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Woohooo.. Well, I successfully completed the 2007 Escape from Alcatraz Triathlon and yah, that was kind of hard. It was a foggy and cold (ie.. normal) day here in SF, which actually was kind of nice… At 4am, I headed over to the Marina, where I joined 1600 other crazy people to jump off a perfectly good ferry, swim to San Francisco, and then bike and run around the hilly parts.

Here are my splits — I didn’t finish last. I actually beat 6 dudes in my class. Yay. There were 163 dudes in the 30-35 age group.

Total Time	Swim Time	Swim Trans	Bike Time	Bike Trans	Run Time	Sand Ladder
4:01:32	0:50:22	0:12:49	1:14:45	0:02:35	1:41:01	0:03:40

I met up with a bunch of peeps from my triathlon club on the ferry, so that was kind of nice to have some people to talk to whilst I awaited my doom.. It seemed like an excruciating wait between the time that we actually boarded the ferry and the starting gun.. As the moment neared, we all crowded toward the starboard side of the ferry, causing it to list severely to that side.. And then… like lemmings, people started jumping off into the bay. The cold wasn’t as shocking as I expected — I guess those training sessions at aquatic park paid off.. What was surprising was how far the city looked off on the horizon. Crap. That’s far. What the hell have I gotten myself into? Hmm. I hope I don’t die.

I started swimming, and as expected, I started off at a pace that was WAY too fast. But again, I knew I would do this from my practice sessions in AP, so I consciously tried to slow myself down as to not tire myself out too quickly. As I swam into the channel, things got kinda choppy. Literally. The swells started getting bigger, maybe 6 feet or so. Not huge huge, but still, a lot more than I had ever seen. Freestyle got tiring. I switched to breast stroke, which I knew was a bad idea cuz it uses your legs a lot more. But, who cares as long as it propels me closer to home. Hmm.. let’s try sidestroke — I read somewhere that it was super efficient or something. Some dude behind me was doing elementary backstroke and he looked pretty happy, so I tried that one too. But damn, that’s so slow. So, I finally settled into a good rhythm. 5 strokes of freestyle, then, 2 breast strokes to sight land and straighten myself out…

But.. apparently, my sighting wasn’t working that great. The race is timed such that the ebb current pushes you out towards the Golden Gate. So, you’re supposed to sight towards Fort Mason, and then the current will push you right into the finish. I apparently need to aim at Oakland. All of a sudden, a dude in a Kayak yells..

“Hey YOU! Go LEFT!”

I stop for a sec, look around, and realize that the ENTIRE field is to my left. Oops. But (thankfully) the exit is now in sight, albeit like 300 yards to my left now, which, of course is now against the current. Crap. I put my head down and swim hard for the exit and after a few excruciating minutes, I creep slowly towards the exit. Woohoo. I made it. Legs are wobbly as I stumble onto land. My transition bag is easy to find because, well, I was pretty slow, so most everyone had already gone ahead of me.

I jog the half mile back to the transition area, happy that I didn’t die somewhere back there. But now I get to bike and run. Great.

The bike portion was super fun. I’ve done the bike course a ton of times, so it’s my home turf, so I felt quite solid and strong on the bike. I actually passed a bunch of people, cranking pretty hard up the hills and then bombing pretty fast on the downhills. My new Ksyriums and the Specialized Pro tires were super solid and instilled a great deal of confidence in my riding, so that was pretty cool.. So yah.. hooray for biking. I felt pretty damn good. Zoom zoom. I biked above my swim/run rank, since I was ranked 1,175 in the bike, and well into the 1400s for the swim and the run.

The bike course took us from the Marina, up past the GGB, over to the Legion of Honor, down around the Cliff House, down Ocean Beach, around Golden Gate Park, and then.. all the way back.. It’s an 18 mile course, but super hilly. I passed a bunch of people that were from out of town and were completely taken aback by the sheer hilliness of the bike course. Apparently Chicago… not so hilly. So yah, I guess all of that fixie riding around town paid off..

Then.. the run. Ouch. I hate running. It’s painful, and I’m not very fast. I’d blame my broken ankle, but honestly, that was the only part of my legs that didn’t hurt today. The run was an 8 mile run, from the Marina, to Baker Beach and back… with a climb up the deathly Baker Beach sand ladder. All in all, it really sucked, but I actually jog/ran most of the course, which I’m actually quite proud of myself for doing. Then again, I don’t think my running is *that* much faster than my walking. The slowness of my running was exemplified when, at the turnaround, I was passed by a 71 year old dude. Man, that old guy could move.

My legs started cramping up somewhere near the 6 mile marker. Ouch. I gulped down some cytomax, and that seemed to help, but that wasn’t very pleasant. I just tried to keep on truckin’ and eventually, the finish was visible in the distance. I kicked hard for the finish, and when I got there, I was met with Mom, Dad, Andy and Meredith at the finish line. Thanks guys for coming to support me!

Despite my slowness on the run, I decided that I would book up the sand ladder as quickly as possible. I got what I think is a pretty respectable (compared to the people that finished near me) 3:40 for the sand ladder. I can’t run too good, but sure.. stairs? Done.

So yah.. I do admit that I did think to myself that I wouldn’t be too disappointed if “something” happened and I couldn’t do the race. But, I’m glad I did it, and I don’t think I’m gonna do that again. I think I’m gonna do more biking now, and maybe some more swimming — but limit that to a pool. Oh, and I guess I’ll still run, but only to beat Carlo and Sunnia in our Nike+iPod challeges. The SF to LA Aids Ride started today (Go Dana! Go Chad! Go Steph!), so I think I’ll do that next year.

More photos from Dad, Andy, Meredith, and Brightroom.

I’ve got 4 days left until my big race. Yikes.. I hope I’ve done enough training. According to my records, I’ve swam 23.18 miles, biked 271.04 miles, and ran 113.52 miles… which probably isn’t anywhere near enough… but, I guess there’s nothing I can really do about it now.. eep.

I’m excited and nervous about the whole thing — in particular the 1.5 mile swim from Alcatraz to the city… Hopefully it will be calm and glassy. The weather forecast for Sunday is partly cloudy with a high of 61… Anyway, Sunday morning, I’ll be boarding the ferry to Alcatraz at 4:15am, and at 7am, I’ll be joining 1,600 racers as we all jump into the bay..

So, here’s a cool thing — if you want to track my progress during Sunday’s race, Accenture (the main sponsor) has set up a site where you can get alerts (either via email or text or voice call..) whenever I finish the swim, bike, and run.. Neat. I’m aiming for 1:00 swim, 1:00 bike, 1:30 run.. but we’ll see… I’m gonna be super happy just to finish..

So, I’ve been loving my Nike+ iPod nerdy shoe integration thing that Andy and Mer got me for Christmas… I’m currently about halfway into a 100 mile race with Carlo… Carlo’s currently winning — he’s at 51.89 miles, but I’m right there with 45.92 miles…

Anyway, I just noticed today that Nike is giving away the LCD Soundsystem song that they commissioned from them.. awesome.. Here’s the link:

45:33, by LCD Soundsystem.

This song used to be only available on iTunes for $9.99 for the “album,” which consisted of one 45:33 track. Hmmm. That doesn’t seem very fair. I mean, it’s one track, right? So it should cost $0.99.. not $9.99… whatever. It’s free now.

Weird, the song is actually 45:55 long.

Anyway — I’m listening to it now, and it sounds like it’s gonna be a great track to run to. Carlo, I’ll be catching you soon. Look out.

So.. I turned 30 on Friday.. wahoooo!! And what a crazy few days it’s been.. it’s been three days of non-stop fun and excitement…

Thursday night, I met a whole bunch of peoples at The Page for a drink, which has apparently become the neighborhood hangout on Thursday nights… So, since I happened to be there when the clock struck midnight, everyone was nice enough to greet the first minutes of my birthday with a raucous shot.. of something.. I don’t remember what it was that we drank. That said, I didn’t have a crazy night out since the next morning I was waking up at 5am to head up to Infineon Raceway (formerly known as Sears Point) for a track day…

So, I woke up at 5am, as planned and headed towards the Golden Gate Bridge to meet up with Jason, who was also going up to the track, at the first parking lot right across the Golden Gate Bridge. As I’m driving towards the bridge, I notice one of those tall cylindrical cones lying on its side in the MIDDLE of the freeway (Paul later informed me that it’s called a delineator) — there was a car in the lane next to me, so I couldn’t swerve to get out of the way, so… I went over it. *THUNK*

You know all of those lights on your dashboard? The ones that inform you when something’s wrong? Well, they all started coming on. Alternator light. Temperature light. Coolant light. Yah.. shit. Something was bad. Very bad.

It was a good thing that I was meeting Jason at the next exit right after the GGB, so I pulled off the exit (only narrowly missing the wall since, as I then found out, my power steering was out too).. We open up the hood and find that, somehow, I hit the cone just right and it managed to knock the serpentine belt off the engine — which powers the alternator, power steering, water pump.. lots of important stuff. Ouch.

So yah, my car was knocked out *before* we even made it up there… how sad is that? (But wait, there’s more) We decided to not let a little setback kill the day, and since Jason had his S2000, we parked my car at the vista point parking lot and continued up to Sears Point.

The morning was cold, and so was the track, so Jason started driving the laps around Sears Point gingerly. After about five laps, at about turn 4, he started to open it up a bit more.. and then… I look behind my shoulder (it’s a convertible) and see black smoke, and a huge FIREBALL. One of the spotter dudes that watches the track from up atop a tower shouts out “Fire! Fire!” so we pull over to the side and open up the hood, finding that the entire engine bay has caught fire. Do we have a fire extinguisher? No. Uh oh. The entire track is under yellow flag, so a few cars drive slowly by us, kind of looking at us with an “oh shit” look on their faces. It seemed like an eternity, but it must have only been a minute or two, but the fire trucks came by and finally put the fire out. Oops.

An oil gauge that Jason had installed to monitor the s2000′s oil pressure had most likely sprung a small leak, causing oil to be sprayed all over the engine bay. Once oil gets hot enough, apparently it catches fire. Crazy. Two cars out of commission, and I didn’t even get to drive (although, lucky for me, I’m getting a credit for the event, and I get to go back in July.. whoohoo!) Good thing I brought my camera.. since otherwise, I’d have nothing else to do up at the track besides watch everyone else drive around the track. So, I did get some good pictures.

We had to call AAA that day. Twice. On the way back from Sears Point, I had Jason’s tow truck drop me off at my car, where I waited for my tow truck. Woohoo.

Since I had some extra time now, since I was home early from the track, I went on a little bike ride with Jason (who was also home and not wanting to be sitting at home looking at his burnt car), we went on a nice bike ride around the city.. It was a gorgeous day, and I didn’t want to waste it. I met Mom, Dad, Andy, Meredith and Stephanie for dinner in South City (bacon-wrapped anything is good in my book) and then headed back to my parents’ house for cake. For my birthday, my parents got me the Digital Rebel that I’ve been taking pictures with for the past month — thanks mom and dad! Stephanie made me some awesome books by printing out the past two years of dennisyang.com — it was actually really cool to see all of this stuff that I’ve written in printed form.. What a great gift! Meredith got me an awesome book of the Golden Gate Bridge, which is completely ironic considering I spent like 3 hours sitting at the vista point waiting for the tow truck. And, Andy got me a new tennis racquet, since I’ve re-found the whole tennis thing lately. We broke out the ol’ VHS tapes and watched some home movies and I headed for a drink at Jade for the last few minutes of my birthday..

Whooo.. tired. So, to re-cap, the first 24 hours of my 30s wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but.. exciting nonetheless..

Oh dear.. what have I done. I’ve decided to do the Big Kahuna Triathlon on September 11th, 2005… 114 days to get ready for the 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run. Oh jeez.

My previous “slacker training” schedule will not work for this race, I’m afraid.. So, I’m going to actually really need to train for this one..

Oh boy. Hope the ol’ body holds up… I’m not a kid anymore.

So, I survived my second Wildflower Triathlon.. I’m pretty sore today. The weather was fantastic this year. Unlike last year’s 100 degree heat, this year was a pleasant 80 degrees or so.

I finished this year in 3:58:54 — almost 11 minutes slower than last year’s 3:48:04.. Well, consdering I trained much less than last year (I did NO running at all), I suppose that’s ok… I need to train more for the next one..

My splits for each year…

I knew it was going to be a long day when I put on my wetsuit.. I was struggling a bit to get into the suit, thinking to myself.. “crap.. have I really gotten that much fatter?” After about 1o minutes, I managed to get the wetsuit on, and I made my way down to the boat ramp, where everyone was milling about, waiting for the race to start. I looked around at all of the other competitors, nervous excitement filled the air..

I had my wetsuit half-on, as was the custom since it’s really hot in the wetsuit. I noticed how neat it was that when the wetsuit is half on, the logo of the wetsuit is printed on the inside of it, so that everyone can see what kind of wetsuit you’re wearing. I then looked down and thought to myself.. “hmm.. that’s weird, my logo is upside down.” — then it dawned upon me. I had put on my wetsuit on inside out. Oooooops. That’s why it was so hard to put on! Instead of the neopreney side next to my skin, the rubbery side was there… Argh! Well, at least I noticed before the race.. had I jumped into the water with my inside out wetsuit, who knows what would have happened.. ugh.

I was able to get my suit on properly before the start, luckily, but the problems didn’t stop there.. after the race started, I started to settle into the swim, when I realized I was having a lot of trouble breathing… Well, it turns out that I’ve added a few pounds since last year’s triathlon, so, maybe my wetsuit fits a lot tighter than it used to, making it sooo hard to breathe. I started freaking out and hyperventilating a bit, but after I flipped over and backstroked for awhile, I was able to calm down and start swimming again… ugh. not fun. I was able to paddle my way in around the 0.9 mile course.. somehow.

Thankful that I didn’t drown in the lake, I hopped onto the bike for my favorite portion of the tri (I must have been really eager since my swim-bike transition was the ONLY time this year that was better than last year).. the bike… Man, I really do love the bike part. You don’t really get to ride for 25 miles without stopping, except for in a race. The Wildflower bike portion is legendary for being hilly and grueling, but the good thing about riding UP a hill, as that you get to ride DOWN it later.. wee! This year, my top speed was 44.7 mph.. wahoo! That was super fun. Anyway, right around the turn-around for the out-and-back course, I really, really, really had to pee.. The way back is basically one long hill followed by a medium hill and then a huge hill… After the second hill, I just gave up and stopped and pee’d at the side of the road.. people kept riding by and joking that I was “lightening the load”.. haha.. i really did feel faster this year, although somehow, my time last year was faster..

And then.. the run.. Now, I haven’t trained running AT ALL this whole year, I’ve maybe run 3 miles in the past six months. Well.. it showed.. I speed-walked most of the “run” but somehow ended up with a time that wasn’t THAT much worse than last year.. strange.. Every time I tried to run, my legs would cramp up, so I just walked most of the way… The run course is 5 miles uphill and then 1 mile downhill.. Walking downhill kind of sucks more, so I ran that last mile all the way to the finish line…

And so.. I made it.. Mehul did very well with a 3:20 time, and Kristin beat me by a few minutes with a 3:55… next year.. maybe I’ll train a little harder, enough of this slacker training stuff..

wahoo.. weezer tonight at the warfield… this weekend is the wildflower triathlon, and i’m not really supposed to be going out, but.. apparently it didn’t stop me last year either.. so.. oh well… my goal this year is to try and beat my incredible time of 03:48:04… yah, i know, it’s not that fast.. i was 224 out of like 250 people in my class… but considering the winner finished last year in 02:04:30 — I’ve got to be able to close the gap a bit…. maybe i can hit 3:30 this year….

all i can say is.. last year, I was the only one I saw with a tortoise squeeky horn on their bike.

so, andy, jason, jeff, aileen and i went to formula d on sunday at sears point (oops, i mean infineon) raceway up in sonoma. drift racing is supposedly the new thing in racing, and basically it’s a combination between.. say.. ice skating and car racing. the drivers race around a track and gain extra style points in addition to being timed. it was a gorgeous day up in sonoma, but it was mad hot and there were only like 3 vendors on the top of the hill that sold drinks. i’m suprised that more people didn’t pass out from dehydration.

in the parking lot, j’s ford taurus didn’t really fit in with the other cars that were in the lot… mostly imports with lots of stickers and stuff. one 300M though, which i really like.

they set up the race on turn 7 of sears point, in kind of a figure 8. it got a little boring watching everyone qualify one by one, so we took off to the paddock to check out the custom cars (ok, andy wanted to see the umbrella girls).. the cars were crazy customized, with insane systems, gucci interiors, jackknife doors, and.. (apparently, i had missed this latest trend).. lcds.. IN the engine bay. um.. just in case you wanna watch tv while you.. check the oil? the paddock was cool though, after each racer was finished, they’d drive their car right through the crowd and stuff. there was a crazy el camino from texas too. oh, and this kickass mini.

the real excitement came when the pros from japan took to the track, 4 at a time.. that was insane. once the pros were done having their fun, the competitors started the real race, two at a time.. for the most part, it was fairly uneventful.. one dude (this 17 year old racer named gushi) put his car a little into the wall and ended up ripping off his bumper and spilling coolant all over the track. oops. we had to wait for like half an hour while they cleaned up the track. fun. rhys millen ran his GTO drifter and it was clear that he had raced a bit over in japan.

in anycase, check out the photo album from formula d.. and don’t miss the movies. yay. vroom.

Well.. my “slacker tri team” training paid off, and I finished my first triathlon yesterday… I’m a bit sore, but really happy I did it. (supposedly tomorrow i’ll experience more pain) The weather was excruciatingly hot.. it was in the 100s all day.. I did almost what I expected… I finished in 3:48:04, 1866th overall, 224th out of 251 in my division. I was looking to do 3:30 (30 minute swim, 2 hour bike, 1 hour run), so I did close to that..

As I learned in my first open water swim a few weeks ago, I do NOT swim in a straight line. I kept veering off course, getting kicked in the head as I cut across several (faster) swimmers’ paths. For the first leg of the swim, I was so pumped up that I was going all out (staying near the front of the pack), and ended up tiring myself out by the first turn. I had to flip onto my back for a little elementary backstroke whilst I regained my composure for a few minutes. After I resumed a more sane pace, I was able to finish out the leg freestyle.

I was really happy with my bike portion — thanks to my brand new bike computer, I was able to see that I hit a max speed of 43.5 mph.. that was soooo fun.. and, my turtle horn was quite a hit with the fans. The bike was definitely my favorite part, though I think I need to see if my bike really fits me properly. Granted, I’ve only logged about 25 miles prior to raceday on this bike…

The run part was the worst — I wouldn’t really call it a run.. more like a run/walk.. I’m actually quite surprised that I actually had 12 minute miles. I was quite delirous and I was making little deals with myself the whole way like “ok, the faster we go, the sooner this is over” and “ok, run to the next hill, then we can walk” (who is this “we” anyway?!?). I also tried to pace myself with some of the various other racers, so thank you camelback-guy, thank you big dude in a too tight race suit, and no thanks to the really cute girl that just flew by as if it wasn’t the last leg of a grueling triathlon in 100 degree heat.

Oh.. and one more thing… why is it that at the end of the race, they put a “false end”.. meaning this.. I’m running for (what i thought was) the end.. and.. it TURNS.. and there’s like another 200 yard gauntlet for you to run through.. and here’s what sucks, you’ve already given your all to get to what you just thought was the end, and now you’ve got another frikkin 200 yards to run, and it’s full of people watching, so if you stop to walk, they all get to point and laugh. so, what do you do? you keep on running. and it frikkin hurts. but they did give me a nice medal at the end. yay!

Actually, I lied about the worst part. The worst part of the day was the walk back to the campsite after the whole thing was over. I mean, honestly, it’s not as if we hadn’t done anything all day. The campsite was over a mile from the finish, and uphill about 1,000 feet. Add the 100 degree heat, carrying all of my gear, and my bike and you can imagine how frikkin annoying that was. They should really put in a chairlift or something.

Anyway, I’m already looking for the next tri.. I figure I already have all this equipment, so why the hell not. Maybe i’ll train harder next time.

yay! i’m so happy whilst running the half marathon, i think amy was about to kill me at this point. this pic was taken at about the 13th mile…

more pics of me at brightroom.