It's been around for awhile. I just checked, my first post was just under 5 years ago! I'm going to keep blogging, hopefully a little more frequently. New address: http://triathleteguru.blogspot.com/ which has an RSS feed. The RSS feed will be feeding content to the front page of http://www.triathleteguru.com. This site will remain for the time being as an archive of my past posts...

On July 4th I travelled down to Jefferson City and ran the Firecracker Mile, a free one mile race put on by the Jefferson City Road Runners. I had read this was a "downhill mile" so I was thinking this was a great opportunity to try and go sub 5 for a mile. Turns out the downhill consisted of the first 1/4 which was sharply downhill to begin, had a 90 degree turn and leveled off for the final 100 yards of that first quarter, the rest of the mile was flat! I guess better than a track, or so I thought initially...

Having real no idea of what a fast miler looks like, I lined up for the start unsure if there was anyone else in the crowd of about 30 that would be trying to run sub 5 on the day (not that sub 5 for a mile is all that fast!) I had run about a mile for the warm up which probably wasn't really enough. The horn sounded and we were off.

Turns out, no one else was apparantly trying to break 5 as I quickly found myself in the lead. Though when I passed the first 1/4 in 1:06 I realized maybe I had gone out a little too fast! Went through the next quarter in 1:14 so at the halfway point I was at 2:20 and was thinking I just about had the sub 5 wraped up...

The next quarter things really began to hurt especially towards the end of it and when I saw my average pace dropping fast I began to worry. 1:18, it was still within reach, all I needed was a 1:21 and I would do it! For the whole of the last quarter I could see the finish clock ticking down. With a hundred yards to go I still thought I could do it, but the numbers slowly ticked by as my legs got tighter and tighter. Eventually I crossed the finish as the clock read 5:02!

Turns out I had won the race by 32 seconds, but I would have been happier in second place if someone had been there to push me a little, had helped me break 5! On the trip home I somehow ended up betting a couple of friends that I could break 5 within the following two weeks, not sure what I was thinking!!

Unless you've been living in a cave, you've probably heard something about the government mandated switch to all digital for over the air broadcasting. At first I didn't care that much about the switch until I saw two things, the incredible clarity of a digital channel versus a standard analog signal, and the new channel that became available (Columbia, MO area) via the new digital signal, Universal Sports channel which carries quite a few triathlons, bike races, and other sports I enjoy seeing.

I subscribe to basic cable through MediaCom, not a ton of channels, but I'm not willing to pay any more to get more channels that are just going to waste more of my time. But, if I'm going to take the time to watch TV, I want to see the best picture I can which means I really want to get HDTV! After deciding I was willing to pay a little more per month to get basic cable in HD, I found the following on MediaCom's website: "Mediacom customers who have an HDTV with a digital tuner can receive their local broadcasters* in HD at no additional charge." Hmm, no additional charge sounds great to me! However, after plugging the coaxial cable into my HDTV input on my TV and rescanning the channels, I still had no HD channels! Granted, I get a few channels occasionally by using amplified rabbit ears, but it's spotty at best and Universal seldom works.
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Well, it isn't really much of a PR, but I've got to go all the way back to 2004 to find my last documented PR in running! Back then I started out the year running a 3:06:39 marathon in Houston and then ran a 17:23 5k four months later, here we are more than 5 years out from that and still no new PRs!
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Well, the nerdy side of me won tonight and I found myself logged into Facebook waiting for the countdown until I could pick my personalized, unique link to my Facebook profile. What did I choose you might be wondering? This is Triathleteguru.com, so what else would I do?

http://www.facebook.com/triathleteguru

TriZou is this weekend, formerly known as Race for Sight. Last year I was the 5th overall age grouper, it was probably my best performance of 2008. By this time last year I had won four races, run 2 half marathons in just over 1:25, and run a 3:08 marathon, qualifying for the Boston Marathon. Comparing that to this year, I've also run two half marathons this year, both of them 8 minutes slower than my two last year! [Read More!]

At the beginning of the year I had put this race on my calendar and had mentioned it to several other racers including my friend Delbert Marriott. However, once I decided to go to Indonesia, I changed my mind about doing it for both financial and training reasons. So, while I had originally planned to do this race, the actual decision to enter wasn't made until 17 days out when Delbert talked me into it. [Read More!]