Big cup of coffee

A lot of stuff to cover from the long three day weekend so grab the large size coffee.

Our Friday night was consumed mostly by  preparations for the race.  Ali and I entered close to 150 paper applications.  This race was a blueprint for what is wrong with our registration process.  In total the race had around 650 entries.  560 of those entries happened in the last week and the majority of those were on paper during the last couple days.

This is the behavior that our registration policy has cultivated.  Trying to reprogram people to get into the habit of registering online and early will be a tough task for sure but necessary if I am going to continue to be involved in the process.

Crawling out of bed at 4:10 am Saturday morning was not welcomed.  By the time we arrived on site around 5:30 there was already a bee hive of activity going on.  The pre-race scene was hectic.

One of the volunteers asked if she could plug her coffee pot into my surge protector.  I told her with all of the halogen lights plugged in that adding a coffee pot could pop the circuit.  She said she didn’t think it would pull much power so she plugged it in.  Less than a minute later the pavilion was dark.

Well now there was a mad scramble.  Luckily the event director had a key that got us into a room that had the breaker box.  I flipped the breaker and we had power again.  What I didn’t realize was that door also had an alarm system on it.

About a minute after restoring power the alarm starts blaring, very loudly.  Well obviously I didn’t have a code to kill it so we had no choice but to let it blow.  I am sure any neighbors within earshot loved hearing that racket at 6 am.  We figured cops would show up and turn it off.  The alarm continued to sound for a good 10-15 minutes but cops never came.  Then suddenly it stopped.  I am not sure if it just resets after a period of time or was turned off remotely. Either way it was welcomed silence.

Ali and I had a hectic scene as well at the day of race registration table.  In between trying to frantically get all of the last minute runners into the system we were repeatedly interrupted to handle screw ups.  We had 12-15 people that signed up, got their number but then did not have the corresponding timing chip available.  This happens when somebody in the registration area screws up.  These mistakes snowball at the end into a bunch of people with inaccurate times after the race.

Ali was planning to run in the race with her girlfriends so I did the last 15 minutes of data entry solo.  We had dumb asses scrambling up to the table late, I think we got some paper shoved at us as late as 7:25. (race starts at 7:30) I had more registrations to do but I had to get to the start line to time the race.

As I was quick stepping it towards the start line I heard the race director call my name on his bull horn.  I had a second bull horn with me and I yelled “DON’T START YET” as I approached.

So the race starts and I have to run back to the finish area to enter the stack of late entries.  I was entering people right up until a minute before the first runner crossed at the 16 minute mark, it was pretty nuts.

The timing system worked fine as it always does.  I was surprised when I saw Ali come across the finish line under the 29 minute mark.  She hadn’t run a 5K that fast in quite awhile, I guess her track practice has been paying off.

After the race was over I packed up and headed home solo.  Ali was scheduled to run another 3 miles in addition to the 5k and she was going to swim with the girls after that.  I got home and spent the next couple hours attending to my normal post race duties.

Randall was supposed to drive over on Saturday to hang out for a couple days.  Earlier in the week he said something about showing up around noon.  I joked to Ali that means he will be over around two.  Randall stretched the window even further not showing up until closer to 4.  His tardiness was actually a good thing, it gave me time to get some more stuff done around the house.

Randall came bearing gifts, flowers and wine for Ali, dried chicken breast for the dogs and a card with Carraba’s gifts cards for me as thanks for some electronics I gave him a few months back.  He got a bunch of the stuff at the Ave Maria Publix.  He wanted to see the place for himself after reading about it in my blog. Sadie and Nicki were very excited to see Randall as well, he likes to play with them.

I asked Randall if he wanted to go see Expendables that night.  Ali had an option to go to a party being held by her track coach so she was fine with us going.  Randall was fine with going so I bought tickets online for Silverspot, the high end luxury theater.

We wound up just grabbing food at the theater, we both got the mini-burger platter which was good.  We headed in for the movie with about 10 minutes to spare.

We were sitting right next to a woman and her daughter.  The kid was only 10 which I thought was a bit young for an R rated film like Expendables.  We chatted with the woman a bit and she described her daughter as a “mature” 10, whatever that means.  We continued talking with them for a bit as we waited for the theater to go dark.  Then “it” happened.

We heard the sound of childrens voices, VERY young childrens voices.  All four of us looked in horror as two adults came up the steps with no less than 6 children.  These kids made the 10 year old next to me look like a college student.  None of them could have been older than 6.

We were shocked.  At first we assumed they had to walk into the wrong theater.  Who would be ignorant enough to take a group of small children into such a movie?  Well we got our answer, these people.  It was just beyond the scope of my imagination.

So the movie starts and these kids are carrying on the entire time as little kids do.  While the screen is filled with exploding heads, T&A and language that would make a sailor blush, these adults sat there with these kids like it was no big deal.  Luckily for the most part the action of the movie drowned out the little munchkins noise but there were several times their incessant chatter was very annoying.  They got “shushed” repeatedly with little change in their actions.  Ironically the woman next to us with the 10 year old was probably the most annoyed of all.

Well luckily, although the kids were a distraction, we still got to enjoy the movie.  It was awesome seeing all of these guys that normally carry a movie themselves work together. It was a throwback action film and both Randall and I liked it a lot, I’d give it an A.  No it isn’t going to make you a deep thinker but it surely will entertain you for around two hours.  It’s hard to believe Stallone is in his early 60’s.  He is still ripped to shreds, a tribute to the power of HGH.

When Randall and I got home we started in on a series of Wii battles.  We played tennis, bowling, baseball and ping pong among others.  For the most part I came out on the losing end of the games but all of them were closely contested.  Ali shot some Iphone video of the contests once she got back from the party.  There is some funny footage in there.  You can see the clips here, here, here and here.

Sunday morning Randall agreed to do a brick with Ali and I.  We decided to once again head to the water park and use that as our training grounds.  We did the bike portion first.  Ali decided to use her clips this time for the ride.  She had a funny (since she wasn’t hurt) fall while she was clipped in.  It was funny because she was standing still.  She had one foot clipped in and one not.  Somehow her balance tipped towards the clipped in foot and she went right over.

Ali said she was fine if Randall and I rode ahead.  We had a tail wind for the first leg of the ride and it translated into some very fast pacing, at least for me.  For the most part the first 5 miles was done in a 22 mph+ pace.   The ride back into the wind was slower but still 18-19 which isn’t bad.

Randall had me drafting him for a good portion of the ride.  Basically you try to keep within a couple feet of the rider in front of you.  Doing so allows you to miss the majority of the headwind that slows you down  and maintain the same speed as the guy in front while spending much less energy. It was best to have him lead since he is a much more accomplished biker than I am. After we got back to the park I circled back to meet up with Ali to make sure she was doing ok which she was.

Next up was the run.  Ali and Randall ran together.  They were only going to do about a mile run since Ali had just run the day before and Randall hates to run anyway.  I elected to do the full 5K once again.  I was not thrilled with my decision once I was out on the course.

I pushed myself much harder during the bike this week as opposed to the week prior when I was riding with Ali.  The extra energy expenditure on the bike made the run more difficult.  The intense sun and high humidity didn’t help much either.  I managed to grind out the 5K in under 29 minutes, not a great time for me but not horrible considering the circumstances.

Ali and I decided to buy a year long family pass to the water park instead of paying $10 a head each time we go.  This was the third week in a row we went.  Randall was smuggled in as one of our “kids’ unbeknown to management.  We hit the lap pool.

I did 800 meters total.  I timed my first 400 meters and it clicked in right around 10 minutes.  Now I am sure open water and a bunch of bodies will slow that time down a bit in the actual tri.  Randall did some swimming too but it was pretty ugly.  I got tired just watching him try to swim.

After swimming all three of us were pretty exhausted.  We spent two or three hours just chilling at the park.. We spent a good chunk of it just floating around the lazy river.  Randall only did a few trips down the water slides. On his last trip down he bottomed out in the splash down pool and scratched up his back pretty well.  That was enough for him.

Sunday night while Ali worked on the bills Randall and I watched Crank 2 on Netflix.  Randall said he saw the first one and liked it so we loaded up the sequel.  Ali watched the first bit of it before heading off to do the bills.  Luckily she left the room before the scene where Jason Statham is humping some woman in the middle of a horse race track.  Yea, the movie was filled with over the top silliness but it made me laugh quite a bit.  I’d give it a solid B.

On Labor Day Ali elected to work while Randall and I entertained ourselves.  Randall had suggested we go on another bike ride Sunday night but I was negative about it since I was already feeling sore from the brick in the morning.  Sunday I was pretty achy but I felt good enough to ride.  I just told him I wouldn’t want to be trying to set new pace records.

We elected to do the 20 mile Dunkin Donut ride.  Even without trying to push the pace we covered the distance much faster than I ever have by myself, averaging 18-19 mph over the course of 20 miles.  We had a 10-15 minute coffee and donut break at the halfway point. Randall was nice enough to be the windbreaker for the entire ride, I stayed within close drafting distance the entire way making it easier for me to maintain pace.

After the ride we were both a sweaty mess.  We cooled off in the pool for awhile.  We actually managed to wear Sadie out as she ran endlessly around the pool encouraging us to splash her.

On Monday afternoon we watched Kick Ass. This was a dvd rental from Netflix.  I rented it after I heard Howard say how much he liked it.  I actually regretted ordering it after I heard an ad for the dvd which had nothing but swearing scenes.  I thought that if that is what they are trying to push then it may not be worth watching. I was wrong.

I expected Kick Ass to basically just be a spoof of a real super hero movie and in the beginning it was.  However as the film went on it actually turned into a somewhat compelling story with real ass kicking, real bad guys and real action.  By the end of it I was cheering on Kick Ass and Hit Girl as they annihilated the bad guys.  It was a thoroughly enjoyable movie and not the one trick pony I thought it might be.  I’d give it a solid A, no shit.  Check it out yourself and see what I mean.

Randall and I loaded up Wii Fit Plus and tried out a bunch of the balance games.  Jeremy had mentioned to me awhile ago they were very good but I never checked them out.  He was right.  Sure some of the games were silly but almost every one was fun to play.  Randall and I particularly enjoyed the snowball fight, obstacle course and juggling games.

Before Randall headed back east we watched the end of Major League and the beginning of Bull Durham.  We both had a good weekend even if we didn’t get to complete a Bar-barian forum video.