2017-06-04 · 18:20

Powerlifting meet report: Empire of Renegades, 3 June 2017, Huntsville

I just competed in my third powerlifting meet, Empire of Renegades. It was a blast!

Originally I had planned to lift at Europa Orlando two weeks ago, and had trained for that, but the airplane nose landing gear broke and Matt and I got temporarily stuck in Adel, Georgia. Luckily while I was sulking in my hotel room, I found this meet, which was only about 10min from my house, so I signed up and got ready to kick it. I have long had the goal of getting to 1000# total and I thought that maaaaybe this might be the day, if everything broke perfectly well for me.

Training and meet prep

Most athletes who are preparing for a meet will follow elaborate training programs with a goal of peaking their strength right at meet time. Because I’m coached by the team at Complete Human Performance, I just do what my coach (a pro triathlete) tells me to do. Typically I lift 3x/week (upper one day, squats/deads one day, one day of combo), usually with a LISS run or bike afterwards. The other days are higher intensity cardio. This is liberating since I don’t have to worry about my programming, but undoubtedly means I’m leaving pounds on the rack since I am not trying to optimize my lifts. I lift in my garage, with no spotter or live coaching. My technique probably has lots of room for improvement. So I didn’t do anything super special for the meet other than tell Jon, my coach, three months ago that I had a meet planned.

All powerlifting federations separate lifters into different weight classes. In general, you want to be as heavy as possible within your weight class, but as light as possible overall (because your overall score is computed using your total bodyweight). Like wrestlers and UFC fighters, then, powerlifters have a whole science around trying to drop weight without losing muscle. I usually walk around about 205 lbs, and that would put me in the 220lb weight class against much stronger lifters. I decided to try to get down to 198 or below using a water cut. The idea behind these cuts is simple: by manipulating your fluid and salt intake, you trick your body into dehydrating itself. A typical plan might look like this for a Friday morning weigh-in:

  • Monday: drink a gallon of water, cut down dietary salt, lower the amount of carbs you eat
  • Tuesday: drink 2 gallons of water, with minimal salt and low carbs
  • Wednesday: drink a gallon of water and don’t eat anything
  • Thursday: drink half a gallon of water, no carbs, and nothing after 5:30pm. Spend a little time in the sauna in the afternoon
  • Friday: wake up, go get weighed in, and then start dehydrating and refeeding

I roughly followed this plan, but I didn’t start until Tuesday (Monday I had the Cotton Row 10K race in hot, humid conditions so I ate and drank like a pig until I got up Tuesday morning). That worked fine; I weighed in at 88.1kg. after having 2 gallons of liquid Tuesday with a mostly normal diet, nothing except eggs, cheese, and hot sauce (and a handful of peanuts, I’m weak) with 1 gallon Wednesday, 1/2 gallon and protein only Thursday, then weigh-in Friday morning.

Mid-week I stumbled across Bigger, Smaller, Bigger and will probably use it next time. It makes for a fun read even if you aren’t a powerlifter.

The meet

Crossfit Xiphos hosted the meet; we had 45 lifters arranged into 3 flights. I want to start off by saying that the meet was very well organized and run. Everything was smooth despite the fact that more than half of the lifters were doing their first meet!

A digression about how meets are organized. Each lifter gets 3 attempts for each event. In a full power meet (meaning the lifters will squat, bench press, and deadlift), you thus have 9 tries to lift. Saying that you went “9 for 9” or “2 for 9” thus indicates how successful you were overall. You tell the meet officials what your opening attempt weights will be for each of the 3 lifts, then, if you lift that weight, you can go up (by as much or as little as you want) for each subsequent attempt. There is a lot of strategy behind choosing weights; more on that later.

Once everyone’s checked in, the officials break all the lifters into groups called flights, based on their body weight and the amount of weight they said they’d lift in their opening attempt. The lightest lifter is the first lifter in the A flight, and (in general) the person lifting the most weight will be the last lifter in the last flight. For each lift, the first lifter in the A flight does her thing, then the second person in A flight, and so on. After the last A lifter has lifted, the first A lifter takes a second attempt, and so on. This is harder to explain than it is to do.

I was either #1 or #2 in the B flight for each of the 3 lifts. Based on my lifts, the only reason I wasn’t in A is because more than half of A were novice female lifters (several of whom set Alabama state records, which was extremely cool to see!)

During each lift, there are 3 judges watching you: the head judge is in the center, with one judge on either side. They each have a little switch that illuminates either a red or white light. You need 2 or 3 white lights for a lift to count– get 2 or 3 reds and your attempt is considered a “no lift” and doesn’t count. The head judge gives the lifter commands. You have to wait for these commands before you do anything. For example, in the squat, here’s what happens:

  1. The head judge says “The platform is ready” and you get on the platform and address the bar.
  2. At your own pace, you unrack the bar and walk it out to your preferred position.
  3. The judge says “SQUAT” and you can start the squat, at your own pace. You come up at your own pace.
  4. When you’ve stood all the way up, and have the weight under control and not moving, the judge will say “RACK” and you put it back into the rack.

There are different commands for the other lifts, of course. These commands are what burned me at my last meet– I missed my first squat attempt and was thereafter so frazzled that I blew a couple of attempts just by missing commands. It’s easy to get so focused on your body that you lose awareness of what the judge is telling you to do.

Squat

I warmed up light: 10 reps bar only, then worked up to 125kg x1. I’d planned for an opener at 140kg, with my other attempts bracketed per David Dellanave’s excellent advice about attempt selection. Summary: pick an opener that’s   “a weight you can lift 10 times out of 10 with a cold and a headache,” then decide ahead of time what your second and third attempts will be based on how easy or hard the opener is… and then stick to the plan.

My opener was a headache-and-cold winner: 140kg, 3 whites. Sadly I had a camera problem, so no video of that.

Second attempt I chose 150kg, at the top end of my bracket. Three more whites.

Third attempt I had 155kg at the top of my bracket. I took 157.5kg instead, smoked it, and ended up with a new 12lb PR… sadly, I was too conservative here and could probably have gone 162.5kg. That choice turned out to be important later.

(Side note: we had two dudes go over 700#. One attempted 777# and damn near got it. This was super motivating to watch.)

Bench

I have poverty bench. At 6’3″ with giant albatross arms, my leverage sucks, and my form is, shall we say, unique. I opened at 100kg, well within my cold-and-a-headache range, and got it.

For round two, I had bracketed 105 at my top end and got it, but it was a bit of a fight– probably RPE 7.

Discarding good judgement, and David’s advice, I went for 110kg on attempt #3 and couldn’t lock it out. That was the only lift I missed but I was bummed. Learning for the future: don’t get greedy.

Deadlift

I love the deadlift. I especially love it at meets, when the crowd gets more and more excited as people work up to their third attempts and we see some crazy numbers on the bar. My opener was 165kg, which flew up. However, I got one red light because I lowered the weight before the command– too much excitement, I guess.

I had bracketed 172.5 through 177.5 for my second attempt but had forgotten to look at my bracket before I went on the platform. Sadly I told the scorer that I wanted 172.5 for my second attempt– that proved to be too light, as it flew up. You can see the bar flex as I lift the weight. It’s not that I was lifting a lot (although 380lb is respectable), but that a deadlift barbell has more “whip” in it than a bar that you’d use for squats or bench press. The whip makes a big difference. On my shopping list for my home gym: a deadlift bar. Maybe someday…

For attempt 3 I decided to try for a PR at 182.5. I smoked it too. David talks about the importance of choosing a big third deadlift attempt when you’re competing against other people and trying to win, but I wasn’t, so I didn’t get as aggressive as I could have here.

The aftermath

Only after I sat down did I realize that I totaled at 445kg, just 10kg short of my goal. This goes back to a key point David makes in his attempt selection guide. In retrospect, I could have made up that 10kg by not missing my 3rd bench (putting another 2.5kg on the total) and then getting a measly 7.5kg total across squat and deadlift– both of which I could’ve done.

Despite that I was well satisfied. With two PRs on the day, and 8/9 total, it was a day well spent. My neighbors Ashley, Erica, and Michael came by at various times to watch; Dana was there cheering me on and making sure I had food, and it was a great positive and fun atmosphere. I feel like my hard work in the gym paid off and I look forward to what’s next!

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2017-05-30 · 20:00

Training Tuesday: running with Stryd PowerRace

Engines are generally most efficient when they run at a constant speed within their design range. That’s why you get better mileage on the highway than in town; it’s why gasoline-powered generators don’t typically have multiple power settings, and and it’s why airplane engines are designed to run for very long periods of time at a steady constant power output. It turns out the fact holds for endurance athletes.

It’s well documented that one of the most effective ways to train for cycling events is to monitor your power output using a power meter. The idea is simple: when you’re riding outdoors, your speed and heart rate will vary widely due to factors you can’t control. On a flat road with no wind and cool weather, you might go 25mh at a certain heart rate. Into a headwind, or uphill, or in an Alabama summer, you might be working just as hard but only going 10mph. So trying to control your workout by pace or heart rate is needlessly difficult and may not give you the results you want. A power meter measures how hard you work, not how fast you’re going or how hard your heart alone is working. Without going too deeply into the complexities of training with power (see this free e-book if you want to know more), the basic idea is that you build your training plan so that you try to put out a certain amount of power, no matter what the road and weather conditions are. I started doing this a little while ago and it’s really useful– my coach will say “make X watts” or “your race target for the 70.3 distance is Y watts” and I just pedal hard enough to hit that number. My speed may go up or down depending on wind and hills, but my effort stays constant so I don’t accidentally work too hard trying to go fast into the wind (for instance) and leave myself unable to sustain my pace later in the race.

That’s the theory, anyway.

The folks at Stryd have built a similar tool for runners: the Stryd power meter is a little pod that clips on to your shoe and measures the amount of force you produce when you run. Since running uphill or into a headwind is harder than running on level ground, or in still air, they intend their product to be used by people who want to control their pace through power management. The problem is that the cycling world is much further along in embracing power, so it’s hard to actually see what your running power is, much less pace to it. Garmin watches can display power data from Stryd pods, and Stryd has a nifty web app called PowerCenter that gives you a bunch of analytics.. but what I wanted was a real-time, on-the-wrist alert that would tell me when I was making too much power, or not enough. Garmin (and many other manufacturers) allow you to set alerts that will buzz or beep when you go outside the predefined pace, speed, heart rate, or distance targets. I wanted one for power… and now I’ve got one.

Stryd recently started beta testing a new app called PowerRace. It’s very simple: you plug in your race distance and your power target, then start the app. It will beep and turn red if you go outside that range. It purposely doesn’t show your pace or elapsed time.. the whole idea is that you only look at your run power and adjust your pace to keep it where it’s supposed to be. Here’s what it looks like in action (“AP” stands for average power, and “HR” is heart rate):

PowerRace in action

I played around with the app a bit and couldn’t get it to work reliably but Gus Nelson of Stryd was kind enough to do some live troubleshooting with me via Google Hangouts and we got the problem sorted out, so I used it for this week’s Cotton Row 10K.

Executive summary: it worked flawlessly and gave me useful cues when I was going too fast, or too slow. I got a 45-second PR, which would have been more if I’d set my power target higher. I hadn’t done the recommended power test, so I was guesstimating what my power level should be; I could have gone a bit harder.

Cotton Row is a tricky course: it’s got a big hill about mile 3 and many a runner has come to grief by blasting across the start line and burning up too much energy.

The Cotton Row course

You may also want to check out the live version, where you can see more clearly the ridge that we run along between miles 3 and 4.

When I compare last year to this year, here’s what my mile times looked like:

2016: 8:55, 8:53, 9:35, 10:20, 9:23, 9:19, 7:18

2017: 9:00, 9:21, 9:55, 10:04 8:42, 8:37, 7:08

So I went out 53 seconds slower this year on the first 3 miles but then finished 46 seconds faster, with an average power of 289W. I targeted 285W, so I did a good job of holding my average. The times aren’t what I would have expected. My perceived effort was about the same, but it was more consistent. For proof, check out the power curve:

Cotton Row data

The red line is my heart rate; the purple line is power. You can clearly see where I walked aid stations or where I took a break to regulate my power output; you can also see my finishing kick.

So what’s the bottom line? I really like the idea of training and running with power. It’s a proven technique for the bike. I did a good job of holding in my power target range, and I did get a (small) PR, but I probably could have done just as well by running by feel alone. I think the missing ingredient is that I don’t really know what my target run power is. Once I have that dialed in I will be better able to fine-tune my pacing. I’ll keep using PowerRace and see how it goes.

 

 

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2017-05-21 · 17:14

Removing a bad Windows driver, the hard way

From the “don’t touch what isn’t yours” department…

Yesterday I wanted to do some administrative chores related to a large stack of bills that were cluttering the dining room table. I grabbed my Surface Book from my laptop bag and plunked it on the table. My son’s Dell laptop was nearby, with his fancy Razer gaming mouse plugged into it. “Hey, free mouse,” I thought. I plugged it in to the Surface Book, opened it up, and went to get a diet Coke. By the time I came back, Windows and/or Razer had managed to install some kind of evil driver from hell™ that rendered every USB device plugged into the system inert.

That includes the built-in keyboard and trackpad, BTW, as well as anything plugged into the Surface Dock. The clipboard still worked great, though.

I tried rebooting and that didn’t help. Trying to search for a solution with just the on-screen keyboard slowed me down a bit, and I had other stuff to do last night, so I let the broken machine sit forlornly overnight and went back to it this morning.

The touch screen functioned normally, which was helpful so that I could open apps. When I looked at the “recent updates” list, I saw that a Razer device driver had been installed when I plugged the mouse in– but it was a version labeled as being from 2012. Why this happened, I don’t know. This was clearly the culprit… but Windows 10 doesn’t give you a way to remove an individual device driver update from the settings interface. Nothing relevant appeared in the add/remove programs list. There was no “undo the last update” button, and I didn’t have a recent backup. Device Manager didn’t show any driver at all for a Razer HID device of any kind… so back to the search I went.

First I tried installing Razer Synapse, their all-in-one utility. All that did was invite me to sign up for a Razer account. No thanks. Then I poked around various arcane parts of %systemroot% but didn’t find anything suspicious. Re-running Windows Update didn’t force a new version of the driver either.

To make a long story short, the answer is here: I had to run pnputil.exe -e to figure out which driver store package had the bad driver, then remove it with pnputil.exe -d -f. Once the offending driver was removed, all of my USB peripherals miraculously resumed their normal operation.

Moral of the story: don’t plug in your son’s gaming peripherals. Lesson learned.

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2017-05-19 · 06:21

Flying Friday: happy birthday, N32706!

Three years ago this week, John Blevins and I flew Delta to Salt Lake City to pick up N32706 and fly her home. I was perusing my logbook earlier in the week and realized that more than half of my total flying time (318 hours of my total 611) has been sitting in the left seat of this particular airplane. I’ve traveled for races/events (DC, Vermont, Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia), family visits (Louisiana, Florida), business (Toronto, Missouri, Kentucky), and fun with the kids (Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee), and flight training (Utah, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska).

where I’ve been in years 1-3

There are times when I think it’s silly to own an airplane instead of renting– like a horse or a boat, you’re always paying the maintenance and fixed costs even on days when the weather is bad, you’re busy, and so on. But the freedom and flexibility of being able to travel where and when I want to, and the comfort of knowing that I’m flying a well-maintained, well-equipped airplane that hasn’t been neglected or operated improperly, more than make up for it.

My next trip is later today, from Decatur to Orlando (well, Kissimmee) for a weightlifting meet. Later in the year, I’ve got Tuscaloosa, Biloxi, New Orleans, and a few other places on my to-go list. I can’t wait!

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2017-05-02 · 17:15

Watch out for bird nests

I recently had a really interesting cross-country trip. It featured virgins, dirt, avian invaders, and tractors.

Some local friends talked me into running the American Odyssey relay race: just under 200 miles from Gettysburg to Washington, DC, over two days. (Look for a race report in the near future.) Some of my teammates were flying commercial, and some were driving, but I found three hardy souls who volunteered to go with me. Jim’s a Navy officer who’s used to airplanes of all sizes, but neither Rese nor Melissa had flown in a small airplane before… so they’re the virgins in this story.

I’d planned to fly from Decatur to New River (PSK), fuel up with avgas and diet Coke, and then fly into College Park, MD (CGS). This would allow me to use my fancy secret code to fly into the Washington DC ring of restricted airspace. However, because we were staying in Harpers Ferry, it didn’t make sense to fly 60+ miles to the east just so we could have extra drive time going back to Harpers Ferry. I decided to go into Martinsburg (MRB) instead to avoid the extra driving.

We departed on schedule, with about 1500′ ceilings leaving Decatur. A front was on its way so my goal was to get us to our destination before the weather got bad. We benefited from an epic tailwind– my normal cruise speed is about 135kts but I was seeing over 200kts for a good part of the first leg.

208!

Unfortunately, with wind comes bumps.. so one of our crew (I’m not saying who) needed to use a barf bag. No major damage, thankfully, either to the victim or the airplane. Apart from that, the rest of the flight was uneventful– a quick stop at PSK for fuel and diet Coke and we were on our way. Potomac Approach made me fly the RNAV 26 approach even though the weather was VFR. Martinsburg is home to the 167th Airlift Wing, so there were a bunch of big gray C-17s on the ramp. Always a fun sight.

Aero-Smith, the local FBO, had prearranged a rental van. It was waiting, so we loaded up and off we went. The next couple days were a blur– I had a fantastic time at the race. All too soon, though, it was time to head back home, so I planned our flight to follow roughly the same route. While the big front had passed through, we were still forecast to have 20+ knots of headwind, so I tried to choose a more southerly route to reduce the wind penalty (spoiler: that didn’t work). I’d planned the first leg from Martinsburg to Ashe County, NC, then home.

We got to Martinsburg safely and turned in the van. The FBO lineman offered me a box of rubber gloves. “We saw a lot of birds on your airplane,” he said. “There’s probably some poop on it.” I’ll take “things you don’t want to hear at the airport” for $200, Alex!

I walked out to the plane, which they’d parked on the far edge of the (empty) parking area. I saw a few poop spots and used a gloved hand to remove them. Now, this next part is relevant: I usually start my walkaround by turning on the master switch, existing the forward passenger door, and walking back down the right side of the plane, around the tail, and up the left side– finishing at the engine. That’s what I did… except that when I got to the engine, I noticed what looked like a few pieces of grass sticking out. That certainly wasn’t there when I parked the plane, so I poked a flashlight into the front of the cowling and was surprised to see some more grass.

That led me to remove the upper cowling, whereupon I found this (click it to see the detail).

Bird attack!

Yep. In two and a half days, the forces of evil invaded my cowling and built two large, flammable nests. I started pulling out handfuls of grass and twigs, and the other three came to help. All this action attracted the attention of the FBO staff, and they brought us a handheld leaf blower.

Now, a brief note. Air-cooled piston airplane engines work on a principle called pressure cooling. Baffles inside the cowling drive airflow from top to bottom, not back to front, to cool the cylinders. When you look at the picture above, what you can’t see is that there are only a few small openings under the top deck for air to flow down– making it very difficult to get all the bird debris out with a leaf blower. We ended up having to spend 30 minutes or so picking little sticks and blades of grass out of the engine compartment. Here are Rese and Jim doing just that:

cleaning the bird damage

Once that was finally done, I wanted to run the engine with the cowling off, whereupon I discovered a failed cell in the battery.. so the plane wouldn’t start. This was not popular with my passengers. Or with me, for that matter.

The FBO staff was very reluctant to help start the plane. They claimed not to have a ground power unit, but I eventually talked them into bringing their tow tractor out so I could use my jumper cable. The problem with this cable is that after the plane starts, you have to unplug it, and the FBO guys didn’t want to do it “for liability reasons.” Thankfully Jim wasn’t a big baby like they were, and he volunteered to pull the cable after engine start. We deployed the tractor, got everything hooked up, and the engine immediately started up.

Getting ready to tractor-start

Once we got up to altitude, we got a 1-2 punch from the headwinds: it was bumpy, and we were only making about 105kts over the ground– so less than half of our groundspeed on the way out. After a little fiddling, I got permission to climb from 8000′ to 10000′; as we slowly climbed, we got bounced around quite a bit. To make things worse, the wind was even stronger at 10000′, so we went back down to 8000. It was a steady parade of mountain waves, something I hadn’t spent any time dealing with before. Frankly I didn’t much care for them.

As we got closer to GEV, the wind diminished a bit, although not enough to give us any appreciable speed increase. The Ashe County airport sits at about 3000′ above sea level, and the airport description helpfully notes “RISING TERRAIN ALL QUADRANTS,” so flying in means dealing with shifting winds funneled in various directions by the surrounding terrain. Despite the wind, I stuck the landing, and we were well and cheerfully served by the airport manager, who coaxed the balky full-service pump into working long enough to fill the tanks. I’d happily stop there again. (Note that KGEV has no AT&T cell service and no diet Coke in the soda machine, so plan accordingly.)

There was a good-sized line of storms stretching from south to north moving through Mississippi when we left. Our original plan was to get home before it arrived, but due to our de-birding time, there was no way we were going to make that. As we flew, it became clear that the headwinds were going to prevent us from making our alternate at Winchester, so I decided to stop in Chattanooga, which has rental cars, nearby hotels, and food.. just in case. We landed and found the ramp crowded with more expensive airplanes that had obviously stopped for the weather as well. Luckily the FBO had one crew car remaining, so we headed out to look for dinner and wait for the storm to pass. The city got roughly 1/4″ of rain in the hour we were at dinner, but it had tapered off to a light drizzle by the time we got ready to depart. I pored over the radar and it looked decent if we flew a little to the northwest, more towards Winchester, and then turned south, so that is what I planned for.

Once airborne, I quickly saw that the radar depictions didn’t give the full picture– they showed rain, all right, but the clouds were well above our altitude, so for most of the flight we flew through falling rain but still had decent visibility. The picture below shows what the radar depicted (they’re different, but that’s a topic for another post). After an uneventful trip, with mostly smooth air, we landed at Decatur, packed up, and headed home.

Which one’s right?

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2017-04-21 · 07:06

Flying with Avidyne’s version 10.2 software

If you think updating the software on your phone is hard, try it with avionics.

Avidyne has been promising a new release of the software for their IFD line of WAAS GPS units for a while now. Originally announced on April Fool’s Day last year, version 10.2 packs a pretty impressive list of features, including synthetic vision, support for a bunch of new devices (including digital radar and FLIR cameras), display of more ADS-B weather and traffic data, and a new “IFD100” iPad app that essentially acts as a second screen for your IFD. They generously made the update available for free, but with a catch: it has to be installed by an avionics shop. The FAA lets aircraft owners make “minor repairs and alterations” (a phrase which has a very specific set of parameters around it), and avionics software updates aren’t considered “minor.” When they finally announced that 10.2 was available, the first order of business was to find a shop to install it. None of the local shops are Avidyne dealers, so we decided to head back to XP Services in Tullahoma. A quick phone call to schedule an appointment was all it took.

The flight to Tullahoma was pleasant, and the XP team had the upgrade done in about 2 hours– right about the amount of time Avidyne says it should take. The update procedure is very detailed and specific, with lots of dire warnings about what happens if you do it wrong, so I’m glad they didn’t. They also upgraded the software in our SkyTrax 100 ADS-B receiver, which will become important a little later in the story. I can’t say enough good things about XP’s staff: they did good work, quickly, at a fair price, and were very friendly. Be forewarned if you go there though: there are no vending machines nearby so bring your own snacks.

On the way home I got to start playing with the new features, but it wasn’t until last week’s Easter trip from Decatur to New Smyrna Beach that they really came into their own. Here’s a partial list of the new goodness in this release.

Let’s start with synthetic vision. The IFD540 doesn’t have a way to sense the attitude of the airplane, so its syn vis feature is limited to showing a “plane in trail” (Avidyne calls it exocentric) view of you, your route, and the surrounding terrain. In this case, I’ve programmed the ILS 18 Y approach into my home airport. You can see the magenta line indicating that I’m on the final approach segment. The white line-and-loop to the upper right is the missed approach procedure that I’d fly if I couldn’t land. There’s another airplane in the area, at 1900 feet and descending. The synthetic vision display makes very clear what the surrounding terrain and obstacles look like, and how my planned flight path would interact with them. This is not a huge deal in the flat riverine terrain near Decatur but in someplace like Montpelier, with more significant terrain, it could literally be a lifesaver.

heading for the approach

Another nifty new feature: temporary flight restrictions (like the one shown below, for firefighting in southern Georgia near Waycross) and winds aloft data (the little white flag-looking things in the second picture) can now be shown along with all the other flight data. You can see that we have about a 20kt headwind. It’s important to remember that, like all other ADS-B weather data, the wind data comes from the ground and may not reflect what’s truly happening in the air at that moment.

Don’t fly in TFRs unless you want to meet the FAA in person

The direction of the wind barb shows which way it’s blowing; the number of little flags shows how strong it is

Traffic display is greatly improved in two ways. First, you can now see trend lines showing you where a traffic target is going (along with its N number, if it’s transmitting one). This is really helpful in crowded airspace, like the area around the Daytona Beach airport. You can see that both airplanes on the display are headed in the same direction as we are, one at roughly our same altitude and the other descending.

In 10.2, you can see where traffic targets are going

I also now get traffic alerts when there’s a potential conflict, i.e. someone else is flying towards me. An aural alert (“bong! TRAFFIC”) comes first, then the screen changes to show the conflicting traffic. This is an extremely valuable feature.

When you hear “TRAFFIC,” you’d better start looking around

The IFD100 app does what it promises: it lets you control the physical IFD, but it also lets you configure its display completely independently of the one on the panel. It does about 80% of what the “real” IFD hardware does. For example, you can load a flight plan into the iPad app while the panel is showing you the map/weather/traffic page, then push a button and activate that flight plan from the iPad. You can see and tune frequencies (but not activate them), zoom in and out on maps, and in general act like you have a second IFD540. It’s pretty neat, although there are some quirks to it that I’m still figuring out.

Not quite a replacement for Foreflight

The IFD100 app isn’t a replacement for FlyQ or Foreflight though; it doesn’t let you anything that the physical IFD can’t do, so no looking up fuel prices or FBO reviews, no satellite imagery display, and so on. ForeFlight has all sorts of useful planning features like terrain mapping, wind estimation, and flight plan filing that the IFD100 doesn’t, and won’t. I don’t think Avidyne intends the app to replace a true electronic flight bag (EFB) app, but rather to give you more options and flexibility with using the in-panel hardware.

I haven’t been able to test one of the signature features of 10.2 yet, though: its ability to do two-way sync over Wi-Fi between the panel device and a tablet. I can already stream a flight plan, and GPS position data, from the IFD to ForeFlight or FlyQ. 10.2 adds the ability for the IFD to send traffic, weather, and TFR data (which means I won’t need my Stratus receiver to see that stuff in ForeFlight), but also the ability to load a flight plan from the iPad to the panel. That means I can plan a complex route at my leisure in my armchair, file it, brief it, get my expected route, and push the route to the airplane when I get to the airport with a single button press. That’s going to be glorious when it finally arrives.

It speaks well of Avidyne that they made this major feature release available for free, and I’m excited to see how they continue to build on the wireless connectivity built into the IFD line.

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2017-04-18 · 22:17

Training Tuesday: 2017 35.1 Challenge

The second weekend in April here in Huntsville features two marquee races: the Heel & Crank duathlon (run by Team Rocket, our local triathlon club) and the Bridge Street Half Marathon, sponsored by our local Fleet Feet. Two years ago, the sponsors joined forces to offer a “35.1 challenge”– do both races back-to-back and you get some kind of swag, plus bragging rights.

In 2015, I completed the challenge,  barely: the duathlon was fine but the 13.1 was a bit of a grind, and I was super sore for the following week. Last year, I signed up for the duathlon and the challenge, but stupidly forgot to register for Bridge Street. One thing you should know: Suzanne Taylor, the RD for Bridge Street, absolutely does not allow transfers, deferrals, or late registrations. Period, full stop. So I didn’t complete the challenge.

This year I made sure to register for all 3 events. Dana had planned to return to the 13.1 world after a long layoff by running with our friend Teri… who managed to catch a stress fracture to her femur (how do you even do that?) just in time to be sidelined for the race. I told Dana I’d run with her instead, at whatever pace she wanted– like a really slow and not especially scenic date. Therefore, my plan ended up being to treat Heel & Crank as a legitimate race, then run the 13.1 more like an LSR. I ran that plan past my coach, who gave me a big thumbs up, so I was all set.

I also planned to volunteer for both races– for Heel & Crank, it was race-morning packet pickup, and for Bridge Street it was day-before packet pickup.

Prerace

Duathlons are easy to prepare for– it’s basically a bike ride (so you need bike gear) plus running shoes, with none of that pesky swimming stuff. I packed everything up Friday afternoon, made sure the ELEMNT was charged, and so on. I didn’t eat anything special for dinner; in the morning, I had a protein shake and a poptart, plus a dose of BeetElite, and headed out to the race. This was the first year for a new RD, and he did such a good job lining up volunteers that they didn’t need me; that gave me a chance to enjoy visiting with friends instead of working. I got transition set up, walked around chatting with people, and waited for the race to start– it was really nice to have plenty of extra chill time, instead of my usual MO of screeching into the parking lot at the last minute and then being harried. My friend Coop was kind enough to buy me a hot chocolate at JaVa.Mooresville, a really good coffee shop that coincidentally happens to be the only one anywhere nearby. It was about 55 degrees and clear just before race start.

Run 1

The run course at Heel & Crank starts on a paved street, which after 0.3mi or so turns into a hard-packed dirt trail. It’s an out-and-back; some of the trail is shaded, some isn’t. It’s almost completely flat. As you can see from the map below, a good portion of the course runs alongside farm fields, which add a lovely pastoral feel– you can literally see the grass (or whatever) waving in the breeze, when there is one, which there was. I settled in early on and tried to hold a steady pace, finishing with an 8:41/mi average in 24:37.

Heel and Crank run course

T1
Transition was completely unexceptional– I dropped my headphones, swapped my hat for a helmet, changed shoes, powered up the bike computer, and choked down a pack of Gu chews. Out the gate in under 2min, which for me is lightning-quick.
The bike
The course overlaps some of the familiar Jetplex course, so my plan was to ride it at a steady pace, in aero as much as possible. This doesn’t sound like a terribly complex plan, but I am still getting used to my tri bike, so I figured anything more complex would be pointless. I made a weighted average of 177W, certainly nothing to write home about, but overall good enough for a 6-minute CR and a PR on one Strava segment.
T2
T2 was even faster– helmet-to-hat, headphones in, shoes on, and out the gate.
Run 2
I was really leery of blowing up by going out too hard on the first half of the run, so I tried to keep my HR caged around 150. I actually ended up averaging 151 for the run; I possibly could have pushed a little harder on the outbound leg, but I was feeling good on the return and was able to hold right around 7:05/mi for the last half mile or so. For reference, my mile PR time is 7:11, so I was well pleased with this. Run 2 was done in 27:26.

Wraup and post-race
Overall, my times were good enough for a 1:52 finish, a 15-minute PR for this race. To say I was pleased would have been a massive understatement. I celebrated with a big plate of the post-race pancakes for which this race is famous, plus a glass of Rocket Republic Scotch Rocket served by my fellow cubano Warren. It was a pretty successful day for the Cubans, in fact: the relay team of Tony, Craig, and Warren placed second, and Lance won the Clydesdale division. I’m sure if Julio had been there he would have won something too. Hats off to first-time race director Paul Erickson and his staff of volunteers for putting on a fun, safe race with excellent post-race food and drink.

I headed home, showered, and went over to Dana’s. Dinner was a giant bowl of Nothing but Noodles‘ finest mac-and-cheese, always a solid pre-race choice.

Race day
We woke up about 530a, with a goal of getting to the race site about 630a. This turned out to be easy. One of the nice things about Bridge Street is that it’s held at an outdoor mall. There is plenty of parking and tons of porta-potties, as well as some nice indoor bathrooms. We wandered around to chat with people for a while, then queued up near the 2:30 pace group for the gun start.

Pre-race

After a rousing rendition of the National Anthem, the cannon went off and so did we.

I wish I had kept better notes on the race itself. The Bridge Street course winds through Research Park, which is pretty flat and not all that scenic for the most part. The course starts in front of Barnes and Noble, runs west for a bit along Old Madison Pike, runs north on Jan Davis and then on Explorer, loops around West Park, and then turns south again. Perhaps the most interesting part is the Double Helix path near HudsonAlpha, which is marked with educational signs about the human genome. It’s also interesting to note the incredible funk we smelled while running past one of Adtran’s buildings; it smelled like someone had bred a skunk the size of a VW Beetle, wrapped it in shrink wrap, and then boiled it in 10W40 motor oil. Truly a scent I will remember for a long time.

The Bridge Street course

It was cool at the start, and we made good time through the course. Dana had planned to do 4/1 run/walk intervals, running for 4 minutes and then walking for 1, but she pretty much ignored these intervals and ran most of it, holding right around a 10:44 pace. I just stuck with her (well, except for once when I let her go ahead while I hit the porta-potty, but let’s not get into that). We crossed the finish line in 2:23:50, quite a respectable performance for Dana’s return to the 13.1 world. We collected our medals and breakfast coupons, then found our friends to hang out and visit a bit.

race posse unite!

The race organizers had thoughtfully arranged for a free breakfast sandwich (which was about the size of a Clementine) at Bar Louie, which we supplemented with a genuine brunch (and, in my case, a couple of ice cream sandwiches). I also grabbed my 35.1 award, which now occupies a prize position on my dining room table until I can figure out what wall to hang it on. Kudos to Suzanne Taylor, the folks at Fleet Feet Huntsville, and the zillions of volunteers who chipped in to put on the race– Bridge Street is one of my favorite races because it’s so well organized, supplied, and staffed.

swag life

All in all, it was a weekend well spent, and I felt fine the next day, at least until I started doing squats… but that’s a story for another time.

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2017-04-10 · 08:47

Speaking at 2017 Office 365 Engage

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be presenting 3 sessions at the new Office 365 Engage conference, 19-22 June in Haarlem, The Netherlands.

With the death of TechEd and the product-specific conferences, Microsoft has more or less abandoned the broad conference market in Europe. They’ve hosted smaller, more focused events covering specific technologies in individual countries, but customers who want a broader perspective, or any degree of engagement with non-Microsoft speakers and experts, have had to come to the US-based conferences. Now the UnityConnect team, led by the redoubtable Tony Redmond, are hosting a full-spectrum event focused on all aspects of Office 365, including Teams, Planner, and Groups– not just the more established Exchange/SharePoint/Skype trinity (although there is plenty of that content, too). The speaker lineup is stellar as well; in fact, I wonder how I got in. Attendees will have the opportunity to hear from Michael Van Hybrid Horenbeeck, Steve Goodman, Michel de Rooij, Sigi Jagott, Brian Reid, Alan Byrne, and a host of other MVPs and Microsoft technology experts. The session catalog is pretty impressive.

As for me, I’m presenting three sessions:

  • The Ins and Outs of Monitoring Office 365 covers the fundamentals of monitoring such a complex service environment. Although it may be tempting to just say “let Microsoft worry about it,” the fact is that it’s critical to keep tabs on the health and integrity of the service and all its components, as your users depend on it and probably won’t accept “it was Microsoft’s fault” as an answer. The session will cover the basic tools that Microsoft provides and analyze how they compare to the monitoring needs imposed by dependence on a hybrid cloud service.
  • Windows Information Protection and Azure Rights Managment: Better Together. Normally I hate the phrase “better together” because it is Microsoft-speak for “buy more of our products,” but in this case it’s apropos. WIP and AzureRM work quite well together, and the combination enables some interesting data protection scenarios that I’ll cover here in depth.
  • Like a Megaphone: Skype Meeting Broadcast will cover the little-known, but quite useful, Skype Meeting Broadcast feature. As its name implies, Broadcast lets you take an ordinary Skype for Business meeting and scale it out to up to 10,000 attendees… but there are some caveats you’ll need to know about to use it effectively.

There’s a full slate of pre-conference workshops, receptions, and so on as well. Perhaps I can persuade Tony to do a live episode of Office 365 Exposed while we’re there– we shall see. Come join me! The conference team has given me a discount code, SPRPR469, which will save you 10% on the registration cost. I hope to see you there!

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2017-03-23 · 07:34

Havana, day 7

(See reports from days 0, 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6.)

Day 7, and time to go home. Logistically, this was a pretty straightforward process, but cognitively, it was deeply weird.

Our flight home was scheduled to leave the Havana airport about 225p. We decided that a 9am pickup time would give us enough time to get all our stuff loaded, get to the airport, and struggle through whatever challenges might be imposed there. Julio had flown home the day and gave us some useful feedback about the amount of time required. Of course, before we could go anywhere, we had to marshal all of our gear and get it down the frighteningly narrow steps to the street. There was a lot of last-minute swearing and horse trading as we all looked for errant pieces of gear (Tony ended up with my Garmin charger and my cycling kit, for example) and scoured the apartment to make sure we weren’t accidentally leaving anything behind. We had the gear stacked by about 9am, so it was time for one more shot of Tia’s coffee:

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Tia’s coffee is best coffee

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a driver. Eventually Eric, our guide from day 1, showed up.. in his Plymouth.. which was useless, as we couldn’t fit all of our people or luggage in it. A long series of negotiations, with some arguing, then ensued. I couldn’t follow it all, but the eventual result was that Juan Carlos showed up in this beauty, with its original engine intact:

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Not a common sight in Alabama

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The original small-block 283, lovingly maintained for decades

Shortly thereafter, two dudes in a stake-bed truck showed up. We loaded up the luggage, and off we went.

It took about 35min to drive from the apartment to the airport. I was much more aware of my surroundings than I had been on the inbound drive, so I noticed more of the details as we moved between areas of the city. Apparently there is very little zoning law in Cuba– it reminded me of Houston in the way that you’d see residential, commercial, and heavy industrial space cheek by jowl. The typical Cuban mix of ugly Cold War-era buildings, graceful but crumbling older buildings, and improvised vehicles and structures held my attention throughout the drive.

Now, here’s the thing about the airport: it’s like every other airport you’ve been to, except it isn’t. For example, there are ticket counters for the various airlines that serve Havana. The Delta counter has the same Sky Priority signs and so on that you’d see in Europe or the US. But the ticket agent didn’t want to hassle with making the computer accept the $150 bike fee that Delta normally charges, so, with a casual wave, we were beckoned around the corner to the freight elevator and our bikes flew free. Of course, there’s no online checkin (at least for Delta), nor is there any wifi on the land side of the terminal… although there are pay phones, something I haven’t seen at a US airport in ages.

The basic workflow is the same as at US airports: check in, drop off your bags, go through security and immigration, and go to the gate. The immigration part is interesting because you are required to turn in the second half of your tourist card. Hypothetically speaking, if you lost it, you could be detained for further questioning or just hassled, unless a bored and irritated immigration agent decided to let you pass without it… hypothetically.

Immediately past immigration, the first thing you come to on the air side is the duty free shop. It was packed. No surprise, since the prices for rum and coffee are set by the government and identical to what you’d pay out in town. We all loaded up with more rum and coffee; I think Warren also bought some more cigars.

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dark and smooth, this is perhaps the perfect rum

The name of our game overall was “spend all your CUC” since there’s no feasible way to change it back in the US. There is a cadeca on the air side, along with a row of small shops (kiosks, really) selling random crap– a far cry from the typical excess of US airport shops. There are two places to buy food– a small coffee shop downstairs and a weird sort of hamburger place in the main concourse. The gates, chairs, and so on all looked essentially the same as in a US airport, but the mix of airlines serving the airport is very different than what you’re probably used to. Aeroflot and Air China are both prominent, for example (I really wanted to take a picture with an Aeroflot flight crew but they were gone before we got to the gate). I had a ham sandwich at the coffee shop, bought some sodas, and settled in with the boys to wait for our flight. There’s (government) wifi in the terminal, so that helped kill some time, but I spent most of it people watching.

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because writing “KILROY WAS HERE” would have been rude

The rest of the trip, to be honest, was anticlimax. Being on a Delta airplane in Havana is just like being on one in Houston, Heathrow, Huntsville. Lance and I got upgraded so we immediately asked for Diet Coke– something that just doesn’t exist in Cuba. Our flight was uneventful, the in-flight wifi worked flawlessly, and soon enough, we were touching down in Atlanta. I had previously signed up for Global Entry and it was magnificent– a quick stop at the kiosk and I was through customs in about 2 minutes total. We all had to do the bag drag to get our bikes and checked bags (most of which had serious quantities of liquor and coffee therein) to the drop off. After that, it was just like every other time I’ve changed planes in Atlanta (well, except that Tony immediately started hunting Pokémon). I had a turkey burger, walked the concourse a few times, and happily boarded our homebound flight. Teri and Theresa met us at the airport, and we happily chatted as we waited for our luggage. Once it arrived, Lance gave me a ride home, I dragged all my crap inside, and that was that… except for Pancake spending the next two hours dogging my heels and/or leaving cat hair on every item I’d brought back. The unpacking and general recovery took me the next few days; I think I’ve put everything where it belongs.

¡Cuba Libre !

 

 

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2017-03-19 · 10:06

Happy day: Windows Outlook now supports Focused Inbox

A few weeks ago I complained about the Focused Inbox feature. A big part of my complaint was that Windows Outlook didn’t support it. This morning, I updated my Windows Office installation and found that the Focused tab magically appeared.. sort of.

First, how I got it: I was already signed up for the Office Insider program, and my tenant is enrolled in Office 365 First Release. My Office installation showed up with “Current” instead of “Office Insider Fast,” though (to check yours, click File | Office Account in any Windows Office application). For some reason, on my unmanaged, non-domain-joined Windows 10 machine, this setting periodically resets, so I launched regedit and changed the value of the UpdateBranch key under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officeupdate to “Insiderfast”, relaunched Word, and checked for updates. After a few minutes of coffee break, the updates had downloaded. When I launched Outlook, I got the pop-up telling me that Focused Inbox was active.

This leads me to my “sort of” comment. This installation of Outlook has 3 Exchange Online accounts, 1 IMAP account, and a dozen or so shared mailboxes in its default profile. My home robichaux.net account is default. All 3 Exchange Online accounts are on tenants where Focused Inbox is available, and all 3 show the appropriate UI in OWA and Mac Outlook. However, only my work account shows the Focused tab; the other two don’t. Relaunching Outlook didn’t fix this, nor did rebooting, nor did waiting a while. At this point it isn’t clear if having only a single Focused Inbox is by design, a bug, or a temporary limitation. However, I’m happy to see the feature appear at all.

This must be a very new change, as the Outlook 2016 update history doesn’t include it as I write this. Perhaps Microsoft will update it soon to explain more about Focused Inbox support.

 

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2017-03-17 · 09:33

Setting up run intervals on Garmin watches

(Disclaimer: I am not a coach or even especially knowledgeable; in fact everything I say in this post could be completely wrong. Don’t blame me if you create an interval that causes you to inadvertently run an ultramarathon.)

If you want to be a faster runner, you have to run faster. Unlike many other areas of endeavor, though, the best way to get faster is to train in intervals. Instead of going out every day and knocking out the same distance on the road, almost every runner can benefit from mixing those steady-state runs in with shorter-distance, higher-intensity work. For example, my coach might give me this: “2 mi WU, 6 x (2:00 @ 10K, 2:00 slow), 1mi CD.” Translated, that means “2 mile warmup at an easy pace, 6 intervals where each interval starts with 2 minutes at your 10K pace and then a 2 minute slow run, followed by a 1 mile cooldown.”  Tracking intervals is a pain in the butt, though, which is why many runners use a track– then they know to run 440, or 880, or whatever. Distance-based intervals are OK but I find track running to be even more boring than treadmill runs; I’d much rather do my intervals outside. Luckily, Garmin has my back: you can build a structured workout, then send it to your watch. When you’re running, the watch will tell you what to do. It’s magic! Because I am a nerd, I was excited when I found this feature a couple of years ago, but I find that lots of my running friends don’t know that it exists.

Garmin lets you build structured bike, run, or swim workouts that include an optional warmup, zero or more individual steps, zero or more repeats (which is the actual interval– you do X, then you do Y, repeated Z times), and an optional cooldown. Once you create the workout, you can send it to your device and it will guide you through the workout. Note that there are a lot of differences between run, bike, and swim intervals and how they are presented on various devices; for now I want to focus on the simplest case, setting up a simple run interval.

Let’s say that you want to do a simple interval workout: a 10-minute warmup, then 6 intervals at 5K race pace, then a 10-minute cooldown. I’ll pretend that you want 2 minutes at race pace and a 2 minute cooldown in each interval. Here’s how you’d set that up.

Start by logging into the Garmin Connect website. Once you’re there, click on the hamburger menu (3 parallel lines in the upper left corner), then and scroll down until you see “Workouts,” then click it. That will bring up the workouts page.

the workouts list in Garmin Connect

Click the “Select a workout type…” menu and choose “Run,” then click “Create a Workout.” You’ll see the workout creation page. Garmin helpfully assumes that you’ll have a warmup, a single run step, and a cooldown. Each of these items is color-coded.

A new blank workout for you to customize

Delete the single run step by clicking the “X” at its right edge, then edit the warmup and cooldown to include the times you want. You can also specify distance– wherever you see “select a duration”, you can choose to base the length of that item on distance, time, speed, pace, or just pressing the lap button. Use the pull-down menus in each section to fill out the workout you want.

Start with the warmup and cooldown

Now for the magic: click the “Add a Repeat” button and a new section will appear.

Oh noes, this is all jacked up

There are several things wrong with this, though: the repeat is in the wrong place, it’s for the wrong number of reps, and the intervals we want aren’t there. Luckily, this is easy to fix:

  1. Use the + and – icons at the top of the repeat block to set the correct number of reps.
  2. Use the “Select a duration…” pulldowns in the “run” and “recover” sections to set the right durations.
  3. Use “Add More…” in the “run” section to add the correct pace:
    1. Click “Add More…”
    2. The “Select an intensity target” pulldown will appear.
    3. Click it and select “Pace”, then fill in the target pace range you want. (Note that you can also set intervals based on heart rate zone and a bunch of other metrics).
  4. Repeat step 3, but this time for the “recover” section.
  5. Click and drag the little grabby thing (next to where you see “Repeat N Times” in the repeat block) to drag it into the correct position.

When you’re finished, here’s what your workout will look like:

All done! (Bonus points if you notice the one other change I made)

Now you can save the workout.. but before you do, use the pencil icon next to the “Run Workout” title to change the name of the workout so you’ll be able to identify it. Once that’s done, click “Save Workout.” At this point, absolutely nothing useful will happen when you look at your watch, because there’s another required step: you have to transfer the workout to the watch. The easiest way to do this is with the Garmin Connect mobile app, although you can plug your watch in with a cable if you prefer. As I write this, you can’t create interval workouts in the app, which is too bad. Here’s how to perform the sync: (These instructions are for the app on iOS; I don’t have an Android device so I have no idea if the UI is the same or not.)

Start the app, then click on the “More” icon (the three little dots) in the bottom navigation bar and tap “Workouts”. You should see the new workout you just created in the list:

The new workout is available to sync

Tap the new workout, and you should see the workout itself. In the upper-right corner of the screen, there’s a little icon showing an arrow pointing into a phone. That means “sync,” although why it shows a phone and not a watch is a mystery. Click it, then you’ll see a page showing all the devices your app knows about.

Here’s your workout, nearly ready to go

Select the device you want and tap “Send”.

Select the target device

Wait a minute, then check to see if the workout’s on your watch. On the Fenix3 HR, you do this from Training > My Workouts > Running. Scroll through the list until you see your workout, then hit the “start” button and you’re all set.. happy running!

Ta da

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2017-03-16 · 07:43

Havana, day 6

(See reports from days 0, 1, 2, 4 and 5.)

Two notes I forgot in my day 5 writeup: first, we gave Anita, our housekeeper, a set of All-Clad pots we’d brought as a gift. Y’all, she cried because she was so happy. Something that everyone reading this blog takes for granted was an incredible and unexpected gift to her. We also gave her around 20 lbs of assorted travel size toiletries: shampoo, deodorant, and so on.

Anita, our excellent housekeeper and singer

Second, in a related note, we’d asked Anita if there were any good bars in the neighborhood. She told us about Industria 8, so we went there after dinner, arriving about 945. It was completely deserted, and at 10 (when the DJ arrived and started playing music), it stayed that way. Take from that what you will. The drink below is called an “Industria 8” and Lance described it as tasting like vodka plus Crest toothpaste– it was the most memorable part of our visit. Now, on to day 6.

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Day 6 should be titled “my favorite day.” I woke up feeling chipper and well rested, in part because I knew our plan was a leisurely bike ride on the Malecón with plenty of stops for picture taking. We all got kitted up and assembled on the street for our ride. Riding on San Lázaro is a little tricky because it’s narrow and there are usually cars parked on both sides, plus there are several cross streets without signals or stop signs. We launched and I almost immediately had to stop for oncoming traffic– at which point I fell over. Humbling, since that was the only time anyone fell over while clipped in the entire trip.. but it was minor and gave my buds a good opportunity to hassle me for the rest of the day.

Our plan was to ride out to nearly the end of the Malecón, take some pictures, and then work our way back, stopping at various photo opportunities.

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Our initial route on the outbound leg; stops not shown

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Craig and his trusty steed

Lance let me ride his beautiful Lynskey, which he hand-built using his preferred components. Wow. It was so much smoother and responsive than my Domane 2 that I now want one, so thanks for that.

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Lance’s uber-bike

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Cycle Club posse representing

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The Blevins Bicycle posse at the Garcia monument

We rode past the same restaurant, Cafe Bohemio, that we’d previously seen while driving and running by, and Lance noticed a couple sitting on the patio with a camera. They took our picture, so after passing by we circled back to eat breakfast there (and ask them for a copy of the picture, which they graciously provided).

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Riding by. Note Lance’s pointing

The first step, of course, was to order coffee. Note the prices shown in both CUC (“tourist money”) and CUP (moneda naciónal).

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A grand list of coffees

I ordered a cafe Caprichoso, which was the best single cup of coffee I’ve ever had in my life. The ham, egg, and cheese croissant I ordered was equally good, but I didn’t find that out for nearly an hour while we waited for the food.

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soooo delicious

Luckily we had plenty to talk about while we waited.

the breakfast club, Havana style

After breakfast, we set out for part 2 of our ride. This time we stopped at several monuments, plus an open-air flea market where I got some nifty souvenirs: puzzle boxes for Matt and Jack, a backpack for Tom, and a Havana Club-logoed apron for myself. Cuba is not a souvenir place; we didn’t see a great deal of variety between different markets.

rambling ride

Perhaps the most interesting stop was at the gates of the US embassy in Havana, a terribly ugly building that was maintained by the Swiss until 2015, when it was reopened as the US embassy. Sadly, there are no Marine security guards outside, although we did meet a nice gentleman from Syracuse who volunteered to take our picture.

In front of AMEMB Havana

The embassy faces Monte de las Banderas (“monument of the flags”), a Cold War-era plaza with hundreds of now-empty flagpoles. It’s flanked by two giant signs with famous slogans… they’re not much to look at in person, especially with the oddly empty flagpoles towering over them. (Bonus: the guard yelled at us to get off the grass.)

“We are winning!”

“Homeland or death!” sort of the equivalent of Patrick Henry

After the ride, we headed back to the apartment to disassemble and pack up the bikes. Once again, I owe a great debt of thanks to Lance for being our on-call bike mechanic. He had all the bikes disassembled and packed up within about 90 minutes, while the rest of us were showering and packing the rest of our stuff. The afternoon schedule called for us to go back to Hotel Naciónal for a rite of passage: smoking a real Cuban cigar, while in Cuba. First, of course, we needed to eat, on the theory that such a fancy hotel would have good bar food. They did, on condition that you liked ham and cheese sandwiches (with or without pickles): that’s all they offer. When I say “all,” that’s what I mean: no sides, just sandwiches.

jamón y queso!

One thing about the National: their patio service is exceptionally slow, even by Cuban standards. Once we finally finished our food, we went back inside to the cigar shop, conveniently located right next to the rum shop, and bumbled around. None of us are cigar smokers, so we depended on the two very pleasant sales ladies to help us pick out cigars to take home. An old man was hand-rolling cigars in the shop lobby. This was a surprisingly interesting process to watch, although he was too busy rolling (and, I suspect, too hard of hearing and/or incredulous at our poor Spanish) to answer our questions. We bought our cigars, plus some rum (more on that later), and, suitably armed, headed out to the back patio of the hotel near the water.

Now, a confession: I have never smoked anything in my life. I couldn’t get my cigar lit until one of the guys borrowed a torch from another smoker. Then when I did get it lit, I didn’t really know what to do with it. The others were not a whole lot better off.

Lance, looking like a natural

Me, trying in vain to look as cool as Lance

Tony wins the award for “best hat”

Overall, it was a great experience and a solid reminder of why I’ve never smoked. It took about 4 hours for the taste to finally leave my mouth. However, I’m glad I partook– how can you not smoke a Cuban cigar at an iconic Cuban landmark while in Cuba? Speaking of Cuba, here’s a word from their sponsor:

Bonus picture of Fidel

After that outing, it was time for me to put in some work. I’d offered to take some pictures of Bicycle Cove swag around the city, so Chris and Jessica armed me with an 8′ banner. Craig was kind enough to be my photographer and we started taking pictures with various backgrounds:

at the apartment

We had planned to take some pictures of the banner hanging from the balcony of El Presidente. When we went in, however, the balcony was full of Danish tourists. The owner came over, all 6’4″ of him, seemingly pissed off, and we explained what we wanted– then Warren mentioned that we’d been in the day before. “That was you?” the owner rumbled in a strong Slavic accent. “You drank 21 daquiris. Is new record. Thought was my friends! You come back one hour.” So we did. We went next door to Nazdarovie, the most unique restaurant I’ve ever been to. It is a Soviet-themed (not Russian) restaurant, in the capital of the Soviet Union’s biggest client state, serving traditional Russian dishes and decorated with all sorts of Cold War-era propaganda. Here’s how the menu sums up their origin story:

“sun and snow” indeed

We ordered a round of drinks; the Green Russian I had is sort of like a White Russian but with mint, and it was incredibly refreshing. I wish I had the exact recipe. We also ordered some sardelki, a sort of Russian smoked sausage, as an appetizer. (Almost all of us were queasy and sick the next day; since the sardelki was the only thing we all ate in common, I am betting they were to blame.)

It was surreal to be sitting in a Soviet-themed restaurant, surrounded by flags and posters of what used to be the maximum bad guys, in Cuba. Seeing the hammer-and-sickle flying outside was weird.

in Soviet Cuba…

Luckily, we were able to apply some good old American ingenuity.

Bicycle Cove, represent

Also, I believe that more restaurants should have party hats for their guests. This was a great touch.

Other contenders for the “best hat” competition

Once we’d finished our sardelki, we went back to El President and Ján, the owner, greeted us warmly and treated us like kings. He spent probably 3 hours with us, explaining life in Cuba as an expat business owner. Raised in Slovakia and educated at the University of Oregon, his grandfather was a government official (there’s a picture of him with Castro in the restaurant), he had a unique perspective on Cuban life and culture. One of the many things we learned: toilet seats are very expensive, which is why so many public places don’t have them. Many people don’t have them in their homes because they’re costly, so they don’t mind not seeing them in restaurants, etc. (This leaves open the fascinating question of why they’re expensive, but none of us could come up with a plausible theory). Ján told us all about the beer market in Cuba (there’s no draft beer) and we spent a good bit of time planning how Warren and the Rocket Republic team could exploit the untapped market. I would happily go back to Cuba just to hang out with him some more.

Ján also spent some time explaining Cuban rum to us. It’s ubiquitous and cheap. His recommendations: Havana Club (sort of the Budweiser of rums) makes both dark and light rums that are good as mixers, with their higher-end 7- and 11-year rums (añejo, or mature) being better sipping rums. The best rum, he told us, was Mulate 15, but it’s around US $80/bottle. Instead, he suggested we try Cubay Añejo, and offered us each a free taste.. maybe half an ounce in a wide-mouthed glass. Summary: best. rum. EVER.

Anyway. By this point, we still hadn’t had dinner so by the time we left El Presidente, none of the places we wanted to go were still open… at 9 or 10pm, most places close. A helpful passer-by directed us to a paladar called El Viejo Enrike. Along the way I encountered some Havana wildlife:

tiny street kitten

fierce Cuban gecko. Probably named “Fidel”

Sadly, the best thing about El Viejo was the art on the walls.

wait, what?

Well, overall, I suppose it was nicely decorated, and the staff was friendly, but it was expensive (CUC 17 for a mediocre ropa viejo, smaller and less tasty than the one at Kilometro Zero) and the service was extremely slow. They also added a mandatory 10% charge to the bill, just because they could, I suppose. By the time we finally finished dinner, it was around 1130p and I was worn out– so I headed back to the apartment while a separate delegation peeled off to go bar hopping.

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2017-03-09 · 09:38

Havana, day 5

(See reports from days 0, 1, 2, and 4.)

Day 5 should be subtitled “roaring back” because it was the first day where I felt like my normal self: energetic and ready to explore. I woke up feeling rested and starving so once the rest of the posse was ready, we headed back to Parque Central for another breakfast. This time I got my 15 CUC worth.. an omelet, brioche, cheese, ham, a piece of pie, more Cuban coffee, fruit, fresh orange juice– I feel like Homer Simpson just thinking about it.

On the way there, we enjoyed a gorgeous walk up the sunlit Prado. Since it was Monday, school was in session and we saw a group of kids having their PE class, practicing the long jump. Combined with the rest of the pedestrians and tourists, this added a nice dash of energy to go along with the greenery.

Caution; children at play

We’d planned for this day to be our first real sightseeing day, and right after breakfast we set out for one of the major city landmarks: Plaza de la Revolución and the José Martí Memorial tower. The plaza is a very large open area, formerly used for massive rallies when Fidel spoke. It looked strangely empty even though there were a fair number of tourists moving around.

Cuba Libre!

Opposite the memorial tower, there are large apartment buildings featuring the faces (and slogans) of Fidel, Che, and Cienfuegos. Pictured here: metal Che saying “until the final victory!”

Rocket Republic colonizes the Republic of Cuba

The Martí memorial is an impressive-looking stone-clad tower with a statue of Martí at its base. The tower looks like it’s swaying when you look directly up at it, which is a little bizarre. There’s a small museum in the base of the tower, with no air conditioning and a few desultory exhibits about Martí.

Jose Marti memorial tower

For 2 CUC you can take an elevator to the top of the tower, which has two noteworthy features: observation windows and air conditioning. From that vantage point, you can see all of Havana and a good bit of the surrounding countryside.

After a bit of effort I was able to capture a picture of this bird, whatever it was, which was flying around the top of the tower. Perhaps it was a DGI surveillance bird, checking up on tourists?

Che, there’s a bird on your face!

The plaza is near the National Theater so we decided to walk over there and check it out. As it turns out, this is a complex of low-slung buildings that have absolutely nothing happening on midday Monday. Herewith the nicely landscaped sign:

The sign was the best part of the theater

By this point we were all hungry again, so we decided to head back over towards the apartment and have lunch somewhere on the Malécon. The plaza had an impressive array of classic-car taxis lined up:

Tons of classic cars

With a party of 6, though, we couldn’t fit everyone into a single car, and we could only find one! That meant that Tony, Julio, and I ended up in a cocotaxi, the little egg-shaped, two-stroke-engine-powered taxis that infest Havana streets. It did the trick, getting us to our destination intact and with only some exhaust poisoning:

Tony regards the cocotaxi with some suspicion, rightly so

We decided to have lunch and drinks at El Presidente, a restaurant and bar about a block from the apartment. Their daquiris are excellent, and I recommend them highly. Their food? Not so much. I ordered crepes with ice cream; they were out of ice cream, and the crepes themselves were rubbery and tasteless. However, the water views and the hilarity of Warren trying to speak Spanish to the waitress made up for it.

We walked back over to the Parque Central to grab some wifi. Julio wanted to go to Parque Lennon, named after John Lennon, so we grabbed a classic car and headed out for the 20-minute drive there.

The park itself was pretty interesting. Its main salient feature is a bench with a lifesize bronze of Lennon.

Other than that, it’s unremarkable– a nice city park with some open areas for kids to play soccer, a concrete bandstand/podium, and some trees. The best part of this outing was our cab driver– he was super friendly and personable and made the drive fun by (loudly) playing Cuban music on his (excellent) stereo.

Julio WISHES he could drive this car every day

After everyone had time to chill at the apartment for a bit, we headed out for dinner. Tony had suggested a place for which we couldn’t get reservations (I wish I’d written down its name). We wandered aimlessly around, stopping by El Floridita (too many lines) in search of someplace to eat, then we stumbled across a place Tony had mentioned earlier: Kilometro Zero. With live Cuban music, and superb food, this was one of the high points of my dining on the trip. I got to try ropa vieja for the first time. It is, essentially, slow-cooked shredded beef with spices, but that doesn’t capture how good it is. I look forward to learning how to make it.

Ropa vieja

 

The band at Kilometro Zero

Kilometro was pretty typical of the tourist-oriented places we ate– in appearance and decor, it would not have been out of place in most large US cities. The menu and service are what made it Cuban… and oh, that ropa! I am still thinking about how good it was.

Dinner took a long time, so afterwards, I headed back to the apartment to get some sleep. As usual, the Prado was semi-crowded, mostly with people camping out on benches using the available wifi… a uniquely Cuban sight.

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2017-03-05 · 08:32

Havana, day 4

(If you’re wondering what happened to day 3, that was race day. See the race report.)

I woke up the day after the race still feeling like a pile of garbage. “I didn’t eat much yesterday,” I reasoned. “A good breakfast will fix me up.” With that happy thought in mind, we headed out to the Parque Central hotel, where our Airbnb host alleged we could get a delicious buffet for 15 CUC.

A digression about money in Cuba. There are two currency systems in the country: “CUC” and “CUP” (formerly known as MN, for moneda naciónal). CUC is for tourists, CUP is for citizens. This is a practical restriction, not really a legal one; citizens are free to use CUC if they get any. The exchange rates for both are fixed; 1 CUC equals USD$1 equals a little more than 24 CUP. There are a few important things to know about Cuban money:

  • US-issued debit and credit cards cannot be used. This is thanks to the US economic embargo. Cards issued by banks in other parts of the world work just fine. That means if you want money in Cuba, bring it with you, because you won’t be getting any while you’re there unless you use Western Union.
  • As far as I can tell, no one in the US changes CUC. You can’t get it at the Atlanta airport or any of the online currency exchanges I found. There are currency exchanges at the Havana airport but you’re better off finding one in town. Many hotels have them, but Eric took us straight to one inbound from the airport.
  • There’s a 10% penalty when changing USD to CUC. In our case, we saved about 1.5% by buying Euros and then changing them to CUC after our arrival. However, when you change CUC back to USD, there’s no penalty.
  • Prices for many things are quite low by US standards– you can get an excellent meal with drinks for 15 CUC, for example. However, hotel rooms and taxis are not particularly cheap, nor are cigars.
  • I found that I could comfortably get by on about 80 CUC/day for meals, transportation, and incidentals. That doesn’t include lodging. If you eat less, drink more, or do more tourist-y stuff your mileage may vary.

Anyway, back to the buffet. The other guys all loaded up huge plates with omelets, ham, pastries of various sorts, and all kinds of other goodies. I picked at a hard-boiled egg, a couple of pieces of ham, and a roll… I just wasn’t hungry and was still feeling queasy and dizzy. Despite that, the two very strong cups of Cuban coffee I had were quite welcome.

Our next stop was Museo de la Revolución. Napoleon’s aphorism that history is written by the winners was clearly the inspiration for this museum, which is just as propaganda-heavy as you might expect. It’s housed in the former Presidential Palace, and many of the original furnishings and decorations are intact, as are the bullet holes generated by the armed band of students who attacked the palace as part of the Cuban revolution.

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Evidence that this was formerly the Presidential Palace

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View of the interior courtyard

As you might expect, the exhibits focus heavily on the revolution and its aftermath. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are extremely prominent; Camilo Cienfuegos, who was really the true military mastermind behind the revolutionary army, gets relatively short shrift. I learned that he died in a mysterious airplane accident in 1958, shortly after the revolution. The exhibits are all labeled in Spanish but only a few have English translations, and those are mostly poor in quality and too brief to accurately capture the detail of the Spanish versions. Sometimes the propaganda quality was just over the top– the “Corner of Cretins” is a good example. The small plaques thank each cretin (Batista is the fourth, off to the left) for various things. The entry for George H.W. Bush says “Thank you cretin for helped us TO CONSOLIDATE THE REVOLUTION.” I mean, come on, guys, at least get someone who can conjugate verbs to help you write your insults!

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Cretins’ Corner

Interestingly, the museum itself contains three small shops selling random tourist crap. Not very revolutionary.

The ground floor has a small and well-hidden cafe where we stopped for a drink. This led to the highlight of my visit: reading the entries in the comment book the museum maintains for its visitors. I wish I’d taken pictures of some of the comments– there were people from eastern Europe writing (in beautiful English) that having the exhibits labeled only in Spanish was dumb; there were Australians and Canadians asking why the museum didn’t make a bigger effort to explain what was so bad about the pre-revolutionary Batista government, and one person (I think from Australia?) who said “Why are you selling Nestlé products in the cafe? They are the definition of imperialist devils!”

After the museum, I skipped lunch and went back to the apartment for a badly needed nap. When I awoke, everyone else had made it back and we all spent time washing our race stuff and hanging it to dry on the terrace. While this was going on, Anita, our housekeeper,  and her friend Rita were cooking us a Cuban dinner of slow-cooked chicken stew with pineapple, rice and beans, salad, and fried plantains.

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From L to R: Warren, Rita, Anita, Craig, and Julio

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Yes, I ate the whole thing

It’s true, I was very hungry at this point, but I have to say that this was the best meal I had while in Cuba, and one of the best I’ve ever had anywhere. The chicken was tender and flawlessly seasoned; the pineapple was naturally sweet, slightly caramelized, and a bit spicy from being cooked with the chicken, and the beans were perfectly cooked and seasoned. I had 3 plates worth and then had to quit before I damaged anything.

Our plan for the night was to go to FAC– Fábrica de Arte Cubano, basically a super-powered art gallery and party space. It’s only open Thursday through Sunday from 8p to 3a, so this was our last chance to go. We wanted to have drinks on the rooftop bar at El Cocinero, which is next door. However, when we arrived, we found the bar closed due to plumbing problems. That turned out to be OK; we got in line about 715 but by 730 the line was down the street and around the corner. FAC admits only 800 people each night, so if you don’t get there early, you might not get in.

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The FAC line

We stood in line chatting with other visitors, including a couple from Montreal who told a funny story. They were staying at an Airbnb owned by a Canadian and his Cuban boyfriend. Non-citizens can’t legally own real estate in Cuba though, and of course the Cuban government doesn’t permit gay marriage. How was that possible, I asked? “Oh,” laughed the Canadienne. “The Canadian married his boyfriend’s mother, and the apartment is in their names.” Nice workaround!

We paid 2 CUC for admission and got drink cards– to buy a drink, you show your card and the bartender marks it, then you provide your card at the exit to pay your tab. (Lose your card and it’s 30 CUC!) There are six or seven bars inside FAC, along with a large performance space, a video gallery, and wall after wall of art exhibits. The best way I can describe the overall vibe: noisy crowds of tourist hipsters. I’m not really an art person, and I tend to walk through art museums at a pretty brisk clip, so I didn’t really see anything that made a huge impression on me. (There was a nice gallery of small pictures of zebras chasing laser pointers, though.) The big attraction was being able to sit outside on the roof in the warm Cuban air talking with my friends and hipster-watching, but eventually I started getting more and more tired and decided to punch out and head back to the apartment.

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Lance marks the spot

I was awake for maybe 15 minutes once I got there– and getting there was an adventure, not because of the taxi we took (which was fine) but because of the stairs! My quads were still trashed from the previous day’s race and so I couldn’t make it up even half a flight of steep Cuban stairs without having to stop to catch my breath. Humbling.

 

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2017-03-04 · 07:35

Havana, day 2

Day 1 of our trip was about getting settled in. Day 2 was all about race prep.

Lance and I got up early-ish and went for a short run along the Malécon. We started from our apartment (the little red pin on the map), so you can sort of see where we were situated compared to the rest of Old Havana. This was just a short shakeout run, so we made a couple of stops for picture-taking along the eastern leg. You can’t see it in the map, but there’s a really interesting old fort across the strait to the east.

Running along the Malécon

Running along the Malécon

Called Castillo de la Punta, its construction started in 1590. It offers a great landmark from anywhere along the shoreline to the west because its promontory is further to the north than the rest of Havana. It makes a great scenic backdrop, too.

Castillo de la Punta

Castillo de la Punta

Further to the south along our run route, we saw a couple of cruise ships jockeying for entrance into the port. Non-US-flagged cruise lines have been stopping at some other Cuban resorts for a few years now but having them come into, or just offshore, Havana is fairly new.

Paul and Lance on the run

Paul and Lance on the run

After our run, we met up with the rest of the posse and finished getting our gear and bikes together. This was quite a production, as Julio, the 6th member of our group, was staying one block away. We’d arranged for Eric to bring a friend with a truck, so we set out on the half-hour drive from our apartment to Marina Hemingway, named after Papa himself. The drive took us through a row of embassies (not including the US embassy; more on that later) and some scenic residential neighborhoods. The marina itself was pretty well representative of Cuba: dilapidated in spots but still functional. The marina has two hotels: Hotel Acuario and El Viejo y La Mar (“The Old Man and the Sea”), which is being renovated.

The Old Man and the Sea-themed fountain

The Old Man and the Sea-themed fountain

The registration events were all held at Acuario, more or less. We were told the workflow would go like this:

  1. Get a race number and athlete wristband
  2. Drop off our bikes and bike bags in T1
  3. Drop off our run bags at T2

In my race report, I alluded to a certain degree of disorganization at registration, so it may not surprise you to know that things didn’t exactly work this way. We stood in line for a solid two hours to get in and register– registration opened at 10 and we were in line about 1015. The registration process itself was a maelstrom of people milling around trying to do 4 simple things: sign a waiver, sign up for race photos, get a race packet with numbers and so on, and get the coveted wristband. The volunteers seemed overwhelmed, and the layout was such that the crowd was funneled to the photo station first.. where you couldn’t sign up without your race number, which you wouldn’t have at that point. You get the idea.

Eventually we survived that process and walked back over to where we’d parked to get our bikes and bags. Each of us had to take all of our stuff and pack it into the event-provided T1 and T2 bags, so that took a few minutes. Then it was back to standing in another line to drop off our bikes and bags. This process was more smoothly organized: each of us had to find our numbered slot in the bike racks, park our bike, and hang our bike bags on the corresponding numbered hook. Run bags? Oh, yeah, we had to leave those too. At various times we were told that we could set up normal transition areas near our bikes, that we must set them up, and that we could not set them up (also that we could and/or could not leave helmets and shoes with the bikes). Oh, and also that we would and/or would not have access to our run bags before the race. You get the idea here too.

After another hour or so of fumbling around in the heat, everyone had their gear staged and we wandered off to find lunch. This was a bit of a challenge; our drivers had left, and the marina only featured one restaurant. Lonely Planet characterizes by saying that you can eat there, if you have no better options, which you won’t if you’re at the marina. They were right. Nothing was bad but it was, at best, mediocre. I had shrimp pasta; the shrimp and pasta were perfectly all right but they were served in an odd not-Italian tomato sauce.

Cuban pizza

Cuban pizza; note the skeptical looks of Tony and Julio

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The Cuban national tourism agency had offered a tour package for triathletes that included airport transfers, rooms at the Hotel Naciónal, and some other goodies. We found a bus going to the hotel and got on it; no one asked if we were supposed to be there, so we enjoyed the air conditioning and ended up at one of Havana’s most venerable institutions.

The imposing Hotel Naciónal

The imposing Hotel Naciónal

The hotel is set on a hill, and it has a commanding view of the water from its back terrace. Naturally, we immediately went there, whereupon I met a new friend… because of course he’d be there.

No word on whether he supports Fidel

No word on whether he supports Fidel

We hung out at the hotel using their wifi for an hour or so, then Lance and I took a classic-car taxi back to the marina while the others went home.

Riding dirty

Riding dirty

The idea was that we didn’t need to all go to the race briefing, so Lance and I volunteered to go find out two important factoids: whether the swim would be wetsuit-legal and whether ITU rules allowed swimming bare-chested. The answers turned out to be “maybe” and “yes”, and we were able to avoid having to wait until 7pm or later to find that out. We left the marina on foot and walked around the area a bit, including crossing the small and sluggish Rio Jaimanitas, before we caught a taxi back– a late-model British MG sedan that had seat belts and air conditioning– the only vehicle I rode in the whole trip that had either, much less both. On the other hand, I’d just as soon have no seat belts and no AC if it means I could roll around in this beauty all day:

What a beauty

What a beauty

We got back to the apartment and back-briefed everyone on what we’d learned. They’d already had dinner, so Lance and I walked a block over to the Malécon to look for dinner, where we found Castropol. Named after the town in Spain, and not You Know Who, this was a lovely surprise. It was easily on a par with the best meals I’ve had anywhere else; I had a grilled chicken breast with arroz moro, some fried plantains with garlic and salt, and a no-kidding-really-delicious bottle of mineral water (usually that stuff tastes awful but this was great). Portions were generous, service was friendly and quick, there was great live music, and the sidewalk-level people watching opportunities were excellent. They also have a second level of the restaurant where they specialize in Italian food, but we never made it back there to try it.

Grilled chicken? Why, yes, thank you

Grilled chicken? Why, yes, thank you

Full and sleepy after the 10 or so miles I’d walked/run that day, I headed back to the apartment and was in bed by about 830p. Now might be a good time to mention that I’d been getting steadily more and more congested– going through a pack or so of Kleenex and 2 12-hour pseudoephedrines per day, yet still continually honking like a foghorn. I was feeling a bit run down but was optimistic that a good night’s sleep would set me right. If you’ve read my race report, you already know how that turned out.

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