October 31, 2009 by steve.

Well, the week before Halloween and its time for the last triathalon of the Team CurbCrusher season. As with last year, I’m ending the season a short trip down the road from the house at Moss Park for the Masters Triathlon Championship race. Of course there is good and bad to this, the good is that it is close to the house, the bad is that this race is put on by Buttar.com which is probably my least favorite race promoter.

Pre-Race

I was busy on Friday and Saturday, so I wasn’t able to get my packet early. I showed up at Moss Park around 6am for a 7:30am race since I needed to get my packet. I checked in fairly quickly and put my number on the bike and headed to transition. After body marking, I wandered into the transition area to find an ‘open-seating’ policy in place, put your bike and stuff where ever you want. So I found a nice spot up against the fence and set up. I then wandered back to the car and noticed that the race t-shirt said it was Nov 1, a week later than the current date. I thought that was odd.

The race was advertised as starting at 7:30am, with pre-race meeting on the beach at 7:15, so I made my way to the beach about 10 after 7. Someone got on a bull horn and announced that the time on the web site was wrong, that the race would be at 8:00am. Then about a minute later, they announced that the race meeting would be at 7:30 and the sprint tri would start at 7:45 and the Olympic tri at 8:00 because the original date was Nov 1 and that was after daylight savings time ended. About 7:30am the bullhorn came alive again and race instructions were given, and it was announced that the sprint tri would start in about two minutes and the Olympic tri would start three minutes after that.

Swim - 15:25
So we finally start the race about 7:35am, just five minutes after the advertised time. The air temperature was in the low 70s and the water was probably in the mid 70s. There was only one wave of sprint tri athletes, but it wasn’t too crowded in the water. I settled into a good rhythm swimming and made my way toward the first buoy. We were swimming east into the lake, and the first buoy seemed to be right where the sun was rising over the lake. So, I just followed some other folks and made my way there. After turning at the first buoy, I looked at my watch to see how I was doing. My watch face read something like “-=L_” hm, not good. After a few more strokes, I looked at the watch again, and could see a line of water behind the face of the watch. Looks like the battery replacement might have caused the waterproofness of the watch to be compromised. I kept swimming and finished feeling pretty good.

T1 - 5:44
Moss Park races have a pretty good run from the swim finish to the transition area, and this eats up most of my time in T1. The first part of the run is not bad, along the beach in the sand. Then you turn through some pine woods with lots of roots, pine cones and pine needles on the ground which all seem to hurt when you step on them. Next is the pot-holed pavement of the park road that seems to just eat at the bottoms of your feet. Finally, as you get to the transition area, the ground becomes sandy and grassy and comfortable to run on again. A pretty straight forward T1, bike jersey on, helmet on, socks and shoes on and off you go. Although I did take time to remove my worthless watch as I figured if I kept it on I’d just keep looking at my wrist.

Bike - 40:58
Almost 12 miles on the bike. The course is flat and runs through the neighborhoods around Moss Park, so it is pretty easy. I used a five minutes of riding hard with a one minute break cycle, sort of imitating the Galloway running method on the bike. Also, continuing the practice of consuming something other than sports drink on the bike that I started at the last race, I had a goo at about the 25 and 36 minute marks. One of the things that I don’t like about Buttar races is there never seem to be any officials on the bike course. There were at least two different groups running a pace line of at least four bikes on this course, along with a large number of others drafting in twos and threes.

T2 - 1:22
Not much to T2. Rack the bike, put on a dry shirt and head out to run.

Run - 31:19
I really wanted to break 30 minutes on this run, and I think I could have done it if I’d had an idea of what kind of pace I was running. But, I found that without a watch, I am terribly incapable of judging my pace. There are two water stations on the race, and I ran between the water stations. I stopped at the water station and walked for a counted out minute (1 - Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, …) after each one. This seemed to work well, and I was feeling very good during the run. I thought that I was doing fairly well and running at about a 10 minute or less pace. Obviously, looking at the time, I was really wrong about this, I was on more of and 11 minute mile pace.

Overall - 1:34:51
Well, I felt good at the end of the race. But I was slower than last year. That was a real disappointment as I was convinced that I could do under an hour and a half for this race. Of course five minutes is a bunch of time, but I’m going to blame it on the broken watch. That wraps up the Team CurbCrusher triathlon season, now for the one endurance running race of the year, the OUC Half-Marathon the first week of December.

Posted in Triathlon | No Comments »

October 9, 2009 by steve.

We extended our limits this month and headed all the way to the Florida Keys for a week. As our home base while in the Keys, we stayed at Long Key State Park. Long Key State Park is mostly a campground, there are two small day use areas, but most of the park which is located at mile marker 67.5 between Islamorada and Marathon seems to be sixty camp sites with water and electricity sandwiched between US1 and the Atlantic. The sites are right on the beach, giving you a great view of the water from the front window when you pull in to the sites.

Campground – The road on the way in from the ranger station is nice and smooth, until you get to the gate that gives you access to the campground. Then it appears that the road has not been surfaced in at least three decades. The campsites are all between the campground road and the water, with the first 10 or so sites being fairly shallow. The sites all have water and electricity, and there is a dump station opposite site 14. The sites are configured so that electric and water are between every other site (between sites 1 & 2 then 3 & 4) so regardless of whether you pull straight in to get the water view in your window, or if you back in, it will likely be necessary to have extra hose and an extension cord if you want to use the water and electricity. Sites in the teens and twenties also seemed to retain water for an extraordinarily long time following rain, with some of the sites appearing to have a small lake between them and the road that stayed for one or two days.

The Park – Yes you are on the beach, but… It is one of the filthiest beaches that we’ve ever seen. For the first four nights we were there, we’d walk down the beach from our campsite to the day area. After the first night, we started taking at least one (sometimes two) large plastic garbage bags with us. There was not a trip down the beach that we did not completely fill every bag we took with us. There were bottles, shoes, ropes, lightbulb and all kinds of trash on the beach. The Ranger said it is because of where the park is in relation to the currents and most everything gets washed up with the tide. Regardless of how it happens, it does take away from the experience. In the day use area there is a boardwalk that runs from the parking area to the water with some pavilions located near the water. Along the boardwalk there is an observation tower, but it is not high enough to see anything, just the tops of mangrove trees. Also off the boardwalk is a hiking trail. Beware though if it has rained, or if the tides are extra high, you may find that portions of the trail are underwater. More pictures of the park are here.

One of the most popular past times for all the campers was floating. The water is very shallow, you can walk out a couple of hundred yards and not have the water get any deeper than your knees. So most everyone blows up inner tubes or a raft, and then wades out in the afternoon an floats for a while. The bottom is sandy, so there aren’t a lot of fish, and when it’s hot it makes for a very refreshing time.

Stuff To Do We found other things to do in the Keys as well. A day trip from Long Key down to Key West let us visit the Southernmost Point, the Key West Lighthouse, the Mel Fisher Museum and Fort Zachary Taylor Sate Park. We put our bikes on the car and drove down and parked at Zachary Taylor State Park and toured the fort, then unloaded the bikes and went around Key West. That allowed us to avoid the hassle that is trying to park in Key West. Pictures of our Key West adventures are here for the fort, the lighthouse and the southernmost point. After biking around Key West, we returned to the fort and snorkeled around the rocks that are just off the beach at the park.

There are also some other state parks in the area, Curry Hammock State Park, John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park and Bahia Honda State Park.

We had a great lazy week, it might have been too lazy. With this trip, we have now spent 110 nights in the motorhome since we got it in April of 2007, and 35 nights this year alone.

Posted in RV Stuff, Campground Review | No Comments »