Psycho Cookies

Sedona… my first marathon!

I know it’s been a while since I posted anything. My last post ironically was about a half marathon I ran more in a last minute kind of decision (registered <2 weeks before the race and didn’t really train specifically for it). Now I’m posting about my first marathon experience. I knew this marathon was coming up, but I still didn’t train specifically for it. I trained knowing I would be doing it, but with my long term goals as #1 instead of my performance at the marathon as being #1.

READ MORE

Preparing for next season

I’ve started to get back into training again after some time ‘off’. At this point I feel like I haven’t done enough that week if all I do is 15 miles of running, 50miles of biking and a mile or two of swimming. It’s funny to think that my ‘lazy’ week has become excessive for most people in the world, I never intended that but it just kind of became that way.

READ MORE

Old Pictures from my first triathlon

T1: I definitely wasn't a pro at this... wet feet + socks, wet hands + gloves... but I was smart enough to put the helmet on first so I don''t get DQed

Back in 2003, after graduating from colllege, I went and got a taste of my first triathlon.  It’s taken me 6 years to attempt another obviously, but it’s a big step above the sprint triathlon I did.  I was going through some old CDs looking for some stuff because I bought a new laptop and came across these pictures from that first Tri.  My most vivid memories from it include thinking “swimming sucks” while my out of shape, untrained self tries to swim along with the rest in the ocean just beyond the breakpoint of the waves.  Luckily the waves were relatively small that day, otherwise it could have been interesting.  My other most vivid memory is a of these two guys I met before the race.  They were cross country runners from a university in Philadelphia, I think it might have been Drexel, but I’m not completely sure.  They had never done a triathlon either and had actually borrowed bikes from people to come do this. I saw them struggling to fix a flat tire before the race.  They didn’t have any of the tools to do it though.  So I went over and offered to help.  We only had a few minutes before the race started, so I popped off the tire, changed the tube and put the tire back on real quick and handed them the pump with enough time to say “115 psi should be good” as they announced 1 minute before the race starts.  So the one guy with the flat stayed to finish putting the wheel back on and pumping it up and me and the other guy jogged over to the starting line.  I end up finishing about 30 seconds behind that guy.  I just wasn’t able to keep up with his 5k pace, but had formed enough of a lead on the bike to finish close to him.  After the race they came back over to give me my pump back (yes, they didn’t even have a pump) and asked if I wanted to go grab some breakfast.  They were shocked when they walked over and I was smoking a cigarette…. I guess that explains why it was also the ONLY tri I’ve ever done. :)

What is this ‘Psycho Cookie’?

‘Psycho Cookie’ is a term I coined sometime back in high school that has stuck in my head for some reason. During high school when I was running track and cross country I wasn’t very good. My 5k times were around 23-25minutes, but one year I decided to really train instead of just being lazy and doing what was needed to just get by. At the same time I was still figuring out what aspect of computers I wanted to do for the rest of my life and was playing with Photoshop. I quickly learned that I’m a coder, not a graphic artist ;-) But during that time I managed to create an image that looked like a chocolate chip cookie. (Probably still the best art I’ve ever made on the computer, luckily my programming skills are much better) I still have the image somewhere and will dig it off a 3-1/2″ floppy one of these days so you can see how bad I was/still am.

READ MORE