Had my best race yet. Set a new Olympic distance PR and had quite a bit left at the finish.

35 minute swim | 30th of 50
72 minute bike | 19th of 50
57 minute run | 37th of 50

still losing loads of time in the run. If I can take a minute per mile off my run, I will start hitting the top half of my age group.

Lance Armstrong is in Triathlon

The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the immortal court of public opinion.

Lance Armstrong as nearly every person with access to a television, newspaper, library, or smartphone knows, is an American athlete that during the 1990′s and 2000′s won 7 straight Tour de France titles. Those same people then it would seem, also know that Lance has been embroiled in a never ending fight to defend his place in cycling’s halls of greatness against accusations of doping, bribery, and conspiracy. Rightly or wrongly, the accusations have continued well past his retirement from cycling and continue to dominate sports headlines a couple of times per year (usually coinciding with the start of the Pro Tour cycling season, and the media ramp-up of pre-Tour coverage.)

What many people don’t know about Lance is that prior to being a brash, demonstrative, and dominant Tour rider, whom the pro peloton nicknamed ‘The Boss’, he was a brash, demonstrative, and very talented Classics rider. And before that an equally brash, demonstrative, and talented Junior triathlete…and before that, yada, yada, swimmer.

When you boil Lance Armstrong down, what you get is an extremely talented, gifted, and competitive athlete. However, at the surface there is so much more to Lance that people find interesting. He has transcended his sport. He survived cancer. He started a foundation in his name that focuses on cancer as a whole, including researching cures, improving treatment, education, survivorship, and grief management. He also, has been a gossip rag’s dream come true. He’s dated Sheryl Crow, an Olson twin, possibly Kate Hudson, and eventually settled down with his girlfriend Anna Hanson and then had 2 children (naturally). And on top of all of that, he has become a social media darling and has over 7 million followers on twitter.

In America, riding a bike is something kids do until they are old enough to get a driving learner’s permit…then their bike collects dust for eternity or gets sold on Craig’s List to help fund their first car purchase. In Lance’s time though, partly due to his achievements, he has brought cycling into the mainstream in America and bicycle sales for American companies like Specialized, Trek, and Cannondale have shot through the roof. The United State Cycling Federation (USCF) has more members than ever before, and many of those are cyclists under the age of 18 (Juniors).

Now, a bit more than 2 years after Lance’s last official bike race, he is back in sport, as a competitor. This time though, he has gone back to his roots and has taken up triathlon. Not just as an Age Group athlete, but as a professional. He has announced a full years worth of races he intends to compete in with the goal of qualifying for triathlon’s Tour de France, the Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii. At the same time that he announced his race schedule he also announced that his foundation (Livestrong) is now a partner with the company that runs Ironman events.

The Good

Lance Armstrong coming to triathlon brings with it many potential benefits. Like him or not, Lance is a sporting celebrity. Media attention follows him everywhere he goes. Because of that triathlon is now set to be thrown into a spot light that it has never been a part of. Triathletes and people close to the sport know the names and icons of triathlon. Names like Dave Scott, Mark Allen, Natascha Badmann,  Michellie Jones, Chris McCormick, Craig Alexander, and Chrissie Wellington…these are the past and current kings and queens of our sport. We can give you the play-by-play of every move made going into Hawi or every surge made on Pilani that have been the winning moves for these great athletes. However, outside of our sport, these names don’t ring any bells.

Triathletes have a special view into endurance sports. We train and race for one event that has 3 disciplines, swimming, cycling, and running. Because a great triathlete is not specifically great at any one of these disciplines, but is very good at all of them, it stands to reason that we all would research and dig into everything we can about each sport. This means we know nearly as much about each sport as those folks that focus on only one. We know the names of cyclists like Eddy Merckx, Cadel Evans and Ivan Basso. We know the names of the best freestyle swimmers, like Janet Evans, Amanda Beard, and Michael Phelps. We know and follow the best runners like  Steve Prefountain, Bill Rogers, Grete Waitz, Uta Pippig, and Geofry Mutai. We try to emulate all of these athletes, because they are or were specialists and doing what they did can make us faster.

We tend to lose sight however, of the fact that outside triathlon, only people in those sports really know those names, and outside our sport, people don’t know the names of the great triathletes. Craig Alexander for instance, can walk around almost any town in the world outside Sydney Australia, without a single sole recognizing him. The same is true for Chrissie Wellington. Lance Armstrong though, can’t go to a local restaurant in Wichita Kansas without being recognized and autograph hounded.

It stands to reason then, that with his involvement, there is going to be a new light shined on our sport. When Lance gets beat by one of the other pros, that athlete’s name is going to become ingrained in the back of the minds of people that had never heard of that athlete before. Lance also brings with him a HUGE amount of potential advertising and sponsorship money. With Lance comes companies and individuals that had never cared about triathlon before. These people love to use Lance’s image to sell their products…products that triathletes may also be interested in. With Lance in triathlon, prize purses and sponsorship deals could grow at a rate that triathlon has never seen.

As with any sports hero, fans follow and emulate them. Lance has a huge following. Many many people have bought bicycles because of Lance. Some have even take up bicycle racing. With Lance in triathlon, it think it is safe to say, triathlon gear purchases and race entries could see a significant increase while he is involved.

The Bad

Triathlon is still fairly grassroots. Age group athletes race right beside the best pros. The pros are approachable, nice, helpful and for the most part, act like regular people. These pro triathletes, even though they get paid to race, most of them are not making the kind of money that a even a Manufacturing Engineering Manager makes. Yet they are expected to behave in a certain way such that they represent their sponsors (the people that pay their salaries) appropriately. In fact, many of these pro triathletes actually still have full time jobs outside of training 20 hours per week

Lance Armstrong comes to triathlon with A LOT of baggage. He has doping, bribery, and conspiracy allegations hanging over his head. Regardless of the fact that nobody has ever been able to prove him guilty, this cloud of suspicion follows him everywhere he goes. Now he brings it to triathlon. Now because Lance is a triathlete, by merely being associated with Lance, there is a chance that the ‘outside’ world will start to be suspicious of all pro triathletes, especially any of them that actually beat him.

Lance also as mentioned before brings a throng of media. Some of it is his own, people that he pays to write stories about him that are positive. Some of it, is sporting media that want to get a good race story. Much more of it is tabloid press, hoping to catch him with a needle in his ass. At any rate, this brings a great deal more people to transition areas. Lance has to protect himself from that to some degree, which means body guards and people that need to make sure he has his space…the area around him needs to be controlled.

Triathlon is an open sport; amateurs mingle with pros, spectators mingle with athletes. It is one of the alluring aspects of triathlon. With Lance, there is a great chance that open, friendly, and approachable atmosphere will change, in order to protect ONE GUY. If this is the case, then everyone suffers to some degree.

The Ugly

You either love or hate Lance Armstrong…there seems to be no in-between. Because of this there seems to be 2 opinions about his involvement in triathlon; it’s great, or it sucks. The reasons for each opinion and why he is either good or bad for the sport are too numerous to comment on fairly. The fact of the matter is though, he is here, and at least until he gets too old to be competitive, or he is found guilty of something, or he gets injured, he is here to stay and we must deal with it.

The problem is though, the way we deal with it. It has take very little time for his detractors to view him as an interloper in our sport, that can only bring a negative pall. They have given him no time to see if he can bring a positive impact. Many arm-chair athletes, and a few professional triathletes have already taken to broadcasting their negative opinion of Lance to the community via the web. There have been arguments from his detractors, that if the fan-boys are only going to blow smoke up his ass and treat him like a king, that those with an opposite view should have an equal pulpit to stand upon.

The problem with the ‘opposite’ view of course, is that it is mostly focused on presenting “the facts” of Lance’s ongoing investigations by the USADA and WADA, and the suspicious timing of the dropping of his federal investigation versus his announcements about getting more involved in triathlon. At least one current pro triathlete and one retired pro triathlete have made thinly veiled accusations of drug use or control tampering within 48 hours of Lance’s debut at Panama 70.3 last weekend. This only serves to fan the flames of public opinion against Lance and does nothing to combat doping in sport.

Other athletes that haven’t necessarily voiced their opinions about Lance’s baggage, have made it clear that they either don’t like or are afraid of the media attention he draws, and that other more deserving athletes will suffer because they won’t get their share of the spotlight. This all seems very petty. Do these athletes deserve their time in the sun? Absolutely. Angela Naeth won the women’s pro race at Panama, but that got very little media attention compared to Lance. Was it less than it would have if Lance wasn’t there? Not likely…the same media people were there that always are; Competitor Magazine, Lava, Ironman Live, Slowtwitch…and they all reported that Angela won (and smoked Leanda Cave). They all reported that Magali had a flat in T1. They all reported that Chris Lieto lost another race on the run, and they all reported that 2 time Olympic medal winner Bevan Docherty ran Lance down and beat him by 41 seconds. Admittedly though, none of these stories got the same coverage comparatively.

If Lance sticks around long enough, the luster will wear off, particularly if he gets beat on a regular basis. He is also 41 years old, so he isn’t going to be relevant in the pro ranks for very long. These pros that are worried about not getting their spotlight will return to it soon enough, and when Lance is gone, they might be a little sad that this new light, in his absence is less bright…kinda like it used to be.

The Immortal Court of Public Opinion

Lance knows what he is getting into. He has to scrutinize the balance between satiating his thirst for competition and being a public target for accusation. He didn’t take the decision to come back to triathlon lightly. He is not naive. He knows that his cloud of suspicion is going to follow him to triathlon. He has decided that either he doesn’t care about it’s impact on the sport, or he feels that the positive impact he can have, will out-weight any negative implications.

At any rate, he is here…good or bad (possibly both). The media will focus on him…sometimes as a sporting hero, sometimes as a pariah, sometimes as a cheat, sometimes as a philanthropist, and sometimes as an egotist. Individuals are going to chose sides, because for most of us these days there are no shades of gray. As a professional triathlete said to me recently regarding thoughts on Lance, “I think some balance is really the best thing. Though – as modern US politics continues to show us – balance is increasingly hard to find.”

What I think we can all admit though, is that 2012 is going to be a very interesting year for triathlon, WTC Ironman events in particular, and whether we love him or hate him, we will all be watching Lance Armstrong very closely and cheering him or booing him on raceday.

This past weekend I presented a Group Cycling Clinic to a bunch of my Team Triple Sports teammates. I will be writing up a blog post with more of the talking points later this week. If you would like a copy of the presentation notes, please feel free to download it here. Group Cycling – etiquette and safety

I will update this post later with more details, please check back soon.

Jeley

Been a while since I blogged it up. I just figured it would be good to get some of my 2011 experiences down on “paper” before my old age prevents me from remember much of what went on.

2011 was a banner year for Jeley. I would say that it was pretty dang near my best year yet. I feel like so many things were accomplished and I feel that it was a successful culmination of 365 days.

Professionally, it was a great year. 2011 was my 5th year with Solid State Networks. I work as a manager of many hats; Product Manager, Engineering Manager, Project Manager, and to a certain extent Account Manager. Solid State Networks (SSN) is a small software startup in Tempe Arizona. We started off as a Peer to Peer file sharing software company and slowly (but surely) moved to a company that specializes in the delivery of very large digital assets, like video games, movies, etc. We used to be a software as a service company and now are a software products company. Our products assist content publishers in delivering their large assets reliably and quickly.

In 2011 SSN landed and delivered on a couple of very big contracts. First, in July, SSN took over as the download manager client for Adobe Systems group. Our DIRECT product is now at the core of every delivery of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Reader on Windows. The solution we provided Adobe gives them the ability to offer opt-in/opt-out 3rd party products (including Google Chrome) at the point of download of the Adobe products. This has lead to SSN products being responsible for the most downloaded software on the web, and now contributing to the second largest number of Google Chrome downloads and installs on the web. At the end of 2011 we shipped to Adobe the first iteration of our DIRECT Client for MAC on the Apple Web Kit platform, and look forward to that going live in 2012.

The second big win SSN had in 2011 was assisting EA Games, BioWare, and Lucas Arts in the release and delivery of the most highly anticipated online game release of 2011; Star Wars: The Old Republic. We spent all of 2011 working very closely with BioWare to provide the best possible solutions for downloading, patching, and installing SWTOR. SWTOR went “live” on Dec 20, with over a million pre-ordered copies, most of them distributed online…many more copies were sold off the shelves of your favorite electronics stores. BioWare reports that there were over 1.5 million monthly subscriptions ordered in the first 2 days, making it the fastest selling MMORPG in online gaming history. Every one of those games sold, contains SSN DIRECT patching systems, and a bit of our blood, sweat, and tears. I am very proud of our team. I work with some extremely talented folks, that worked VERY hard all year to make this happen.

Personally, 2011 was also a banner year. In 2011 I lost nearly 45 lbs. Mostly due to my new obsession with triathlon. I trained for and competed in 7 multisport events in 2011 and am proud of how far I have come with my swimming and running.

Also in 2011 my amazing wife Christine had not 1, but 2 heart surgeries to fix an exercise induced arrhythmia. This condition would cause her heart to beat out of control randomly during some of her workouts. It is a very dangerous condition, and it ultimately came down to getting it fixed, or discontinuing her athletic activities. The first surgery wasn’t successful so she ended up on medication to mediate the problem. Medication worked pretty well for about 8 months, then it just stopped working. It became apparent pretty quickly that a second surgery was the only option.

Christine did a lot of research and found a new cardiologist that was willing to actually work with her. Once the surgery was decided upon we were anxious to get it done and over with. This surgery has a 70% success rate, so we knew going in, that there was possibility that it would not fix her condition, but it was better that sticking with a solution that was 100% guaranteed to NOT work. The surgery took a lot longer than the first, but when the surgeon met Christine’s mom and I afterward, he was VERY confident that he had fixed the problem. So far, she has had no arrhythmia events since the surgery. BIG WIN!

Also in 2011 Christine trained all year long (even with heart issues) and completed not 1 but 2 70.3 half Ironman races. Once in Oceanside California where she finished in just under 7 hours. And the second was in Sonoma California where she finished in 6 and a half hours. I am SUPER proud of her, she has a will that is simply amazing. With all the set backs she had with her health, she never got down on herself for more than a couple of hours. She missed maybe 8 workouts all year and met all of her performance goals.

Overall, it was a great 2011 and I know 2012 will be even better.

IronMan Arizona; for local triathletes the week leading up to IMAZ is almost like Superbowl Week or Daytona 500 Week for most of the rest of the (US) population.

IronMan is a triathlon that is 140.6 miles in length, 2.4 miles swim, 112 miles cycling, and 26.2 miles running and it has to be completed in 17 hours or less. Along the way athletes will have to complete each discipline within certain time limits. For instance, the swim must be completed within 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Athletes that are competing in an IronMan typically train 15 or more hours per week starting about 6 months before the event. Suffice to say, most people, the mortal ones at least, do only 1 IronMan race per year (if they do more than one in their lifetime). For those of us that compete regularly in triathlons and are not doing IMAZ we are just a bunch of fan-boys. This is a chance to watch our friends bury themselves in athletic endeavors at the cost of $600 entry fee, ridiculous cash spent on nutrition, countless hours training, and aggravating the hell out of their families and friends by not being able to discuss even the most current events simply because they have nothing but Swim, Bike, and Run on their brains.

The obvious motivational impact of IMAZ is not felt only by the athlete that is competing, but is felt by nearly every other triathlete in the community. Even though our “off-season” has already started, we still get up early and head to the pool for a little more intense speed set than usual. We hop on our bikes when we would be typically headed to a big stack of pancakes at our favorite breakfast joint. We strap on our running shoes right before the sun goes down and try to log a new 5k PR, even though we already did 5 base miles earlier in the day.

We can’t wait for the IronMan trucks to arrive in downtown Tempe. As early as Wednesday before the race, we find ourselves commuting over the Mill Ave. bridge so we can see the T1 transition area being setup…even if we don’t work anywhere around Tempe. The site of all of those empty bike racks in the grass at Tempe Beach Park is immediately replaced in our minds-eye with the same area filled to the sides with shiny $5000 aero machines and wet triathletes scrambling to put their helmets on and get their bikes off the rack and head out for 5+ hours of riding the “Beeline”.

We begin to imagine ourselves headed out of T2 with all of our run gear on, our legs heavy with 112 miles of biking, and wonder how in the world WE would survive a marathon after everything we have already done. We see our friends, teammates, and families standing on the side of the course or riding by on bikes and yelling encouragement. We see ourselves running down the finishing chute and hearing Mike Riley’s voice as he proclaims us “IronMan”…

For those of us not competing in the 2011 IMAZ, we get inspired by the venue, the race, the athletes, and the stories of how hard it has been to get this far, and how rewarding it is to realize the dream of competing in and finishing an IronMan…and we start planning. We start saying to ourselves “I can do this” and “When can I start training for next year”.

It starts this week, and it starts with going to IMAZ events, the pro press conference, pro “meet and greets”, the kids 1 mile run, the IronMan expo and then the race. Some of us will volunteer on the race, some of us will just watch and cheer. Some of us will pay very close attention to every nuance and think “how exactly am I going to handle this next year?”…

IMAZ week is here, time to train that much harder, stalk pro triathletes like they are celebs, buy M-dot gear like it’s going to be in-style, and prepare to spend 17 hours watching a sporting event that is like no other.