Triathlon 2

Tri mission number 2–woo hoo! Motor City Marathon on June 14 on Belle Isle.

First the swim. My wave is at 8:20.

It’s been a cooler spring this year and the water temp was 67 degrees. Quite chilly. I have to spend a few minutes getting used to the temp to calm the hyperventilation.

This is the pic taken when my wave started. Yes, I am in this picture, toward the back. My wave was the 40+ women. You have to swim around 3 orange buoys (the 1st one is not in this picture).

The swim wasn’t bad until you start getting out in the river and the current picks up–it really throws you off when swimming away from and back to the beach.

(Again this year, not the best quality pics. I have to do something about my cameraman.)

I loathe to post this picture as I don’t have that “triathlon” body (yet), but I will tell you this. There were plenty of people my size and bigger. And women bigger than me who finished the swim well before me. (But I beat several of them on the run-ha!)

So I run out of the swim (gasping like a guppy) and into ….

T1 or transition 1, where the bikes are parked. You dry off (maybe), throw on shoes, a shirt (maybe), glasses (in my case), and run out with the bike and hop on the road. This area is a big deal to get in and out of quickly. Really, really good athletes with great gear do it in 20 -30 seconds. Me–not so much.  That’s me in the red circle fumbling with shoes after fumbling with my blue and black jacket.

On to the bike ride, 2 and 1/4 trips around the Rock about 12 miles. Anyone whose ridden here knows how pleasant and easy it is to bike around the island.

Reg wasn’t as quick with the camera on the bike. This is the best we got.

After you finish the bike, you go into another transition area, rack your bike, and run out for the 3.1 (5k) run. I really don’t think I did bad at all on the run. I wasn’t running at the pace of the several high school kids who passed me (yea, yea, rub it in), but I was running when others were walking. That’s me in the pink/orange actually passing someone!

OK so 2 hours and 20 minutes after the start of the race, I power across the finish line. Again, miscommunication with the camera crew has left me without THAT picture. But here I am in the parking lot after all is done and I’ve had a piece of pizza and more electrolytes.  Still standing upright (actually I feel good) and smiling.

Now to home to spend the rest of the day grazing, sleeping and talking on the phone to well-wishers.

Stay in the Know with Google Reader–but selectively

I just love Google Reader for catching up on blogs and news items. I get too happy sometimes adding more and more sites that I like to my feed reader, only to delete and clean out G Reader after a month because I am finally frustrated looking at the G Reader icon in the status bar constantly reading 1000+ posts to read. When you get to that number you just don’t read any of them and defeats the whole purpose.

My point is, if there is one, be selective about your reader subscriptions. Don’t be afraid to add, but don’t be afraid to delete to keep a manageable list. I install the Google Reader Watcher add-on if using Firefox/Flock/etc. It’s cool, it let me know how many unread feed posts I have to read. A little nagging doesn’t hurt, at least that’s what I tell my family when I’m not finished.

But what’s up with looking at your Trends in Google Reader? It’s an option on the left side of the bar. I don’t care how many times I starred something. Is there really a reason for this…other than Google secretely tracking all these stats for everyone and aggregating them for their own research?

The Back-To-School Happy Dance

No more homeschooling. The children have spoken. Their father concurs. The grandparents approve. What else is there for me to do?

Except dance!

School started Tuesday, they settled in their classes, and I have 6 UNINTERRUPTED hours I can put in quality work in my online businesses. YEA BOY!

So I took a little break from my started a serious diligent schedule to write this and do my dance.

Now back to work.

P.S. Just becuase I am working from home does not make me automatically available for anything! And if you call before 2, don’t expect an answer. Cheers!

I Tri-ed!

I finished my first triathlon, on August 10, the day before my 40th birthday. YEEEAAA!!!!!

Here I am about an hour later. Still smiling even!

I have a friend who writes a triathlon blog ask me to write an account of my first tri. If you want gory details they are below.

Where are the other pictures you ask? Well, let’s just say Reggie is very lucky that we have kids and that they need to have a father. I’ll actually have pictures for the next one I do.

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IM Free week

Personal experiment now that I am just starting to get traction with some of my Web sites.  No learning this week, no reading others blogs, no ebooks, no podcast, no training material. No blogging here either. Writing content and marketing content.