And the #G2E party is over.

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Have I mentioned #IGT is hiring? Send me your resume. #hangoverslots

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Where did all my stars go? Does @Starbucks use @amazon EC2?

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XTERRA Real 2011 Race Report

The weather in Reno hasn't allowed for a lot of outdoor training this winter so this race was my first mountain bike ride of the year. Most of my bike training has been done at IndoorPower or at home with Trainer Road. The weather was freezing driving over the pass but at least the temperature at Granite Bay was pretty nice.  The water was another story.

The Swim

I made the mistake of not getting into the water before the race started. I felt pretty bundled up with a full wetsuit, earplugs and a neoprene swim cap, but my face just wasn't ready to hit the water when the horn went off. I lined up behind Melanie McQuaid, Benjamin Hoffman and a few other pros. I don't know of too many other sports where any racer can toe the starting line next to national champions. The race started and I walked out about 15 yards from the beach since it is pretty shallow, delaying the inevitable.  When I finally dove in, the cold water on my face was so cold that it took my breath away.  I'd try to stick my head down and swim normally but I couldn't link more than a few strokes before I'd have to bring my head out.  I felt silly but eventually just resigned to swimming with my head out of the water to the first buoy. When I finally got there I had started to get numb enough and the feeling of getting the wind knocked out of me had passed so I was able to swim the rest of the way with my head in the water and a normal 2 stroke breathing pattern.  The swim was much shorter than 0.5 miles since the water was only 48 degrees. Having my Crocs lined up out of the finishing chute worked great for saving my numb feet on the run up to transition.

The Bike

I've made the mistake before of overdressing for the bike just because the swim was cold so the only warm gear I used were gloves and neoprene shoe covers. My new Louis Garneau shoes went on quick but I seem to always struggle with gloves. It didn't take long to get muddy once I was out on the course.  I really should come down more often and pre ride this course. I know I could be faster on it if I just knew it better. I quickly remembered why I do these races. The mountain biking is so much fun. It's like a roller coaster that you get to control. I mounted my new toy on the handlebars and filmed most of the ride. Check out the highlight video here. I thought it'd be cool to be able to sync a map with the video so you know what part of the course the video is from but I haven't found any software to do that yet.

The Run

This was a big disappointment for me. I've had issues with my left hamstring tightening up after I work out for a few months and have been stretching and seeing a chiropractor to work on it. But this was the first time it affected me in a race.  Basically, the first mile went fine. I was starting to speed up and find a comfortable pace. But just after a mile, my lower back started to tighten up. My calves, hamstrings and lower back were all really tight.  It didn't feel like cramping, just tightness that was so uncomfortable that it kept me from running up any hills.  And this course has a few hills after the first flat mile. So I'd walk anything that wasn't completely flat or downhill. I got caught by a few racers that I had passed early and just watched as they pulled away.  Finally after the last climb to the water tower, I ran down and my back started to loosen up. I don't know if it was because I was close to the finish or just that there were less hills, but I finally was able to run again and finished at a decent pace. You can see where I struggled on my Garmin file as my heart rate dropped when i wasn't able to run.

Race Results – Check out the other Renoites including Matt Balzar, Phillip Glenn, and Nathan Brown. They did awesome.

What's Next?

This race got me excited to race more XTERRA races this year. I'm signed up for the two at Tahoe and I hope to qualify for Nationals in Ogden again. I'd love to qualify for World's in Maui but i think that's a long shot for me this year. I'm doing Ice Breaker Tri with my triathlon class next weekend, Rock N River half marathon 2 weeks later,  and the Reno Tahoe Odyssey with the Runny Bums in June. After that my race plans for the summer are all contingent on Evan as he's due at the end of May.

Reid

See the full gallery on Posterous

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What is Trainer Road?

Trainer Road is our new workout player for indoor cycling. Part of what makes our software unique is that it turns your PC into the head unit for any ANT+ devices.  That means it will display information in real time during your workout and save it to a variety of formats afterwards for further analysis. 
To use Trainer Road, you’ll need:

1. A Bike
2. A cycling trainer or rollers
3. A Windows PC or laptop that can be positioned close to you while you’re on your bike (not too close if you’re on rollers).

That’s it. With those three things you’ll be able to find a workout from our library, hit play and perform the workout complete with visual (graph and text) cues telling you what to do for the entire workout. The cues will be based on an RPE scale of 1-10 in 0.5 increments.  And text instructions will tell you when to change position, cadence, and other tips you’d normally get in a live cycling class with a knowledgeable coach.
Sign up to be a beta tester

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How a running watch can make you a faster CrossFitter.

I wore my Forerunner 305 for the CrossFit Open Sectionals WOD 11.2 on Tuesday evening.  I knew pacing was going to be important and I wanted to keep track of how long each round took me. So I hit lap after my last box jump each round.  This recorded each lap (round) time to look at later, but it also gave me instant feedback on how long that lap took without having to do any math.  It just pops up on the screen with the last lap time.

I wore the watch on my left wrist which didn’t bother me for these movements. I didn’t wear it last week because I felt it would be uncomfortable with the snatches.  But even if you don’t wear it, you could have an observer hold it, hit lap after each round and call out your last lap time. In this way it provides one more piece of data  for validation.  If I had been counting rounds in my head and swore I did 13 + some change, it’s easy to go back to the watch and count the rounds and realize that I did 10 + a partial round. The 12^th round was me hitting lap before hitting stop after I was done.

For me, this showed that I really started to slow down in round 7 and then picked it up again in round 10 when I had the finish in sight.  Based on this information, I’m going to try to keep rounds 7-10 under 1:25 and hopefully complete at least 11 rounds. 

If you wanted to go for the win, 56 seconds per round would get you 16 rounds.

Activity on Garmin Connect

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CrossFit Games: Which region is the most competitive?

Now that the results for the first week are in, we can start to get an idea of the quality and distribution of athletes around the world competing in the games. So what else would we do to kill the time until the next workout is announced besides analyze the numbers.  I scraped the data from the games site for the Men’s Division. This could be done for the other divisions but I just started with one because it takes a bit of time to get all the data together.

 

So we all think our region is the most competitive, but let’s look at the numbers and see if that is really the case.  The first and easiest way to answer this question is to rank regions by number of total participants.

 

Number of Athletes

Rank	Regions	Athletes (men)
1	Southeast	1313
2	Northeast	1241
3	Mid Atlantic	1144
4	Southern CA	1084
5	Southwest	1048
6	Australia	954
7	Northern CA	943
8	Northwest	938
9	North Central	934
10	South Central	909
11	Europe	851
12	Central East	775
13	Canada East	480
14	Canada West	452
15	Latin America	112
16	Asia	83
17	Africa	75
	Grand Total	13336

 

This shows that the East Coast (US) is the best represented. This is a bit surprising to me given that the first affiliates were in California and I generally thought of CrossFit as growing out from the West Coast.  I didn’t look at the total populations of each region but it’s possible that HQ made the same assumption as me and made the East Coast regions each cover a bigger population area than the regions in the West. In any case, the US divisions seem to be somewhat evenly sized, between 775 and 1313 athletes in each one.

 

But that doesn’t tell us anything about how good the athletes from each region are. To get an idea of how strong a region is as a whole, we can look at the median score from the first WOD.

 

Median Score

This shows the score of the person with half the scores above his and half the scores below his in each region.

 

Rank	Regions	Median Score
1	Canada East	253
2	Canada West	249
3	Southern CA	240
4	Mid Atlantic	238
5	Southwest	237
6	Asia	235
7	North Central	235
8	Northwest	234
9	South Central	233
10	Northern CA	233
11	Northeast	231
12	Southeast	225
13	Europe	225
14	Australia	224
15	Central East	220
16	Latin America	219
17	Africa	166

 

Now this is getting interesting. Southeast and Southwest were at the top of the first list but drop to below the middle when we sort by the median score. This would indicate that those regions have more “average” CrossFitters participating in the open sectionals.  While the men (remember, this is only looking at the men’s division) competing from Canada are likely to score higher than the average CrossFitter from another region.

But that still doesn’t tell us anything about what it takes to qualify for the next round.

 

Qualifying scores

To remind you, the top 60 men from each region advance to the Regional competitions held in May or June. This is obviously preliminary since we’ve only done one workout, but it gives us enough data to see what score you would have needed to advance if the sectionals was only one (err two) week(s) long.

 

Rank	Regions	Qualifying score	Median Score
1	North Central	349	235
2	Southwest	345	237
3	Southern CA	345	240
4	Northeast	343	231
5	Southeast	340	225
6	spanspanspanspan

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CrossFit Games: Which region is the most competitive?

Now that the results for the first week are in, we can start to get an idea of the quality and distribution of athletes around the world competing in the games. So what else would we do to kill the time until the next workout is announced besides analyze the numbers.  I scraped the data from the games site for the Men’s Division. This could be done for the other divisions but I just started with one because it takes a bit of time to get all the data together.

So we all think our region is the most competitive, but let’s look at the numbers and see if that is really the case.  The first and easiest way to answer this question is to rank regions by number of total participants.

Number of Athletes

Rank	Regions	Athletes (men)
1	Southeast	1313
2	Northeast	1241
3	Mid Atlantic	1144
4	Southern CA	1084
5	Southwest	1048
6	Australia	954
7	Northern CA	943
8	Northwest	938
9	North Central	934
10	South Central	909
11	Europe	851
12	Central East	775
13	Canada East	480
14	Canada West	452
15	Latin America	112
16	Asia	83
17	Africa	75
	Grand Total	13336

This shows that the East Coast (US) is the best represented. This is a bit surprising to me given that the first affiliates were in California and I generally thought of CrossFit as growing out from the West Coast.  I didn’t look at the total populations of each region but it’s possible that HQ made the same assumption as me and made the East Coast regions each cover a bigger population area than the regions in the West. In any case, the US divisions seem to be somewhat evenly sized, between 775 and 1313 athletes in each one.

But that doesn’t tell us anything about how good the athletes from each region are. To get an idea of how strong a region is as a whole, we can look at the median score from the first WOD.

Median Score

This shows the score of the person with half the scores above his and half the scores below his in each region.

Rank	Regions	Median Score
1	Canada East	253
2	Canada West	249
3	Southern CA	240
4	Mid Atlantic	238
5	Southwest	237
6	Asia	235
7	North Central	235
8	Northwest	234
9	South Central	233
10	Northern CA	233
11	Northeast	231
12	Southeast	225
13	Europe	225
14	Australia

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Tempo run explained

Josh and I were talking a little bit about the tempo run and how to pace for it. Sometimes it is easier to just see a picture.

Here's my run from today:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/73552849

 

Scroll down to the charts section and here's what to look at:  (blue – warmup and cooldown, black- build or descend, red – 3 minutes at 5K pace)

1. Heart Rate - It slowly rose to a peak around 17 minutes, then came down and leveled off between 17 and 25, then came down even more as I slowed down at 25 minutes to cool down.

1. Pace - first few minutes were slow, after about 5 I sped up and held pretty much the same pace to 14 minutes. Then, at 14 minutes I picked up the pace for 3 minutes. My target was to get my HR as high into zone 4 as possible during those 3 minutes.  Then backed off and tried to hold a steady pace to 25 minutes.  For the last 5 minutes, my goal was to bring my HR back down into zone 1, so that forced me to slow down and not finish out of breath.

When you guys do this workout, the shape of those graphs should look the same for everyone.  I'll analyze your run or bike activities if you upload them and share them with me.  If you have a garmin watch, http://connect.garmin.com allows you to upload and share them for free. There are plenty of other websites as well.

 

The spike in HR around 5 minutes is just because it reads high when it doesn't have a good connection with my skin. Once I sweated enough, the connection got better and read correctly. It messes up some avg numbers but you can infer a straight line through the messed up area since my pace didn't significantly change.

 

Reid

 

 

Reid Weber

Software Engineer, Global Technical Architecture

 

International Game Technology

Office: +1 775.448.0492

Mobile: +1 775.233.5859

reid.weber@igt.com

twitter: @rweber

 

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Took the cable car this morning

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Nutrition and training tips for my Triathlon class

Some of us just started the Whole30 diet plan in conjunction with our triathlon training. I shared these notes with them today. How was the bike ride last night? Did you have a post workout meal? Whole 30 recommends having protein and some carb rich veggies like squash or yams with little or no fat immediately after your workout. Then within a few hours have a regular meal. I encourage you to try this vs. the recovery drink I recommended the other day (coconut milk, berries, eggs)
Are you taking any supplements? I'm still taking fish oil and vitamin D (5,000/day) but I've also added some amino acids after I work out. The idea here is to get amino acids in your blood after a workout to tell your body not to burn muscle. I'm sure there are lots of options but I'm taking Recoverease. Considering that we'll start to taper our training about two weeks from the race, we've only got about a month of hard training left. Is there anything you can cut out during this next month that is adding extra stress and inhibiting your recovery?

Feel free to ask me or the group any questions about your training or diet. Last tip: sparkling water. Water, tea, and coffee are pretty much your only option for beverages on whole30. If you get bored with this, try some carbonated water. It may also help satiate your appetite. Have fun swimming tonight!

Reid

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The Apple iPad event was next door to #gdc2011

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Yerba Buena Gardens

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Delayed until 5:15. The suspense is killing me. What's the free gift, @google? #gdc2011

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More sweet clouds!

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Sweet clouds.

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My 200yd TT with the Finis Swimsense

Right now the finis software doesn’t have a good way of sharing the details of a workout since you have to be logged in to see these screens.  So I took some screen shots to show you what I get to see. This first window shows the breakdown of my 200yd TT by length. The bottom section is a slider that can be adjusted left or right to see different parts of the workout. You can select an interval, length or entire workout and the graphs below will reflect that selection.

You can see I started out pretty strong, started to slow down after 100yds, then picked it up for that last 50.  My last 200yd TT was 2:53 and this one was 2:37 so I’m happy with the improvement, but I can’t help but think that with a little better pacing I could shave 5 more seconds off.  I’m a little surprised that my 2^nd to last length was so slow.

These next graphs show that as I slowed down my form probably also started to break down as my stroke count goes up. Having never looked at stroke counts much, I didn’t know what a good number was.  Glen Gore, who’s a pro triathlete was pretty consistently at 10 in his 30X100M repeats. And if he’s swimming in a 25m pool, it would probably be even lower in a shorter pool.

His distance per stroke was above 3m, whereas mine is between 2 and 2.8y. This graph shows that after halfway my stroke rate continued to increase while I got slower, which I think is an indicator of my form breaking down.

Are there other things I’m missing in the analysis of this?

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Race Report: 2011 3M Austin Half Marathon

 

Preparation

A few friends from high school decided we should do a destination race and we decided on this one back in October.  After my last triathlon in early October I switched my training focus to CrossFit.  And in November started to bike about 2 days a week indoors. For some reason I couldn't really convince myself to do much running outside of CrossFit workouts.  So January came and I started doing the run training with my triathlon class, which consisted of 2 runs a week, usually less than 20 minutes.

I also ended up signing up for the Move, Lose, and Cruise challenge about 3 weeks ago.  I've been eating almost exclusively meat, eggs, veggies, beans, and water with one cheat day a week.  I didn't change my diet at all for the week of the race (no carb loading). I've also cut out most caffeine in hopes of making myself more sensitive to it on race day

Pre Race

I got about 5 hours of sleep and had some water, a gulp of Gatorade, and about 3 cups of coffee (since I forgot my caffeine pills).  We got to the start and it was still dark but surprisingly warm (55 degrees?), foggy, and humid.  It didn't ever really rain, but there was definitely some mist through the first half of the race.

The Race

One of the biggest downsides of not doing any traditional run training for this race was that I had no idea what pace to target. So I started with the 1:30 group and told myself to stick with them until about 6 or 7 miles and if I felt good to go ahead then and chase my PR of 1:27:40. But I didn't listen. Around mile 2 I found myself in front of the group after the aid station and began to pull away from them slowly.  When I had run my PR, I ran just under 7 min/mile for the first 9 miles then picked it up for the last 4 to around 6:15 min/mile.  So my new plan was to run around 6:40 until mile 9, then pick it up to 6:30, then try for under 6:20 for the last 3 miles.  In addition to wearing my Garmin 305 telling me my HR and pace, I also had my iPhone in a little belt thingy with RunKeeper running. Every 5 minutes it would tell me my time, avg pace, and distance.  But the really cool feature is that it was constantly updating the website so anybody up in Reno at 4:45 could watch my progress. 

The course was pretty flat with a fair share of downhill. Nothing so steep that you'd have to brake coming down, but I could really feel the downhill miles in my legs towards the end and especially after the race. The course was easy to follow, well marked and after the first 400M, crowds weren't an issue even though there were 6,000 people running.  The water stations looked well stocked and laid out well, although I never grabbed any water or Gatorade. It was fun to have so many spectators along the course.  It seemed like they lined most of the streets and would tell you that you were "lookin' good" even if that wasn't the case. 

Around mile 8 my plan started to fall apart.  People started passing me. I kept thinking more and more about how far I had left to go.  I'd try to pick up my pace as someone would pass me and only be able to stay with them for a short time.  This is when I realized my shot at a PR had slipped away.  My new focus was to stave off the 1:30 group and finish under 1:30.  A downhill mile around mile 10 gave me some hope but shortly after, I began to hear the louder cheers behind me that I knew were associated with that 1:30 group.  And sure enough, the group (although much smaller than the last time I saw them) caught me and steadily pulled away.  The last 2 miles were just about getting to the finish line.  I repeatedly tried to speed up, but I had no speed left.  I'll attribute this to starting too fast (could I have finished under 1:30 if I had stuck with the group?) and lack of and long runs.  I finally finished in just over 1:31. My legs were in immediate pain and running was not happening for me for the rest of the day.  

Overall, I had a fun race and I'm happy with my time.  And my friends all finished, despite their lack of preparation as well.  I can't wait for our next destination race and for this early, but likely abbreviated, triathlon season. I'm also excited about endurance training in combination with CrossFit.  While I'm not at my very fastest, I feel like there is real potential to become a fast, competitive age group triathlete doing what I'm doing with the Triathlon class at CrossFit Initiative. I'm pleased with the diet, too, which is pretty much the slow carb diet from Tim Ferriss', "The 4-hour body". Training and racing without tons of carbs seems to work well, at least for this distance. I didn't have any stomach issues the entire race, and although I haven't done any testing, i did read, "Metabolic Efficiency Training" and tried to apply some of the concepts in that book to my training. It makes sense to me that training your body to burn stored calories rather than relying on food you're ingesting during or immediately before the race.  

Now we're off to enjoy our last night in Austin and the rest of my cheat day.

 

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