not me...

 But I like, totally know the guy who did it.

Vancouver...fun race, expensive trip

Drove up on Saturday to Vancouver for the ITU World Championships. The U-23 and Men's and Women's Elite races were amazing. Spectator friendly, exciting, well produced, with tons of chances to see the race pass over and over, a huge video screen with the action, very impressive. I've been trying to explain to people not there the size of the crowd, specifically for the Men's Elite race. I can definitely say I've never seen anything like that at a triathlon, it kinda seemed like it was Europe, I hear there's huge crowds at some races in Germany, Hungary, etc...

Sarah Haskins and Helen Tucker made an great move on the bike to get a nice lead from Vanessa Fernandes, and battled it out for the world title, and on the men's side, Javier Gomez "did what he does" ...surged at 5k and broke everyone. At the line, he pointed at the number 1 on his arm, and, if you win 11 world cups in 2 years, I guess you can do that. Anyway, great race.

The expensive part of the trip (outside of hotel, gas, and food) was that when I went to get my car from the parking garage at the hotel, it was broken into, rear passenger window busted, all my S#*! thrown around, and my bike was stolen! With my new SRM on it! It could be much worse, it's just a bike, but it was quite a loud trip back home with the garbage bag taped to the window.

favorite country songs

I'll typically answer the question, "favorite type of music?" as  "mostly everything, except country and techno"

...but I was in the car and heard some country song as I was going through the stations, and I thought, yeah, I like that, and kept it on (and then changed it when the next song came up).

   So I thought, there are some country songs I enjoy.  So, like, in the interest of full disclosure, my favorite country songs of all time.  Crossovers such as Cash, Dylan, and all Alt-Rock-Country are excluded.

...in no particular order (except #1)

Here's a Quarter (call someone who cares)       Travis Tritt  

Family Tradition        Hank Williams Jr.  

Much Too Young         Garth Brooks

Fast as You        Dwight Yoakam

Always on my Mind    Willie Nelson

Easy Come, Easy Go    George Strait

You Never Even Called me by my Name   David Allen Coe 

Training is coming along...slowly getting back into the running, but focusing on power on the bike and speed in the pool should help.  Good thing about this sport is if you're out of commission in 1 area, you can still improve in the others, and not lose much overall fitness.

Also filmed in Oregon

Cupping

So I woke up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in the middle of my back/shoulder blade area (the area that was injured in the past).   Supposed to go to an Oly Distance race today for Sunday.  Pretty much kept me up all night, and didn't go away.  Called MT's all morning to get it worked on.  So I got into a place for some quick work on my shoulder, see if I could attempt to race the next day.  Got worked on hard, and then was asked if I'd heard of "cupping".  The MT said that it was an old technique, pulls lactic acid, bad blood, etc... to the top of the skin.  So here's a pic of what that looks like.  My back/shoulder does feel a bit better, but the pain is still quite bad.  I'm going to hopefully train tomorrow(no race), and this will improve, but for now,  it really hurts.  Going back in for some PT tomorrow evening, and might try some acupuncture as well.  

....

a little inspiration to get me out of bed