Forecast

OK it usually doesn't rain all day everyday, but not a very sun-shiny forecast. Winter in the PNW. Snow in the mountains though!

Columbia Gorge Marathon saga

Since I've been meaning to write a post for over a week now to recap the columbia gorge marathon, well, here goes! This year, I really wanted to do a fall marathon. Since my MN days, running the twin cities a few times and chicago, I really wanted to get the feel of another marathon. Running in the fall is just the best. The cool air, the leaves on the trees, can't beat it. I ran Portland marathon in 2004 (our 1st year in Oregon), so that was the last road marathon for me.

I found out about the CG marathon way back last spring when we were having breakfast with our friend and neighbor Susan and her sister Leslie and her husband. Leslie lives in Hood River, and said that they were thinking about organizing it, they found a sponsor, this and that... So I told her to keep me posted. Pretty much immediately when I got word of the race being on, I registered and started thinking about how sweet it was going to be.

Well my training plan was working pretty much perfect. We got back from spain, and I started doing long runs and even some speed work, and I was in pretty good shape, even though I wasn't doing many races, but I was planning on running a 1/2 marathon in Bend 2 weeks before CG marathon. Then, two weeks and six days before the race I was doing a 'recovery' run in Forest Park, and tripped on a rock or root or something, and smacked my ribs pretty hard. I tried running on that Thursday, and was in too much pain. the next week I took it easy but biked one day (felt crappy, ribs hurt). The weekend before the marathon I was able to do some easier running, but it was still hurting. The days leading up to the race it really started to feel better, each day, which gave me confidence that I should at least be at the starting line.

I drove out there on race morning, and was a little intimidated by some of the strong winds in the gorge in the amazingly dark early morning; if it was going to be that windy, the race would not be fun. Finally I arrived at the start area and a few people were around, but it was calm and non crowded as ever. Had a good chat with Leslie, Win (fellow pdx runner) and Kelly (pdx run oregon blogger). Finally made it over to the staring line and found Sean, good buddy (and rival) from central oregon. We chatted, took some photos, and then it was getting time to start. Chad (race director) did a little speech and then he said GO! The 7 or so miles were nice, just chatting with Sean and Win like it was a wednesday noon run or something. Rather uneventful, except that we noticed some of the mile-markers didn't seem right. We got to Mosier and Sean picked up a gu and put the hammer down. I tried to keep him in sight, but was only successful in keeping the 2nd place guy in sight. However, it was at this part of the race where I knew I was going OK (ribs weren't going to stop me today).

One of the coolest moments of the race was near the 1/2 way and high point on the race profile there was a helicopter hovering really low and taking some photos. It felt like we were getting tour de france style coverage! Then it was a right turn and downhill back to Mosier, where I arrived in 2nd place, with no sign of Sean. The long climb back up to the bike bath to hood river was a real grinder, and I was taking it at my pace and went back to 3rd. I did not lose too much time however and still had intentions of trying to catch Joel for 2nd place with even 2.5 miles to go. Then I just said to myself, you are having a great race, just hold on for the finish. The last 2 miles flew by (maybe a little short), but the feeling of finishing this race in sub-2:55 fashion was pretty outstanding, especially after my lack of any workouts that felt decent in the three weeks prior.

Since the marathon, Laurie left for a 2+week trip to Vietnam for operation smile, and I've been really busy with work and school, and it started getting dark really early. What is the point of daylight savings anyway?

Probable

OK, here are a couple of spain pics (bike related). we were there for almost 2 weeks and saw alot of other stuff (no bullfights), but seeing la Vuelta was pretty memorable.


Here is a pic of big mig! We saw Miguel Indurain. My friend Sean (sorta jokingly) asked me if we saw Indurain in spain, and was surprised when I said yea!!! Other (cycling) stars we saw were Cadel Evans, Fabian Cancellara, David Millar, Tyler Farrar, Vinokourov, Valverde, and a bunch of others. Vino almost won the stage we saw the finish of (he ended up 4th), and why is it that these dopers are worshiped is beyond me sometimes. Especially when 34 year olds are still dropping dead. I'm as guilty a fan as anybody I guess. I hate Valverde, as he is sorta not just a suspected doper, but an actual doper banned in Italy!!! and he is the hero and love of all the spaniards, winning la Vuelta. I guess maybe Contador is a bigger spaniard star, but he didn't show up at la vuelta this year.

As for Cadel Evans, he is the man. I was glad he got world champion stripes, the media makes him out to be a dork, but I think in real life he's a good guy at least from my observation after stage 10. Too bad he got that flat tire at Vuelta.

I thought Millar would have been uglier for some reason... He's a former doper, and now he's on the clean team Garmin, and I was going to say he never wins anymore, but he went on to win the final TT at La Vuelta, so maybe there's hope for the sport.

We're going to the race across the sky movie showing on Thursday, to see the leadville 100 mt. bike race documentary. Should be pretty cool, and I think I'm going to wear the dopers suck wrist bands for fun, and it will probably give me a little inspiration for Sunday (columbia gorge marathon), and future goals, maybe even leadville 100.

Upgraded to probable for the marathon. I'm pretty sure it will be a struggle, but I'm pretty stoked, and have been looking forward to this for a while. The crash a couple weeks ago was luckily after most of my important training, but I still feel like I haven't done enough running (and ate too many donuts) in the last 2 weeks to make a good race out of it (sub 3?). Someday I want to go sub lance (which is somewhere in the 2:50 range). One thing is for sure: running through the tunnel on the way back is going to be awesome, but it's still a ways to the finish.

Day to Day

After a long lapse, I'm updating the blog. Since updating, we took a pretty sweet trip to Spain, which I hope to post a recap at some point. In short I'll just say that southern spain is a very arid landscape and the weather is hot. We saw the Vuelta

In preparing for the Columbia Gorge Marathon on Oct. 25th, I had been getting into some good form. It's been 5 years since I've ran a road marathon(ran Portland marathon in 2004 in PR time) and I'm really looking forward to this one. The course is challenging and it's got a view of the gorge most of the way. If the weather's bad it could turn out to be an epic cold and windy death march. Two weeks ago I did yasso 800s averaging 2:46 per half mile, which (according to Bart Yasso) translates to the potential of being able to run a 2hr 46min marathon. I pre-ran the final 18 miles of the CGM course felt great. I was all scheduled to run a half marathon tune up last sunday, and then last week, on a 'recovery' run at forest park, I was running on the trail and instead of staying on erickson drive, I needed to warm up so I ran up to the wildwood on wild cherry trail and came back down dogwood, where I proceeded to crash on the down hill, tripping on a root or rock or something. It wasn't running fast, but running downhill that translated into a harder fall, and I didn't catch myself really at all, and basically landed on my side and managed to scrape both the left and right shins (very minor road rash). The worst was the impact to the lower right ribs, and if you've ever had a rib injury you know the drill. Hurts to laugh, hurts to sneeze, hurts to cough. Well try running. So I tried running 3 miles last week and it was not happening. Rested the weekend and got a couple hours on the bike yesterday in a desperate attempt to keep the fitness. Feels a little better this week than last week (but it's more sore after the bike ride), so my status is day to day for the CGM.

I'm nearing completion of school and will be looking to land a job staring in 2010 (around Feb or March). What does that mean? I don't officially get done w/ school until June2010, but I only have one class for the spring term. So the job will probably be here in the valley (portland / hillsboro area). My plans are to get employment in the semiconductor industry as it relates to solar cell manufacturing. The outlook looks pretty good. The program at the school I'm in really could prepare a student for potential employment in the wind, solar (manufacturing), solar (residential), hydro, bio-fuel or electrochemistry (fuel cell) industries. At this point I'm hoping the solar manufacturing thing works out, as I already have an internship at the largest solar cell factory in the Americas. And my senior project (call it Bachelors Thesis) topic is studying the light induced degradation of mono-crystalline CZ silicon solar cells.

Hope somebody still reads the blog, and hope to write a killer race report for the gorge marathon. And if the race doesn't go so well, that's ok, but I should be on the starting line.

2009 Vuelta a Espana - Stage 10 finish

It goes by pretty quick!!!

here's Simon Gerrans winning stage 10 of LA VUELTA!

Summer

It's July, it's in the 90s, it must be time for... the Tour!

So the Tour starts tomorrow!! Even though I'm excited for it, I'm not excited about some things. I was pretty excited for Astana, but that was before they left Christ Horner off the tour squad. You can say that one of Contador's spanish buddies got his spot, but in reality, his LordStrong is the one who's there in place of horner...

Now, I really hope either Menchov or Evans can whoop ass on both Lance 'second coming' Armstrong and Alberto Conta-Doper, but I don't really like those guys either. Either that or Levi just crushes everyone, which is unlikely. I pick Sastre to repeat, and Cavendish to get green, and a random doper to get the polka dots. Now maybe I'll just go out and ride my bike.

Anyway, I'm back at it this weekend, with the foot traffic flat 1/2 marathon. Known for hot weather, it won't disappoint, as it's supposed to be in the 90s. So I guess that's about all for now... After using twitter so much lately, it's difficult to get more than 140 characters, but I'll keep trying.

Pre classic

I had the opportunity to go to a professional track meet last sunday. The Pre-classic in Eugene is one of the best meets in the USA, in terms of the world class competition. There were no less than 34 Beijing Olympic medalists there... Here are some photos below. The rest are on flickr.

shot put winner below. He attempted a victory lap, but only made it 1/4 of the way around the track:


bowerman mile winner. His victory lap was complete in about 60 seconds, and yes he is as skinny as he looks if not skinnier. About 13 guys went under 4 minutes in the mile. Pre would be proud:


Lashawn Merrit breaking the sea-level world record in the 300m.


Dwight Phillips just after jumping the 5th longest long jump ever, 8.74m (or 28 feet 8.25 inches) holy crap.


Sanya Richards, just before going sub 50 in the 400m.

RIP Sasha Clapper

We built one bad ass power supply (below), and a sweet electrolyzer. I met Sasha in Spring of 2008, when we were lab partners in Electrochemistry at OIT. The students in our program are diverse and Sasha was no exception. We're talking about a dude with neck tattoos, on one side, the angel whispering in his ear, and on the other side, the devil.

He will always be remembered in the lab for the experiments we ran. Especially when he ignited the hydrogen that we produced in our electrolyzer.

taken 4/21/2009

Rest in peace, my friend, it's not going to be the same at school without you.