I may not be cool, but at least my food is

A couple of weeks of down time after a long racing season have been a welcome change, and a chance to get a few things taken care of on the home front and get a bit of adventuring in.  I went with my brother down to a family reunion near Waldorf this last weekend and got to try my new $15 tent out for the first time.  Cary and I teamed up for the lawn golf and "win it in a minute" challenges and won both.  The golf games were very close, as we changed what implements we used each time.  Over the course of the weekend I used a Frisbee, a lawn dart (both the new weighted and old sharp variety) an actual golf club and ball, a horseshoe, an apple, and a block of wood.  The block of wood won us our very close victory game, it went into 3 extra holes to break the tie at the end of the regulation round.  Cary dominated most of the minute challenges, but I pulled out ahead in blowing a ping pong ball into a horseshoe and stacking erasers and dice on a Popsicle stick I was holding in my mouth.
I don't do a lot in the way of home maintenance, but I do what I need to.  My basement is finally finished, and is actually looking pretty good.  A nice thorough cleaning and things should be in ship shape down there. 
I am also working on fixing my refrigerator.  I had to de-ice it this spring and then a few weeks ago it started not keeping food cold.  I did some sleuth work and found out that the evaporator fan was bad, so the cold air was there but was not being circulated.  I replaced that, but still suspect that my defrost timing switch is bad, since I never notice the fridge going into defrost mode on it's own, and that was stated as one reason that an evaporator fan might fail, if it gets plugged up with frost.  The new fan is working great, and I can at least manually switch the defrost on and off, so I'm going to watch it a few days and replace the switch if needed.
A bad storm this last weekend knocked a lot of branches down, so that was a good catalyst to get some lawn work done as well.  I cleaned up all the dead fall and pruned a bunch of my trees and bushes back, so I had a good sized load to bring to the compost this week.  It is always fun packing the Focus full of branches and ratchet strapping the big ones on top, then cruising right through downtown with the whole ensemble to get to the compost site.  I also got my strawberry garden weeded out, a huge project, but it looks pretty good now, except the fruit season is long done already.
Got my first real rollerski workout in last weekend too, 15km in 1 hr, a pretty sedate pace, but it felt good to start getting the ski legs back under me.  I've had a couple really fast near TT bike sessions the last couple weeks on the lunch rides.  I would attack right after the intermediate sprint and open up a gap that I would try to hold as long as possible.  Add that to a 10 mile run on Tuesday, and even though I haven't been doing many extra workouts I feel like I'm getting some solid training in.  Racing starts back up for another block in a couple weeks, so I need to hone the fitness back in a bit before then.

A flood of panic

Gary and Maddie came down a couple weeks ago for some canoeing on the cannon river.  The river has been high all summer, and was finally settling down, so I figured it would be a good time to get some boats out.  It rained about 7" in a couple hours the night before we went however, so the river was very high and fast when we put in Saturday morning.  The trip started alright, and we made really good time, hardly needing to paddle.  There were a lot of trees down and debris requiring some navigation skills, which it turns out we don't really have.  We overturned the boat going under a tree and only then realized the predicament we had gotten ourselves into.  It was warm out, but the water was surprisingly cool.  More noticeably it was very fast, and high enough that it went well back into the trees near the typical shoreline, so there was no safe way to get the boat out of the current.  Maddie was in a kayak and her quick reaction saved our paddles and a couple other random objects.  We floated downriver with the boat for a while and finally managed to manhandle it over to a downed tree where we could anchor ourselves and get the boat righted, although it was a tough fight with the current to get it out of the water and upright.  Our poles and tackle were sadly lost, and I had to untangle my legs from the fishing line, but we got back underway.  We didn't make it near as far before tipping a second time, and needed to work over into some shallows and right the boat.  Then We decided to try me in the stern and Gary paddling bow, but barely got underway before tipping again.  This time we got caught on a pile of flotsam, but Gary had to drift away.  I managed to hang and get the boat flipped and emptied on my own while bracing on a log that seemed mostly stable, then sat in the bottom of the boat and turned it by leaning and paddling with my hands until Gary could grab hold and pull himself into the boat, while going downriver.  Maddie saved our paddles each time, and handled her kayak very well, without her there things would have been much the worse.  We ended up stopping when we reached a good place to beach along Hwy 3 and had Gary's dad come rescue us.  I think all of us had as much adventure as we cared to that day, and it was a good reminder how much the speed and power of a river differs from the lakes where I have been doing most of my paddling as of late.

Ngede it done

The final race in this block was another unique one.  My friend Erik has been dreaming up this race for a few years now, and to finally see it come to fruition was exciting.  It is called the Ngede challenge and is a pretty exciting series of events to make up one spectacular 65km race.  Since it is in it's inaugural year the field was pretty small, and this is probably a good thing since there were still a few bugs to work out in terms of course design and marking.  I showed up Friday night to have supper with some of the racers and volunteers and ended up helping finish up some course marking before heading to my folks to catch a bit of sleep.  The next morning was perfect temps, if a bit muggy.  There were 5 of us doing the whole event solo, and maybe 7-8 relay teams entered as well.  Erik I expected to get away on the 10k run that started the race, but thought I could pull him back on the road bike depending on his mountain bike skills.  There were some very fast looking Orbea TT bikes there with their accompanying triathletes.  These guys would be the unknowns, how much would the bikes and multi sport experience chip into the gaps I could put on them in the runs?  The 10k played out pretty much as expected.  One of the relay runners got a huge gap, Erik slowly edged away and probably had 1:30 on me by the exchange.  I was 3rd in with Than right there with me.  I took the time to throw on my EMVC jersey and shoes and hit the bike trails.  I kept it relaxed for the first couple km then started to work the big hills on the black ski loop.  I caught Erik after turning onto the blue loop and overtook him pretty quickly.  The long green climb I was starting to feel it a bit, and after pushing over the black climb I geared up and tried to relax on the long descent to the exchange zone.  The road bike transition went very quickly, just change bikes, no clothing changes at all, and took off, still with no triathletes in sight.  I hadn't seen the relay team in the lead either though, so I wondered if they were away.  I saw a flash of yellow ahead when I was about 3 miles into the bike though, and just kept my head down and pushed as hard as I could maintain knowing what was yet to come.  I caught the relay team rider about 3 miles later and quickly left him behind.  I knew this was going to be my chance to make a gap, and I kept right on the edge of what my legs could handle.  There was a long stretch on a crushed rock bike path, and I could feel the speed slow down compared to the road, and the effort increase.  It was a rail trail, so there was no break to climb or descend, just effort and the slow feeling of the legs creeping towards fatigue.  I tried to keep my focus on staying low and lean and keeping consistent force on the pedals through the entire rotation.  I took a couple glances back, but didn't see anyone closing on me.  Getting back on the road was a welcome change, and I picked up the tempo for the last 7 or so miles in to the last exchange.  I changed shoes, lost the jersey, and hit the trails.  The legs and abs were angry, they didn't like the change of motion.  I hadn't seen anyone else arrive by the time I left the exchange zone though, so I figured I was at least 1:00 clear and was willing to take my time for the first mile to let the legs adjust.  Then I picked up the pace a bit but kept things in control, just in case.  Much of the run was an out and back, so when I passed mile 2 on the way back I knew I had over a mile lead and was able to relax and just work at a comfortable pace the rest of the way in.  I ended up with a rather large win, at least 15:00 I think, since the fastest of the triathletes got lost on the road bike, and Erik stopped to redo some course markings along the way.  There was a Tanzanian feast afterwards that was simply amazing.  It was great to just eat and hang out with a bunch of friends new and old.  With that race done it was nice to go home and relax before heading to the cities the next morning for the EMVC urban warfare ride.