Endurance Magazine's Ramblin' Rose Women Only Triathlon Series wrapped up in October and capped off an amazing first year of our "green" initiative, "Race Without A Trace". All of the athletes who participated in the series, as well as the Carroboro Classic Endurance Festival, The Tarheel 10-Miler and Franklin 5000 helped contribute to a cleaner environment with respect to the amount of event-related waste they reduced and recycled.
Rather than hand out throw-away plastic bottles at the finish, the Endurance Magazine/Sport Often team hands out re-useable plastic bike bottles participants can use to fill up at one of our many water stations. In addition, race packets including flyers and coupons are all distributed digitally via e-mail. Shirts, bags, and other items are handed out at packet pick-up without plastic bags as well.
Earlier in the year, it wasn't unusual to find our team sorting compost, recycling, and trash in the few bags of waste generated at our events. As the year wore on and more people became aware of our different recycling, trash and compost bins, our job became easier and the environment a little bit cleaner!
Posted by: Thys Wind in Triathlon, Training, Events on
Oct 22, 2008
The other day I was running through the quiet forest in Umstead State Park. With the leaves falling to the ground around me and the oxygen-rich air feeding my brain, I started thinking about the Bailout Plan. Not the one that we've all heard so much about on the news lately, but the one that you actually have some degree of control over, and one that has been shown to be absolutely 100% effective. Having a training plan before the weather gets cold and wet is highly recommended if you want to come out of the other end of winter in reasonable shape - ready for a breakthrough year of racing.
So as you train during the next few months, save yourself from a physical recession by employing the following (bullish) Bailout Plan:
The Endurance Magazine team was out in force at the Mission Man triathlon this weekend with our events director, Thys, taking second place overall. Having done this event every year in its existence, I have to say it may have been the best weather to date. Either that or the extra shade on the new run course made it seem that way! Oh yeah, we turned a few heads in warm-up with our new Team singlets.
Posted by: Joe Nuss in Triathlon, Training, Swim on
Jul 24, 2008
Great minds think alike. I recently discovered one of our blog readers "invented" copying Hemingway's style for Endurance Sports Writing long before I did. In fact, he dooes it much better than I have... Check this link out and scroll down for "The Old Man and His Wetsuit."
http://triguyjt.blogspot.com/2008/03/hemingway-and-holly.html
Sunday the 13th of July started early for me. I arrived at Lake Crabtree at about 6:15 AM to take part in the Triangle Triathlon. Joe and Steve had other commitments so I was there to represent Endurance Magazine the best I could. The race went well and I enjoyed hanging out with my good friend Ricardo (November 2007 cover and star WindSpeed client) afterwards. Just as a side note, Ricardo told me about how he's "building" a bike, which to me means you just order a frame and a bunch of components, bring them to a local bike shop, and have them puzzle the bike together. No, Ricardo is actually building a bike, as in designing a frame on the computer, creating molds for a monocoque carbon fiber frame, using epoxy and fiber glass tape, etc. Pretty impressive!
Anyway, now that I'm home relaxing in the A/C, I am probably doing what the 890 other participants are doing (or not), which is checking to see if Set Up Events has posted the race results. At this point in time they aren't up yet, but don't worry because I am checking every 2 minutes! What is it that make race results so great to look at? The funny thing is, once you finally get to look at them the build up simply doesn't live up and you end up feeling sort of let down.
With my thought patterns now officially stuck in the "how about now?, how about now?, now?, now?,..." loop, I thought about a hilarious bit that the well-known comedian Kevin James did about the frustrations of unlocking the driver side door while your passenger keep pulling up on the passenger door handle. Fast forward to 4:25 in the video.
Posted by: Joe Nuss in Triathlon, Swim on
Jul 08, 2008
The funniest question I ever heard at a triathlon pre-race meeting was "how deep is the water?" Everyone chuckled because obviously the time to worry about not being able to stand in open water is NOT 2 minutes before the swim start! It was very funny to me, of course, because I spent most of my early twenties surfing the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. I surfed a couple of El Nino sized waves and fought some pretty tough conditions on many occassions just to make it out to the surf line-up beyound the break, so I've always been a bit cocky about open water swims. It wasn't until I was on my first training swim in the Gulf of Mexico at Ironman Florida, however that I finally understood the feelings of the person who asked that "silly" question we all laughed about.
During my first training swim prior to the race, I swam out to the first buoy, about a half mile and as is my tradition on long triathlon swims, I punched the buoy as I swam around it. Just as I was about to put my face back in the water and charge back in to the beach, I caught a faint glimpse of the shore... a faint glimpse. Holy cow! It was so far away, I was kind of scared. I lost my breath and instinctively looked for the Gulf's sandy bottom beneath the surface. I couldn't see it! Just then another swimmer rounded the buoy and without thinking of the silliness of the question, I asked him this:
A great article on the Outside Blog called Old, Drunk Man Lost at Sea was the inspiration for this inaugural edition of my weekly column -- Training With Hemingway. Check back every Wednesday to read about my current training for the Duke Half Ironman written in the style of the greatest writer ever!
My first installment is a cycling piece about the new group ride I attended in North Raleigh last night. When told the average pace was 20-21 mph, I should have known better... but unfortunately I have the spirit of Hemingway in me (minus the Mojitos).
