Lazy May

May came and went surprisingly fast. I fell into a lazy slump this month, although I'm not sure why. That's why I haven't been writing any posts. I spent most of my time reading and consuming various media. I need to return to being productive though and I hope to resume that tomorrow.

One part of my life that I was not lazy about was my training. Yup, its triathlon season again and I'm glad its here. I'm training on my own this year. It can be difficult to motivate myself some days and I don't really have much of a training plan. I just try to get in a good amount of running, cycling, and swimming every week. I usually adjust my workouts each day according to how I feel. If I feel good, I'll do a little more and push a little harder. If I feel bad, I'll cut the workout I had thought about doing by as much as 50%, change to another discipline, or even just decide to take the day off. So far its been working out pretty well. I've remained injury free since March and I'm faster in running and swimming this year than last. I'll be focusing on cycling a lot more this month because its my greatest weakness right now.

Last Monday I did my first triathlon race of the season, CapTexTri. Last year this was also the first triathlon race that I ever did, so it was a nice way to celebrate my "triathlete anniversary". The race went pretty well, as I expected it too. I did the sprint distance (750m swim, 20km bike, 5km run), the same distance I did last year. I chose to do the sprint instead of the olympic distance because I didn't feel my training had quite prepared me well enough for that distance and I had a few different injuries and illnesses that had affected my training in the last few weeks. I also won my age division last year and I was hoping to defend my title and repeat that performance.

After the race started, I was confused during the swim portion of the race because I thought I had become a much better swimmer, but I found myself unable to catch many people in my swim wave. Last year I was first out of the water and during the race I thought I was around 10th place (I was actually 6th I later discovered). That hurt my confidence right from the beginning. The bike portion was okay, but I knew I should be going faster. I just haven't been developing the right muscle groups enough. I got passed by fewer than 10 people on the bike. Coming off the bike into transition I was neck and neck with another guy in my age group. As we started the run, he bolted out and was running hard. I was having difficulty shifting gears and I tried to minimize the gap between us. After the first mile my legs finally came around and I settled into a good pace. I eventually overtook that guy in another half mile (I talked to him afterwards and learned that he cramped up). I felt really good on the run, almost to the point where I felt like I wanted to do another lap and make the run a 10K instead of a 5K. I picked up the pace as the finish came in sight and sprinted in the final chute, and some guy next to me followed up and we pushed each other in. Less than a minute after finishing I threw up (gee, that's twice this year out of three races I've done), but I felt great.

My total time was 1:14:48, almost 5 minutes faster than my time last year of 1:19:27. So I was very pleased about that, although I was hoping to break 1:10 this race. I have a lot of room to grow on the bike and if I can do that, then it shouldn't be too difficult to do. The disappointment came when I looked through the results and found that I placed 4th in my age group, just one place short of a podium finish and an award. That kind of sucks because part of the reason I did the sprint distance was I wanted to get another trophy this year. It just goes to show how much more competitive my age group was this year. My time last year would have earned me a sobbering 13th place this year.

Here's a link to the results of my age group: Race Results
Here's some pictures from this race and others I've done so far this year: Facebook Album


Well that's all I have to share for now. Staring tomorrow I'm going to get my butt back in gear and being productive with my time, which will include more posts here. I have a couple of book reviews to share as well so look forward to that.

2008 Was Great

Hurray, I'm finally getting back to updating my blog again! I had intended to update it after finishing my half ironman race in early October but just never got around to it. I did manage to squeeze in another small aquathlon in mid-September before my big race though. I actually did the exact same aquathlon the previous month of August and although I did pretty well then, the timers screwed up and gave me a very, very slow running time (its hand timed, not chip timed). Well this time I did even better than last and they didn't screw up my time, and I actually ended up getting 3rd place overall! I was feeling pretty happy about that.

I felt more nervous than usual going into the half ironman, primarily because at my last long race I had lost consciousness and didn't finish. Surprisingly enough, the water was cold enough (just barely) to make it wetsuit legal, which made me happy because I love swimming in my wetsuit. Its like my safety blanket for the water. :) The swim went pretty well, although at one of the two turns I didn't turn sharply enough and ended up swimming pretty far off course. The bike was fast and furious for the first 15 miles or so. There were many good cyclists out there pushing hard and they brought me along with them. What I was worried about, and rightly so, for the bike stage were the aid stations. I had never practiced grabbing water or food while on the bike before and my coordination/balance on a bike is pretty bad to begin with. Sure enough, at the first of four aid stations I didn't slow down enough and missed my initial grab for a water bottle. The next 3 water bottles were all lined up like ducks in a row, and I couldn't avoid them so I just smashed into them one at a time with my helmet and water sprayed everywhere. It was pretty funny. I did manage to grab one successfully towards the end of that station thanks to a spirited aid worker who ran alongside my bike to make it easier for me.

But the race went downhill from here. For some reason, my back started to fail on me. Its happened to me before, both in training and in races. I think it happens when I just push myself too hard. At about mile 20 the pain was so strong that I knew there was no way I could keep even my average pace for another 36 miles. At that point I just decided to let it all go, not worry about trying to place high in my age group, and just relax and enjoy the ride. So I did. Although it still really sucked to see so many people pass me on the bike that I knew I could destroy on a good day. It was a slow ride, but still painful. But because I was taking it so easy, I felt very, very energized for the run.

But the run wasn't too great either. Apparently my nutrition intake on the bike wasn't the best (not enough electrolytes or something). I had the worst leg cramps that I have ever felt in my entire life. After about a mile and a half into the half marathon I thought "maybe I'll stop and stretch it out and it will get better". WRONG! When I pulled my leg back to stretch my quardracept it felt like all the muscles in my leg just exploded. Forget running, for a brief moment I could barely walk or stand on that leg. It was awful. So through trial and error I found that I could generally run for about a quarter to a half a mile before the cramps came got so bad that I couldn't run anymore. So I'd run, then walk and recover. And then run, and then walk and recover. And I repeated that process. But when I ran (especially towards the end of the race) I was flying. I'm talking like low 6-minute pace. I had so much energy from taking it easy on the bike and having plenty of recovery from walking and through the aid stations. It was really frustrating for me to feel so energetic in the middle of a competition, and yet my body was unable to respond to me.


But I finished. I didn't pass out, I didn't die, and I finished. And you know what, that was good enough for me. There will be other races for me to be all about guts and glory. It felt nice to release myself of that for once. I was planning to do a 10K race a couple weeks after the half iron, but I backed out of that because my body was just too destroyed to keep going. Not from the half iron really, but from the entire season. I started my training in October 2007 (without really even intending to do a half ironman, or even do a triathlon at that point) and I finished with my first half iron in October 2008. It felt good to accomplish something personal. Something outside of academia and outside of work. Something for me.


So lets see, in November I of course was very, very happy when Obama won the presidency. Its only been a couple weeks into his administration so far so its too early to judge, but I believe that good things will come in the future. November and December of last year were kind of lazy months for me. I was going to take only 2-4 weeks off from training, but I ended up taking more like 8-9 weeks off. It took my body longer to recover than I thought it would, but thankfully I'm back to 100% now after running for several weeks. No shin splints or other injuries, it feels awesome. Because I took off so much time, I backed out of doing the Austin marathon again (I feel so guilty about this...its the third time now that I said I was going to do it and then ended up not doing it). Right now I'm focusing mostly on my running since triathlon season is still a few months away. I'm looking forward to seeing how much I improve this year in my competitions. All in all, 2008 was a great year for me in both racing and in life.


Work hasn't been so great lately though. I've been getting more frustrated and annoyed with my job. And for a variety of good, valid reasons. Its unchallenging because I hardly do any design or coding. I mostly investigate whether X API provided by Y company is capable of implementing Z feature. Its unmotivating because I work pretty much by myself as the only fulltime VXI software engineer in the entire company. Its unfulfilling because even though the driver software sucks, I can do little to change it because rather than fix the core of our problems, the company is content to patch little problems one by one. I could go on and on, but I won't. One day a couple months ago I got so frustrated that I actually left work early because I couldn't take it anymore, then went on a long "rage run" to decompress. It was that event which made me say "I can't do this anymore" and I have since started looking for a new position. I've found plenty to be sure and have recruiters contacting me quite a bit (although not so much recently), but I am being very picky about my next job, and not just settling for whatever. After all, what purpose is there in leaving one crappy job for another? I may talk more about this situation in a later post.


I worked on Allacrost quite a bit toward the end of the year but then I got side tracked with something unexpected. Its difficult to explain fully the situation because it is rather complex. What I will say is that it deals with some fundamental questions about life and about learning from others who have different perspectives than your own. Without even realizing it, my emotional attachment to someone has led me to a sort of new awakening. In the past six weeks I have studied and learned so much about so many things. History, science, psychology, sociology, and religion. I've gained or reaffirmed so many views about various matters, and unfortunately I've recently been left with no one else to express them to. I've been nearly possesed by this and I need to get these ideas out of my head, so I'll be using this blog as a means of expressing and recording those views. I plan for this to pretty much take over my blog for at least the near future, but the good news is that I'll definitely be more motivated to blog often. Maybe even daily depending on how things go. So stay tuned. There is much for me to say.

Victory and Defeat

So my race season has come quite aways since my last post. So far this year I've done one 10K run, five triathlons, one duathlon, one aquathlon, and one open water swim race. It feels kind of cool to be a more dynamic athlete than just a runner, which is how I competed in years prior to this one. I've done well enough to win a few medals and trophies in these races as well. In less than a month I'll be doing a half ironman, which is a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile (half marathon) run. I'm looking at this upcoming race as something completely different, and unlike my other races my goal isn't to win....its just to survive. That will be my last triathlon for this year and I'm kind of looking forward to the season being over so I can recover myself a bit. Other races I have coming up are a 5K run, another aquathlon, and a 10K run. Next year I'm going to do the Austin marathon (which I've trained for twice in the past, but got too injured both times to go through with it). I'll do a half marathon race before that as well. Anyway let me focus on what's been going right and what sucks.


Swimming was what I thought would be the biggest challenge for me going into triathlon, but it really hasn't been. I'm a pretty decent swimmer and I've done very well in the swim leg of several of my races. What I hate about it though is that I'm so inconsistent in my results. The pace they report in races is the average time it took you to swim 100 meters. My fastest pace was a 1:30 I swam at that aquathlon, and my slowest pace has been a 2:10 I swam at one of my triathlons. There are things that definitely make me faster or slower on the swim, the big one usually being getting in a bad position relative to the other swimmers and ending up trapped behind a pack of really slow swimmers. But I can't *feel* how fast I'm going when I swim. At the last race I did on Labor Day I thought I was having a fairly fast swim, and later when I looked at the results my pace was 1:55, and that was even with me wearing a wetsuit. I was not happy with that time at all. I was expecting to swim around or below 1:40. And during swimming efficiency is so crucial that I constantly have to check myself and think things like "Are my hips high enough? Are my arms entering the water at the right distance and angle? Are my legs kicking too little or too hard? Are my hands and fingers shaped correctly?". The list goes on. Its not too bad, just annoying sometimes.


The biggest problem I have with cycling are my technical skills. Things like making turns, mounting/dismounting, or taking in fluids on the bike are major challenges for me. I can go fast and straight on the bike but that's about it. I've been slowly teaching myself to do more and more though. My last race was the first time I've used aerobars in a race and I really think they helped me a lot. But I still feel kind of nervous whenever I'm on the bike because my balance is pretty bad. My biggest strength on the bike though is hill climbing. In a race whenever there's a hill, I always blow by at least a couple different cyclists. But sometimes I leave my bike in too high of a gear when going uphill, and after doing that a few times my lower back begins to spasm and eventually destroys me. I've had this happen to me in one race and I've been battling back problems on the bike occasionally ever since. I like cycling though, its a lot of fun. Especially when you're going fast, although going too fast (on downhills) can scare me enough that I end up riding the brake a lot.


Running what was got me into triathlons in the first place. Specifically, I have a history of shin splints and that constant injury prevented me from running as much as I would like to, which brought me to cross training via cycling and swimming, which naturally turned me into a triathlete. Even though I've been running less through my triathlon training, my shins have still hurt enough to cause me major problems throughout the year. I finally got fed up with it and a few weeks ago, went to get fitted for custom orthotics for my running shoes. They've been a great help so far and the pain in my running legs continues to drop more and more. Although I've had enough injuries in other areas that it might just be I notice the other areas hurting more than the shins lately. :/ After triathlon season is over though, I'm going to turn my focus back to purely running for a while, and I'm looking forward to that.


Earlier this week something horrible happened to me which has never happened in any race I've ever done. The race was the Austin Triathlon and I signed up for the Olympic distance, which was a 1500 meter swim, 25 mile bike, and 10K run. I thought everything was going fine during the race. I felt sluggish on the run, but that's nothing unusual for me. With about 400 meters, or less than 100 seconds, left in the race, I suddenly lost consciousness and collapsed. About 15 minutes later I woke up in the medical tent, and couldn't remember a thing about what happened. The last thing I remembered was about another 400 meters back from where I passed out. My memory was in a horrible state. I couldn't remember a lot of things, like people's names, or my own phone number. I couldn't do math either (I was trying to calculate what time I would have finished based on the progression of events). I was really upset when they told me I didn't finish the race, because I have always finished every race no matter what. It upset me enough that I cried a little and was having trouble accepting what happened. In fact I *still* have trouble accepting what happened, because I felt fine on the run. I wasn't feeling dehydrated, or exhausted, or too hot, or anything like that. And I also didn't have any damage from when I fell on the pavement. When the medics got to me my body temperature was 104F, which is a really dangerous state to be in (according to Wikipedia). Once I regained consciousness I felt fine, other than being a little freaked out about the memory loss. I wanted to get up and leave but they made me stay there lying down for what felt like forever. So yeah, I was pretty disappointed with the outcome of that race, especially because I was expecting it to be a really good race for me. But its a learning experience I suppose.


Well that sums up my race season up pretty well. If I wrote these posts more often I'd go into more detail about the specific results and outcomes of each of my races, but that's way too much for a single post. Next time I'll be talking about Allacrost, so look for that in another 2-3 days.

And... I'm back

So the last two months have been reasonably eventful (for me anyway). Yes, I'm still unemployed, but I can't get these damn recruiters to leave me alone. I get a call/e-mail from one nearly every weekday and I'm getting sick of re-telling my life story to them. I'll be looking for a job soon though, and I'm hoping that I'll find something I don't detest by the end of this month.

At the end of April I became a member at Lifetime fitness and ever since, I've been spending more and more time at the gym. One of the first things I did there was take a fitness assessment test that tells you your "body age" compared to your chronological age by measuring your VO2 max, strength, flexibility, and body composition. I did fairly well and my body age was 18 years old (my chronological age is 24). So that made me kind of happy to hear that. :) I spent most of May focusing on my weak point, body strength, but I also started cycling in addition to running. Towards the end of the month, I started swimming too, which has been a difficult challenge for me because...well, I like to breathe when I'm working out. :) Over the past 3 weeks I've been self-teaching myself how to front-crawl properly and I've come pretty far in such a short time. Now I can easily do bi-lateral breathing (turning your head to the left and right for breaths of air) rather than always trying to keep my head out of the water. The furthest I've swam in a day so far has been about 0.8 miles.

Yesterday my roommate (who is a cyclist and occasional triathlete) invited me to go swim in open water with a bunch of people that meet weekly to go swim. I went and it was fun, although a little freaky since I haven't properly learned how to sight. Most days if I'm not tired, I try to do two forms of cardio, but today I went all out and did three. I swam for half a mile, cycled for 12.4 miles, ran over 3 miles, and did about an hour of weightlifting. Needless to say, I'm totally exhausted as I write this right now, but in a good way :) Even though I won't be anywhere near race condition by the time it comes, I'm thinking of doing a 5K race on or around July 16th, which will be my 25th birthday. It is to be my official "come back" into the world of competitive sports. (For those that don't know, back in high school I ran cross country and track and I loved racing more than anything at that time). My roommate is trying to convince me to do a triathlon, and I actually think I want to do one too, although not until after I get comfortably back into running races again. Plus the way my training routine is going, its almost like I am already becoming a triathlete. ^_^

A couple days ago we finished our second release for Hero of Allacrost. Its a major improvement over the first demo we released in October last year. So far we've seen a pretty good stream of publicity and positive feedback. The most important thing about this demo, in my opinion at least, is that now our code base is mature enough that it is extremely easy to build onto what we already have. I re-wrote some major subsystems of the code after our first release, particularly I re-designed that map code nearly from scratch (to add free range movement support among other things) and I re-wrote the global code, which is the code that manages all of the data that different portions of the game share (characters, inventory, skills, that sort of thing). I haven't announced this on our site yet, but the plan from here is to make smaller, more periodic releases that add a small number of features/improvements over the previous release. We're also going to start a recruitment hunt tomorrow to increase the number of programmers and artists on our team to help speed up production. Needless to say, its an important turning point for our project (which is now 3 years old by the way).

Well I'm exhausted and need to get some sleep. Tyler out.