How to Cheer At a Triathlon

What works best when cheering on tired triathletes? We found out!

Join me and some exhausted triathletes as we yell at racers on the second day of Wildflower while they climb a steep hill in the blazing Sun. Our goal was to motivate by screaming odd compliments and jar them out of their misery and into a smile. We had more positive reactions than I've ever seen before at any race. Most people cheered back and thanked us for our creative chants and some even asked why they were unlucky enough not to get one especially for themselves.

This audio is one of those rare jewels where people typically say "We shoulda recorded that." Well, we did. Big thanks go out to Moonpie, Tyler, Kelly, and the Team in Training Pimp who helped make our cheering section the best on the course.

Listen in carefully and you'll hear us run alongside both Roman (Everyman Triathlon) and Michelle (Rural Girl) as they go past. We did the same for IronWil, but that wasn't on tape.
So, put on your earphones and picture yourself with a small group of fellow triathletes sitting in lawn chairs and drinking cold beer in the shade. Clear your throat as you prepare to yell at the runners climbing a steep grade on mile two of the run, an aid station just 100 feet past the top!

"YOU CAN DO IT, EXTREMELY-BUFF DUDE WHO FORGOT TO TAKE OFF HIS CYCLING GLOVES! NOTHING CAN STOP YOU NOW!"

Wildflower 2007!

Join me and the raceAthlete crew as we hit Wildflower, the greatest Half Ironman in the U.S.! In this episode, I take you along for a bike ride as I detail how trip and race went while I get chased by a dog, shoo a poisonous snake out of the road, and play some great music. The second half of the show is audio from on location in Wildflower and contains interviews with Tricia, Jetpack, and Moonpie. This is a two-hour episode, so load up your mp3 player and take it with you on a nice bike ride or drive to your next race.

Shownotes!

On the Bike in Texas:

• Music - Sugar and Spring by Edible Red on the Podshow Music Network.


• Coach Mike asked for my race report so he could analyze it.


• One word to describe Wildflower - COLOSSAL.


• Used PowerTap without HRM on bike, Suunto with HRM and GPS puck on run.


• Mark from Brussels wants to donate his Tri3Life.com shirt to another winner.


• Used a Trico case to travel with bike.


• Amanda Beard is coming back to swimming!


• Is Dean Karnazes stupid or just media savvy?


• AJ teaches me about not "burning matches" on the bike. This is really good advice!


• Leave room in your suitcase to bring stuff back.


• The Expo has everything, so don't stress if you need gels, CO2, or tubes.


• I get chased by a stealthy dog in ninja mode!


• Chris Sweet tells me how he can tell I'm taking too many electrolytes.


• A gel every 20 minutes is too much!

• Standard gearing is a bad choice for the Wildflower bike course.


• Triboomer sat next to a porn star on the plane.


• RV was cool, maybe try a car and tent next time?


• Big thanks to all the fans that dropped by the RV.

Audio from the Race:

• Meeting Jetpack at the Airport.


• Kelly cracking Tricia's back in the RV.


• Moonpie interviews me after he's drank a six-pack.


• In the transition area, describing the scene just before the race starts.


• Interview with Tricia.


• Interview with Jetpack.

Post Production Audio:

• I battle it out with a copperhead snake.


• Kai says "Hi!" and happy Mothers' Day!

How to Execute a Sprint Tri

Howdy, Tri-Geeks!

Join me on this audio adventure as I take you with me to a local sprint triathlon. I nail this one perfectly as I cross the finish line racing a fellow age-grouper in a to-the-death battle for tops in our category. We're talking wave-winning swims, sub 30 second transitions, and taking the finish line by 0.2 seconds kind of racing, BABY! If you like the fast stuff, you found your fix!

Listen in for the audio goodness and make sure you check out the shownotes below!

• "Dirty" by American Head Charge from the Podshow Music Network.


• This race is just a "C" race.


• Support your local race!


• If you like Metal, you should check out Lamb of God.


• I nearly get run off the road by a huge truck.


• I develop "strategery" for my race.


• Went to the foot doctor for my injury.


• Tri-Rob's voicemail. "Smile, You're Tri-ing!" slogan for Tri3life.com.


• Mark from Brussels - "Pay for one event, get two free."


• NormB from San Diego?


• I go on a rant about Chiropractic treatment.


• Could Nuun + Gatorade + Hornet Juice = End of Times?


• Emily has a back injury. :(


• Driving the bike course the day before the race.


• You have to decorate your bike travel case with lots of stickers.


• I chased down a dangerous motorist and told her off.


• Zentri Hippy Moment - You can buy Hemp Cereal!


• "Yarrow" by Chris in Oregon.


• Pre-race checklist.


• Hornet Juice review from 5inthaHood.


• In my car moments before the race.


• Interview with Emily about seeing me outsprint a guy at the end.


• Voicemails from Rambonie and Sherrif Buford T. Justice.


• Music at end is "Old Country Road" by Doug Macleod from the Podshow Music Network.

Trail Running and Drew’s Interview with a Registered Dietitian

I'm very happy to bring you a double-feature podcast - the first half is me "zenning out" while trail running on a local mountain bike course and talking about lots of great stuff, and the second half is Drew interviewing a registered dietitian about proper triathlon nutrition. She's extremely knowledgeable about the topic and this podcast is a MUST LISTEN if you are trying to nail the energy side of your next race or training. Enjoy the show and make sure you check out all the show notes below!

• Trailrunning at Lake Bryan on singletrack.


• Drew's guest interviewee is dietitian Vanessa Vargus


• I was in a Bike to Work Week commercial. Almost got killed riding home. Took 3 hours to film 30 seconds of material.


• Why is it so hard to be a bike to worker and a triathlete?


• Check out these bike podcasts about biking to work and such - KBOO, Bikescape.


• People wrongly think that the more expensive bike you have, then you're more of a real cyclist.

• Picture of me with Freebirds Burrito van. I got paid with a burrito!


• How to train for triathlons: Swim/bike/run instead of watching TV. Works out just right.


• Trail running is the perfect gateway to becoming a runner. It's more fun, cooler when it's hot, warmer when it's cold, and gives you more agility.


• Went out partying the other night for a birthday party. Ended up in a Hooka Bar. WTF?


• Got to swim in my 2XU wetsuit. It's great, but full-sleeve wetsuits aren't my favorite. I think it kicked me in the nuts.


• I get another hate voice mail from Jetpack. He's obviously scared.


• Emily puts up with a lot with me trying to train for IM Wisconsin. I owe her big time.


• T-shirt contest! Check out tri3life.com.


• Suunto pod system patch. Windows update was giving a nasty error. Go HERE to download the patch.


• The new Reid-Karnezes diet


• The Inoveryourhead.net podcast is strikingly similar to Zentri. You should check it out!


• Check out Zenhabits.net.


• Here are links to notes that details Vanessa Vargus talked about in her interview with Drew:


• Another good link


• Harris Benedict Formula:

To determine your total daily calorie needs, multiply your BMR by the
appropriate activity factor, as follows:
1. If you are sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation =
BMR x 1.2
2. If you are lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) :
Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375
3. If you are moderatetely active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5
days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55
4. If you are very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) :
Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725
5. If you are extra active (very hard exercise/sports & physical job or
2x training) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.9

zen thoughts: no more capitalization in 50 years

As we have witnessed, I have a knack for predicting future trends. This time I will extend myself beyond the world of triathlon and tell you why we will no longer capitalize many words in our written language in 50 years or fewer.

I noticed a pattern several years ago while using chat clients at work. I used to burn calories in the sitting position at an office that didn't monitor Internet usage, so I chatted with several other friends via Yahoo messenger quite a bit. If you haven't noticed, chat language is short and exhibits quite a bit of disdain for proper grammar. While email still resembles a proper letter, chat is so instantaneous and back-and-forth, many proprieties are simply given up. People who converse quite a bit via chat will even develop their own words, phrases, and symbols that may mean nothing to anybody else. I think the speed of chat is a breeding ground for incredibly fast evolutions of language on their own tangents. You might not know that "ping!" means "Hello!" to me, but my chat friends sure do.

Around this time arrives phones with full-blown email clients on board. I started out with a Sidekick and eventually graduated to an HTC Wizard. What's nice about some of the writing applications on these is that they capitalize the first word of every new sentence for you. People are now using these phone email clients quite a bit and the self-capitalizing feature is quite nice.

I switch jobs and start working at an office where outside chat clients are frowned upon, but we still have an internal chat package, so I'm still using it to get work done. I'm now also used to not having to capitalize because of my phone's software. Little by little, I accidentally keep letting capitalization slide. I start letting it slide in chat, forum posts, short emails to friends, on and on. This has been going on for years and no one has mentioned it to me. No one seems to care and it makes no change to the context of the conversation!

I'm sitting in a technical writing class a few weeks ago and the instructor is telling us all the things that used to be wrong that are now OK. Splitting infinitives, beginning a sentence with "and"; the list is numerous. It is quite amusing to see peoples' worlds completely wrecked to find out they've been spelling or using a word the wrong way their whole lives, by the way. More importantly, the teacher focuses on what's changed, but never on what might change. I raise my hand and suggest that capitalization could be gone in 50 years. I'm laughed off, but I manage to point out that the things that have changed now would be scoffed at 50 years ago.

i'd like to demonstrate my point in the rest of this posting. you see, no sentence begins without a space and punctuation before it or without the start of a new paragraph. the beginning of every sentence is obvious because of punctuation or spacing. much like that study that showed that you can jumble up words as long as you keep the first and last letters the same, the brain can easily determine that this is the end of a sentence. the combination of chat clients and self-capitalizing software has created the perfect storm for many of us to realize that capitalizing the first letter of a new sentence is actually, well, pointless.

the tech writing instructor showed us many examples of how you can do certain things in informal writing and not in formal, which i'm sure this will follow. you can write like this to a friend, but don't do it on a job applicaton. and what will happen with proper names, such as joe or bob? hard to tell right now. another interesting fact is that the blog software i'm using right now has several templates that have fonts with no capitalization, so it's not just me thinking this. it's almost like it's a signature of the writtings of the tech-savvy. it doesn't look as nice as proper capitalization, but it sure isn't necessary. with our ever-quickening society, whatever's not necessary will be tossed in half a century.

have you been writing without capitalization? does it bother you when other people do it? can you think of an example where it doesn't work? i can't.