One of my favorite TV series of all time is Babylon 5. And one of my favorite episode titles is “Falling Towards Apotheosis“.

The episode is part of an arc that leads to the final confrontation between the Shadows and Vorlons about the future of the galaxy. The episode is the moment at which the final events that will either lead to a bright new future or a dismal past become inevitable. After this episode the die is cast.

What is interesting about the title is that it juxtaposes apotheosis – a climax or highest point – with the idea of falling … We are to imagine the story no longer moving out of it’s own free will to the end, but the force of history and events pushing it towards the end. Whereas most of the time apotheosis is something we move towards – our actions drive us to the climax.

In many ways JMS’s title was hearkening to another title, a book by Thomas Pynchon called Gravity’s Rainbow.

The phrase Gravity’s Rainbow is an image used by Pynchon to describe the parabola formed by a V2 rocket.

A V2 rocket is fired into space, for a period of time it has control of it’s destiny,  and at some point the rocket loses control of it’s fate and after that point gravity takes over. The parabola formed is what he calls Gravity’s Rainbow. The broader theme of the image is this notion of loss of control and hurtling towards your fate for good or for ill. And that notion of control followed by a switch to destiny plays out repeatedly throughout the book. The book, particularly explores that moment when you go from control to destiny as an important transition point.

For the last couple of weeks I have been in that transition point in the parabola. This is why I haven’t been blogging. In this state between moments, there is s certain amount of breathlessness. There was this nagging feeling that I am loosing control over the outcome of my race.

And this loss of control is disorienting. You feel that your ability to change the outcome is slipping away and that powerlessness is crippling. And you’re trying to desperately do one more hard workout, to focus one last time because if you do the outcome will be different.

And you know it’s pointless.

And then suddenly you embrace the loss of control.

The training is done, the preparation is done, the die is cast. Nothing more to be done.

There is still the small matter of doing this race, and I have control over that but the outcome of this race was determined over the last 8 months of insane training.

And now that the race is days away, I feel good again. I feel that I am no longer in the moment between control and lack of control – I have made the transition. I am now hurtling towards my apotheosis or destiny like a V2 rocket.

And that makes me feel good again.

Final weight loss status update

If you can read this graph what you’ll see is that I lost 26 pounds. My starting weight was 220, I reached 193.9. I was on track to get to 185 but shit happened. As it is I lost about 4 pounds a month which is pretty good.

Fun facts about my weight loss. I dropped 4 sizes from a size 36 to a size 32. I will need to buy a new wet suit when I do my Ironman next year. For a mile swim the suit is okay, but for a two mile swim it’s kinda baggy. I had to buy new training clothes because nothing fits anymore. Making this a ridiculously expensive bit of weight loss.

Weirdest part of losing weight is that I can’t stay in cold water for as long. Turns out the fat was keeping me warm – who would have thunk it 🙂

We still need to get to 176 before the Athens Marathon… unclear I can pull that off … but I will still try.

The one important consequence  of my weight loss is that I did make the promise to myself and my family that if I couldn’t get to 195 by the time I did Vineman, I was not going to do an Ironman. Completing an Ironman weighing over 200 pounds was unrealistic. And if I hadn’t loss the weight 1 year before, I was just going to do a whole lot of exercise and ask them to deal with my workouts and fail and that was not fair to them. I met my goal, so now we can start looking for events to sign up for.

After 15 years of riding my Trek 5200, my wife insisted I get myself a new bike, especially after my cheap-as-dirt bike mechanic told me that he would have to replace every piece of cabling and shifting on the bike. My bike mechanic, who is AWESOME, likes to pride himself of being able to efficiently and cheaply take care of bikes. In my last repair, he admitted that the problems with the bike were legion and something had to be done.

My first reaction was – but I LOVE my bike. And then I remember an old friend who had a 20 year old bike that he loved, and when he got a new one he couldn’t wait to unload his old bike.

And still I resisted. Until I went to Hawaii where I rented a Roubaix … And the first moment I got on this new bike, I realized that the problems I was having with my saddle had nothing to do with the saddle, they had to do with the bike…

Here I am after my first ride:

Does this look like the face of someone who would be happy going back to his 15 year old bike? No, it doesn’t. I felt like some middle aged douche bag who touches a younger woman and then decides it’s time for an upgrade. But then I remembered, my bike is not my wife. Even if my bike is one of the few pieces of equipment that … well … okay you get the point. We are a SFW blog.

Then the debate began over which bike to buy … And unlike 15 years ago where there were only a few choices – racing and commuter – now bike vendors had more sub-genres than AI … (Really geeky CS joke about how all of Computer Science is really a sub-field of Artificial Intelligence)… And then once you get past the genres the equipment choices have exploded, it used to be the decision was shimano or campagnolo components with the only debate being what kind you wanted. Now we have things like electric shifters and disk brakes and life gets really complicated fast.

The first filter was whether I would get a Triathlon bike or we go for a replacement general purpose bike. I have been lusting after a Cervello P3 for almost a year now. The bike represents the future of how bike’s will be made, and has amazing performance characteristics. But it really only can be used for racing Triathlons and training for triathlons.

I agonized over this. If I had just ridden a Tri bike, I would have not agonized over this. Those bikes are so ridiculously stiff that unless you’re doing a Tri, you’re not riding them. To get an idea of how stiff, imagine sitting on a piece of cement that pounds your crotch area every time you go over a bump. Pounds. Yes, Pounds. That’s a Tri bike.

And when you consider that I can improve my speed significantly by losing another 20 pounds, until I lose 20 pounds this feels like wasted money.

Once we got past Tri, then it becomes about components. And I was lusting after the electric shifters until I thought about the following scenario: Bike freezes over night and battery dies so I can’t actually shift gears during triathlon … like last year in IMLT.  And that ended that debate. And again, if I had just bothered to try them I would have realized that although there is a legitimate performance boost, losing 20 pounds is cheaper and more efficient. What the electric shifters do is provide more precise and accurate shifting, and when the differences are measured in seconds this provides an undeniable advantage to someone using those shifters. Electric shifters are like power-meters, great gadgets that at peak levels of performance are absolutely worth considering…

Now the only question that remained was whether I go for the racing or endurance bike. And Bianchi resolved that debate. The recent introduction of the Bianchi Infinito CV made the choice easy. At my age, and with the intent to own the bike for 15 years, I was looking for something that would reduce the suffering on a long bike ride. And the Infinito fit the bill nicely. The bike  I tried the Cervello R3 and was impressed with the speed and lightness, but again if I just lose 20 f-ing pounds, any advantage will be eliminated and if I get to the point where seconds matter to me, I could always buy another bike …

And there was much rejoicing.

Until I started training.

See the problem is that my Trek 5200 was an ill-fitting bike. As my fitness has improved, the ill-fitting bike became a problem and in part motivated the purchase. However, my muscles were used to that ill-fitting bike. Especially my quads. And so now my frigging quads 6 weeks before my first half-ironman are in exquisite pain and misery. And I am thinking, what the hell was I thinking. Until I saw the speed improvements …

And all I could hear in my head was Phil Liggett talking about suffering …

The things we do for our craft.

Problems with weight loss.

The last month has been a mess. 

What you’ll notice is these weekly peaks followed by a drop, followed by an increasing peak later on.

This is usual symptomatic of slow weight gain. Much like the reverse graph is symptomatic of slow weight loss.

What the hell?

At first I blamed my vacations and weddings. But after last weekend, I had to face the reality that something was broken.

What I noticed was that over the last month, I had bonked twice while running. The reason I had bonked was because I had refused to eat gu, preferring to eat a little bit more and then burn off the excess during my running or biking. And as a result I was eating more to avoid bonking. And whereas that fine balance of eating more outside of workouts while I was getting to 200 pounds had worked, at 200 pounds I had not found the right equilibrium between eating outside of workouts and exercise.

What was happening was on the weekend I was eating a lot, then I ate less on Monday and got my weight back down, then on Tuesday I ate more to compensate for eating so little on Monday, by Thursday I was eating a lot but that was okay because I was going to bike it off and run it off and so on. And it was not working.

My new plan is to just eat while training and consider the two calorie budgets as distinct. I eat enough to lose weight outside of training and I eat enough to not bonk while training and don’t try and resolve the equilibrium.

We’ll see how this works out this week.

After getting back into blogging, I had a down week … fortunately because I had a wedding to attend.

Unfortunately, I had a really tough workout day involving 1:30 run in the morning and a 1:30 bike ride in the evening.

The run was a mess. It was super hot, so I demonstrated aptitude and learning because I didn’t die of dehydration. However, I also showed that I can screw up in new and exciting ways.

I bonked. OMG. Bonk’s suck. When you bonk every step, every movement is excruciating. And I was in excruciating unbelievable pain.

What’s stupid is that I had GU in my gym back. I just forgot to take it. And I thought, whatever, 1h30 minutes is not that big a deal. Except it was just before lunch. And I barely make it to lunch without eating. I tend to crap out from hunger.

So what was supposed to be this easy, pleasant run turned into something epic.

I felt like this dude from tough mudder. Crawling towards a finish line that is almost too far away.

And then I had a 1:30 bike ride in the evening. On my new shiny bike, mind you. And this time I said – damn it I will not bonk. So I ate power-bars and was fine… Except I wasn’t … Because once you are bonked, forever will it dominate your brain and you will keep eating past the point of hunger.

And then you have this feeling of disgust, not from the food volume, but because a Power Bar tastes like partially de-hydrated sweat. And when you are not hungry, it’s really really gross.

But that’s okay, because I had a couple of days to recover. And go to a wedding.

And the weight update

We moved in the right general direction this week. There was a sudden dip on Wednesday probably caused because I was super anxious about putting on weight at the Chinese banquet. And lo-and-behold in spite of my best efforts, I ate a shit load of food. I mean 2-4 pounds worth of food.

But this was a wedding banquet I had been waiting on for a very long time. So it was okay.

Apparently, it turns out, that peeing when you are super-dehydrated can hurt. And it can hurt a lot. I mean we’re talking burning sensations where you should not have burning sensations.

And while you’re in that kind of pain, your brain ain’t doing too well either. It’s a bad scene that will refuse to get better…

Let me rewind the clock a little bit.

This week was a down week. And like all down weeks when you’re training for an absurd event like a half-ironman, you still have long runs and long bike rides.

On Thursday I decided to do my long run instead of my long bike ride. And it turns out that weather in the bay area had gotten really really hot all of a sudden. Global warming and all that sort of thing.

A weird side effect of all of my dieting and training is that I am perpetually slightly dehydrated. Mostly because I can’t be bothered to drink enough water during the day. At Zynga we had calorie free drinks available all over the place, at Juniper being old school we don’t.

So on Thursday I decide to go for a run. And it was hot. And I forgot my water bottle. I thought, what the hell, how bad could it possible be.

It was bad. Really really really bad. Painfully bad.

Of course like the obsessed triathlete I am, instead of worrying about my pains in wrong places, I was more frustrated with my heart rate and pace. Turns out that an elevated heart rate is another side effect of dehydration. So is stupidity.

The good news is that I didn’t hurt myself even more. You can actually hurt yourself pretty bad if you’re not careful. And I am very lucky.

So after consuming an ungodly amount of water, I felt a lot better. And over the next few days, I started drinking a lot more water.

My boss gave me this really cool water bottle on my first day, so I am making extensive use of that.

New PR

This week I had a 500 yard time trial. Time trials suck. It’s 10 minutes of your life where you are going all out and your reward is this brutally objective measurement of your progress or lack thereof.

My basic challenge in swimming, running and biking is my posture. Basically a life time of being hunched over and a big belly have given me a horrifically poor posture. My shoulders are hunched, my hips are in the wrong place and my head hangs over like a vultures.

The good news is that I have been working on posture. Loosely that translates into being in pain a lot as your body gets used to a new natural pose.

Meandering notes aside, I had this aspiration of going fast and using good technique.

Well 1/2 is not too shabby.

The technique was there for the first 25 yards, but I went so fast that my heart rate made it really hard for me to focus on technique until about the 400 yard mark. Good news is that my core technique has improved enough over the last year that I was able to go faster and maintain a better technique than I had in the past.

So like I said the other day, I crushed my PR 🙂 

And I do admit that when I saw the 8 in the minute section, I started splashing in my lane like I had just won a race 🙂

As a minor note to myself, I did some math … My fastest ever 25 yards is basically the average pace for a professional ironman triathlete. I feel slower already…

Weight update

Because the internet of things still sucks, I was only able to get a few data points …

The good news is that I dropped some weight, the really exciting news is that I am now 2.5 pounds from having lost a 10kg 🙂

On a more mundane note, ever since I discovered that eating is the key to losing weight, my weight loss has accelerated.

Last week was a brutal week of exercise.

There was 2.5 hours of biking and running on Monday, high intensity swim on Tuesday, high intensity biking on Wednesday, a 3 hour bike ride and half hour swim on Thursday and a two-hour run on Friday ending with a 1:10 swim on Sunday.

But that was actually ok. Not too bad really. What was brutal was trying to watch Peter Jackson’s the Hobbit: An unexpected journey.

When I did my three-hour bike ride, I had originally decided that it was an excellent opportunity to see the movie. I believe it’s the first time ever that a bike ride served as a distraction to a film.

The movie was slow, rambling and poorly paced. It felt like a bad Dungeons and Dragons module … where the characters have insane action sequences paused between silly asinine dialogue… Maybe a bad computer game. If this was metacritic the score would be 10%

The brutality of the experience was made bearable by my biking. Thank God for the pain and suffering of the bike ride otherwise I would have resented the time I had spent watching this movie…

This experience reminded me of the experience of watching JK Rawlings books explode in size over time.

In my mind I suspect her editor went from being able to edit her books to being able to advise her on possible spelling errors. As a result the books became these sprawling amazingly large tomes that were endless and a mess

Clearly Peter Jackson writes his own rules now … and like Rawlings could benefit from an editor.

Oh well…

On weight loss update

At the end of the week I was crushed, scrunched, mauled.

And that turns out to be a good thing.

Because we decided to eat out a lot this week, and it was this endless barrage of “lose weight” while working out “put on weight after meal”.

Restaurants do two evil things:

1. They use ridiculous portions
2. They use a lot of sugar and fat

Let’s be clear, as a sugar and fat consuming machine the food is awesomely good, however, it truly and awesomely goes straight to my midsection…

We had this sushi roll that had greasy goodness wrapped in rice with some sugary sauce. Then we had this Chinese restaurant menu meal that was this amazing bowl of noodles ..

Suffice it to say the quantity was amazing as the tastiness. And I could not stop eating.

Somehow I still lost weight. But it took a lot of careful eating after eating tasty restaurant food!

Last week was rough. Work stuff. Family stuff. Exercise stuff. And worst of all… my internet enabled scale had to be reconfigured with the internet.

Definitely not feeling very humorous or engaging or fun.

But the week was over on Monday.

Except it wasn’t.

My favorite gadget of all time is my Withings scale that uploads my weight data to the cloud. The data driven approach to weight loss has made it possible to confront my own magical thinking about weight loss. Magical thinking I didn’t even realize I have.

This scale is an example of the internet of things. And when it works life is magical and when it to doesn’t I am reminded of the mess that is technology.

Well it turns out that the wifi connection in my house isn’t perfect. And it turns out that blue-tooth enabled android phone and my Withings scale don’t like working together. And it turns out that the UX of the Withings scale and iPhone suck. To configure the Withings scale I have to get out of the Withings application and go to the iPhone configuration set up and then return to the Withings app — why oh why can’t I just do it directly from the Withings app.

Because Jony Ive doesn’t think I should.

Oh well.

So it took me several days of futzing and tweaking and screaming and being very grouchy to get my internet enabled scale to work. And that made me think that doing the same for hundreds of devices would be insane. I would… quite literally… go insane. For the internet of things to work devices and registration of devices on networks has to be at least 4 orders of magnitude simpler.

I have less hair as a result of this. And I am more convinced that the internet of things is a long term trend not a short term trend.

As for what this has to do with my half-ironman?

Lots. You can’t really blog without your weight and you can’t blog about your weight if your stupid scale doesn’t connect to the internet. So there.

But it works all better now, so that’s good.

And here’s the weight data 

Less progress than usual (.8 pounds vs 1 pound) and that is disappointing given my weight loss.

But the stress of the broken scale was just too too much to overcome this week.