Science Fiction, Serendipity, and Git'n 'r dun

Continuing on the science fiction theme from last week, I had the opportunity to use "the force" this weekend in what was my last planned "long day" prior to Ironman Arizona in a few weeks. The force? WTF?

Let me explain...

Yeah, well, last monday, I sent the ol' SRM pro in to get the battery swapped out in the powercontrol, as it would no longer hold a charge reliably. I reckoned I'd sweet talk the folks at SRM-USA into a quick turnaround, but alas, it didn't work out quite like that. I 1-day aired the unit on Monday, and the folks at SRM didn't get it shipped out until Friday - so, I'll have the power meter by tomorrow, it seems.

Anyway, I had this long day planned, and was kind of counting on having the PM data for a little feedback for the supercomputer. I'll admit that I did consider postponing the effort/day until mid next week (and taking a day off work!), until I realized the opportunity I had been presented.

Opportunity?

Yeah, the opportunity to build some more robustness into the ol' supercomputer for race day and beyond! I did my 7 hour-ish (split up a wee-bit) effort completely by feel - I used "the force" ;-) so to speak.

So, no #'s this week, only the following observations:

1) I'm going to swim for a long time, and I'll have to be mentally OK with coming out of the water when I do. This was something I struggled a bit with when I did the two half ironmans a few years back. I started riding with a bit of negativity... It's a long day, and a few 10's of minutes in the water won't mean much in the last half of the marathon, I reckon.

2) I rode for around 5 hours, covering about 160k, and found myself at times riding too hard. No PM, but yeah, I rode a bit too hard. I'll remember that first couple hours and how they felt, and remind myself to go easier than that! The last long day I completed, I reckon I forced down the calories a bit too much and wound up a bit bloated near the end. This time around, I ran things way leaner, maybe a bit too lean at about 250 cals/hr or thereabouts. That's a bit too lean on the fuel mixture, but I reckon the low end of the design space is good to know, nonetheless.

3) I only ran for an hour at about 8:30 pace, but felt OK. I'll be going slower on race day, for sure. A marathon is going to be a long ways to run. I do fear the distance a bit to be honest...

Today was pleasantly surprising, 24 hours later, I feel like I'm about 90% recovered. Hopefully, I'll be at 100% for the events of this coming Tuesday:

madonna at petco park

yeah, Selene is a big "Material Girl" fan, so we'll be checking the "slightly older" version of Madonna out this week here at Petco. That'll be interesting - for some reason, I'm curios to see what the makeup of the crowd will be. A-rod teenage fans, or late thirty somethings who grew up with the birth of MTV and the Material Girl!

One way or another, though, I reckon I'll use "the force" at Petco park on Tuesday, and also in Tempe in a few weeks to git 'r dun! :-)

So yeah, life offers up lots of serendipitous moments along the way - I thrive for these moments.

They are simply another opportunity for us to learn more about ourselves and, therefore, build up our experience portfolio.

Don't be afraid to step into the unknown - you just might surprise yourself!

Air and Space Museum Hall of Fame

Had a pretty cool day last saturday. Selene and I had the opportunity for the second year in a row to attend a gala that inducted some truly amazing folks into the Museum's International hall of fame:



The museum had this cool exhibit that we got to walk through - I reckon Kirk would have been a wee bit jealous, because the exhibit was all about Star Trek. We got to sit in Captain Kirk's chair:



and then I got a little silly - I'm not sure what I was doing in the pic below, but I reckon that's the "captain" pose! LOL!



The rest of the evening was totally cool - it was a little emotional for me, actually. The chance to reflect on what these folks have done, on a human level, was pretty darn inspiring.

I mean, think of what Scott Carpenter (one of the inductees), and the original mercury 7 did. They basically strapped themselves on top of a bomb, and in so doing basically said to his team "I trust you" with my life. Wow.

That's some courage. And a sense of team.