Superfrog Success

I'm sitting in the San Diego Airport (again) waiting for my colleague, Todd Carver, to arrive from Denver. We will spend the day on the US Navy SEALs Amphibious Base working with an elite athlete core of SEALs on their individual bike fits. Elite Bicycles frame builder and master fitter, David Greenfield, is also on hand conducting top notch fits.

Yesterday was the culmination of my early season winter training at the Superfrog 1/2 triathlon in Coronado. Coronado is 5 or 6 miles south of downtown San Diego and although it is now predominately a tourist trap, it is also the home of the NSW (Naval Special Warfare) Community. The half-ironman, the Superfrog, is the longest running long distance triathlon in the world and the SEALs are deeply embedded in the history of triathlon as some of the very first competitors.

This year, I raced the Superfrog individual event and Emily was the swim leg of a very strong relay team. Her cyclist was Swedish uber-biker, Bjorn Andersson, and her runner was a local San Diego Kenyan, Okwaro Raura. They ended up winning the relay in 3 hours, 42 minutes and change, over 10 minutes ahead of the second place team. As a bonus, Bjorn's bike split was a mind-numbing 1 hour and 59 minutes over the 56-mile bike course. He was flying which says good things about his winter training. Now that splits have been verified on Superfrog's website, www.superfrogtriathlon.com, it shows both Okwaro and Bjorn demolishing previous course records on the run and bike.

The last two Superfrog races, I ran into race day mishaps including a run course navigational error (i ran off course while in the lead and was DQ'd) and last year a rear cassette rattled loose. My goal this year was to have a solid, and god-willing, a mechanical-free race.

Rumors floating around the transition before the race pinned the water temperature in the Pacific at 57-degrees, so I wore two caps, and felt quite comfortable throughout the two lap swim. I even opted for a pre-race warm up and felt fine. This kind of makes me think the water was in the low 60's. Anyways, my friend Dean Cummings was at the starting line and instructed "no mechanicals" this year and I was happy to oblige!

I exited the two loop, 1.2-mile swim in second place, roughly one minute behind Aussie Luke Bell and just ahead of Chris McDonald. Chris and I exited transition together and took off after Luke. This was the second race I've done reading power wattage now, and I forced myself to pace the early miles at nothing over 340 watts. Because it was a four-loop bike with numerous out-and-back sections, we would have plenty of time to gauge ourselves against Luke. Chris and I have similar riding styles and effectively pushed each other so we caught Luke after two laps.

The rest of the bike was uneventful and my average wattage over the 56-miles was 325 watts, with an average speed of just under 26 m/h. At the end of the third lap, Chris told me I almost dropped him, so the fourth lap I picked up the pace and that dropped Luke off our pace. Exiting transition together with Chris, we had 30 or 45 seconds on Luke.

The run at Superfrog is 90% sand, both along the beach (hard-packed) and through the SEALs training ground (soft-sand). I dropped off Chris' pace in the first half-mile and Luke passed me around that time. I had no illusions of hanging with them, but wanted to stay conservative and hope they had gone out too hard and underestimated the toll that running on sand puts on the body. Two miles into the run, Luke pulled up with what looked like cramps, which he later mentioned was a slightly pulled muscle. It must have been OK as he finished the race. Chris meanwhile extended his lead. At the end, after 13.1-miles of painful sand running, I crossed the line in second place in 4 hours 2 minutes, over six minutes behind Chris, who won in 3 hrs 55 minutes.

It was a good day for the Finangers. Unfortunately Emily wasn't able to defend her two consecutive individual Superfrog wins, but an injury limited her to swimming on the relay. This race is a staple on our yearly schedule as the organizers run a Wildflower-like grassroots race with the best cause I could imagine - proceeds and donations go to helping children and wives of fallen SEALs. This year, with the introduction of a $10,000 prize purse, same bigger names in the sport came out of the woodwork. In the Olympic Distance, SuperSeal event, was Jordan Rapp and in the Superfrog 1/2, Bjorn Andersson, Chris McDonald, Renata Bucher, and Luke Bell all took part.

Cheers,
Lars

Chris, Bjorn, Jordan and Lars recovering with Normatec MVP after the race

from snow to superfrog

We're escaping Boulder tonight after our biggest DUMP of the year, 13 inches accumulated in our backyard yesterday, and are heading to San Diego for the Superfrog half-ironman.



Superfrog (www.superfrogtriathlon.com) has become a staple on our racing calendar. It is the longest running half-ironman triathlon in the world, this year being the 31st running. Emily has had two great performances here and is the two-time champ. Unfortunately, she will not be able to race the individual half this year due to injuries that have kept her from cycling and running this winter. Instead, she is on a monster relay team including triathlon's top male cyclist, Bjorn Andersson, and a local San Diego runner Okwaro Raura. We know Bjorn well but will meet Okwaro for the first time this weekend.



I will race the individual 'Frog for the third time and would be satisfied with a mechanical free race. I've been in the lead of the race twice, only to succumb a bike mechanical and a navigational error on the run course. The competition will be stiff this year with Luke Bell, Jonas Colting, Jordan Rapp, Matt Lieto, Chris McDonald and 3x champ Mitch Hall all racing for a share of the prize purse. This is not your typical triathlon though with 90% of the run course crossing hard and soft packed sand. It is draining on everyone and it is mentally very taxing. With that said, I think the best athlete will still come out on top.

Stay tuned for pics from the Expo tomorrow.
L & E

why Aussie's are such quick swimmers

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wanna hike in the buff? head to switzerland

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golfing in Saudi -- on grass

we piled it all in yesterday. Bryan (B) and i scheduled a 6:30 tee time at the hill course and were the first ones on the course. the night before, a sandstorm blasted up from Riyadh but it settled overnight and we played with a bit of wind but not a blink of sand.



as kids growing up in RT, we played golf using artificial grass mats. wherever the ball would land on the tar-lined course, you would go through the process of toweling off the ball and plopping down the grass mat directly behind the lie of the ball. we joked there was no such thing as a bad lie on that course.

we ended up playing 18 holes at the Dhahran Country Club, which features 18 grass and 9 of the old mixed tar holes. the grass on the course was imported from Georgia, but the course felt more like something in Scotland or Ireland with the nasty bushes in the rough that swallowed any errant ball.

B used the round as a warm up for his upcoming best ball tournament where he will partner up with our old swim coach, Chuck Peterson. Chuck and his wife, Pat (CUDA CUDA) have been playing now for four years, which is good timing as they will retire back to the golfing capital of the world in Jacksonville, Florida at the end of the year. On another note, B and I had a good laugh when Chuck sounded disappointed his future teammate could only muster to shoot a 50 on the front nine. better luck in the tourney B.

Sandland - Day Two

We picked up the Benchich Boys and girl (Mike's wife Elisabeth) and brought them back to Dhahran with us. It was the first time back to Saudi in 14 years and they were chomping at the bit to get back.



After a few hours of sleep, Emily and I went to the Security Dept to get our temporary ID cards. These cards are needed to enter into any facility in any of the four Aramco compounds. Once we had these, we drove down to Ras Tanura (RT) to spend the day on the small compound where I grew up (1982-1995).

RT is home to one of the world's largest oil refineries and this alone made the compound a popular target for Sadaam Hussein's scud missiles during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Luckily the US had patriot missiles they used to defend the compounds which thwarted all but one of the incoming scuds.


RT is also located on the Arabian Sea in the Persian Gulf, and throughout the years my family had two different houses only a few hundred meters away from the beach. Emily and I swam at the North Pool and had two lifeguards standing at full attention as we were the only two swimming.


After a quick lunch of Emily's new favorite "Arab bread and cheese" we picked up Mike and Elisabeth and took a tour of the compound and revisited all of our old childhood houses. Each house on the compound is identical on the outside but different parts of the camp held the 2, 3, 4, and 5 bedroom houses. A housing list within the company signifies which kind of house an employee and his/her family is most likely to get. My Dad managed to move to the head of this list in 90/91 as he stuck out employment with the company during the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait and the Persian Gulf War.

The four of us took a walk along the beach sidewalk, which was only one-mile long, and waded in the gulf for some pictures. Bryan, who has recently revisited his athletic roots with half-marathon running, was out for a run and we drove back over to the pool area to meet up with him.


The 50-k drive back to Dhahran was crazy as driving in this country always seems to be (note: i will post a separate blog on driving in this country..it's worth it). A quick nap and Mom cooked up a small feast with BBQ chicken and strawberry, alcohol-free daquaries. That's right, there is no alcohol in the country either. My old baseball coach, Rich Hunter, stopped over and it was great to visit. Tomorrow I will stop over to Mark Stenov's house to pick up a road bike he is letting me borrow for the next few days. The compound is not that big, but Mark told me about "the loop" which is 40-k long in which cyclists here ride loop after loop. I'll withhold judgement, but I can't imagine riding a century consisting of four identical loops.

Peace,
LF

Day One in Sandland

We logged 15 hours of flying time with Lufthansa yesterday and arrived in Saudi Arabia in one piece. Flying from Denver - Frankfurt - Bahrain is faster than the Minneapolis - Amsterdam - Dhahran leg we used to fly back when I was a kid. Maybe it goes by faster since I fall asleep right away where as a toddler I used to try and stay up and watch whichever movie was showing. Yes, flights go by faster when you sleep on them.

Mom and Dad were waiting in Bahrain for us and after slipping the customs agent 10 euros worth of Bahraini dinars, we passed through security and started on our way to Saudi.

Bahrain has certainly changed since I was last year five years ago. Manama, the capital city, has skyscrapers lining the Persian Gulf and is littered with bright and neon lights, fast food chains, and speeding drivers.

Our first stop was a tour of the "black flag" district, a strict Shiite neighborhood where inhabitants have been known to set fire to the car tires of innocent passerbyers. My Dad, always one to try and impress his guests, thought it would be a great initiation for Emily on her first visit to the Middle East. Needless to say, a great hush of anticipation fills the car when Dad takes us on these wild adventures. I'm happy to report despite receiving some wild looks, our car made it out of the district with car tires intact.

The next stop was to cross the 13-mile Causeway, a bridge that joins Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The bridge is divided in half and each side is identical: 6.5-miles long with the same humps and bumps along the road. The only difference is, you kiss goodbye to a modern Middle Eastern culture and say hello to the most conservative Muslim country in the world. Pork, booze and rights for women are left in Bahrain. Sorry to say. Fortunately, Westerns have become experts at sneaking all of the above into the country on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. These have become the tricks of the trade.

We made it home late, well after midnight, and were greeted by a very tired, but happy-to-see-us Golden Retriever, Jasmin. Day one complete. Tomorrow we travel to Damman to the new international airport to pick up Michael, Bryan and Elisabeth Benchich (M & B were my best childhood friends). They are here for the 75th year anniversary of Saudi Aramco and are coming back into the country for the first time in 14 years. Can't wait to see them.

Peace,
LF

Travel Day?

It's merely the size of an empty wallet, small enough to fit snugly inside your pocket, and tiny enough to evade detection before carelessly ending up in the washing machine. It also holds the power of keeping citizens confined within their country's borders if it is not in your possession while traveling internationally.

One month ago my wife and I finalized our travel itinerary to visit my parents who live in Saudi Arabia. One month ago we put into motion the tedious process of securing a Saudi Arabia visa which would provide us single entry and exit access into the otherwise closed country. Today is our travel day, specifically at 5:00PM tonight, and we have still not received our passports with country visa back from the Saudi Consulate here in the US. I would say I am worried it will not show up, but for some reason I have enough blind faith in a culture that tends to always wait until the last minute to produce the goods.

People always ask before vacations or longer trips if I am "excited" and my answer is always the same. I never seem to get excited until I am checked into the airport and board the airplane. That is when the trip begins, before that there are too many factors out of our control that can delay or terminate the process.

What I am excited about is to show my wife the country where I spent the first 13 years of my life, to see my best friends from childhood who are also flying back to "the big sandbox", and to even race in a sprint triathlon back in my hometown! It was in my father's P.E. class in Ras Tanura I raced a triathlon for the first time and almost 15 years later I compete at a professional level in attempt to earn a prize check!



The swim for this tri will be in the Persian Gulf and not the local swimming pool like in 8th grade P.E. and I won't be racing to get an A (finish all 3 sports), a B (finish 2 of the 3 sports) or a C (finish 1 of the 3 sports). My folks live in the international community of Dhahran, where the US military made it's home during Desert Shield and Storm, and their teacher friends have volunteered to outfit my wife and I with bikes to use on race day too.

I was told our little blue books would be arriving this morning via FedEX Overnight delivery and they have almost an hour to fulfill that promise. After that, our trip to Saudi Arabia might be put on hold until another time! But, I continue to hold out hope.

-LF

Chelsea the cat

My mom just called me from the vet's office down in Texas with the news that she had to put our cat, Chelsea, down. He fell in the pool last night because sometime yesterday he went blind. My parents said he was walking around the house running into furniture last night. His kidneys were failing and he wasn't going to improve so the vet told my mom that if it were her cat she would put him down.

So, in memory of Chelsea I am going to write down a few highlights of his 18 years with our family:

-We almost didn't adopt Chelsea. They were giving him away at the general store in Francestown, NH and we resisted at first and went home with no kitty. A little while later two kids came by the house and told my mom their dad would kill the kittens if they brought them home. That was enough to convince my mom to adopt him.

-We named him Chelsea because we thought he was a girl cat. When my mom took him to get him spayed the vet told her he couldn't spay the cat because it was a boy. Oops.

-It turns out Chelsea was too young to be away from his mother when we adopted him. He started nursing from our Golden Retriever, Cali, and amazingly enough Cali started producing milk for Chelsea even though she had never had puppies. To stop the nursing we started giving Chelsea milk to drink. 18 years later he still would meow very angrily at the fridge for a saucer of milk every morning.

-Chelsea lived in NH, Alaska, California and Texas. In NH he would hunt the frogs in our pond in the back yard and bring them to the window. He also killed a bat that got into our house when he was just a kitten.

-In Alaska he would fight the local cats and had a bite taken out of his butt and his ear. It happened right around when Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear. He thought hunting Canadian Geese was a good idea. He stalked them and when he went to attack they turned the tables and instead attacked him. That was entertaining for the family.

-He slept with Cali on her dog bed until she died about 5 years ago. After that he couldn't be in the house without a lap to sit on. He just walked around the house crying until someone picked him up or sat down so he could cuddle. If my parents were out of town or not giving him the attention he deserved he would just go to one of the other three houses in the cul-de-sac and make himself at home, usually entering through their cat doors and ending up on one of the beds.

-Most recently he started losing a lot of weight and wouldn't eat the dry food my mom was feeding him. So, she started buying him salmon- only the best after he grew up eating Alaskan salmon. She kept this up to try to get him to gain weight until at a dinner party at the neighbor's house she found out he had been eating at the houses on both sides of my parents and just not eating at our house. Sneaky.

He was 6 pounds today at the vet's office, 1/3 of what he used to weigh. He had a great life and I know my mom will miss him. Mom and Dad buried him in the back yard in Texas, his favorite place to hunt snakes, squirrels and mice.

random updates from the past week

It's been awhile so I wanted to post a quick update...

I spent a few days last week in the California-Danish hamlet of Solvang with my colleague Todd Carver bike fitting Vision Quest camp members. We spent the majority of those days in a hotel room while the campers biked 4-6 hours/day, but I did sneak away for two runs along portions of the Tour of California time trial course (very hilly). The concept of this camp was brilliant as it focused on teaching cyclists, but mostly triathletes, how to effectively ride and communicate in group road riding settings. A class or camp like this should be a pre-req for all triathletes to learn how to properly handle a bike out on the road and with a group.

After we left the camp in Solvang I spent Thursday night in Santa Barbara, had a great run on the beach and got a free pass to the local Y for a few swims in a disgustingly warm pool (unfortunately the 50m outdoor pool along the beach, Los Banos, didn't work with my flight itinerary). This place is like Boulder but on the Pacific Ocean and I realized I could easily see living out there someday.

Back in Boulder, I hopped on my first group ride of the year out to Carter Lake, a Saturday group ride of about 70 strong. The group usually breaks apart at the top of a one-mile climb to Carter Lake and at the top of the climb this past Saturday we had the local country Sheriff waiting for us with lights flashing. The officer has been known to crack down on cyclists riding in groups so I was just happy to have brought my ID along so I would only get a ticket and not a free ride to the jailhouse. I didn't quite know how the officer would ticket all of us, but luckily the officer just gave us a group warning.

Since it looked like the rest of the ride would be spent in one long, strung out paceline, I flipped a left turn and rode out to Masonville. On the way back towards Boulder, I realized the combination of a stiff headwind, very few long rides on the bike, and low fueling would make for a long ride back! When I finally made it to Hygiene (15 miles outside of Boulder) I peeled into the gas station and ordered buffet of sweets (donuts, Snickers, Mountain Dew, Coke, Lil' Debby cookie and an egg salad sandwich). It took all of that to reverse my bonk and get back home. I learned that Emily had a bit of trouble with the headwind too (maybe she'll chime in for more on that story).

Magnolia has become a weekly staple of my run training this winter and every time I head up there I wonder why we don't live up there yet. It is my favorite workout and is always very tough but is a great fitness booster. This afternoon, I had the 15.5-mile out and back on the dirt and gravel roads to myself again.

Our old roommate, Fred, came over for dinner tonight. He's leaving Tuesday for New Zealand to race the Ironman down there. He is going very good right now (like he always does November - May) and I think he's ready to uncork a Kona qualifying performance if his race goes according to how well he is training! In one particular instance on Saturday, he easily pulled off the front of the group ride while putting in ten minute sustained effort. We had to organize and work quite hard to pull him back into the group.

Em and I are waiting for our passports to come back with our visas for our Saudi Arabia trip this upcoming Friday! I am excited to have Em meet the Benchich Brothers and to see my parents and the country where I grew up. Worst case scenario, if the passports don't show up, we will spend the week in neighboring Bahrain and everyone will just have to drive across the Causeway (which separates the two countries) to visit us.

All for now,
lars