Groups from all over the world simultaneously play All You Need Is Love.

Great video and great cause!

For those of us that need some help polishing our biking skills, watch this video and take a few notes. Make sure to click HQ to watch in high quality.

Tomorrow at 10 AM EST I am going to head off solo for my first big ride of the year and do the Spin Cycle Firecracker Ride. The weather is looking fantastic and I have a hall pass. Since I really love you guys and want to bring you along, the best I can do is to test out a few technologies – using my iPhone to track via GPS and post it live to the web. You can post your smack talk about my pace without leaving the comfy confines of your climate controlled office.

If you are of the type that can watch paint dry, you can watch my progress through three North Carolina counties – Wake, Harnett, Chatham, then finally back to Wake – over approx 66 miles. It will record a max of 100 data points, so 3 minute intervals *better* be enough to cover it. If you see it stop in front of Chipotle on Kildaire Farm for more than 5 minutes, you know I’m eating lunch.

I may get fancy and shoot a few pics and post them to Twitter en route.

Click here or the map above to be taken to the live tracking link. Click here for a map of the Firecracker route.

For those of you who missed watching the Ironman Championship on TV, I figured I would repost it on Hulu so you could watch it on your computer.

Click through for HD.

(I am not pointing any fingers, in fact I may be looking in the mirror)

Click here for more amazing recipes like:
Carny Casserole
Loosiana Gator Dog
and don’t forget:
Deep Fried Peanut Butter-Covered Brownie Wrapped In Cookie Dough

Colin Powell has nothing on us! Based on the simple fact that there is no way McCain could beat Obama in a foot race or triathlon of any distance, we are going to have to go with the big O.

Nerd Alert! Having some fun with my new iPhone. Downloaded the free Instamapper App, and set up a track for a Sweet Tomatoes test run. A few clicks to register and get a key, plug it into the iPhone app, and fire it up.

Neat!

I think this app combo also will do real time tracking, so when the group does long rides or runs, those of us that remain deskbound can run vicariously through Instamapper.

Here is a kid who put together quite a trip and quite a video. Inspiring journey! I felt like dancing by the end!

Click above for high resolution YouTube.com link – give it a few minutes to load before you play unless you have a really fast Internet connection.

Riverwood Triathlon 2008 – great day for a great race!

KarenG8r wins her age group (again). Check out how she was telling Squeeky exactly how much butt she was going to kick in the middle of the race

Squeeky deals with inner tendon demons and was stil able to pull an extremely respectable 14th in his age group, despite fighting a nagging injury.

Sandbagger capitalizes on a great aerobic base built from Umstead Trail Marathon, as well as sandbagging on the bike leg to pull a great (for him) 5k run – and place 7th in the age group. (Beat #8 by 4 seconds – T2 30 seconds faster than #8).

Met some other friends and a large number of Lochmere neighbors at the race. The godfather of the the triathlon groupies, Rick, who apparently is the source of all our Tri-shenanigans.

We missed several of you!

Red White and Through

Check out our post for the 2007 Riverwood Triathlon, or the photo gallery.

Parting Shots:

So it’s going to be windy, rainy, and downright crazy tomorrow. For all of you who ran OBX, is it worthwhile to run with an umbrella? How about galoshes?

In honor of the 45MPH gusts we will be facing for those of us running 4+ hours after we start, I bring you the Candle Cannon.

So Squeeky and I went to spin class this morning.

That’s it. That’s the only thing I could think of to tie the pic to something related to our blog.

Someone went WAY out of their way to create a pretty comical spoof on the creating of a “women-only” forum.

For another less testosterone-filled forum, you can check out beginnertriathlete.com which has a number of specific forums, including a state-level forum (the NC one is reasonably active).

Any other online haunts that people frequent?

First the good news.

WOW – Just like I remembered it!

That is our kitchen patio view.

The drive up.

Out on the water.  JB coming in, Sandbagger heading out.

Catching a bit of air.

Ok I will get to that bad news.  But one more pic:

Well, we aren’t really in Baja.  These are my old photos from around 2001.    The pressure was extremely high to produce photos, so being crafty and resourceful, I came up with a post

A nasty weather system moved in and it was predicted to be cold, rainy and windless for 4 days.  No wind in Baja can make you go insane.

So in fact I am sitting at Gate B8 in Chicago-Midway waiting for my plane to take me to the Bay Area – where I can enjoy some of the weather system that screwed up the Baja trip.

Oh well.

Parting shot (not me!)

I promised Rap Master Sass that I would get EW on the podium. (Rap Master – does this count? Will I be sued for fraud or impersonating a winner?)

Pics Here – with our shiny new TriRunWithUs Flickr Account (Ask for admin access so you too can help build this photographic barrel of monkeys)

2007 Mens Results
2007 Womens Results
Recap coming – we (Squeeky, Litl’bit, KarenG8r, Mitdog, Sandbagger) promise!

Yum Yum… Right? More like bloomin heart attack…

Here… we’ve printed it out so you can cut on the dotted lines and add the card to your nutritional 3×5 card collection.

For more thrills, go check out more heart attack material here.

When – 6:00AM < -------------- EARLY!!!

Mileage - Long enough to make your hurl!

In case you are wondering:
- yes she totally hurls in the next few seconds
- the photo comes from a thread on BeginnerTriathlete.com – Finish Line Photos – Oh the humanity (LOL)

A few of us had a nice morning brick – a 14 mile loop around Cary to Cary Park and back – then ran from the Morrisville Aquatics & Fitness Center. From my bike computer, the ride was 14.87 (I think), but I wanted to know how far our run was. Since I missed the REI Garage Sale, I didn’t pick up a shiny new GPS unit (or scratch&dent courtesy of the Garage Sale). I re-remembered a Google mashup that takes Google Map functionality and allows you to pick your points on the map and it automagically calculates distance (and even calories somehow).

Here is the link – www.gmap-pedometer.com

A good way to calculate a cross country route (any route not on the street).

Recap – what a great ride and run. First time I had been rolling this season, in fact the first time I had ridden my road bike since moving to NC in 2003! Perfect weather, fun group, and coffee afterwards.

You read this far? Oh right…. the run showed 4.5km (The numbers on the points along the route show 1km increments)