From what I can recall, it all started at TriJesus on June 12th of 2004. I had driven down the day before and after my customary carbo loading at Fazoli’s I had found a secluded parking lot to park the van in and get some sleep. I really wanted to defend my title from the previous year but the combination of summer heat and 1970’s fabric couch was keeping me awake.

After a fitful night’s sleep, I ended up taking second place by a scant 35 seconds. I’ll never know if the lack of sleep really affected me, but I was disappointed with the lack of comfort in the van. I really began to doubt if my logic of using it instead of renting a motel room was sound.

Following the race I talked with the third place finisher John Conners who had a Cervelo P3. He had ridden the fastest bike split beating me by a full mile per hour. As he talked about his bike, how stiff and responsive it was, I was intrigued. With the aerodynamic frame and rear wheel cutout, it did look downright fast.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m an impulsive shopper. However, with the Cervelo P3 running about $3,500 (equipped with Dura-Ace), I didn’t have enough money to be that impulsive. I knew I wanted one, I just didn’t know how I was going to get one. Eventually I resigned myself to the next best thing, a professional fitting on my current bike.

After making some inquiries and doing some searching, I learned one of the best fitting sessions could be found at Maplewood Cyclery in St. Louis MO. It would be expensive, but I decided $250 was lots cheaper than a P3.

At some point during the fitting session, I told the guy that was fitting me about my classic VW van. He proceeded to tell me that a guy who was trying to buy Maplewood Cyclery collected VW vans. A light clicked on in my head…

Several months later, I was racing at the QuaterMax and HalfMax triathlons in Innsbrook MO. I had driven down in “the van” and was surprised to see a very similar van parked in the center of the expo area. Turns out it was Stewart Munson from Maplewood Cyclery. They were there selling merchandise and servicing bikes. The van was their lodging for the weekend.

After meeting Stewart, I presented him with my idea: We trade straight up, a new Cervelo P3 for my VW van. I figured as the future owner and current employee of a bike shop, he could get the P3 for cost. So he would be getting a deal, the van for less than 3k, yet I would be getting a deal as well. He seemed to agree…

After taking the van for a test ride, he said he just needed to run the idea by his wife. The Maplewood guys invited me to pull the van up next to theirs so I did and spent one last night in the van camped out at the race site expo.

I slept well that night. The night was cool and I was worn out from the Quatermax triathlon I had completed that day. That last night in the van was what I had expected all along when I had bought it. But I hadn’t thought of the erratic Missouri weather that can bring sticky humid nights without consideration for a poor triathlete trying to get a good night sleep. But that final night was good and I woke refreshed and knocked 30 minutes off my ½ Iron distance PR.

A week later I was driving the van down to Maplewood Cyclery. I had signed up for the Rec Plex triathlon; this was my third year competing in this quality race that had started when I did, three years back. It was a strange sensation to be heading to St. Louis for a triathlon, yet leaving with no bike. I also wasn’t 100% certain how I would get back. So I traveled light just in case I needed to bike back, I could always split the trip with a motel stay along the way.

The trade went well and Stewart gave me a ride to the metro station where I caught a train to my parent’s house in Belleville. The following morning they took me to St Peters where I actually rode the bike for the first time that afternoon in a triathlon. I caught a ride home with some friends.

I still love that van. At times I question the wisdom of my decision. However, it was a classic vehicle that deserved to be pampered. I should also mention it didn’t fit in my garage. I remember driving up to my new house in it and pulling slowly up to the garage realizing it wasn’t going to fit, so it sat out on the street in the elements. It was also a gas hog getting around 18mpg on the highway. Finally, it was a distraction from my athletic pursuits. While I had planned on it being my “triathlonmobile”, it ended up being a time and money drain.

The other day I met my neighbor for the first time. She told me how excited her kids used to get when they saw me drive by in the van. It kind of made me sad… They probably wouldn’t get as excited if I got my P3 out with my tri spoke and disc wheel, threw on my aero helmet and some spandex, and then raced around the block a few times… Oh well, I like my P3, I’ll be faster on it this year that last, and in a few years from now I just might have to buy another van!

While I’m still keeping my fingers crossed, I think I might have made it through the strep throat battle. I’ve managed to make both the Tuesday/Thursday 5:30am runs, even this morning when the temperature was a chilly 12 degrees. I’ve kept it short both times, around 5 miles and my legs have definitely felt the effects of my long layoff. Both mornings I’ve followed up the run with a brief (1,000 and 1,500 yd) swim. I can’t say there are no lingering effects of the strep, my throat still feels sore occasionally, but my immune system seems to be holding up and preventing another bout of fever and chills.

I’m looking at updating the site, changing things around a little; we’ll see how that progresses over the next few weeks…

I used to get pretty nervous before a half marathon; the distance always seemed fairly substantial. I guess after finishing an Ironman a mere 13.1 miles seems inconsequential. It is only fitting that my lack of respect for this distance resulted in one of my worst performances in recent memory.With the race starting at 2:30 in the afternoon, I had figured I needed to leave by 9am in order to make the trip to Conway Missouri to pick up my friend Brandon and then to Springfield for the run. As usual, I didn’t get on the road when I wanted and didn’t end up leaving Kirksville until 10. This meant arriving at the race site only 20 minutes before the start and after waiting in line to register I had only about 5 minutes to use the restroom and jog to the starting line.

Once at the starting line I talked to the eventual half marathon winner and asked him what kind of time he was shooting for. He told me around 1:16:00. He asked me my goal time and I said I was hoping for 1:20:00. Yeah, right…

I was still optimistic that I might run a PR. My previous best half marathon was the 2003 Drake Relays half marathon which I ran in 1:24:45. I figured this course was flat and I should be in better shape than I was back in 2003. What I didn’t consider was that the Drake Relays was in late April when I would have been prepping for the start of the triathlon season, not during Christmas at a time when I had been doing more drinking and eating than serious training.

The horn sounded and we were off! There were about 300 runners starting together, but there were 4 different races starting concurrently (5k, 10k, half marathon, and marathon). The primary course was a 5k course; those of us running farther than a 5k were doing multiple laps, 4 laps for the half marathoners. In addition, the half marathon runners were running .37 miles out and around a cone then back to the starting line and around another cone before we started our 4 laps.

The run to the cone went relatively quickly and only one person rounded it before I did, the eventual winner who was going for a 1:16:00 time. Back to the start and I was still in second though I was beginning to realize it was going to be a tougher run than I had thought going in. About a half mile later I got passed by a runner. A little while later a second runner passed me. Eventually by the end of the first loop, I was passed by two more runners which put me in 6th place.

The course was a loop with several out and back stretches so there were plenty of chances to see people who might be closing in on you. There were several runners I kept on seeing that I knew were in the half marathon that I thought looked stronger than I did and I figured I would hear them coming up behind me at any time. However, after the first 5k loop, no other runners would end up passing me. This is surprising especially since after the first loop I began thinking how nice it would be to just be doing the 10k. Then following the second loop I began to seriously consider quitting until I decided that even though I wasn’t doing well, at worst I was getting in a good training run.

As it turns out I was the 5th person to finish so I wasn’t in 6th like I had thought. However, this race was “age graded” which means that while I was the 5th person across the line, in the “official” results I finished 19th. Regardless, I was not happy with my time of 1:30:32.

Probably the most frustrating aspect of this race was the inability to keep mile splits on my watch. What I ended up doing was recording my time for each time I crossed the finish/start line.

3.84 miles – 24:51 (6:28 pace)
3.1 miles – 21:28 (6:55 pace)
3.1 miles – 21:56 (7:04 pace)
3.1 miles – 22.29 (7:15 pace)

Now for a little rant: I’m not at all a fan of “age graded” races. As a highly competitive person, a huge motivator for me during a run is the competition. Pit me against an equally fit individual and unless they are as competitive as I am, I will beat them because I’m driven to win. However, in a WAVA age graded race, there is no way of knowing how much time you have to put into someone in order to “beat” them. I would have had to finish 11 minutes ahead of any 50 year olds to beat them and 9 minutes ahead of any 40 year olds to beat them. Even the eventual winner, had I been able to run shoulder to shoulder with him for the whole race, I would have lost to him as he had 55 seconds taken off his time of 1:15:48. So while the WAVA age graded results are cool to encourage runners who might be older and struggle to lower their times, to base race results on them is stupid. If you are too old to compete for the overall, that’s what age groups are for.

Here is a link to the results: http://omrr.tripod.com/results/2004/ranchhalf04.htm

Just in time for the Holidays I’ve got my projector up and running. Now if only I could get myself outside and running! When will this cold weather end??

It will be some time before the complete “home theater” is done, that will involve finishing the basement, but the projector is running great. Click on “read more” to see more pictures of the video projector…

The projector all setup in the living room…

Watching “The Two Towers”…

This gives a perspective on the size of the projected image. Currently I’m limited by the size of the screen…

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a guru yet. I’m not a guru when it comes to triathlons, and I’m definitely not a guru when it comes to electronics! So when I decided to build a video projector, I wasn’t 100% certain it was possible, especially not by me. Nevertheless I jumped headlong into the project…

I had entertained the idea of a DIY big screen tv a while back and had researched the idea on the internet, only to decide that most of the “plans” available online were bogus. The majority of the plans suggested that with the use of a tv, a big box, and a fresnel you could project the tv image to a wall. The obvious (to me at least) missing piece of the puzzle was “light”, how will the tv image be bright enough to show up on the wall? So I scraped the idea, at least for the time being…

After a year or so, a co-worker and friend of mine, Walt Howd came across an article and video on Tom’s Hardware titled “Supersize Your TV for $300: Build Your Own XGA Projector!”. In short, the approach in this article was to take a 15″ lcd monitor and remove the lcd from the casing and remove the backlight after which you set it on an overhead projector. I knew this was legitimate, not only since it was on Tom’s Hardware, but because I had seen something similar done before with an lcd panel that was manufactured explicitly for this purpose. However, I wasn’t real impressed with this approach. Then Walt came across a much better method which is documented at Lumenlab. This new approach involves building a “box” that the stripped lcd goes in along with several fresnels, a projector lens, and a 400w metal hallide bulb. So that’s the idea in a nutshell and since a picture is worth a 1000 words…

The first order of business is to get all the necessary parts. Ebay is a great source. Also, having lots of miscelaneous junk laying around never hurts…

Stripping the LCD was the scariest part, any mistake could ruin the LCD

Once started, space quickly became an issue and I found my work space needed to expand…

I used scrap/salvaged wood to build my box. The dimensions are approximately 15″ wide, 11″ tall, and about 30″ long.

The interior of the box goes something like this: Reflector (mixing bowl), MH 400W bulb, Lexan heat shield, fresnel, lcd, fresnel, lcd brains, projector lens/focus box.

The focus box allows the lens to move for focusing…

…just about done with the focus box.

Firing up the bulb for the first time. My bulb and ballast hasn’t arrived yet, the testing I’ve done has been with Walt’s bulb and ballast…

For the intial testing I used a colored transparency…

Later on I added the LCD, it was a relief to see it still working following the stripping of the LCD…

This final image I hesitated to post as I didn’t set the camera on a tripod and it turned out really blurry. Trust me though, the image looked great in person!