A wonderful weekend in Kansas

Just kidding, it was pretty miserable.

I drove with some friends to Lawrence KS for the 5150 last Sunday.  Everything seemed to be going well; I had some chocolate cheerios and Veronica (girl I rode with) had made some freakin awesome chocolate chip banana bread.   Well then about an hour out of Lawrence we got caught in a huge wreck on I70 that backed up traffic in both directions--and when we finally got through that...the car broke down...literally right next to the wreck.  So here we are on the side of the road on Friday evening.  Any tow trucks still on duty are picking up the pieces of this big ass car wreck next to us, not to mention the fact that their '3 hour estimate' doesnt take into account the fact that traffic is backed up each way.

After nearly sweating to death on the side of the road, running out of water, and contemplating drinking my own urine (or worse, that can of coconut water), I was rescued by Michelle and Jeanni who were driving to the race too and were behind us.  Will and Veronica voted me off the island so I got the free ride to Lawrence...but Will and V got the last laugh... we got stuck in more traffic (another accident) and they got to a hotel in Tulsa (where the car got fixed) long before we got in.

Naturally it was graduation weekend in Lawrence (University of Kansas) so every hotel was booked to the max and we were in the circa 1946 Rodeway Inn.  I had to switch rooms twice (because in one the carpet was soaked and the second the tv didnt work); I was worried about the roof collapsing, but when I saw they had a Disney channel I was quickly distracted by Madagascar3 which is flippin incredible! btw.

Ok, so anyway, got some sleep and biked all over town with friend and fellow pro Jeanni and met up with the others for some pre-race swimming in the lake.  (Unfortunately, not nude).

Chilled out and watched Shark Tale on that disney channel (also awesome) and my roommates finally made it with a fixed car!

They were tired so we went to pick up some pizza (to keep it easy) and whoda thought, there was Rudy's pizza shop!  Unfortunately the pizza wasnt that good but I still packed down a whole large one.

So race day basically sucked.  It was like a Kansas hurricane/tornado/disaster.  Lightning was forking out of the sky and it was raining sideways and freezing cold. The race was delayed 30minutes and the swim was cancelled (which ok this was about the most annoying thing that cold have happened; I mean I have been working on my swim all winter and I just wanted to see if I could make the front pack. Denied.)  The bike was a TT start and I got a flat like a minute before we were supposed to start.  The bike support guys had peaced out about 30min before because of the weather and I was about ready to just accept the weekend as a total failure, but friend Michelle had just decided to not start and she loaned me her wheel just in the nick of time!  Back in business I went off.  There were only 15second gaps between the pros (way too small)...blah blah blah...groups formed pretty quickly, but I was towards the front and was able to hold off the main group of guys until the run (hilly tough course btw).  I ran fine (it got hot and sunny towards the end actually) and finished 4th.  Meh, cant complain; the race was 'fine' but nothing special.  Here is the guys podium.  Pretty nice day by the end, right?

After that I ate a loaf of bread and a 16oz container of cottage cheese (the rudy special) and we drove back to Boulder without the car breaking down (thank you baby jesus).

I am really excited to finally swim in a race!  Maybe this weekend at 5150 New Orleans?  Didnt have too wait long...

Rudy

Warm weather is "just around the corner"

Flatirons Athletic Club, the year-round outdoor pool that I swim at, there is this stupid sign that says "Warm weather is just around the corner," but it has literally snowed 14 inches every Tuesday for the last month.  Tomorrow is Tuesday and it is the first time since March that there isnt a forecast of snow.  I'm not holding my breath though.

To make things worse, the pool heater has been "breaking" like 2x a week for the last month.  I say "breaking" because after about 2 weeks of this nonsense (showing up to the pool almost every other day and hearing that the water is 72) makes me think that the heater didnt just "break" again, in fact it has just been straight up "broken" for about the last 6 weeks and somebody keeps putting band aids on the heater.

The reason I am getting tired of this (apart from having to swim in my wetsuit 2-3times per week) is that there is this awful sign on the way out to the pool that says "warm weather is just around the corner."  If they had put it up last week that would be one thing, but its been there since February and I am about ready to burn it down.

I suppose one thing I cant complain about is that the snow melts in about 2 days and the weekends have been relatively beautiful.  Nice enough even to ride out through Estes Park CO with some friends each of the last two weekends.

My training has been going well, and now that summer is upon us, its only going to get better!  I took my environmental law final last Monday (it was nuts; I was at such an advantage having only to take one law class as compared to my law classmates; there is just so much information to know and read) but anyway, thats over, so I can subtract 6+ hrs a week of reading from my schedule. ALSO, I passed my comprehensive exam (whew) about 2 weeks ago; its a major milestone in the PhD which most students complete about 6months to a year before defending their PhD.  Now that exam was brutal.  Its a 30minute presentation on research to date (which went really well) but then 90 minutes of questions where you just get grilled by the committee.  Its something of a rite of passage and although I thought I was well-prepared, they sure made it tough.  I dont ever need to do that again.

So, now that those things are over, I am cruising into the summer.  All the undergrads are finishing finals and moving out; soon Boulder will be a nice quite town.  My next race is in 2x weeks; the KC5150 followed by the New Orleans 5150 and Dallas.  Its gonna get real, real soon.

In the mean time, I got some new music to keep me occupied.  Cant wait to start riding the dirt roads up in the mountains again!  I KNOW spring has to be "just around the corner."  I cant wait for the trees and plants to start blooming.

Rudy

Collegiate Nationals 2013 and stuffaluffagus

Last weekend was collegiate nats, and since it was so close--Tempe AZ--and my parents and brother were going to be there, I decided to fly down for the weekend and do a small race on Sunday just for fun.  It was the first time in my triathlon career not racing Nats which seems kinda sad, but I knew it was time to move on this year and I am glad I did.  So, in all honesty, I was perfectly content to just watch this year.

And holy smokes was it exciting! Here is the swim taking off in Tempe Town Lake:

I was cheering my head off for the CU guys.  It was exciting to watch them dominate but it was exceptionally impressive to watch Ben Kanute just have his way with the field after winning the draft legal race the day before. 

Here is Davide coming out of the water wearing my old Xterra wetsuit!  It got to experience one more nationals.  Davide went on to crush it for about 7th overall.

 Here is my boy Chris Braden aka Chris B Real coming through on the bike course:

And here is my Brother (actually my brother, who races for UVA) Augie after the finish.

AND in the girls race, new CU student and a friend of mine Michelle Mehnert ran away with the womens title by over a minute!  She was untouchable.  Also, CU ended up winning the overall team title for the 4th straight year.

Besides that my race was fun; not much to report after the excitement from Saturday.

While I was in Phoenix, my parents and I went and toured Frank Loyd Wright's winter home at Taliesin West.  It was a pretty cool house--very modern--I think it seems less impressive on the surface because it was built in a style that is popular today.  Whats amazing is that he did it 80 years ago essentially ushering in the current era of contemporary architecture. (We werent allowed to take pictures of the inside)

Great to see the family, watch my brother race, and my friends from CU dominate.  I flew home to boulder just in time for a massive snowstorm--about the 4th one this month.  We are due for more tomorrow too!  When will it end. (Roommate Ginna scraping off her car)

My car.  Buried.  I think the same day it was like 85 back home in Virginia.

Oh yeah it was a busy week too.  Among other adventures I got to see Band of Horses in concert at the Boulder Theater with Ginna.  Amazing concert. I had an incredible vantage point too.  Got some sweet pictures. It was a good cultural experience too--it always seems like all these weird people go to concerts.

I also just went to Provo last week for a catalysis conference at BYU (yes more traveling).  As expected lots of crappy food, but I did win first place for the student presenters and won $200!  I texted my brother that I was in Provo and that he would "dig it here" and the following conversation ensued.  Anyone know the movie reference??  This is why I love my brother!

This week is gonna be nutso.  I have my comprehensive exam on Thursday and then next Monday my environmental law final.  If I am still alive, maybe spring will get its act together and stop dropping snow all over the place. 

Rudy

A bike ride with my mom

My mom wasn's actually on this bike ride, but she could have been.  Last weekend was my first triathlon of the year and my first ever draft legal triathlon.  And basically it lived up to my expectations.

The race was Saturday so I packed up and headed out Thursday evening after school--as you can see here at the bus stop, there is still snow in Boulder.  (We are supposed to get more this weekend too)

I took this travel opportunity to finally get around to reading Boomerang by Michael Lewis.  My best friend Mike gave me this book for Christmas and I have been so busy reading law that I haven't had the time yet to read it! 

I spent the night at a crappy hotel to wait for our Off The Front Multisport team director and baller extraordinaire Stephen Wright to fly in Friday Morning.  He rented a pimped out minivan and we hit the road for Sarasota (which is about an hour south of Tampa).  Here is a picture of Tampa Bay!

The race itself was at a new sports park--Nathan Benderson Park.   No crocodiles, that I saw, thank god.  The format lived up to its annoying promises. I got pummeled on the first lap of the swim, lost my goggles and noticed Monday I had a black eye.  Everyone goes out really hard and I did too but I guess not hard enough.  I almost drowned like 4 times and had to stop to put my goggles back on.  The second lap I finally got some open water and bridged up to the back end of the first group coming out of the water with them and thinking I was in good shape....

Well yeah then I totally blew it when I ran into the back of some dude who decided to try at his first flying mount right in front of me, and fail.  Being at the back of the first group already, that incident was the race.  Within a lap of the 8 lap bike the first group had already put 25seconds on the 4 of us that missed the group.  It was sad to watch them ride away.  I tried to ride tempo but my groupmates weren't staying with me which was sad too--I felt like I was riding with my mom.  By T2 the second group had caught us and the first group had 2min on us.

Here I am on the run:

Overall, it was just kinda depressing to have lost so much time on the bike when it is usually the part of the race that I put time on people.  Such is life.  I ended up finishing 18th and learning that draft legal racing is all about timing and making the front pack on the bike.  Side note: I also learned more tri-related gossip than probably any other time in my life.  Who is sleeping with who, juicy stuff etc.

Here are my teammates Stephen (reading his iPhone like a 'hero') and Jess reading my blog (I documented because she is the first person besides my mom to read it).  It was super fun spending the weekend with these two and I hope this season to do more races with my teammates from OTFM.

I was able to get a direct flight in and out of Tampa on Frontier--extra good since bikes are free with the classic fare.  BUT, I also got to catch up on some Oscar winning movies.  Argo on the way there, Lincoln and Life of Pi on the way back (on my little dinky TV).  Probably one of the most productive aspects of the trip...

Anyway, it was good to break up the training and burn out my legs a bit.  I suppose I will have to do another draft legal race sometime... until then,

Rudy

My unwitting entrance to draft legal racing.

Thats right folks.  My first race of the year is this weekend!  Saturday at 12 noon in Sarasota FL--draft legal olympic distance.  At the least it should yield an interesting blog post for next week!

Side-note, my law class is crushing me so I am eating this right now.

With the start of the season I have been putting together a race schedule...well piecing a race schedule around the rest of my schedule.  This will be my second year as a pro and again I decided that it would be good to spend at least one more year focusing on the olympic distance in an attempt to get fast--especially at running.  Sometimes I wonder if it is possible to get as fast as the top guys, especially in running.  I mean my swimming has improved a TON this winter and my biking has never really been an issue but how do you get your body to run super fast?  I've always followed the precedent of the kenyans, run a lot, run fast, run fast a lot, and when you arent supposed to run, dont.  Of course I think they have a physiological advantage on me since my legs are as thick as their chests.  Who knows, each year I keep getting slightly faster which is encouraging but I still have a ways to go to compete with those top guys. 

As I mentioned, my first race this weekend in Sarasota Florida as a draft legal race.  I have never done a draft legal race (so that will be interesting) but for those of you unfamiliar, the format of this race is that you are allowed to draft on the bike portion.  Therefore the tactics of the race change dramatically since large groups typically come off the bike together.  Basically you can lose on the swim and the bike but you can only really win the race on the run.  These races almost always come down to who can run the fastest 10k at the end.  Sure I am a bit concerned about that, but honestly this being my first draft legal race I will probably do something totally dumb like drop by shoes or crash my bike.  So I figure I should just focus on finishing without any major screw ups.

This also kicks off the first travel of my jam packed year...I just added it all up and I will be traveling a LOT this year:

14 different cities for triathlons

3 different cities for chemical engineering conferences

2 more different cities for weddings

Thats 19 different cities in one year.  And that only takes me to the first week of November.  I assume I will be going somewhere for the holidays (or else my parents get sad) so that would be some more travel there on the end.  Yikes.  I am going to get cancer from all the gamma rays.

In other news, winter finally hit Boulder.  We have had snow like 2x a week recently.  About time we got some precipitation in this place.  Its real pretty actually.  And weird because I kind of like it.

Thats all for now.  

Rudy

February. Is it over yet?

Hello peoples.  Two weeks since my last post.  Whew time flies.  I dont even have anything to write about, but I have to make an effort to write about something otherwise it will be 2 months.  

Winter finally started dropping some snow--its pretty cool to be swimming outside in a blizzard!  I should add that to the list of perks of swimming at FAC that I outlined in my last post.  Also, I have ridden my bike to school every single day since I have lived in colorado = 2.5 years.  Rain, snow, ice, nothing can stop me.  One time I rode through about 14 inches of snow!  This is a shot from this week on the way home.  No big deal really.  It gets a little slick.

I have kept the swimming up and recently have been collecting swim caps.  As I mentioned in the last post about swimming, the coaches include Dave Scott and Simon Lessing, and each of them run their own coaching business which they promote through swim caps.  Haha.  I was getting a lot of crap for my old cap which is orange and see through (sorry Joanna), so Simon gave me a cap to wear (Boulder Coaching).  Well, that cap was not kosher at Dave's practices, so he gave me one too.  Now I have to make sure I wear the right cap on the right day!

Oh yeah I dont think I wrote about this yet, but one of my roommates Ginna is in school for acupuncture and other Chinese medicine rituals.  She is like a witch doctor (Sorry Ginna, I am a chemical engineer, I cant handle non-science (though I certainly do believe in the placebo effect...)).  She works on Rob and Nate sometimes (my other roommates) but I dont let her touch me with any of them needles.  Why?  Here is a perfect example.  I come home from school one day and she is lighting her foot on fire.  Literally.  With some herb that smelled a lot like marijuana.  She is a runner (which is why I still love her (plus she is super nice)) but I think she was trying to remedy a case of plantar fasciitis? I dunno if it worked, but it blew my mind.

Besides that, I also failed to mention in my last post the awesome law classes I have been taking.  So, just to be clear, I am still doing a PhD in Chemical Engineering but have finished all the coursework required for that degree--more than a year ago--so now I just have an undefined amount of research in my future.  So, just for fun, I have been taking energy policy classes in other departments, and last fall, I took Energy Law in the Law School.  It was mind blowing.  Of all the different departments I have now taken classes (both in undergrad and now in grad school) including engineering (duh), the business school, environmental science, environmental policy and law, law is by far my favorite, probably because it is also the most erudite.

And, my professor has a PhD in science as well as a J.D. so I think he has a soft spot in his heart for scientists.  Anyway, he convinced me to take Environmental Law with him this spring.  I am such a sucker for learning; I signed up.  Law school is sooooo cool!

Maybe it is just because I have a flipping amazing professor, but I have learned more in these two classes than in anything else I have ever taken, I think.  Well, I probably learned a whole heck of a lot in graduate thermo but not much of that applies to everyday life...plus it is still kinda fuzzy what exactly we did learn...it was all abstract stuff like partial derivatives of thermodynamic properties which honestly make no real physical sense anyway even though pretentious enginerds pretend that they do; dont let them fool you.  (Rule of thumb: just because someone's area of expertise makes no sense to anyone does not mean they deserve deference.)  In contrast, law is just rational thought applied to everyday circumstances.  Its like, "Joe Schmoe is angry because his land is now covered in toxic chemicals from the chemical factory that got built next door."  Its like yeah I get it Joe, I would be mad too.  Figuring out the solution in terms of the law can be complicated (and funky) but the circumstances of the case are pretty easy to understand.  

Anyway, reading for the class is taking all my spare time, but I am also ramping up the piano playing as of late.  I recently learned Requiem for a Dream, the theme song from Peanuts, Moonlight Sonata, and Dawn (theme song from Pride and Prejudice haah).  I am working on Claire de Lune, but its pretty tough, not gonna lie.  I have a tendency (OCD/perfectionism/possibly both) where I cant stand learning the watered down version of piano music because I feel like I would be offending the original composer, but in the case of Claire de Lune, I really dont know how it is physically possible to even hit all those keys with only 2x hands.  Claude DeBussy must have had like 4 hands at least.  When it feels too daunting, I just look up and Mohammad Ali tells me that impossible is nothing (I have had that poster since high school).

Also, I am having some serious problems right now because my electric keyboard has only 76 keys (though it was only $50 on craigslist).  Naturally, all of these pieces I am learning pretty much require the full 88.  A real piano is kinda out of the question at this point, but one day I will have one... mark my words...

Rudy

My new Blue. Its black. And has red components.

As promised it has been less than 3 months since my last post.  Read it and weap momma.

One of the new advancements of this spring is that I have upgraded my bike.  Back in 2011 at Age Group Nationals, I had the fastest overall bike split and "won" a Blue Bike Frame.  After sending +/- a zillion emails to various employees of Blue, I never received a frame and so I entered 2012 basically giving up.  Then, I had the fastest bike split at Collegiate Nationals in April 2012 and "won" another Blue Bike frame.  So at this point, I emailed them and was like, look guys, if you just send me one full bike (not 2x frames) that would be cool.  I even contacted the CEO to try to light a fire under their buns.

So finally they said ok yeah they would send it in May...I wasnt fooled.  I tried to put it in the back of my mind for the summer and sure enough, after "warehouse problems" and "shipping problems" and large chunks of time without contact, I finally got a bike in November approximately 15 months after "winning" the first frame.  Better than never I guess! I still got a brand new bike although, looking back it was hardly free--for the time I spent contacting them and the value of the bike it worked out to about $3.50 per hour which I am pretty sure is less than minimum wage.

Anyway, when I "won" the 2x bikes they put you up on stage in front of everyone so every random person seemed to know I should be getting a new  bike and have been asking about it for like 15 months.  So here you go, here is the story.  I finally can say yes it came.  And here are some pictures.  They ended up sending me their limited edition Matte Black frame so it looks pretty cool, but it doesn't actually have red components like they said it would, surprise (it has SRAM force).  Still, they have won this battle, I concede, I am not sending it back to them.  By the time they got back to me there probably wouldn't be roads anymore.

And of course the old Cervelo P2 is now out gunned.  I got the Cervelo back in December 2008 and have ridden it all over the US, won a couple national championships on it, got 16th at Hy-Vee on it this year, taken it on century rides--not to mention all the quality trainer rides we have had together.  In deciding what to do with it, I was talking to my friend Drew Scott who said that his dad Dave still has his first bike that he raced Kona on back in 1980.  Its probably steel and has like 5 gears and some downtube shifters.  In short it is pretty much worthless to anyone except for the personal nostalgic value it holds for Dave.

I know I know its sad but, I decided that although that bike and I have had some great times together that it was time for it to move on and get on with living its life.  So, I sold it to a nice guy who promised to treat it well (I think he could tell it was meaningful to me).  I figured, (a) this guy could get good use out of it or (b) it could sit and collect dust for a couple years by which time the value and usefulness would inevitably decrease leaving me with a rusty dusty outdated unridden bike that would be viewed as 'junk' by anyone other than myself.  (Its probably good too since I still have like 5 bikes.)  Maybe I will even see it out there on the roads sometime!  Until then, it will be remembered:

Besides the bike news, my dad recently sent me a bar of dark chocolate.  Normally this would not be noteworthy, but in this case the bar in question weighed 5kg or about 11lbs.  It has like 125 servings, 30,000 calories (roughly) and enough caffeine to jump start Sonya Sotomayor's rate of speech from its dismal state of 40 words/min to the audiobook recommended level of 150 words/min (I'm speculating but the world can only hope).  I also ate too much last night and couldn't get to sleep until like 4am...

If you want one for yourself, good luck... the bar was imported from Belgium.  My hobiless dad (to the endless vexation of my mother) apparently has nothing to fill his time since there are no more soccer tournaments and little league baseball games, so he started going to this french bakery every morning at like 4am (since he apparently doesn't sleep either).  Now he and the baker are BFFs and this baker imports all of his chocolate from Belgium because it is of higher quality than is obtainable in the US.  He gave my parents a chunk of a bar at one point (which was sitting in our freezer at home) and over Christmas I pretty much demolished that stash.  Sensing that I like dark chocolate, my dad arranged to have a whole bar sent to me!  HAH!  11lbs...it will  probably last me like 3 weeks.

Side note, the bar is like 2 inches thick so you cant bite it and you cant break it.  Apparently my dad cut his with a band-saw in the garage (which I think is terribly wasteful), so I got a chisel and a hammer and have been shattering mine to get it into bite-able sizes. 

Thats all for now, hopefully my arteries wont clog up with saturated fat before my next post. (Each serving of the chocolate bar is 50% of daily value).

Rudy