Half Ironman

It was an amazing Ironman weekend for the Fresno PAL Triathlon Team! I (Coach Dorman) competed in my first (half) Iron man race (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run) in 6 hours and 35 minutes; I was hoping to finish between 6 and 7 hours so hit right on the money! Seven students (Albert, Marvin, Edna, Michael, Aaron, Eric, Omar) came down with me in the Suburban as well as my girlfriend Meagan and friend Jen. The students did a GREAT job volunteering/cheering people on as I raced and Meagan and Jen took pictures and cheered me on!

To make a long story short, we left Friday around 7pm due to a swim meet against Fresno High, arrived around 1am and went to bed at 1:30am… only to wake up at 4:30 and leave by 5am for the race! Saturday after the race we hung out at the beach for a bit, had some great Pizza and Guitar Hero at my good friend Jeff's house. Sunday we went to some tide-pools at the beach and played some football. Then it took about 8 and a half hours to get home due to traffic and some pit stops. Car time is quality time...

Preliminary results are here:

http://www.nasports.com/results/cah2008prelim.html you can search for Dorman.

Some pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hightri/halfironman

Special THANKS to the Ironman staff who helped make it happen, Fresno PAL of course, my brother and his fiancée Trish for letting us invade their house, and the parents of my students who gave us sandwiches for the road!

Some kids and I will do the Millerton Triathlon April 19^th with Sierra Multisport (http://www.sierramultisport.com) and others have chosen to do a Visalia super-sprint triathlon(http://www.onyourmarkevents.com/Vi-TriInfo.htm) and the Kids Triathlon here in the Fresno area April 27^th! http://www.triclubcentralcali.org/kids_event.html We are going to try and get some more kids from Fresno PAL's mentoring programs involved the Kids Triathlon as well. We are having some problems with bike maintenance so if anyone has some forks laying around or chains we always welcome donations!

Any questions, comments, etc. should be directed to Brandon Dorman or http://paltriathlon.googlepages.com Thanks for your support! I was SO proud of these students this weekend!
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my race report:
Swim: LOVED every minute except getting kicked by some guy in the face. felt good about a 1:33 100yd split. water wasn't that cold with my new skull cap thing!

Bike: Really enjoyed it although the hills were challenging and I was Way slower than everyone on the bike... i honestly don't think i passed anyone! but that's ok. it was fun to cycle for the first time ever for me... I was super stoked at the end, especially considering the longest i'd ridden in one sitting was 45 miles on March 1st. Some people complained about the wind but I didn't mind it really... also I appreciated the slightly overcast weather sometimes because it kept me cool. I did feel like I perhaps needed some more liquids, but the aid stations and water i had kept me fine. I downed 3 packages of shot blocks and several gels as well, and always did drink water or gatorade after those!

run: I was tired so walked quite a bit as shown by my 10:30ish average mile time. also hadn't done a full half marathon in training. there were some hills and what not but was the most challenging part for me was looking out on the beach and smelling barbecues, people having fun and just spashing in the waves, etc... ugh! I wanted to just jump off the course and into the ocean for a minute!

analysis: more training of course, also more bricks. and rash guard for the wetsuit... looks like a giant hickey much to the amusement of my high school students... But overall a GREAT trip overall and great race too! also need to get a second water bottle for the bike...

teaching and... Ironman-ing?

Ok so now some students and stuff are starting to read this as well... we'll see if they post back though!

- this week we will be refreshing the past few months (i know, a week is a LONG time!) and doing a project on the Pythagorean Theorem to finish it off. I didn't want to finish it before easter break because it's so important it's good to start off now with it. Eh, something like that.

- You'll also be working on your space projects! I posted a sample website as well as job descriptions and examples here.

- One week from Saturday - March 29th to be exact; I will be racing in the Ford Ironman 70.3 California race. Basically it's a "half ironman distance" so not the full ironman, but something about teaching and coaching, and a Girlfriend/life get in the way right now of doing that. and i enjoy mountain dew too much.

- still, I'm very excited! You may see me riding my bike to work a few days this week to keep my legs loose for the race.
- I will be checking homework every day again and you will have a quiz on Friday.

pi day

not sure if i mentioned it in the last post, but PI Day was awesome last week! Above is a picture of one of my classes spelling out PI!

a great few weeks!

It's been a while since I've posted... mostly just general busy-ness and high school exit exam testing last week!

Several more successful events in the past month - February 22-23rd saw 7 kids and myself going up to Folsom to volunteer at a duathlon and a great time was had by all. Pictures are at http://picasaweb.google.com/hightri/camping The week after that was our second time doing the Tree Fresno race in downtown Fresno. 12 participated -including Eric's family (mom and 4 siblings!) It was absolutely amazing to see them racing! First race for Francisco too which was cool. Albert got 10th place overall, and beat me by about 8 minutes in the six mile race. (I got about 45 mins, so about a 7:30 mile).

This past weekend we figured since it was spring break it'd be cool to do a big camping thing. So I took 9 kids along with fellow teacher Wendy up to Folsom. We borrowed mountain bikes from Jen/CSU Fresno Triathlon Club, and 7 kids did the Chanoko Duathlon either as a relay or individual. (2 mile run, 12 mile Mountain Bike, 2 mile run). I did the six mile trail run and completed it in about 50 minutes which considering the hilly terrain I was happy with!

We will practice this week but not a whole lot... I need a break too! This morning I rode 30 miles and it felt great! I did get a flat tire though. This afternoon I'm going to do some reflection time at Woodward Park and probably do some running as well; Ironman California 70.3 is LESS than two weeks away!

This weekend I was pleased that I felt much more like the coach than previous trips. Last year I focused a lot on mentoring and that kinda thing... this year i feel like I know the kids less, but it is helpful sometimes too because they seem to be more willing to share stuff sometimes too and there's less risk of them telling me something they shouldn't. However I still feel the relationships being developed on this team are incredibly powerful. It gets more complicated sometimes when I go on a trip such as this past one and I know for sure that I have strong relationships with at least 4 of them - tensions sometimes rise if they perceive favoritism and such. But that's life. It was a great trip and after a great time talking with my girlfriend Meagan last night, I'm on cloud nine right now! And my car's in the shop so I'm stuck at home :-)