blog.zgraggen.name  All-day insanity or I have a blog too!

Jihaa! I did it!
Only one week after the Marathon in Washington DC. I competed in a stair race for the American lung association.

I not only competed… I WON THE RACE!

Two weeks ago (one week before the marathon) the organizers offered some practice time on the stairs. Since I haven’t done stairs since Pittsburgh (in the cathedral of learning) I welcomed this opportunity. I did two training runs, both times in 3:40. I tried to do the first run slow and take every single step, but I realized way to late that I’m not really going slow. The second time I took two steps at a time and was half way up in 1:30. Considering the marathon a week later, I decided to slow down for the second half and save myself the pain of pulling it through. This training gave me some valuable information: I should take two steps at the time and aim for a 3min time.

The racers where started one by one with a 30 second gap in between. This would prevent too much overtaking on the narrow staircase. I was assigned number 18. And to my luck number 16 was missing. The race was started by the first runner, and I got more and more nervous. Only a few more minutes till it was my turn. I started to get nervous and decided that it would only be to my benefit if I would lose some weight by going to the bathroom once more.

I tried to start with a “moderate” pace. But considering all the adrenaline in my body it was more like I was bitten by a snake. I overtook the next runner which started 30sec in front of me after about floor 7. She was very nice and let me pass when she heard me coming. Thanks! On floor 9 it was time to check my time. I was expecting 45 seconds, the actual time was 42 seconds which satisfied my. Especially, since I was still feeling fresh! On floor 18 I had about 1:20 and knew that I was on the right track. But my legs started to get really heavy. I passed floor 25 with 2:00 minutes and then I had tunnel vision. I tried not to slow down but more and more parts of my body started to work against me. With 5 floors left I told myself that I can do it. It is the last thing between me and 3 weeks rest. And then finally I saw the finish line. I pressed the time token on the time measurement device, walked two more steps and fell on my knees. A helper came asked me if everything was okay. I showed my thumb up and tried to catch my breath again. My lungs where burning from the dry air in the staircase. It felt similar to running too hard in minus temperatures outside. (My lungs were still hurting a day later but to my surprise the muscles were doing fine) But all the pain didn’t matter to me. The only thing I was thinking about was that I achieved my goal.

At the award ceremony I learned my finisher time. I did the 34 floors (590 steps) in 2min 56sec and therefore improved the old record by 10 seconds! I then received my age group medal and a nice plaque for being the fastest male. It was a good feeling to be “the fastest” the crowd was cheering and some policeman and firefighters were giving me high fives. But I also was missing my friends at the ceremony.

After my first marathon which didn’t go as well as expected I was able to finish this season with a happy ending! Sometimes the hard training doesn’t pay off and sometimes it does. This race will certainly help me to start the training for the new season, which starts in 3 weeks from now

Results

Link to the pictures from the organizer will follow here.

Here is a little story about all the other things Amy and I did while in Washington DC.

I’m sure many of you have heard of Jon Stewert’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Washington DC or Stephen Colbert’s “March to keep fear alive”. If not, check out the following links (Announcements Daily show 1:05, Colbert Nation 3:00 Website Sanity, Fear). Obviously, we had to be part of this big event
But before we went to this event, I needed to go to the packet pick up for the Marathon. Once, I had my race packet including the start number and a shirt. Amy and I took advantage to check out the latest running gear. This took longer than expected and so we ended up going to the mall around noon. We both were surprised how many people were there. The Rally was supposed to happen between the 4th and 7th street. But walking down 7th street was almost imposable because of all the people. After a failed attempt to walk through the people we walked back to the 12th street to try again. There we were luckier but unfortunately, we were way to far away too see or hear anything of Stewert or Colbert.

So after enjoying the crowd and signs for a while we decided to be reasonable and go to the Zoo, which was well worth it! The Zoo in Washington DC is free and has to offer a variety of interesting animals. My two personal highlights are the Panda bears, even though they are almost always sleeping and the Octopus feeding.

The only negative part about this Saturday was that we were walking around for 5 hours till our legs hurt. I’m still wondering if that was a good race preparation

Here are pictures from the weekend and from the race.

In the last post I wrote about the experience of my Olympic distance triathlon. But I didn’t mention my analysis of it. Yes, I know this could be boring and no one cares how I could have saved a few more seconds. But I like to talk a little about the analysis and especially the attitude of an athlete in this post.
When I crossed the finish line, I was happy and I knew that I gave my best. But then a few minutes later when I had the receipt with the detailed split in my hands I immediately started thinking I could have done it faster… I was thinking in which part I could have saved a few more seconds and maybe even finished under 2h 15min. Why is that?

Before I started this race I had a goal. I wanted to be faster than my last Triathlon in Stamford (2:21:08). I also set an aspiration for 2h 15min. So finishing with 2:17:45 is perfectly within this range, and that I didn’t hit the 2:15 shouldn’t be a big deal since it was a stretch goal. But as an athlete that doesn’t matter. As soon as you achieved one goal, you think you can do it faster the next time. I guess this is just the eternal drive to get better…

Then I look at this race from the other perspective. I wanted to improve the time from Stamford. But what I didn’t consider were the differences in the races. First off, the swim leg was shorter due to the low tide. Which saved me several minutes (let us say 3min) and then the transition are which were smaller and closer to the exit. Comparing the time of the professionals Stamford was another 3min faster. Admittedly, the Stamford Triathlon had a hillier bike course which is hard to factor in, but looking at the pros again, it seems that they were about 3min faster (also considering that the field in Washington DC was better). So the major factors seem to make the Stamford course 3 min faster.
This leads to the conclusion that I improved my time not “only” by ~4min, but rather by ~7min. And there is still the excuse of the wet roads

After this though process I was much happier with my time from this Sunday. This seems weird, since I just should be happy with my time in the first place. After all I gave my best…

Any other athletes out there, who go through the same process?

EDIT: Some pictures from the event!

I hope many of you are waiting with great anticipating for my triathlon report!
Well, here he is:
The weather forecast wasn’t great and so was the actual weather. It was already raining when I got up at 5am in the morning. But, since I knew from military that I’m pretty much water proof and that is all in your head it didn’t bother me much. Not so many other athletes, “only” 5000 from about 7000 bothered to show up
After my morning routine and a long wait for the shuttle bus I arrived at the transition area. Within a few minutes I was soaked and shivering because of the cold temperatures. So the first thing I did was putting on my wetsuit which made the early rainy morning hours much nicer. The transition area was on natural ground and wasn’t ready to swallow all the water so I was super happy to have a plastic box for my gear. Since my neighbors bathing towel was underneath the water surface.

For whatever reasons the organizers delayed the start by 25min. At the same time they also promised sunny and warm weather which should arrive shortly. Guess what! That didn’t happen =)
The next big challenge for me was finding a restroom… even though they had massive amounts of “Porta Potty” I had to wait 20min till I was able to re leave myself. This was exactly 3min before I had to line up. Amy who hasn’t seem me for the last hour was already nervous where I would be and if I would make it on time. But I did. Since I consider myself not a strong swimmer I decided to start from the back of the 12th wave and try my best at drafting. I figured at the end it would be less hectic and I could focus on my swimming. Well I was proven wrong. The water was very crowded, since there was a wave every 4 min. There were swimmer everywhere; it was almost a fight zone. Giving and receiving hands/arms/elbows was a common thing for the whole 1500m. Somehow I manage to come through the water without a knockout and a satisfying time of 28min 46sec. The run to the transition area was rather long and is always an interesting experience in a dizzy state after the swim. I managed to find my bike and make may way to the exit. There was Amy who screamed some encouraging words and off I went.
The bike ride went really smooth. It is a flat course with only a few turns which was good for the rainy weather. Here again, I noticed that I was in wave 12 I had to overtake many people and was screaming “passing” all the time. Apparently it is really hard for bike riders to follow the right side of the road. To my surprise, I also saw many mountain bikes with suspension on the course. After only 1:04:53 I was back where I started.
After a stabling my bike and putting my running gear on. I was on my favorite part of the race. Amy once more had some encouraging words for me.

I run past the Washington Monument and was enjoying the scenery. That is also the reason I missed the first mile marker. The only indication of how fast I was going was the amount of people I was passing on the run. They even cheered me on with things like “Wow, you’re fast” or “Keep it strong”. I passed mile 2 with 13min, so I knew that I wasn’t slacking of too much. But since most people were running considerable slower, I had a hard time to keep my pace. Until at mile 4 another guy passed me. This was a blessing… I had finally something to focus on. I only lost about 100m on him on the next 2 miles. Which resulted in a run split of 39:01.

Thanks to jetBlue I received a print out of my race splits a few minutes after I passed the finish line. What an awesome service! It even included my correct division place (I was in the last wave of my age group).

Here you can see an animation of the race. Its easy to observe how much catch up I did in the bike and run leg

Other facts about this weekend:
600 miles (965km) car ride
12h of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (BBC Audio book)

EDIT:
Some pictures and videos from the race photographer: asiorders

Tomorrow, I will be competing in the National Triathlon in Washington DC. I already arrived here yesterday Friday to get settled in and have time for the race preparation. Amy and I had also some time to explore the city. We were on the top of the Washington memorial and visited the American History Museum.

The race seems to be organized very well, and everything is going smooth. The best part of the day, was the organized bike ride from the Hotel to the transition zone. Two Police car with blue light and sirens escorted us (several hundred athletes). I felt like a celebrity, while we passed the white house and the World War II memorial. After the bike ride, I did a test swim in the Potomac. They say this is one of the dirtiest rivers in the US, and that might very well be. I was barely able to see my hand in the water during the swim stroke. Unfortunately, I bumped my knee into the ramp to get out of the water. So it is a little swollen and I am hoping that everything will be fine till tomorrow since I will be racing anyway

Apparently, there are 7000 athletes competing in 44 waves
I am in wave #12 and will be starting 7:44am (EST)!

Check back in a few days to read how I did…

Many have heard the joke:

What do American Beer and having sex in a canoe have in common?
Both are fucking close to water!

But the sad fact is that exactly this kind of beer is what is sold to 95% in the USA. Only 5% is from smaller independent breweries. Shocking about that is that this 95% of beer comes from three companies: Anheuser-Bush (Budweiser), Miller, Coors.
Living in Pittsburgh for 1.5 years I always drunk Yuengling and wasn’t aware what kind of “war” is going on between all this smaller breweries against the big ones, since it was so easy accessible all over the city. But this is not the case in other parts of America. Here in Stamford I have the hardest time to buy decent beer in a store. Yes, I live next to a local brewery which eases this sad fact a little…

I highly recommend this documentary movie. Watch it and tell me what you think about it.
Yes, I know many readers are living outside of the USA and might ask themselves: “Why should that bother me?”. Well how do you know there is not a similar Beer War going on in your country…?

Watch a trailer of the movie!!

I had a phase were I played many flash games and also blogged about several of them. I haven’t been playing for a while. Recently I tried out some new flash games and was amazed by some of the ideas. If you like flash games I recommend to try the following three:

Neon rider is a 2D racing game where you have to drive from point A to B. But the interesting aspect of this game is that there are different colors of lines to ride on. The player can change the color of the bike and according to this color the player will use a different path. These means that besides the driving skills there is a second thing you have to watch out for…

This is the only level
This is the only level too
These are two small flash games, which have only one level. But they include several stages for each level. The level is really simple and has a simple path to solve it. The interesting aspect is that each stage there is something different. You can’t jump, keys are inverted, invisible walls… etc.
This means in each stage you have to figure out what the trick is to beat it. Sometimes, you can guess it from the name of the stage. I like this game because it is so simple but still really interesting.

Closure has one simple underlying rule: “What you don’t see doesn’t exist”. Each level is dark and there are lights which allow you to walk through around. If you walk outside the light up area you will fall even there is supposed to be a path. The goal is to find the door in each level. To solve the level it is necessary to use the “darkness” as a mean to make your way to walls and other obstacles.
Thanks to Michael for telling me about this game.

Have fun playing… and let me know what you think of them!

It’s almost a tradition that I clean up my blog at the beginning of the year and publish all the posts which I never finished during the past year. This time I will focus on all the things I did during my last semester at CMU. Passing all my classes with an acceptable grade and finding a job kept me quite busy… But I did a few fun things!

Family Road Trip

Before the last semester started my parents came to visit me in Pittsburgh. After two days in Pittsburgh we started a road trip to see the Niagara Fall, NYC, Amish People, and Washington DC. Besides all the typical tourist stuff which can be seen on all those locations we also saw something special.

A waitress at the Niagara Falls told us that it is possible to operate the lights for the Niagara Falls at night. We followed her directions and knocked on a particular door which was then opened by an elderly nice guy. He told us stories of the old days and how everything used to be and also technical details about today’s lighting system. And finally we were allowed to play around with the light system. I thought this was funny since 100 of people were standing on the edge of the water fall taking pictures of all the random combination my family experimented with

A more detailed description of our road trip can be found on my brother’s blog. (in German)

Oopsla 2009 in Orlando, Florida

I and a friend from school went to the Oopsla 2009 convention as student volunteers. Special about this Oopsla is that it was held in the Disney World Convention center which was in the middle of Disney World Orlando. What a great location. The conference itself was really interesting and it would have been even better if our professor would have relieved us from our homework assignments

But I have to say one negative thing about Disney World Orlando, all the water you can drink from the fountains taste horrible after sulfur. Maybe that is because of the fireworks they light every night.
Before we left Orlando, my friend and I had to visit the Universal Studios and go swimming at the beach, which felt like a mid-semester break

Philly Marathon and Rocky stairs

Amy, I and two of our friends drove together to Philadelphia to run there a half marathon which ends in front of the famous “Rocky Stairs”. It is a nice and almost flat course. The special thing to do after you finished the half marathon is to run up the stairs like Rocky Balboa did in his movie.

There would be many more detail I could tell about each specific thing, but I finally want to publish this post. Besides for most of my readers this is supposed to be a short update on what I have been up to.

Ocassionaly, I check who visits my blog with Google Analytics. Recently, I realized an interesting spike from Korea.
Apperently someone found my blog useful and refered to it. Here is the post which refers to my blog.

Even tough I wasn’t blogging that actively lately, the traffic on my site was still there thanks to all the Korean visitors.

People were glad to have me back in Switzerland… Which I conclude from the welcome gifts I received I especially liked the balloon with the 20min! But I shall not name him here in the blog

Two interesting things from my flight back to Switzerland:
In the Washington Dulles airport I saw a man in a wheelchair with a Challenged Athletes t-shirt on. I was curious about it, and asked him few question about the sport and how the training is going. As it turns out it was Oz Sanchez which is one of the top handcycle and also triathlon athletes. He won a gold and bronze medal at the Paralympics in Beijin (Peking) 2008.

The other interesting thing is the book I read on my journey: “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time” by Mark Haddon. It is an easy read from an unusual perspective. The book is written as if the main character Christopher Boone, who has the Asperger’s Syndrome, had written this book. He looks at the world with different eyes than we do which makes it a very interesting read. In fact it is so interesting that I finished the whole book in the flight home, ignoring G.I. Joe which was shown as part of the in flight entertainment program.