Half Marathon coming up

Greetings,

I cancelled my comcast internet a few weeks ago to save money, but after two weeks i realize how much I actually do need/miss the 'net at home, so will be starting up next week again with At&t internet for twenty bucks a month. Still saving $50 a month. Combined with saving fifty bucks a month for turning 25 on car insurance, it's nice to know that I'm $100 richer every month to apply toward that credit card payment - and I saved another $100 this month in unrelated cost-cutting (like doing better on making my own healthy food... low-fat mac and cheese mon/tues and baked chicken with greenbeans and corn on wednesday! Yesterday I did buy a teriyaki rice bowl for dinner and did some upper-body weights at the gym.

I've been training for a local half marathon november 9th. 9 miles on Monday, 6 miles on Wednesday and will do 11 miles this saturday. Next week will see a few speed-based 5K's to be ready for 13.1 next Sunday! I'm doing it with my student Albert and good friend Dave Castro is doing the full marathon. I've really been enjoying running these past couple of weeks but am sad I seem to need new shoes every few months/the bottom of my feet start to hurt. I figure these shoes have about 100+ miles on them but didn't keep a running journal or anything.

A placeholder website for the race is up at http://www.splashdashfresno.com I'm still waiting for official confirmation from the Fresno PAL board of directors before going further. (they'll handle the financial side of things.)

USAT coach!

i'm an official USA Triathlon certified Coach now!

- and will be PUTTING ON A RACE (Aquathlon most likely) sometime between April and August of next year! (with proceeds to benefit my triathlon team).

Two Tri's in a weekend!

Ok, so here is the race report I've been waiting to write!

This past weekend I did two triathlons - the Tulare Triathlon (sprint; pool swim) and the Golden State Triathlon (also sprint, river swim/criterium style biking). Both went great overall I would say and I wasn't even that tired Monday from them so apparently my post-race stretching and such is getting much better! not to mention I tend to be better prepared for races...

I obviously wasn't ready for the bike (I'd been on the bike one time since August; not even any spinning or at-the-gym bike trainer stuff) but was feeling ok for the swim and run... Tulare was with the Fresno State Tri Club and at the last minute I decided to take a handful of kids with me to Sacramento to volunteer with TBF Racing on Sunday.

Tulare Triathlon
- on the way there we saw a fellow Fresno State Tri Club'er with their bike on the bike. Jokingly I accelerated behind them saying, "the race starts now baby!" and someone in the car made a joke about their bike falling off.

Then it did.

Well, not off but one wheel off and the rest was dragging as we were on the freeway at 5:30am going 75mph. so we honked and flashed our brights to get their attention and it was all ok.

It was butt-cold as we readied for the swim, and the pool deck was SUPER slippery. During the olympic race part which we watched first a lot of people almost fell hard and we had to scream at them to SLOW DOWN!

I got in the third-from-fastest lane because I hadn't trained as much as I normally do for even a sprint distance swim; but I knew I should be ok because I get in the water with my kids "enough".

I was first out of the water! I couldn't believe it but the guy counting laps and my internal counter matched up as I finished the 400 yard swim and hopped out! Very cool. I did good on the to-bike transition and headed out.

Things were going ok considering... then on the way back a group of 3 of us got led astray by the CHP. Seriously... there were quite a few turns getting out of the pool area to the main road part, and as I was with the pack going out and just with the group of us coming in got turned around. So we went straight intead of turning in! I found out later the guy right behind us stopped to ask the police officer guy, "are they going the right way?" to which he replied, "nope," but he waved us to go straight and didn't say anythign when we didn't! So... after at least a 10 minute detour we went through downtown tulare and found our way back to the high school. I was pretty upset because I certainly passed people on the run and was feeling quite good overall. Still got 1:24 overall which isn't bad but... ah well :-)
http://onyourmarkevents.com/results.asp?id=2094

PICTURES

It was great seeing my good friend Luis there and tons of people from the Visalia/Tulare area there (I basically grew up in Visalia but haven't gone back a whole lot since I graduated college in '05, so fun to see people I knew including teachers and old friends!).

SUNDAY - Golden State Triathlon

After going to a students' quincinera saturday night (interesting experience...) I got about 4 hours of sleep saturday night (fri-sat night about 4 too because we went to the Fair on Friday night to see Randy Travis), i was awake at 3am to pick up the students and leave fresno by about 4am. Pretty much everyone awoke and called me like they're supposed to (kids I mean). I got meagan and we took off right about 4:10, and made it to Sacramento at 7am as planned. I got the kids set up volunteering and Meagan was body marking. Met a first-time triathlete next to me who was really cool and we had a good time talking tri and stuff. I kept seeing him throughout the race too which was fun.

Because I've done a lot of TBF events over the past two years with kids and by myself, I love going up there and still have it feeling like home. the TBF Staff could not be more awesome to my kids... it really makes the whole trip worth it. Two kids (Edna and Albert) even got to do the kayak thing for water safety! They totally loved it and got to help a few people too which was a good experience except Edna got wet.)

My arms were really stiff on the swim part (perhaps not enough practice with the wet suit/improper stretching of the arms/warm up before hand?) but I was still 8th out of the water (about 100+ in my field) which was alright but oh man, it was ugly! The bike I loved especially after the first of three laps. I started passing more people in my age group and everything; usually on the bike portion of a Tri I just count how many people pass me...! I felt pretty good on the run but lack of sleep, nutrition and doing a tri the day before/being not in the best of shape caught up to me and I could not lengthen my stride to save my life. I estimate a 26 min 5k on that part, but oh well. the broken-down-results should be up soon, but for now here are the overall results:
http://tbfracing.com/results/results/2008/goldenstate/gstritroverall.html


So overall I would definitely love to do this more often! I loved it. Tomorrow morning the plan is to run about 6 miles while it's still dark. We should have a water polo game at school tomorrow against our arch-rival Roosevelt High School, but something's wrong with their heater and ... our pool too is all messed up. so... we'll see.

New Algebra II test

I did not wake up to go biking this morning at 4:30 like I was hoping, but did make it up for morning water polo practice. but only 2 kids showed up so we went to mcdonalds. and got iced coffee! so i'm all jazzed today.

http://mrdorman.com/alg2/alg2unit1.html is a new algebra II unit test they will take tomorrow. they've been learning the stuff with quizzes thrown in for a month and a half now. they just finished a "benchmark" three-problem test where they had to more explain than do the math for each of the main types of problems (inequalities, graphing/modeling, and slope stuff/piecewise functions). so today it was super easy to them, which was certainly gratifying to see! On the pre-test most of them got like 2 right out of 11...

then tonight go to go to Fresno State and swim along with my asian Josh and myself. tomorrow is bike to work day and we also play clovis north in water polo! Big day! It's 10:40 and i better get in bed if i have any hope of waking up around 5 to actually get a 10-20 mile ride in before school starts and get there early too! and safely :-)

more water polo - and Triathlon - and teaching news

It was once again a very busy and productive week!

Teaching wise my kids worked on their "understanding by design" units and i am getting pretty pleased with the results! It's basically focused questions that make them explain their results more and show their answers in a variety of modalities. so one problem will have them getting an answer by graphing, functions, and explain what it MEANS. pretty cool. i will probably try to scan some of them in for work-related stuff, so will post a link. algebra 2 is cool!

Water Polo established a website at http://www.mclanewaterpolo.com which links to the existing google site. we officially split up into JV And Varsity.

Friday night: Fundraising (made about $70 but hey, better than nothing).
Saturday morning from 9-11am when it was raining!: Scrimmage! (http://picasaweb.google.com/mclanepolo/Fundraising_scrimmage#)

Saturday afternoon: Took two kids to work on computers for the fresno seniors computer lab! http://picasaweb.google.com/brandon.dorman/FRESNOSENIORS02#5253880204609849058 a 2005 article. great to see people are still using it 3 years after i left it and almost 8 years since i started it.

Sunday morning: A trip with 4 kids and my girlfriend to Merced for a triathlon! We just watched it, which was pretty cool actually! It's been a while sine I just watched a race and cheered friends on... so pretty cool. Also made contact with the Merced Jr. College water polo coach and will probably try to send a couple of kids his way next fall...

Then this afternoon took a nap, hung out with meagan, made dinner, did some swimming at the gym to prepare for next saturday and sunday's triathlons (just two sprints), and now am doing laundry and will prepare for the week some more! two polo games; both away against tough teams but it will be fun!