florida travels

Been visiting family and friends the last couple of days. Spent some time with my sister Anna and my niece Cate on Monday and Tuesday, visited my sister / brother in laws on Tuesday, and about to go back to St Pete to pick up Bri at the airport tonight. The weather here has been less than pleasant, sunny but windy and cold. Still running and swimming. Planning on the Belleair Classic 5k on Saturday morning and swimming and riding with Bri tomorrow (Friday). On Sunday we will head home, hope to catch up a bit with my mother and sister again. March and April will both be busy months. Time flies. I would post pictures but am not smart enough to hook the camera up to my mac laptop. See you somewhere!

busy times

The past few days have been jam packed with exciting new things people and places. I prepared for and then presented a Powerstroke clinic in Fort Myers for the Island Coast Triathlon club on Saturday morning. That went well and it was nice to meet some new triathletes. On Saturday night I met my mother in law and her fella out for dinner at Jorge's seafood grill in Clearwater. Try the Amberjack, it was good and you don't see Amberjack on the menu too often.

On Sunday I dragged myself out of bed and headed over to Fort Desoto to race in the 6th annual Chilly Willy Duathlon. This is a relatively low key event but it has grown into one of the largest duathlons (if not the largest) in the United States. Fort Desoto is a nice place and the mid-west coast of Florida has a ton of triathletes and runners. They like to get their groove on early in the season. I was pleased with nearly even 5k running splits and a solid bike split on a borrowed bike. Finished 13th overall and 2nd in my age group.

This week will be spent burning DVDs for the past clinic, and preparing for one more Powerstroke clinic this weekend here in Cary. I am debating running a local 5k on Saturday morning but I may opt for a long easy run in the park and then a good breakfast somewhere.

On Sunday I take off for Florida yet again, and our winter training camp starts Tuesday morning. We are all looking forward to a few days on the beach in FL. I am going to hope it warms up slightly as this winter has been quite brutal here in NC as well as for most of the east coast states.

Not much TV or reading lately. I will be blogging only sporadically for the next 3 weeks. Let's all pray for springtime, world peace, financial stability, and a few miracles in Haiti.

Terminator: Salvation review

This movie sucked. If it sucked any worse it would create a time-dilation vortex and suck both the future and the past into it, eradicating all existence. While I was watching I stabbed myself in the leg three times to convince myself I hadn't died and gone to hell. Don't see this movie unless you hate yourself and deserve to suffer.

Bri has been telling me to write a review, so there you go. I was sorely disappointed.

Anyway we had a nice time in Virginia. Bri posted some pictures which you can check out here.

Next up is New Years, and then we start riding outside in 30 degree weather. I mentioned running in one of the New Years Day 5k runs around here, but Bri pushed me out of the car into oncoming traffic, so I took that as a "No."

Heading into 2010

It has been a quiet few weeks here at OSB central, as many of our athletes take a well needed break from regular training plans and emails telling them to get out of bed and go work out. We are looking forward to 2010 as another great year both personally and athletically. Some highlights with our 2009 athletes:

- 5 first-time IMers
- 2 70.3 World Champ qualifiers
- 1 Boston Marathon qualifier
- 1 Hawaii Ironman finisher
- 3rd age group Duathlon Worlds
- Several NCTS and FS Series top 3 age group / masters overall

Bri has been fortunate to work with a small group of really motivated athletes and has had a lot of fun coaching them. It is nice watching her become more confident in her ability to coach people successfully.

We're going to run several Powerstroke clinics again throughout the season (every 2-3 months) and will be hosting our Winter training camp in late February (there is currently 1 open bedroom in the shared beach house) and another weekend training camp in Raleigh in August.

We signed back on as series coaching sponsor for the North Carolina Triathlon Series and will be racing / attending a number of these events throughout the season. There are 25 total racing days, which is a bunch, so you won't see us at all of them. I am planning to race 6 of them - Belews Lake, White Lake Sprint 2, Kure Beach, Stumpy Creek, Lake Norman, and Jordan Lake Sprint.

We've been selling a few Powerstroke DVDs each week since making them available for sale. I hope to keep this up indefinitely. There will be a couple of production upgrades to the material coming soon, but if you buy one now you're receiving the same content. Basically we have a chance to re-shoot the lecture in a professional studio with better lighting and equipment in January. It will be a prettier presentation.

My goals for 2010:
low 18 5k
Host 8 to 10 Powerstroke and open water clinics throughout the year
3 or 4 top 5 overall local sprint triathlon results
Low 2 hour olympic distance at St Anthonys Tri in April
Top 5 Triple T NC individual
Save money / pay off all debt except mortgage & car payment
Put together a 100 +/- page training manual I can give to new athletes as a guide and-or sell as a standalone book.

Twitter

I may come across as a smart guy, but it is more the intelligence of a dog that kept doing tricks over and over until he got them right. It is super pigheadedness. It takes me a long time to figure certain things out, and some things will always be beyond me (like the mind of an emotional woman, and most higher math, probably because they are the same thing).

But I just don't get Twitter. What is the use of this thing? If you're following a bunch of people, you have to check your Twitter page every day to see what they're up to, or you miss the updates. If you're having the tweets sent to your mobile phone then the thing would be beeping all the time, which seems to me to be a colossal waste of time and energy for what often amounts to something like "I picked some lint out of my bellybutton." Some people stick to a specific industry, which is good. But they tend to send a message every hour or two. I don't want to hear from you every hour or two. You are boring. Stop updating.

As an advertisement, I can see some value, but you have to be a zombiefied self promotion machine to keep cranking the stuff out. By the way, the Powerstroke: Speed through force and form freestyle technique DVD is done, mass production starts next week. you should buy one, now now now now now.

If you follow only one person, then you're a stalker, or a technology idiot, and that doesn't seem right either.

Facebook I get. Blogger I get. There are picture pages, a nice layout, and super cutsie stuff for kids who want to play with stuff on the internet.

Twitter is like the ADD generation on crack. I don't get the utility of it.

I would put a good joke here, but it is early in the morning and I haven't gotten the blood flowing yet.

Off to New Orleans this weekend for some quality time with my father and brother-in-law. We will be at Harrah's Casino, mostly the poker room, if you want to stop by.

Off to Lake Norman

Bri and I are racing the Lake Norman Sprint Triathlon on Saturday, part of the North Carolina Triathlon Series. This is a nice race out by Davidson College, a small but powerful school in both basketball and academics. Lake Norman is a reservoir lake that serves as a water source and recreation source for the greater Charlotte area.

A couple of years ago I was in fantastic shape and took 2nd overall in a competitive field. This year I am hoping for more in the top ten range. My swim and bike are still solid, but the run is not up to snuff in comparison to the other local amateur elite racers. That is OK though, I am at peace with where I am at this moment in time. (No, I'm not, who am I kidding, I want to win win win but don't always have the drive to train train train.)

In other news, we will get to catch up with a couple of my Sigma Chi fraternity brothers from Florida State, guys I haven't seen in ten years or so. We have all migrated to North Carolina over the past few years for personal or professional reasons.

In other, other news, mark your calendars for the 2010 OSB St Pete Beach training camp - February 23-28 2010. We've set the date and will be securing a 3 or 4 bedroom house shortly.

Homeward bound

I had a nice visit here in Miami with my Dad over the last couple of days. We did all sorts of fun guy stuff - poker tournaments, bar food and beer, fishing, and staying up late. Next time I'm going to bring Bri since she just loves all this stuff. :)

Tomorrow we're co-running the first annual 5280 swim at Beaverdam Lake. There will probably be about 50 people swimming which is good for a first time event at this time of year. I will be conducting a 15-20 minute pre-race open water clinic as part of the deal.

This morning I got in a nice choppy swim off the beach in Fort Lauderdale, then ran a couple of miles on the sidewalk/boardwalk out there. The beach area in Fort Lauderdale is a nice place to hang out but I wouldn't wanna live there (too much traffic and too crowded for me).

On Sunday I'll be racing in the NC State Centennial Sprint Triathlon - 750meter swim, 10.5m bike, 5k run. After my flat at the last race I thought it might be good to get a continuous race effort before St Anthonys next weekend.

Speaking of St Anthonys, looks like next weekend I'll be driving around a bunch.

I borrowed the Art of War by Sun Tzu from my dad to read and study, after which I will "crush my enemies, see them driven before me; and hear the lamentation of their women."

today's stock trades

Today in my fictional stock market account, I was a moron. I held onto my Wachovia shorts, and got hammered by good news and happy talk of mergers and hand holding. I also held onto Ultrashort financials and lost most of yesterday's gains. I didn't buy gold earlier this week so have no happy news there. Goldman Sachs shorts are my only good move at the moment. My uranium mining stock is a stinker, having lost 70% of it's value over the past few months. BRK as my fictional core holding would be good if it was 1992.

In fake real dollar terms, I was up to 110,000 yesterday, and today am down to 95,000. Those are fake dollars, I am not really trading out of Bri's retirement fund.

But in the real world today, since I didn't cash out everything in our retirement funds, I was a genius and made nearly 4%. Amazing.

Broken bricks and sweaty days

Bri talked me into doing a 3 x 10 mile bike / 2 mile run this morning. A couple friends joined us for the session and we had a great workout. It was hotter then heck but we all toughed it out and really pushed the final round. Afterwards, Bri's sister and boyfriend cooked us breakfast.

Now I'm working on the couch. Later we'll head out to have some holiday weekend fun of one sort or another.

Tomorrow (Labor Day) I'm working a half day at Inside-Out Sports.

I have no other random things to say.

Here is a picture of a scary clown.

weekend update

It was a pleasant weekend and a good week of training for me in my quest to beat Bri at the Sandman Triathlon in Virginia. Feeling decent again. Tassie and I watched Bri race at the Triangle Sportsplex triathlon on Saturday morning. Tassie was really excited. We watched Bri forget to take her Blue 70 Point Zero3 off but didn't get to record that part. Shoot. After the race and a nap, Bri was kind enough to accompany me on my first 10 mile trail run in a long time. We did the Turkey Creek loop in Umstead. Quick happy hour at the Flying Saucer then off to bed.

On Sunday we rode a couple hours then enjoyed the rest of the day.

This week I'll be back at it with group rides, trail runs, massive swim sets, and other kooky stuff.

BTW, OSB decided to be a minor sponsor of the Pier 2 Pier swim in Wrightsville Beach.

Monday, Monday

We had a nice but short trip up to Boone to see my MIL. Boone is a neat little college town and we did a quick tour of App State. Cool place to go to school! I told Bri that when we're 60+ we can go back to school together somewhere like that.

The Housing bailout bill has passed the Senate. All us suckers with good credit who have been saving our pennies get to pay more pennies for people who don't save their pennies. Soon we may all be penniless. Pennies cost two cents to make, did you know?

Tassie says "Bull****!"



I am going to go for a run with Bri in Umstead.

Last night our buddy Paul Power from Long Island made me stay out late drinking beer. Bad Paul!!

interesting links

No ice at the North pole

Foreclosures ain't done yet

A Berkshire buying opportunity?

Will we see wetsuits in the Olympics in 2012?

Five dollar gas not far away

Is Pokemon Satan? You decide!

Can Florida State football come back in 2008?

Is this movie gonna be any good?

Possible Outer Banks beach crash pad?

Or a Smokey Mountain retreat?

Money saving tips

Will hemp as fuel make a resurgence in America?

July 4th in Cary, NC

Taco hell

Today I had an urge to make a run for the border. Now I have angina. Happy Monday.