New Wetsuit

My new triathlon wetsuit arrived this afternoon; having been shipped from California from the 'Xterra' company. This is my first wetsuit, and I'm sure it'll help quite a bit with the swim leg of my triathlons - not so much making me faster, but helping with buoyancy...which in turn, I guess, will make me faster.

That said, I tried the suit on for the first time tonight - and if I'd had the forethought - I'd have video taped it for your comedic enjoyment. On second thought, it might have been frightening. It's not brain surgery to get into it - but it's also harder than you would think to squeeze yourself into a full body condom.

Instead, I'm going to let this hot blond show you a bit more about how to properly put on a wetsuit.

New Twilight Movie

USA! USA!

I don't know where Algeria is - I think it's a hybrid terrorist combination of Africa and Asia. Either way, definitely scintillating watching the USA pull out that soccer win today. Backs against the wall, it looked like were facing elimination and 4 years of 'bad calls by the refs...'. Not to be.

As an encore, we had a brilliant (still going) ultra marathon tennis match involving American John Isner. 59-59 in the 5th? Ridonkulous.

Oh Sookie

True Blood is a guilty pleasure on Sunday nights. After tonight's episode, they blew my mind with this Snoop Dogg crossover ode to Sookie. Gotta hand it to those marketing people at HBO, because this will be everywhere today....though it will probably only make sense to loyal fans.

Speaking of HBO: Treme, after a slow start, has become my favorite show of the season. Should be plenty of Emmy nods for the actors in this one.

Lastly, Mad Men Season 4 starts up later this summer. Everyone get your home bars stocked up with plenty of Scotch and Whiskey, and have your suits pressed. If you're not caught up yet - you have about a month to go crazy on DVD with seasons 1-3.

Get Smart

Open Wine In A Pinch

When I was a Sophomore in College, I helped my girlfriend at the time move in to a new apartment. It was a cramped little hole of an apartment, but move-in day was made brighter by the fact that the new landlord left a bottle of red wine for her sitting on the counter. Total score.

Being 19, free alcohol was the pinnacle of all things holy. However, also being 19, neither of us had ever really had wine...or knew how to serve/store/open it. But hey, free booze - we were going to make the most of it. We also weren't going to question why this landlord was leaving alcoholic beverages for clearly underage college kids - when in Rome...

First things first: let's get this baby chilling. We popped the bottle of red wine into the fridge to get it cold. Patience not being our virtue; this was taking too long. "Put it in the freezer for a bit to get it really cold," she said. Excellent idea.

Once the bottle was nice and frosty, we found 2 plastic cups and were ready to enjoy our bounty. Removing the foil top, we were suddenly faced with a new paradox: cork. I remember searching the side of the bottle, thinking maybe there was some sort of special opener attached to the bottle that I'd missed. Nope.

Now, before you go mocking me and my 19 year old ignorance - remember back to when you first started enjoying adult beverages....were you the alcoholic connoisseur (lush) that you are now? No, you were equally clueless as me. Back to the frosty Merlot....

Like a rabid dogs, we clawed at this cork with a knife - eventually excavating enough cork that the remainder could be pushed into the bottle. At last, our ice cold Merlot (complete with cork floaters) was flowing into two Twins plastic cups. The 45 minutes of ice time combined with the 15 minutes of knife hacking had built up expectations that, 'this better be good.'

It wasn't.

Cold red wine tastes like licking a metal spoon. "Maybe it was just the first sip," we thought. Like when you first tried beer...that wasn't good right away either. Another sip. Gag. "Why are all those rich people SO into wine? Nasty," we said.

It wasn't until a few weeks later that we learned that 1.) Red wine should be served room temperature and 2.) The proper way to wield a corkscrew...which is far superior to a kitchen steak knife.

That story was just a lead up to showing you this great video I found on how to open a bottle of wine - should you too find yourself without a proper corkscrew. Enjoy, and thank me someday. Also, it's in French, which I think classes up this seedy blog.

Triathlon #1 of 2010

My first triathlon of the year was this past weekend; an early 4:30am wake up call for east coast mark. As I rolled out my garage, it was a steady downpour - and I wasn't sure we'd get this thing in. However, these triathlons are way too complicated to reschedule, so they always make a big show out of 'race will be held rain or shine.' So off I went.

By race time at 7:45am, the rains had parted - and 300 or so of us were off in the swim. Of the 50 or so guys in my age group, I estimated that I was one of two guys that didn't have a wetsuit on. The water was plenty warm, but I've been learning that the wetsuit gives you considerable added buoyancy - allowing the swimmer to focus on their stroke, and not so much about staying afloat. Puts me at a disadvantage, but I'm also not a particularly strong swimmer. Yet.

For me, this was my first swim of the year - and I was predictably slow and toward the back of the pack. The one upside of being toward the back of the swim pack is that I get kicked in the face less. Though, I have aspirations of soon being up front, and delivering regular jaw blows to the slowpokes behind me.

(I'm somewhere out there in that pack of yellow swim caps.)
For the bike leg, I was considerably more optimisitc. This year, I upgraded to a new Trek Road Bike, and added a set of aero bars to put me in that aerodynamic time trial position (aerodynamic position not pictured). It all worked pretty much as planned. I averaged just over 17mph for the 12 mile bike leg, and at times was up over 25mph. The only people passing me on the bike were the hard core riders who, jerkishly, were flying.

The run, normally my strong suit, was not my best - as I'd put so much energy into the bike. However, it's early in the season and my running legs are still only at about 70% - so plenty of room for improvement there as well. Also, I plan to do more 'brick' workouts - which is doing a hard bike ride, and then going immediately into a run.

All in all, pretty pleased for this early in the year, and I'll probably do my next Tri in about 3 weeks. I've also decided I'm going to invest in a wetsuit. I'll save my readers the pictures, but instead - you can get a feel for the suit I'm buying from this guy from the catalog:

Go ahead. I'll give you a minute to let your imaginations run wild.

And for a walk down triathlon memory lane, my first ever Triathlon back in 2009.