No, his bite IS worse than his bark

With tomorrow's forecasted 80% chance of rain, I decided to move tomorrow's workouts to today and move my off day to tomorrow. Little did I know today came with a 100% chance of dog bite.

I had a 90 minute upper aerobic/hill ride and headed out on a familiar route. Coming up a somewhat blind twisty hill (North Fork and Seneca Hollow), I was met by two yapping dogs that I have seen on the road before but I had avoided, till now. This time the blue heeler made contact with my left ankle, tearing my new Castelli socks (nooo!!!), breaking skin, and causing some slight bruising. I nearly went down. Man those dog jaws are strong! I stopped and figured this was something that needed to be reported.

As I waited, another cyclist stopped, we chatted, and he went on his way (more about him in a second). Two animal control officers came in two trucks, the neighbor gave them the owner's info, and the dog was loaded in the back of a truck. They explained that most likely the owner will be permitted to pick up the dog and quarantine the dog at home for 10 days. I am supposed to be contacted by the health department.

I thought it odd that they didn't look at my ankle or take pictures or anything. 

I'm sure this dog was doing what it thought it needed to be doing - herding me or whatever. So I feel kind of bad. On the other hand, the owner should know the danger they are potentially causing to other cyclists. I got off pretty easy, but another rider could go down and in that low visibility bend, could be run over.

contrite? maybe?

While I met with animal control, the cyclist I talked to had circled back around to report he'd been chased by two pit bulls one street over. Animal Control said they'd had complaints and left a note but hadn't heard back from that owner. Geez! It's dangerous out there.

Anyway, I carried on with my ride dodging chipmunks and squirrels and jumping at the sound of every dog bark. I still managed 29 miles in 1:34 with 3100 feet of elevation gain, even with all that extra drag of a ripped sock! LOL.

Be safe out there people!!

How well are predicted times reflected in actual swim rankings in a pool swim triathlon?

Subtitle: fun with non-parametric statistics!
Sub-subtitle: getting my nerd on. 

On my run yesterday when I should have been thinking about cadence or something like that I was busy wondering whether or not our swim order for the time trial start at Sunday's pool swim triathlon was close to the swim time order outcome. We were intended to be lined up fastest to slowest, but were we really?

We were "seeded" fastest to slowest based on the times we submitted - our 100y swim time that we could maintain for 300y.  Our bib numbers reflected that seeding. So the athlete who submitted the fastest time was "1" and the next fastest was "2" and so on. I was 44.

The researcher in me asked, "how well did we self-seed ourselves?" Were we ordered relatively correctly, did we submit/guess our right time, resulting in the right order?

So I pulled the Salem Sprint Tri results into a spreadsheet and got to work.

• I took out the two late entries I knew who had high bib numbers because they registered the morning of the race and their number did not reflect their seeding. There may have been others, but I didn't assume so.
• I renumbered the seeding and the final swim rankings to account for the two pulled entries and any no-shows resulting in two columns of ranked data, 1 to 162.
• I plotted the data, shown on the graph below.

The X axis is our swim order (denoted by our bib number) and the Y axis is our actual swim rank based on our 300y swim time (plus the run to the transition mat which introduces error). If we'd ordered ourselves perfectly, the data would all fall on the red line. Those above the line were seeded faster (too far up in the swim lineup) than they should have been; those below were seeded slower (too far back in the swim lineup) than they should have. I am the red dot on the graph, I was pretty close to right on - seeded 38, finished 39 with the adjusted rankings.

If you are a dot far away from the line you probably created a logjam and should re-evaluate or get a new watch!

I calculated the Spearman Rank Order Correlation Coefficient and got 0.806 with a p less than 0.0001 meaning it's a significant finding. A correlation of 1.0 would be perfect meaning we'd all fall on the line. (I couldn't use Pearson since it was ordinal data only). Really, we didn't do too bad a job.

The funniest thing is how long it seems to take us to put ourselves in numerical order from low to high on race morning even with giant numbers on our arms.

If I'd had the estimated times I could have correlated those with actual times and used Pearson...but I digress.

I found no significant gender differences so men and women were equally capable (or not depending on your view) of predicting swim time/self-seeding.

I'd like to thank my PhD adviser Dr. Tonya Smith Jackson for helping me to appreciate the beauty of statistics, especially non parametrics which are still my favorite!!

Shoe love, breakups, and moving on

By the time I finally get around to ordering a new pair of running shoes, my old, beloved, trusted model is usually long gone. I scour the online sources...shoe stores, Amazon, eBay....and at times I've gotten lucky. But more typically, not. I grieve. I search. I bravely try to keep my chin and my cadence up.

Each time it seems to get harder. The breakup with the yellow shoes was particularly crushing. They carried me through an amazing 2012 season.

Why don't I just order several pairs at once? Well, that's risky. Sometimes shoe love is instantaneous and passionate, but turns out to be blister-inducing and short-lived. I don't want a shoebox stack of reminders of failed shoe relationships. Other times it's a slow-growing love, and by the time I realize I'm forefoot-over-heels in love, it's too late to find more.

Thin-soled and broken down, I begin the search for a shoe anew.

Tonight I sent an email to our local running store (RunAbout Sports) asking them to order my chosen new shoes, already seeing in my mind where this would lead. I imagined it triggered this sequence of events:

1. Shoe company is alerted that I have selected their shoe
2. Shoe company sends one pair to me
3. Shoe company immediately halts production on my chosen color and size combination plus a half size up and down, but continues to make plenty of the chosen color in size 5's and 11's that will taunt me for months to come
4. Agents are deployed to buy up and destroy any remaining inventory of chosen color and size
5. New model is announced the following day, all in undesirable colors
6. The shoe I just bought goes on sale

 These were my 2011 favs.

 These were going to be my 2013 shoes, but this relationship is wearing out.

And no, I'm not telling you what shoes I have ordered lest I should love them and need as much inventory out there as possible!!

Oh, and Saucony, I think you should have an option for custom colors on the Kinvara. And please go back to the eyelet style of the originals and 2's. That worked much better with stretchy laces. And can we have a few more pink-free choices? Yes, I'd be happy to be on your advisory board ;-)

Race Report: Salem YMCA Sprint Tri - 3rd female

Yesterday I raced in the third Salem YMCA Sprint Triathlon, finishing third among women, with my parents Donna and Ted there to cheer me on!
 
The race was won by 20-year-old Kate Buss who was the 2011 Junior Duathlete of the Year and is now running collegiately. In second was 14-year-old Grace Obando, who had nearly two minutes on me and a very speedy swim! Their combined ages were twelve years less than mine! Once again, I felt very fortunate to be on the overall podium in a race that was not big but had some real talent.

Leg	2013 Time	2013 Rank	2012 Time
Swim - 300y	05:21	12/58	5:20
T1	00:31	4/58	00:44
Bike - 15k	25:15	2/58	24:23
T2	00:41	11/58	00:37
Run - 5k	21:39	3/58	20:44
Overall	53:25	3/58	51:46

Complete results here.

My time was fast enough to be 9th overall out of 164 competitors (both male and female) but it was off - over a minute and a half - from last year. I'm not going to over analyze that especially given the week I had leading into this but it's good motivation and fuel for my training moving forward :-)

I really REALLY enjoyed this hometown race! My husband and parents came to watch (while the kids opted out and slept instead). It's really spectator friendly and the weather was about as perfect as can be.

I really don't have a lot to say about the race itself. I thought my swim felt ON and fast with solid open turns, nothing dumb, no logjams, and a good focus on turnover. My swim time didn't really show that.

swim start (photo by Brandie Bailey)

The bike felt OK but my left quad was giving me some grief from the get-go and I was a little worried it was going to cause problems on the run. I backed off a little from time to time, pedaling more with my right leg, hoping a little break might take care of it. With the time trial swim start, and a nearly two minute break between me and the swimmer before me, there were not too many people to chase down on the bike course.

into T2 (photo by Brandie Bailey)

The run was fine. It's a hilly two loop course with an out-and-back section with a LOT of great cheering :-) [thanks Tim K. at the turnaround!] By the second time around when I hit the uphill section my engine was starting to sputter a bit. My friend Edie and husband Robert were yelling for me to kick it into gear in the final quarter and I gave it what I had left. I finished strong and had the post-race rehash with friends before meeting up with my parents.

 run time! (photo by Kimberly Arbouw)

Crossing the finish! (photo by Brandie Bailey)

 
I enjoy my friendly rivalries, particularly with reporter Mark Taylor. No opportunities for teasing in either direction are wasted! At one point the results showed that he had bested me by 12 seconds and Mark was quick to let me know. Then the results were updated or corrected and it appeared I had beaten him by 20 seconds. Ahhh, maybe next time, Mark. Maybe!!

Granted, Mark *is* training for IM Lake Placid
and not sprints and he *did* ride his older/heavier
steel bike for this race. But still....

Coach Jim's parents were there too and able to see him finish 3rd among the men (@ age 50).

  Coach Jim receiving his award! (photo by Brandie Bailey)

 my (empty) beer mug award (later remedied) (photo by Kimberly Arbouw)

 I love the post-race roundup! (photo by Brandie Bailey)

My friend Betsy Henderson was the bike sweep on her fixie. Mike Morris and John Gregory stopped by the race after their 83 mile bike ride while friend Donna was still out to get to the 100 mile mark in prep for her IM! Betsy, Mike, John, and Donna are all multi-time Team USA members and Mike has done 200+ triathlons! This is the all-star group!
 

 Betsy, Mike and John

It was a busy weekend for racing. I'd like to give a little shout-out to my friend Scott Moir who finished 2nd in his age group out of 123 at IM 70.3 Raleigh! It's always exciting when a friend can put together that near perfect race that does justice to their talent and hard-work. Congratulations, Scott!!!

As for me, I'm just happy that school is out, the weather is finally decent, the outdoor pool is open, the house is in good order from the spring cleaning binge, and I am feeling better. Let the new summer routine and summer training begin!

Thanks again, mom and dad, for coming to visit. Thanks Coach Jim as always for the direction, guidance, and encouragement!!

Rough lead-in to tomorrow's Sprint Tri

I have my second triathlon of the season tomorrow - the Salem Sprint. Luckily it's really short (300y swim, 15k bike, 5k run) and close by because it's been a rough week and I am not quite up to par.

Last Sunday night through Monday I was laid flat out with a fever and all the pleasantness that goes along with that. I pretty much did not move from the bed for two nights and a day.

I had night sweats for a few after that, a headache that's come and gone, achy-ness, and my appetite only just sort of returned yesterday.

This was the last week of school and I'm really glad that my parents were able to come into town to see the last grandchild "graduate" from elementary school. They are staying through the race tomorrow. So of course on top of recovering I'd been doing some much needed spring cleaning and getting the house ready for my parents so it's not exactly been restful.

I didn't train Tuesday but then tried a short run and swim Wednesday. Both were slow and labored and the GI system was not happy from two days of being "off my feed". Thursday went a little better with a short brick. By Friday I was starting to feel a little back to normal and an easy spin and short swim went fine.

Friday was the last day of school around here (a half day) so I figured we'd wrap up elementary school in my typical style. I managed to time it that I got my bike ride in and cycled into the garage at 12:52 for a 1:00 school pickup. I retrieved Grant, still sweaty and in my cycling clothes. I was expecting to be THE last parent in the carpool line as I often am, but I was a few cars away from that honor.

I'll miss Harding Avenue Elementary and all the fantastic teachers who have loved and nurtured my kids for all these years (and put up with their mother!)

Yeah, it's not been an ideal race week, but some just go that way. Other than the bit of the bug I've been fighting, I am in a very happy frame of mind. I'm glad my parents are here and summer is here!! What I might lack in energy and physical condition tomorrow I plan to make up for with the happy factor :)