Photos and Dropping Out

The photos were finally posted from the Patriot last weekend. For those of you who are too lazy to read the race report, here is the condensed visual version:

Me, Michelle, and some random woman who is NOT Big Red. This is absolutely, positively not Red, who I promised I would not post pictures of. The woman on the left is SOME OTHER LADY.

Finally it was time for my wave to start. I don't know if I'm in this picture, but let's imagine that this girl in the sleeveless wetsuit and black goggles is me. I have a sleeveless wetsuit and black goggles!

How very me. I'm not even out of the water and I'm checking my watch. I can never remember unzipping my wetsuit... I guess I do it as soon as I stand up.

I love this picture. You can totally see on my face that I can't believe the time that my watch says. It turns out that the course was about 500m short. I'm glad that the photographer got a picture of my double take!

Alright, ONWARDS! (I totally look like shit in this picture! I look about 20 years older than I am.)

Here we go!

This isn't me, but I found it in the lost & found and I love this picture! She totally stopped to pick her wedgie!

'Aaaah! So much better!' Well it looks like she's having fun.

Yes! This is the part we've all been waiting for!

I remember almost crashing into this guy. God knows why he decided to mount on the inside rather than the outside where there was much more room... He never passed me. Nobody did.
Nice helmet visor, buddy. Is this a mountain bike race?

And off we go!

I love the following sequence because you can see me coming at you, and see my whole pedalstroke. If you flip through it quickly, you can almost see me pedaling and breathing hard.




Finishing the first loop. I'm averaging 22.6 mph right here and thrilled! Can you see how happy I am? Nope, because I ALWAYS have that face on when I'm riding.

Note: Camera side knee bent, ALWAYS! I swear that my legs go all the way around!

Coming at you again! Get the hell out of my way, the Speedy Train is coming through!
What I love about the picture above and below is that if you look at the position of my left shoulder (right in the picture), you can tell how hard I'm heaving down on the pedals.

And then I won! (I was SO HOT in that jacket. It was about 85º and HUMID.) What's hilarious about this picture is that I'm standing a full step above the other chick (who I beat by about 17 minutes), and we're STILL the same height.

So there you go. It's almost like you were there watching the whole thing.

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In other news, I've decided to drop out of the Longsjo Classic 4-day stage race in Fitchburg next weekend. I signed up for this race months ago when I was planning on spending all my free time doing road races. But then I met this great girl and started spending all my free weekends with her. I'm not saying that I'm not in good cycling shape, I'm just not in good ROAD RACING shape.

What I'm learning is that road racing requires a whole different style of fitness from ultradistance riding and triathlon riding. The balls-to-the-wall accelerations followed by recovery require a completely different kind of training which I just haven't done. I'm much better at holding 85% effort for hours at a time than I am going back and forth from 40 to 100 and back. It seems like every time it comes time to ride in a pack and do road race-style rides, I come up with an excuse not to do it. I've done a lot of thinking about it, and it's not that I'm not comfortable riding in packs. I'm comfortable riding shoulder-to-shoulder, wheel-to-wheel with others. It's that I don't LIKE it. I don't like letting someone else dictate my pace, and I don't like being lead through potholes and over branches. I don't like going slow when my legs want to go fast, and I definitely don't like when they make me go faster than I feel like going.

Plus, two stages of this race are a crit and a circuit race. I'm comfortable riding in groups, but not at full speed around turns. No-sir-ee! I'm not comfortable with that at all. Today I sat down and had a conversation with the King of the Bike Geeks, who knows everything (or so he thinks) about riding a bicycle. He said that this was a really technical course on really shitty pavement with horrible visibility coming out of the turns. "You would just have nothing to gain by having this be one of your first real road races," he told me. This is a guy who thinks that everyone should jump into every kind of cycling that there is out there.

The final reason for me to scrap the race is that I have my 24-hour race the following weekend, and all I want is to save my poor legs for that. I know, I know. This is a strange time to change my M.O. of never resting, ever (not true, by the way), but this race is really important to me. Way more important than a road race with a bunch of road riders with seat posts up their butts.

So I've made an executive decision. I'm going to do the time trial the first day, and then I'm going to drop out. There will be a time to get into road racing, but this race is not the time or the place I want to be doing it. Maybe I'll find more time for it this fall when I'm not trying to squeeze 200-mile rides into the same week as balls-to-the-wall group road rides. Maybe I'll focus on it next year. Maybe never. Who knows.

Point and taunt all you want. I know I'm making the right decision, even if it is based 70% on fear and 30% because I won't be instantly successful at it. Road riding just doesn't lend itself as well to "participation" as "you against the course" sports like triathlon. So if you see someone riding all by herself around the potholes of New England, go ahead and yell names at me out your window, honk at me, throw Gatorade bottles at my head (it's all been done before). I'm confident that I'm making the right decision.

Quick update

Hi.

I'm working on a post that's turning out to be a bit of a project. In fact, I'm not sure I ever want anyone to read it. I'm pretty sure it's going to turn out being bombastic and boring in addition to being several thousand words long and about things I'm not qualified to talk about. When it does come out, I'll be sure to bury it under a post that's nothing but a pretty picture that everyone can leave courtesy comments on without having to read anything.

In the meantime, there's not much to report from over here on the couch. My foot's been feeling fine all week, but I fucked up my eye. Don't ever get shampoo in your goggles. It hurts. Now my eye is all red and jizzy.

Photos are out from the marathon, but they've found a very clever way to keep you from stealing the photos: you can only see sections of the photos in high resolution at one time. So what was the first thing I looked at? I didn't check my facial expression, or the background. I checked all the pictures to see if my legs looked fat, of course! Tell the truth, do you really look at anything else in your race photos?

As usual, my feet didn't leave the ground for 26.2 miles. But for once I was pleased with my photos. I don't look like I have cottage cheese thighs. In fact, whether it's a trick of the light, the shirt I had tied around my waist, or some other miracle my thighs do not look like they get fatter above the knee!!! I haven't had a picture like that since I weighed 85 lb. in high school!


Look!!! Muscles!!!


But then, there's always the one fat photo. Guess which one I'm fixating on??? (Cue wha, wha, wha trumpet sound). The lesson? Never, ever bend your knees while running. Because when your knees are bent they look fat, just like on the bike.


Angry would also like you to marvel at HIS sexy legs, while we're looking at marathon photos under a microscope. Look at all those muscles! He's single, ladies! Angryrunner@gmail.com.

It has been suggested (by Angry, based on my photos from other races) that I overstride when I run. In other words, my front foot is landing in front of me and not directly underneath me, braking my momentum, slowing me down, and increasing the risk of injury. What do you guys think (photos from somewhere between miles 14 and 19)? Suggestions welcome.

The last thing that I noticed is that my visor did a FABULOUS job of hiding my face, which is definitely NOT my best feature in the late stages of a marathon. I will have to remember this when I either become rich and famous and need to flee the papa razzi, or when I'm wanted by the law and on the lamb. (PS Thanks to Angry for the badass shirt!!!)

(You can poke around the photos if you want by clicking here, selecting the ING Greater Hartford Marathon, and searching bib number 1061).

In other news, I think that the following cartoons are hilarious! Click them to enlarge. For more, click here.





Alright, that's all folks. Hopefully I'll have more interesting stuff to talk about soon.

1000 words

The pictures are out from last weekend, and for once they're a little different. The swim photo came out the same as usual: I look a little less buff and maybe like I just ate a grape popsicle, but at least I remembered to shave my armpits:


For once the bike pictures turned out alright! I think the aero bars make a huge difference in the coolness factor. Plus, they put the photographers at corners, so I look like a bona fide badass cornering. I didn't realize I leaned that much when I turned. I was still pedaling in THIS picture, so imagine how cool I'd look on a REAL turn!Sorry folks, I just don't smile at the cameras. My face in the pictures is exactly like my face looks during the rest of the race. I didn't realize till I was weeding through other people's race photos today how many people actually DO smile at the camera. They almost all look like real fools.

Then I had to run. You can almost see on my face how much I am fearing running the next 13 miles. What's going through my head? Running is stupid. Running is stupid. Running is stupid. Running is stupid. Running is stupid. Running is stupid...

And then the finishing photo. My arms look like I'm going fast. The picture almost cuts off low enough so that you might imagine that I'm actually picking up my feet, but then...
(cue stabbing theme from psycho)

...I look like I have...
...AN ENORMOUS GUT!

In other news, I finally got around to pirating some of the pictures from other races recently. There were some pretty great pictures from the Charles River swim, but for some reason they don't seem to be on the web site anymore. The good news? I'M the picture they chose to represent the finish line! Look how hard it was raining! I had to walk back to the subway in that!

And then there was the Cranmore Hill Climb. I was hoping for some pictures of how it was POURING, or the fog, or the mud, but most of the pictures were just from around the finish line. But you finally get a picture of Grandpa (although I'm starting to suspect there are actually 2 grandpas that look alike):

And now my favorite picture ever taken of me: On this one I'm coming down from the first loop, I'm soaked to the skin, I'm running down a trail that's muddy and wet and about a 25% grade, I'm wondering which will happen first: I'll fall down, or my pants will fall down, and then this putz appears with a camera. THIS is the face I made when I saw him:

Photo Mojo... NOT

I'm sure it's happened to you. You finish the race of your life. You were a precision machine of pure, cut muscle. You swam with a perfect form, you were tucked low in your aero bars, and you ran like the wind, lifting your knees high. You can't wait to get those photos, so you'll finally have a shot to blow up and put on your mantle above all those finisher's metals. Finally, after checking 15 times a day, on the Wednesday after the race, the pictures are finally posted. You click eagerly and find... The photographer caught you with your elbow in front of your face as you tried to get your wetsuit off, then sitting up straight on your bike with your helmet perched atop your head like a giant castle and your hand in what looks like your ass on the bike, and your feet conspicuously glued to the ground as you shuffle along in the run. And worst of all, you look FAT. And then they have the nerve to ask for $80 for a print. Where do these photographers get off? I mean, doesn't their "photographic eye" tell them that what they have in front of them is total crap? Don't try to sell me that shit!

I've had some particularly heinous race photos over the course of my athletic career. And because I can't help but humiliate myself to strangers on the internet, I've decided to share these abominations with you in a public service announcement to race photographers everywhere:

Do NOT:

Do NOT take our pictures when we are an embarrassing shade of red, purple, or blue. We would rather not know we look like that in public, and certainly will not be showing this picture to our friends.

DO NOT take our picture in a position that is going to make us look fat.

DO NOT take our picture when we are giving threattening or loathing looks at the camera.

DO NOT take our picture when we are being passed by someone who is walking.

Mile 25.7 is NOT a moment anyone wants to relive. Save your film for the finish line.

DO NOT take our picture if we are having some kind of hair emergency.

DO NOT take our picture if we look like we have already died and are already going through the height of rigor mortis.


DO NOT take our picture if we are licking diluted snot off our faces in the 5 minutes after the swim.

DO NOT take our picture from an angle where we will come out in shadow. Don't they teach that in Photography 101? DO NOT bother to post these photos on the web site.

DO NOT stand so far away from the finish line that not even our own mothers would recognize us in the shot.

And, of course there are some things that you, as an athlete, can do to prevent bad photo mojo.

The Dos and Don'ts of race photos

Should you choose to wear something on your head to hold your hair back, be sure it is actually holding back your hair, and not knocking down your sunglasses. Do NOT let your accessories compete.

Do NOT try to look cool by drawing attention to your attire. It will not look cool. It will inevitably look like you're wearing a shirt that says, "I'm with stupid", or someone just yelled out, "Who's a tool?" and you're yelling, "I'm a tool!"

DO wear sunscreen.

Should you sign up for a race, DO make sure your bottom half is supportive of your goals. You do not want to get half way there and have your posterior turn around and go the other way without you.

If you see a photographer up ahead, the pictures will be way cooler if you stealthy try to make a muscle rather than smiling at the camera. DO make a muscle, DON'T smile. People who smile at the camera look like tools.

Do NOT wear gigantic oversized t-shirts unless you are planning on peeing your pants during the race. It's not a sexy look.

Buy a helmit smaller than the state of Rhode Island.

And for god's sake, keep your damn tongue in your mouth.

What I really want to know is, where all the lost photos go. You're out there and you see a photographer up ahead. You make sure there's no one around you, you put on your best runner's form and game face, you flex the muscles on that side of your body so you look ripped. You take note of what landmarks are behind you so you can find this photo more easily later. You see the photographer point at you, but the photo never materializes. What happened to all those photos? I've even yelled, "Hey, take my picture!" and the picture has gone to the great lost and found in the sky. And then I get stuck with THIS crap. What the heck?!