Debut 3 Days Away

Well, my triathlon debut is coming up this Saturday. It's getting down to crunch time. This week's training has consisted of a lot of taper:

Sun - run 14 miles with Beth (this wasn't part of the taper--it starts next)
Mon - OFF
Tue - 50 min run with Beth
Wed - Easy swim (8 x 100 w/ 2 min rest); 45 min bike
Thu - OFF
Fri - ?? Some easy combination of all three ??
Sat - RACE DAY!!!!

This race is the Butler YMCA sprint triathlon at Moraine State Park. It's a 400 yd swim, 7 mi bike ride, and 5k run. Last year, a lot of the people ran in the 16's and 17's, so I'm suspicious of the run distance. But, all the previous years (including '06 when Beth did it and won), the 5K times were more legitimate. My goals are pretty simple--survive the swim (but go hard), push it on the bike since it's only 7 miles, and let it rip on the 5k and see how many people I can pass. We'll see where that gets me.

In other news, the summer elementary program I'm working with is ending tomorrow. It's been fun showing the little kids how to calculate all kinds of baseball statistics and football scores, but I'm ready for a break. Those little kids wear me out......and it's only for three hours!!!! I'm definitely not cut out for elementary school, I'll gladly stay up with the high schoolers. Some people pooh-pooh elementary school as glorified babysitting, but I can attest that you need to really work hard to keep those little energy-filled munchkins' attention and get them to learn something.

Something else I came across on espn.com's website over the past few months was this story of an athletic female who was seeing if she could qualify for the olympics. It was started over a year ago with the following thesis:

What would happen if a better-than-average-but-not-great athlete, who also happened to be able to write, tried to make the U.S. Olympic team in the Summer Games' equivalent of the two-man luge?

So, she tried things like the modern pentathlon (cross-country running, swimming, fencing, horseback riding and pistol shooting), team handball, track cycling, and triathlon before settling in on cycling.

This is her first entry to give you some background. This is her entry just posted detailing her attempts to make the olympics in cycling. It was a pretty interesting series. I saw a lot of Beth in the cycling events and how she persevered through some difficult times. It's a great read and I fully recommend it. It makes you laugh, think, get teary-eyed, and inspired. Some of the pictures and captions are priceless.

The Pirates update is that they're currently 5 games under 0.500. Getting swept last weekend in Milwaukee sure didn't help things. Their closer Matt Capps is out for another 8 or so weeks and that certainly doesn't help. I'll still not be disappointed if the Pirates make some deals at the deadline to bring in some prospects in the same way the Cleveland Indians traded C.C. Sabathia (although the Pirates' trade value probably isn't as valuable). As I mentioned last week, the minor league system is not in good shape, so more good prospects would be a good thing.