swim is still very respectable in spite of focusing a lot of my energy elsewhere lately.

But I did see the difference between focusing most of one’s energy on racing and focusing most of one’s energy on other things. That said, it was very validating to see that I can still have a fantastic time with a race without needing every moment of my home life to be about racing. We’ll see what the next few months and years hold for me, triathlon-wise, but I do expect to be out there at the Monroe and San Francisco ITU races with a giant smile on my face!

(Thanks to the good folks Brightroom for allowing athletes like me to use their thumbnails on our blogs, free of charge!)

Less is More

I’ve been rather quiet on the ol’ blog lately, for good reason. I have been a lot less focused on training & racing since September and this blog has always been mostly about triathlon. I managed to burn myself out again, despite what I should have learned from the last three months of 2009. So after Tuscaloosa I decided to back off, mentally and physically, until it felt fun again.

I had a few other good reasons for backing off --

1. I agreed to take on a new role at Microsoft, and I really want to see what I can accomplish there. I’ve been rather happy with my racing efforts over the years but I’ve often felt like I could do a bit better at my “day job,” so I am making that a higher priority this year.
2. A friend and I have opened a personal training business called GeekFit. There is enough going on here that I’ll do a more detailed post soon, but let’s just say that GeekFit is giving me a great outlet for my passions for exercise, nutrition, wellness and teaching. If you live or work near Microsoft and you are looking for a smart, efficient workout, let me know!!
3. General health – I’d been slowly driving myself into the ground with my overly ambitious mix of racing & work & life. I thrive on being busy … but apparently I have limits, too. A lot of the GeekFit research told me that my lifestyle isn’t all that good for my long-term health, so I am trying to “slow down” a little and to reduce stress & inflammation.

An intriguing piece of all of this is that this lower-stress, lower-volume approach might actually lead to faster racing for me in 2011 and beyond. I thought that my past approach was very well-researched and meticulous, but I was probably piling on too much work without letting my body recover enough.

After September, I adopted an approach of “Swim/bike/run when you feel like it, if friends are going, if you’re excited about it. Otherwise, sleep in, go out, rest, work, enjoy life.”

As I hit the end of the calendar year, I started thinking about what a GeekFit-inspired training program would look like: lower volume, very focused intensity, lots of recovery… I’ve been doing our GeekFit strength workout once every 10-14 days and I’ve thrown in some very infrequent but focused/hard swims, bikes and runs. I am still trying to figure out exactly what the right structure should be, but for awhile I did a ten-day cycle with the GeekFit workout on day one, a hard swim+bike+run on day six, and everything else easy/social/optional. I really enjoy hard group workouts and my friend have been on the track a lot, so for the past ~3 weeks I’ve done a (running) track workout every Wednesday while keeping spacing to any GeekFit workouts and to one hard swim (3/21) and one hard ride (3/12 in Austin!).

Recall that in 2010 I would do 1-2 hard runs, a long run, 2-3 hard rides and 2-3 hard swims EVERY WEEK, plus a lot of easy/volume.

I raced a 5K on the track today at the Club Northwest Spring Break Open. I surprised myself by running a smooth, easy 16:01 – eleven seconds faster than my previous PR! The first two miles felt super-easy as I sat behind a guy I knew… then I took off with a mile to go, splitting something like 5:04, 5:16, 5:04 for the three 1600s. (Yes, there is an extra 200 in there somewhere.) I could have run a bit faster in that second mile. I went in with no expectations … but next time I’ll be expecting 15:45!

So I’m training less, sleeping more, focusing more on work, and (running) faster than ever! As for the swim and the bike… well… maybe next weekend?

A lot of stairs

While in Colorado Springs for a recent PROTA board meeting, I decided to check out the Manitou Incline. Dave Messenheimer had told me about this epic staircase a few years ago and a friend of a friend reminded me about it at a recent dinner party. I think that conversation went something like this:

DUDE: There is this really difficult staircase in C Springs that you should check out on your trip. I used to hike up it in like 50 minutes, but I hear that it’s been done in forty.

ME: Wow, sounds tough. I wonder if I could beat forty. Actually, I think I’ve heard of that before. What’s it called?

DUDE: The Incline. The Manitou Incline.

ME: Hrmmm…

ME (via text message): Hey Mess, what’s the OTC record for the Manitou Incline?

MESS (via text message): I think [Mark] Fretta’s done it in 14:30. My best was more like 16 or 17 minutes.

ME (back at the dinner party): check this out. This guy I know did it in 14:30!!

Yeah, I can be a bit of a punk…

So anyways, after our board meeting I had not-quite-enough time to go run the Incline before taking Jesse & Rebeccah to the airport. Really, they almost missed their flight because of me. And here I said that I would stop being so self-absorbed about training during my “semi-retirement…” but this wasn’t training. This was silly masculine competition.

The Manitou Incline is about 0.9 miles long and has an elevation change of 2000 feet, for an average grade of 42%. I think that the peak grade was in the 60s. My goal was to get up there in twenty minutes. Not even close.

View of the Manitou Incline from Hwy 24, shamelessly stolen from InclineClub.com. I didn’t bring my camera up the hill.

I started off at sort of a “casual jogging” and hoped I could build into it. But after a minute I was already winded. Did I mention that the Incline *starts* at 6600 feet above sea level, and that I live in Seattle? Urgh. It hurt.

I plugged away at a pace that could only be described as “a brisk walk.” The steps were rather uneven at times, and some steps were above knee height, requiring a pretty big step up.

Oh, and there was a lot of snow up there. It was mid-January, after all.

I thought I was going to come close to my goal, only to realize a bit of a “false summit” at 20-21 minutes in.

Incline profile shamelessly stolen from InclineClub.com. See that “false summit” around 0.8 miles…

I finally reached the top at 26:45 and checked my pulse: 160! not bad for a retiree whose heart always runs a bit slowly!

View from the top, shamelessly stolen from InclineClub.com.

The way back down was painful and dangerous. I was short on time to get to the airport, and I think that I slipped and fell at least three times. Not smart. It still took longer to get down than it took to get up. The snow and ice didn’t help. My quads were sore for about four days afterwards. Very sore. Don’t run down stairs.

In other news, I’ll soon reveal my racing plans for 2011… as well as what I’ve been working on during my extended break from high-volume training!