Travis Pettijohn: Blog

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The presidential election is over, cleanly and decisively. I tried my best this year to avoid the pundits in entirety and instead listen to the candidates themselves. I haven't watched any of the 24-hour news channels in years. Somewhere along the way I realized that the pundits create more drama and perpetuate an "us versus them" mentality. I hear it in the media and from my friends: people attack not the candidate but the caricature of the candidate. This is called the straw man logical fallacy; rather than argue against your opponent's position you state a superficially similar and easier to attack position and credit it to him. You then attack the caricature.

Two great examples are that Obama wanted to spread the wealth and that McCain was just another Bush. Neither of these statements faithfully represent either of the men, but they are widely held as truths by many.

If you only listen to the pundits of "your" side, then you come to accept their straw men as reality. I saw it today in friends' Facebook statuses: Now begins America's slide into Socialism, Welcome to the Soviet States of America, etc. This is a reflection of the caricature, not the man.

As I listened to candidates, I came to see that I liked a lot about both Obama and McCain. Either way we would have had a new, strong leader and a break from the past eight years. A chance to revitalize our country's image on the world stage. A fresh start by an intelligent, dedicated man. Sure, there were differences in how they wanted to achieve their goals, but they both wanted the best for the country.

This year I voted for Democrats, Republicans and Greens, because I listened to the candidates and not "my" side's caricature of "the opponents." I'm proud of myself for staying out of the fray and voting for the people, not their parties, and looking for the good in the individuals. It's a good day for America, and I'm looking forward to the future.

I just picked up an HTC Diamond from Sprint. It's by far the best mobile phone I've owned. The display is just jaw-dropping. It's pretty speedy, and the TouchFlo 3D interface is a nice step forward. It's not as good as the iPhone, and every now and then Windows Mobile 6.1 rears its ugly stylus-head, but most things tick along with just my thumb.

A few tweaks I've made:

• Remove the Sprint Music link from the music player. Frees up more screen space for album art. Also while you're editing that XML file, delete the Sprint TV. There's no need for that in the quick-launch.
• A few registry tweaks. Turn on a geo-tagging camera (though I've only had it report 0,0 in flickr...wonder if they turned it off for a reason?).
• Of course I installed S2U2 to lock the screen. Also remapped (#31) the "Manila" (internal name for TouchFlo 3D) home key to have a "Lock" softkey.

From Wikipedia:

As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and services offered by the nation's economic machinery. [Emphasis in original.]

Instead of achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had by 1929-30 drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game stopped.

-Marriner S. Eccles, Franklin D. Roosevelt's Chairman of the Federal Reserve from November 1934 to February 1948, detailed what he believed caused the Depression in his memoirs, Beckoning Frontiers (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1951).

Yesterday I rode my first “century,” or 100-mile bike ride, on the Evanston Bike Club’s North Shore Century. Before this ride, my longest ride ever was 50 miles. As you can imagine, it was extremely challenging. We started in Evanston, IL and rode to Kenosha, WI and back. I was on the bike for 6h37m, on the course for 9 hours. My Garmin reported that I burned 5800 calories (about 2.5 days’ worth of food, or (since fat contains 3500 calories per lb) roughly 1.6 lbs of fat). My average heart rate over the time on the bike was 143bpm (excluding rest time). Average speed was 15.5 mph.

This morning when I turned on a computer the first thing I did was make a list of what hurt. For my own future reference, here is my list. An *asterisk means that the pain is more that what I’m comfortable with, i.e., it might pushing from hard use into injury.

• Neck and shoulders, from supporting the posture. Especially left side between shoulder and neck.
• Forearms and hands are stiff. Lower back is mildly fatigued.
• Butt is very sore. Swelling at seat-contact points.
• Glute is sore & fatigued.
• Bottom 1/3 of quads is especially sore & fatigued. Especially medial.
• Hamstrings are stiff and sore.
• Right lateral knee pain from IT band. *
• Both IT bands are stiff and sore.
• Top-back of calves, up into the knee. Left one feels strained, especially on the medial side connecting into the tendons under the knee. Certain strains produce sharp pain. *
• Knees and the muscles that move them are very fatigued. Getting into the bathtub was a challenge.
• Feet and ankles are somehow okay.

Check out this blog entry from a guy that just did the Escape from Alcatrez Triathlon. The course looks grueling.

I recently bought a new bike, an Orbea Onix TDA. But this post isn't about the bike, it's about where I bought it.

On a Friday about a month ago I decided to go bike shopping. I went to five stores: Get a Grip, Mission Bay, Kozy, Cycle Smithy and Performance Bicycle.

Each store had a certain vibe to it. Get a Grip was all about getting the right bike with the right fit for you. They don't just sell you a bike, they put you through a 2- to 3-hour fitting process. Adam Kaplan gave me a great talk on materials and had three tubes of different material so that I could rap them against the floor and feel in my hand how they transmit (or in the case of carbon, don't!) vibrations. But he was hard to nail down on makes and models. He wanted to find my fit first and then find a bike to work with my fit and budget. This bugged me a bit as I didn't know what was in the market. But I did really appreciate his level of expertise and his willingness to just talk and explore the subject with me.

Mission Bay was next. He was all about materials, components and prices. This helped me understand the marketplace better and what differentiated the price points.

Kozy wanted to move their inventory. "Here's what's in stock, and LOOK, it fits you, let's get you on it." Cycle Smithy and Performance were better than Kozy, but still, they were more about moving their inventory than service, and they didn't know or weren't able to articulate the differences in price points.

Now that I better understood the market, I called Adam back at Get a Grip the next day. We spoke about models that they carried and I felt comfortable that after going through the fitting process, I would walk out a bike owner. So, I scheduled a fitting and mentioned that I was hoping to get a new bike in time for the Triathlon. They set me up with a loaner bike (a Cannondale Six13) merely on the promise that I'd go through with a fitting.

The fitting rig lets you adjust everything: all of the angles and all of the lengths. It's hooked up to a computer that draws graphs of your power output as you pedal. They did video analysis and showed me some tweaks. It was a very cool process.

When I picked up my bike 2 days later (normally they order a bike and then customize it in about ten days, but this was in stock and they rushed it for my race), it fit me like a glove. I sat into it and I wasn't stretched out, I wasn't compressed. My feet were positioned correctly to get the best power. And to boot, the bike was on end of season clearance, so I got a great price. Adam told me the fit was "within a centimeter" and to schedule an hour with him in a few weeks to get it "within a millimeter." Very cool.

I can't recommend this place highly enough. No where else in Chicago will you find such a level of expertise, professionalism and passion. If you're in the market for a new competition bike, start your shopping at Get a Grip. I'm proud to be a member of their community.

Check this out.

In March of 2004, I blogged about my achievement of running two miles continuously.

In July of 2006, I blogged about running 3.6 miles continuously.

In May of 2007, I blogged about running The Relay, 3 legs totaling 15 miles in 36 hours.

In August of 2008, I blogged about completing an Olympic Distance Triathlon.

What's next? Seems like all I have to do is set a goal and then make it happen.

I finished the Accenture Chicago Triathlon today! I wanted to write up some details of the event for my learning purposes. Some may find it interesting, others will not :)

Overall Stats

These numbers are not "official," but they reflect my stopwatch and the real-time SMS alerts they sent. Updated with official numbers and Olympic distances.

• Total Time: 2h59m51s (broke the 3 hour mark!)
• Swim (1.5km/0.93mi): 34m20s (includes the 1/4 mile trot into T1)
• T1: 4m55s (39m15s)
• Bike (40km/24.8mi): 1h19m55s (1h59m10s)
  • The bike is (more or less) four lengths from Monroe Harbor to Foster. The wind was out of the North at about 10mph.
  • Avg Speed: Overall, 18.6mph; L1, 17.1mph; L2, 21.9mph; L3, 17.8mph; L4, 20.9mph
• T2: 4m58s (2h04m08s)
• Run (10km/6.2mi): 55m41s (2h59m51s)
  • The course went South from Museum Campus and back North. I broke it into two lengths, out and back.
  • Avg Pace: Overall, 8:58/mi; L1, 8:38/mi; L2, 9:27/mi.

Logistics

• Prepared everything the previous afternoon (done before dinner). Mentally rehearsed transitions and how to pack them so that it would be brainless.
• Wake: 3:55am
• Out the door: 4:15
• Set up transitions per my brainless plan. Note that when I arrive to transition at race time, I work with what's on top of the stack first. Whatever's on top, pop it. T1:
  • Mesh bag hanging under bike
  • Bike
  • Helmet upside down. Inside the helmet:
  • Cycling Gloves
  • Gu & Alleve (wrapped in Saran and taped to Gu)
  • Shoes - socks in one shoe, sunglasses in the other
  • Hand towel on top, everything buckled into a tidy bundle
• T2
  • Running shoes
  • Extra socks and Gu in one shoe
  • Orange water bottle (to aid identification) and race number/belt in the other
• Transition closed at 5:45
• Eat: 6:00
  • Turkey sandwich
  • Fruit Smoothie
  • Coffee (prepared the night before and refrigerated)
  • Water (see "mistakes" below)
• Race start: 7:41.

Mistakes

• Over-hydration before the race. I drank 1.5L of water, plus coffee, plus one of those fruit smoothie drinks. I felt bloated and had to relax my swimming pace four times to relieve myself. That's hard to do when people are swimming on top of you. Another consequence of the bloating was that the wetsuit was tighter than usual, meaning it constricted breathing a bit. I also relieved myself at T2. Next time I'll drink less before and drink more on the bike. If I do it right, I should be able to do the whole race without a bathroom stop.
• Ate a little too late. I just sat with my stuff at transition to make sure it would be in a known state and drank water. I should have started eating 30 minutes sooner than I did, or eat a little less.
• What else could I improve about transitions? Not much. Dealing with all the gear was slow. Ride sockless? Do like the pros do and leave my shoes clipped into the pedals? Have Gu on the bike so I wouldn't have to stuff them in my pockets? Don't wear gloves?

Pain

• My right knee is pretty sore. It's the same inflammation from a tight IT band that I get all the time anyway—fixing this needs to a top goal next spring. I tried self-medicating with 3 Alleve along the way to prevent inflammation. I don't know if it helped.
• I got a blister on my left arch on the run. I want to blame the shoes, but since I only got it on one foot it must be a combination of my form and the shoes. A fellow Triathlete suggested double-layered socks. I think I'll try 2 pairs of thin socks next time I go for a long run. Or correct my form :) I wonder if fresh socks after the bike would have helped, as 2.5 hours in one pair left them pretty damp.

Impressions

• When the race kicked off and I was watching the first waves of people swimming, the water looking like it was boiling from all the splashing...I gasped...it hardly seemed real. "I can't believe I'm about to do this," I thought to myself.
• The swim was a blur. I was in such a daze surrounded by 150 other white-swim-capped people that I hardly realized what was going on. All of the sudden I was in the water, and all of the sudden I was exiting and people were helping us out and up onto the steps. I held my front crawl form really well—I usually switch to breast stroke to catch a breath every now and then, but this time I didn't let that be an option.
• T1 was flawless. I sat down in the grass to remove my wetsuit, which helped avoid the cramps I've experienced from time to time in my calves. Everything was in order and went according to my mental rehearsal.
• The bike was more engaging. I was on a brand new bike (got it Thursday—nothing like breaking it in on race day!). Between checking my cadence on the Garmin 405, shifting gears for the hills, avoiding potholes, avoiding debris (like dropped water bottles) and passing at 25mph on Lake Shore Drive, the bike finally woke me up.
• T2 was pretty good. My area was a mess—there were bikes I had never seen before on top of my stuff. But I was able to find someplace to stash my bike, identify my running shoes and change into them. I didn't change into the dry socks, though I might next time.
• It was weird setting everything up in the dark. I didn't recognize where the transition area actually was until I picked up my gear in the afternoon. I just followed the herd this morning...moo.
• The run was long and tiring. I tore out of T2 and when I checked my pace it was 7:30. I laughed and slowed down to a more comfortable 8:30. In the end, I really started running out of gas at the turnaround. Twice I walked while I took some water (at most 30 seconds of total walking, but still). The middle 4 miles of the run were lonely, as the spectators fell off.
• Running under the final underpass 1/4 mile from the finish line...people clapping and cheering and the echoes down there...I got goose bumps all over.
• I'm really proud of myself for doing this. I signed up over ten months ago! I have to say, one of the best decisions I've made in my life was making physical activities social. I have to especially give a nod to Mike Wood and Adam Wengert for the great camaraderie along the way and constant chatter about our training. I honestly don't know if I would have gone through with it by myself. The social spirit made it possible. Congratulations to you two, and to all of my fellow athletes!