Daren took his bike camera to the pool yesterday. I didn’t know it was waterproof; that’s pretty cool!

This vid is good to get some technical advice on my swimming. This is the first time I see myself. I do turn my entire body to get air, does that slow me down? should I just turn my torso?

Daren got two clips of me. I merged both in one video. You can see the first clip caught me by surprise after close to half a mile of swimming. I’m rested on the second clip so you can see me swimming a bit better.

I was worried that it was going to be cold, but that was not the case at all. It was chilly before the race started. But at 8:30 it got alright.

So we ran for 3.1 miles (5km), biked for 10 miles (16 km), and swam 350 meters. I did it in 1 hour 9 minutes. The fastest guy did it in 50 minutes.

Unlike the cyclocross race, we did not suck position-wise. Not sucking is always good =). My guess is we were faster than 60% of the crowd.

Click here for pictures

I had a broken spoke before I went to the Cyclocross race last week, and after the race I found another one. So I thought “What the heck?”, it’s been about 10 broken spokes this year, they all break in the bend that they have where they hold on to the wheel’s hub.

This time I took it to Infinite Cycles to get it fixed and to ask the mechanic if I was doing something wrong when I fixed the previous broken spokes. He pretty much said that this was normal for a rim that you ride hard and a lot. He had seen this before and what was happening is that all of the old spokes would eventually break.

My rims are the Mavic 117, which are good rims. But I’ve been riding them harder than I have ever ridden before and have done this for at least twice a week this year and the last.

So I have decided that I’ll get new rims the next time I break a spoke. I need to do my research but this time I’m going for a rim that has straight spokes, meaning they do not bend to grab the hub. Like this one http://www.mavic.com/mtb/products/crossmax-slr-disc.996414.1.aspx . I’m thinking they will be pricy but I’m tired of taking taking my tire and cassette off to fix broken spokes!

My first triathlon is on Saturday and I forgot that I have weak ears. I’ve only been about 4 times on a pool and I already have ear ache.

I don’t think it’s one of those massive infections where you need antibiotics… I’ve had those about 5 times in my life. It’s the other kind that only makes your ear ache a little and it’s warm all the time for about 4 days; I’ve had this kind about 15 times in my life. Sucks…

If you feel my triathlon took you by surprise, well that happened because it also took me by surprise. The triathlon is called the “Turkey Tri” and the day of the turkey (thanksgiving) is at the end of Nov. So I thought i had a couple more weeks to train and blog about it.

It’s not a hard core triathlon: 3 miles running, 10 miles biking on the road, and 350 meters swimming in an indoor pool. People that have done triathlons before usually refer to this type of short triathlon as a “sprint”. I’m sure I won’t be sprinting… Sprinting would probably mean drowning by the time I hit the pool.

The main point of doing this triathlon was to get a feel for the sport. So far I’m enjoying the training. I just need to get some ear plugs!

I’m doing a half-marathon on March and talk is in the air about a half-ironmans and marathons, should I do it?

We really did not do great on the race position-wise. But we had a lot of fun and we learned a lot about Cyclocross. The biggest one being that you’re sprinting for 40 minutes as opposed to our usual 3 to 4 hour rides. This requires a different type of training.

Another interesting thing is that you get to pass the same person several times without him ever passing you… yeah, there were some cheaters there cutting through the trail.

Here are some pics, click here for more:

Daren also brought his bike-cam here’s the video:

We had our first decent snow storm yesterday. Fall in Utah is sooo crazy.. I was biking on Sunday! It was chilly but good for biking.

I’m now starting to run around my neighborhood. We’ll see if I can keep that up through the winter. So far it does not feel too cold.

Just to try it out, my biking friends and I will do a Cyclocross race this coming Saturday http://www.utahcyclocross.com/raceinfo.html . It looks messy and fun. We’ll do it with our mountain bikes; none of us have a cyclocross bike.

It will rain and snow on Tuesday and Wednesday. So the terrain conditions will be somewhere between this

and this

But I’m sure it will be cold. Can you tell I don’t like being cold?

I’ve promised you guys a lot of bike videos. They are finally here. I have a lot so I’ll place mine at the top, followed by others (some taken yesterday) in order of coolness

Here are my two videos of when I did the Jump into a pond in Alpine:

And this is me going through The Spine in the Wasatch Crest trail. The majority of riders take it on the lower side. This year, I started taking it on the higher, most difficult side:

Daren got a helmet cam! I took this vid of him yesterday going down Jacob’s Ladder:

I also got Cody yesterday going down Ghost falls:

I also got Shaun for a little while but the video is not worthy of The Machine, we need to get him on camera the next time we ride.

The trails are now quite cold if you hit them after work; but that is not stopping us… for now.

Daylight savings time will end on November 1st, the clock will go back one hour. Right now it is dark around 7pm. After nov 1st it will be dark at 6pm, which screws up our after-work rides for good.

We’ll still ride ride on the weekend for some time, we’ll see how long we can keep at it.

We went biking yesterday to Draper and it was not too cold until we got to higher altitudes, by that time I was wearing my knee warmers, arm warmers, head band to keep the ears warm, and a windproof jacket. And i was still cold!

I had full finger gloves and my fingers were extremely cold. The gloves were not winter-riding gloves though.

We had the massive move on Tuesday last week. Friends helped us out with muscle, taking good care of our stuff, and they even brought their trailers so I didn’t have to rent a truck for the move. It rained on us for a while and nobody even mentioned it. I’m lucky to have you guys in my life, many thanks! I’ll be there when you need me too.

This past weekend Carol and I still had to do some “minor” things that took a ton of time, like 5 to 6 hours each day. I had to remove my projector wirings that went through the ceiling and had tons of screws, we removed all the nails where we hung pictures, mirrors, etc. And we fixed all these and painted all of that and the spots on the walls that we messed up like where I hung my bike and my derailleur and handle bar rubbed it.

We also had to pack the walking closet and some kitchen cabinets. We did not have time to pack these for the massive move.

And of course, the vacuuming and cleaning of kitchen, bathroom, etc…

But we’re finally over with the move-out part. Now we’re focusing on the move-in. We still have not unpacked anything other than the essentials. We need to hook up the washer and dryer. We’re about to run out of clean clothes, but we need to go to Lowe’s and get one of those dryer vent tubes to connect the dryer outlet to the hole in the wall… I could go on and on with things like these, but in short, we we’re looking at at least 3 weeks of settling in the house.

But settling in is a lot more fun than moving out =). We want to take our time and do it right. We’ll be living here for a long time.