To those of you wondering - Yes, I'm alive and yes, I finished =). The biggest triathlon in the world. Done. One more thing off the Impossible List. Here's the story. The Night Before Saturday evening I headed downtown for the Triathlon Expo. An hour of chaos and a bag full free energy bars, I met up with Mark Lawrence, Nina Yau & Brandon James for our own mini-Chicago blogger meet-up. We had a nice pre-race dinner at a small Peruvian restaurant ...
Tri Indy Results [Embarrassing Stories Edition]
[blackbirdpie url ="http://twitter.com/joelrunyon/status/20065765753"] The twitter message pretty much says it all. I finished and did pretty well, but I’ve been getting asked a lot about the results, so here's the race recap. It’s sort of epic so here are some quick highlights to look forward to: My fastest bike time ever 2 embarrassing stories A variety of semi-amusing photographs Ready? The Race The swim was in the canal in downtown Indianapolis. ...
Last Minute Impossible Plans
It seems I couldn’t get enough of my first triathlon experience so yesterday I signed up for another one…this weekend. I’ll be running obliterating [my new word for finishing triathlons - thanks twitter-verse] the Indy Tri this Sunday downtown. It’s an official USAT event and it's listed as a Sprint triathlon. The distances? All over the place again – 500m swim 11.5 miles 3.1 mile run I’ve got to admit, I’m terribly confused on what qualifies as a ...
How To Buy A Road Bike For $150
I've been meaning to get a real bike. It was one of my goals at the beginning of the month and while I got "a bike" from my brother, I found out that it wasn't an ideal bike for a triathlon. So, for the last few weeks I've been trying to get my hands on a legit bike that rides well and this past Saturday I ended up getting a pretty good one for $150. Here's how I did it: Check out Craigslist I've used craigslist before, but it wasn't until I read "How to ...
Who’s Got 2 Thumbs And Just Did A Triathlon? – Valpo Tri 2010
This guy. After 400m swimming, 12.4 miles biking and 3.2 miles running, I'm alive and I'm proud to say I finished! I'm pumped that I did it, but not so pumped about my time. My goal for the race, was 1 hour 15 minutes. I actually thought that that was a realistic time for what I wanted to do. In reality? I wasn't even CLOSE. As it turns out I made quite a few miscalculations...let me explain... The Race The 20-29 male age division was the first wave to ...
Weird Distances, Uncertainty & My First Real Triathlon
Tomorrow’s a big day. I'll be running my first official triathlon in Valparaiso, Indiana. It's a fairly short-distance race. I only have to do a: 1/4 mile swim 12.4 mile bike 3.1 mile run That's pretty doable, right? Sprint vs. Novice Technicalities Over the past few weeks, I’ve been referring this triathlon as a “sprint” triathlon”, but after doing some more research, I realized it really should be classified as a novice distance. The distances ...
Getting A Bike & Killing Off Excuses
Not My Bike Or My View :( I'm On A Bike! Good news! Exactly one week before my first real triathlon, I got a bike. Last minute, like always, I snagged this one from my brother when I was back up in Chicago for the weekend. He got it like 10 years ago back in high school and hasn't touched it since so I decided to steal it for next weekend. It's silver & blue, and is basically a super cool...mountain bike. Great for riding around as a kid, probalby ...
Vibrams Five Fingers Review Part 2
This is the 2nd of a 2 part series where I review my Vibram Five Fingers Shoes I bought last month. You can read the first part of the review here. *** In my last review, I touched on a bunch of the things I really like about my VFFs. In this second part of the review, I'm touching on some of the things I wasn't so happy with. Once again, for those of you wanting to skip around, here are some of the highlights of the video: [-0:17] - ...
Surrounding Yourself
If you're going to get good at anything you have to surround yourself with people who are better than you, people who believe in you and people who challenge you. The more you do that. The faster you do that. The faster you improve. *** If you surround yourself with people who have no goals lack motivation show no discipline and have no higher arcing purpose for what they're doing, Chances are, you'll end up wandering without ...
Durham Cares RAAM Videos
[Update June 25th] Jesse gives a sweet case study on how he shot the Race Across America over on his blog & portfolio site: JesseOxford.com. He was also featured over on Planet 5D, a site dedicated to shooting on the Canon 5D. They did it! Team Durham cares rode into the docks in Annapolis yesterday morning about 6:30am. Their final time: 6 Days, 13 Hours and 14 minutes. In under a week they did two amazing [dare I say impossible] things: Biked ...
