Flower City Challenge

This past weekend, I competed in my first duathlon (5k run, 20 mile bike, 5k run). The race was part of the inaugural Flower City Challenge sponsored by Unity Health and Fleet Feet Rochester. The other events for the weekend included a run/bike/paddle triathlon, a half marathon and a 5k.

The duathlon went reasonably well, I felt pretty strong running and biking and ended up finishing 3rd overall. I came into the first transition zone right behind the leader and alongside one other guy, they were both faster getting out onto the bike course and I never saw either of them again, but also wasn't passed at any point during the rest of the race, so I guess it was ok. Here are my takeaways from the race:

- I showed up an hour before the race and the bike racks in the transition zone were already a total cluster. I saw Frenchy, who promptly asked me why I was late. Apparently, you have to show up really early for duathlon/triathlon races.

- In hindsight, I probably could have pushed harder on the first running section, but I wasn't quite sure what I was getting in to. I feel like I sort of talked myself out of taking the lead and pushing the pace.

- I was a complete fumble-fest in both transition zones. Maybe next time I should practice untying my running shoes with my HR jacked up, not the easiest task. Getting my bike shoes on and helmet strapped up also doesn't seem like it should take that long, until you actually try to do it fast.

- aero bars would have been a good idea for the bike section, especially for the 2nd half of the bike course which was mostly a gradual downhill.

- The first 5 minutes of the second running section (after the bike) was an interesting experience for my legs to say the least. I don't know what it looked like, but I would say it felt like a cross between running with full leg splints on and a duck-waddle. Couldn't have been pretty! I definitely gained a newfound respect for triathletes.

- After about 5 minutes of that, I eventually loosened up and got back into a rythym running and ended up with a reasonably respectable time for the 2nd 5k.

The event was extremely well organized (especially for it's first year), and I heard that there were over 2000 runners between the half-marathon and the 5k that was run on Sunday. This type of event is an excellent way to showcase the city and for people to get out and get some fresh air and exercise. I hope that the organizers make this an annual event and that it continues to grow.

Some other highlights - Frenchy won the paddle triathlon race despite complaining all week about how much his back hurt; Warren Hern (CFO of Unity Health and also the father of one of my former college baseball teammates) competed on the winning relay team for the paddle tri, and I'm sure was also an important part of the reason that Unity Health was the title sponsor for the event; Dave Bischoff, who works at Harris runs with me our lunch break a few times a week ran a 1:18 half marathon (that's a 6:01/mile pace for those doing the math at home), look out for that Harris Corporate Challenge team this year!!

Here are pics of Frenchy and I with our awards (flower pots).

His back looks fine to me, sandbagger!

The next few weeks are pretty hectic with a lot of bike races coming up. My immediate goals are to be in good shape and ready to go for the Bristol Road Race, Tour De Syracuse and the Corning Circuit race. After those, I'll be running the Corp. Challenge and doing a couple criteriums in Rochester. Then, it'll be wedding and honeymoon time!

Back in the saddle

Yesterday I competed in the Bloomfield Classic bike race sponsored by GVCC. It was my first bike race of the year (and first race of any kind since ski season ended 6 weeks ago). The race consisted of four laps of the 11+ mile loop, so about 45 miles total, and covered many of the same roads that I roller ski on fairly regularly as the course was very close to my parents tree farm, where we set up a biathlon range last summer.

I just got home from two weeks on the road where I hadn't been riding anything other than a stationary bike for the last two weeks, so I didn't have high expectations...The race went about as expected as I was able to hang on to the lead pack for almost half the race, then rode the last 25 or so miles by myself to finish somewhere in the middle of the field, counting all the DNF's (why are there so many DNF's in bike racing?)...Not too memorable of a race, but it was good to pin a race number on again and compete. It was also good to get a good solid 2.5 hour race effort in to wake my body up for the races I have over the next several weeks.

Later this week, I'm planning on doing the Thursday night GVCC race and then a duathlon (5k run/20 mile bike/5k run) on Saturday here in downtown Rochester, which should be fun. On paper, I run more than most bikers and bike more than most runners, so you'd think I should be good at this duathlon thing, but I've never done a duathlon before, so who knows what it'll be like...we'll find out though!

What day is it?

This trip started on Easter Sunday when Kevin and I left Rochester for Tbilisi, Georgia. The flight over was very smooth and uneventful. There were several activities going on for us here. The high point of the week were some high-level meetings with top government officials for which, some high-level people from Harris came over. For Kevin and I, this added some stress as we hadn't traveled much with some of these guys in the past and didn't know how they'd react to some of the cultural differences in Georgia (namely the amount of alcohol drank at a typical Georgian dinner). So, when the VP of sales arrived on Wednesday night, we had an internal strategy meeting to discuss the agenda for the following day, which included meetings with the Minister of Defence, Chief of Staff and head of the Georgian MOI Border Police, followed by a dinner hosted by the MOD. We also discussed that this dinner would consist of wine drinking and explained the Georgian customs for wine drinking - In Georgia, as best as I can tell, a "light dinner" includes beer and vodka, and a "heavy dinner" includes wine-only. Although it may seem that the wine drinking may be easier to handle, this is far from true. The custom when drinking wine is that when the "Tamada" (chief of table) gives a toast, everyone should drink more than half of the glass and the Tamada should drink the entire glass unless he passes the toast to someone else. So, it's easy to see how this can turn into a "heavy night". Anyways, based on this info, our VP responded with the following - "See, when I was a young sales guy, I used to sacrifice my body for the good of building relationships with customers. I'm done with that BS, that's why I have guys like you (pointing to Kevin and I). So, I'm counting on you to handle that for us." So, given clear instructions from our superiors, Kevin and I carried out these responsibilities well and had a great night with our customers followed by possibly the worst hangover of my life the next day. Some pics from that day.

The following day, all of our VIP's were gone, we had some more working-level meetings and Kevin and I could relax a little. The next day (Friday) was also Ivane's (owner of our dealer) birthday. Birthday's are well celebrated in Georgia and typically involve a gathering of as many people as possible and more wine (not enthusiastic about that following previous night), but we again enjoyed another heavy dinner with Ivane and about 55 other Georgians.

That's Irakli, Ivane and Kevin at Ivane's birthday dinner.

Ivane, Kevin, myself, Mike Reda and Anthony Full (both engineers from Harris in town for a demo the following week).

Saturday, we spent the morning walking up to a fortress that was built when the capital of Georgia was moved to Tbilisi (200 AD). Here are some pics of that.

It certainly looks like it could be 1900 years old. I climbed up on parts of it and it seemed pretty sturdy, so I'd imagine it'll be there for another couple thousand years as well.

We then spent the afternoon going to every electronics store in Tbilisi looking for an adapter we needed for a demo happening this week (unsuccessfully), followed by a "light dinner". .At this point, I'm ready to sign a sworn declaration that I'll never have another glass of wine, so I was relieved to see that Temuri had ordered us all beers. There were still a fair amount of toasts with the vodka (mostly to our friends in Poland). Ivane was the Tamada and also gave a few toasts to Nancy and I's future as a married couple.

On Monday at 2am, I left my hotel in Tbilisi, flew to Bucharest and had meetings all afternoon. Tuesday and Wednesday were spent at a defence trade show in Bucharest, capped off by a reception at the US Ambassador's house in Bucharest on Wednesday night. The ambassador and his wife seemed like very nice people and took the time to talk with us for a couple minutes about our interests as a US company in Romania.

Romania has been hit very hard by the global recession, so things are slow for everyone there. So, this trip was focussed on existing programs as well as some new opportunities that are probably a couples years away. I don't have any pictures of Romania as I had to leave my camera in Georgia for use on the demo mentioned above). I spent all day Thursday flying home and am now back in Rochester. It was a fast and tiring two weeks for sure and I'm happy to get back into my normal routine. I am also very excited to not be working out on stationary bikes and treadmills, that was getting very old!

Heavy stuff

I was initially planning on writing a post this weekend about the whirlwind of customer meetings and wine-chugging that Kevin and I have been through the last week here in Tbilisi (and that post is coming, because there's been some crazy activities going on here!). However, in light of the tragic news from Poland yesterday, I decided to write about that instead. The president, first lady, chief of staff, several cabinet members, along with almost every general in the Polish military were killed in a plane crash in Western Russia. In total 88 government officials lost their lives.

The list of countries that have unconditionally supported the US since the fall of the former eastern bloc is very short, and Poland is on top of that list. People may or may not have a grasp for this, but there is still a tremendous amount of Russian influence in that region and in my opinion, Russia may not really consider the cold war to truly be over. In fact, many could consider the Russian/Georgian war in 2008 to be related directly to their feeling that the US/NATO was extending their influence too far into the former "eastern bloc". Poland was the first country in that region to put there hands up and say "we're done with this communist BS and we're not going back." Since that time, they've been a shining star with regards to developing economically and moving away from corruption that seems to hold down many other countries in that region. On top of that, they've also never hesitated to send their best troops wherever the US has asked them to go. They are truly a great friend to our country.

They have a simply awful history of atrocities. Between the German's and the Russians in WW2, over 6 million Polish people were killed. That's 17% of their population that was completely wiped out, think about that for more than a second. In a tragic twist of irony, the plane that crashed yesterday was flying to Katyn in Russia to honor 25,000 Polish soldiers that were executed and buried in a mass grave. 25,o00 troops were killed by a country that was supposedly fighting on their side in that war. This was a war crime that the Russians had never taken responsibility for. The plane crashed 10km from the site of the mass grave.

Despite their awful history, they have persevered as a nation and kept their unique culture and nationalistic pride alive. I have no doubt that they will overcome this awful situation as well.

So, this post is completely all over the map, but anyways...Nastrovia Polska!

Old trip notes

I made it to Tbilisi, Georgia safe and sound and have been pretty busy the last two days. The next couple days will be even more hectic, but there's a lot going on for us business-wise, so there's a lot of excitement...On the plane ride over, I stumbled across these trip notes from a trip I took last Spring to Romania. I typically try to keep notes on the unique things that happen while travelling that aren't business related. Sometimes this helps me keep my sanity by realizing that, when you take a step back and look at it, a lot of funny stuff can happen when travelling and dealing with different cultures...so, I thought I'd post these...most of the people named below work for our dealer in Romania...

"Romania - May 2009 trip

Sunday, May 17 - Rick and Marty arrive...the "polly pocket" toy hand-carried from Rochester for Laurentiu's daughter has made it in one piece...

Played tennis and had BBQ with Laurentiu, Gelu, Radu, and commander of base where Citadel excercise will take place.

Marty and Gelu were teamed up - Gelu has nasty first serve, almost every point we scored was an ace, Laurentiu is pretty good, Rick was good once he shook the rust off, I was horrible.

Radu tells a story about a gypsy who tries to train her donkey to eat less (paraphrasing):

"Every day the gypsy would feed the donkey a little less, while continuing to push the donkey to do the same work. By the 29th day, the gypsy had finally trained the donkey to do all of its work without needing food. On the 30th day however, the donkey died of exhaustion. The moral of the story - don't let your business get to the 30th day."

Monday, May 18 - Met with Offset Agency, very good meeting. no noteworthy events otherwise.

Tuesday, May 19 - Citadel excercise - BGAN functionality went from working flawlessly in the dry run to getting first-demo-flu or something. Conversely, VHF radio performed flawlessly after having problems through several of the dry runs. Following the VHF achievement, Jay looked at me and said "They better turn it off quick and not look at it funny."

Wednesday, May 20 - MTA meeting with Marty, Gelu and Doru to discuss offset equipment donation. 15 representatives from MTA were sitting on one side of the table, the 3 of us on the other. Following very brief introductions, the commander of the MTA and Gelu got into a 30 min argument in Romanian while everyone else in the room stared at eachother....then Gelu turns to me and says, "Ok, please present"...he later briefed me on the situation and everything was ok, but at the time, it was comically awkward. Later met with ODC, then Rick, Marty, and both Laurentiu's went to Champions to watch the UEFA Cup finals. Bob Bolton from GD was also there and joined us for the 2nd half of the game. Laurentiu N. was sitting in between Rick and Bob. Bob was eager to discuss a few things with Rick, and instead of adjusting the seating arrangement, decided to essentially lean across Laurentiu's lap and have a discussion with Rick with both forearms squarely planted on Laurentiu's thighs...maybe that's normal in the UK, but I felt extremely awkward for Laurentiu, can't even imagine what was going through his mind as this 25 minute conversation was going on....this was like a scene out of "The Office"...

Thursday, May 21 - met with MOD at Romtehnica, then went to airport. My flight was late getting into Frankfurt with an already tight connection back to DC. I resorted to runnning through the airport to my gate which was close to a mile away. This was not a typical airport run (hurried speed walk), this was a full-on sprint, with backpack and dress shoes, I may not have set a personal best in the mile, but definitely was at a sub-5 minute/mile pace. Get to the gate and they are at the tail end of boarding, I board the plane to realize my seat has been double-booked...still sweating profusely, myself and the other gentleman approach the flight attendant who takes both our boarding tickets, comes back a couple minutes later and apoligizes to both of us and gives me my first trans-atlantic upgrade to first class, talk about a turn of events! I did feel extremely out of place, especially since we reached our cruising altitude before I stopped sweating...the rest of the trip was smooth sailing and made it home a little after midnight."

office work at race-pace

I think all of my customer's woke up on Monday morning, called each other and said, let's throw everything we've got at Marty and make him do cheetah-flips all week! The last four days have (as my dad used to say) been like "sippin water from a firehose"...

I'm leaving for Tbilisi, Georgia on Sunday where I'll be for a week, then I'm going from there to Romania then home...In the next 48 hours I am planning/hoping to do all of these things:

- finish tying up some loose ends at work to try to have some form of organization before I leave.

- go to nancy's parents house for "Easter Dinner" tonight

- do 70 mile bike ride with the team tomorrow morning

- go to mall to pick up new suits from tailor (Nancy finally forced me to get some suits that fit)

- clean up this hot mess (which I call my wax room) and put my skis away for the summer

- laundry

- pack

- take my old bike into the shop to get it fixed/tuned so Nancy can ride it

- hopefully sleep?

- board plane to Tbilisi...