My problem with one night stands

is that I run out of space for all of my books! You thought that was going to be about making poor life decisions with unknown women, but instead, you got a cheesy joke. More on this later.

If you have spent any time on Facebook, you probably have seen the ads on the side bar or in the middle of your newsfeed for anything from Match.com to christianmingle.com. I have seen such variations as athletic singles, farmers only (no, I am not embedding the links to these. You can use google). They would entice you with "meet someone with the same characteristics as you!" I don't know why I would want to meet someone who has the same characteristics as me. They would be crazy.

After seeing all of these ads, I felt like this:

If I could figure out how to block those ads, I would.

I thought that I would never join a dating site. But after being single, not having any free time with coaching and training to go out on a regular basis, I figured I would give it a whirl. (Here is an article about the difficulty of maintaining a work/life balance as a teacher). At the suggestion of a friend who told anecdotes of his success and how easy it was, I installed this app on my phone called Tinder. The basics of the app are simple-load in some pictures from Facebook, and the app uses your GPS location to give you people who are within a certain mile radius of you. You can either select a little heart to say yes (yes to what, I don't know), or an "x" to say no (which I guess means no, I am not interested in you). If both individuals select the heart, then a chatting function is enabled between the two people.

This means that the app is effectively a meat market. The more attractive you are, the more "hearts" you get. You can write a few lines about yourself, and I occasionally read those, but often they don't contain much information other than "I like having fun!" What does that even mean? Who doesn't like having fun? 

Who doesn't like fun? Probably Squidward.

So after clicking the heart symbols on a bunch of women, you wait. Sometimes, when you click the heart, they will have already done it for you, and you get a notification saying that you can now chat with this person. So what do you say?

I would typically avoid statements like "Hi!" or anything of that nature. That doesn't start a conversation. I tried a bunch of unusual questions or punny jokes, with varying success rates (hence, the opener to this post). Why unusual? Because I wanted to see what they would think, and it was a way to build a conversation. If they seemed interesting, I could ask other, more typical questions. Here are some of my most successful (in terms of response rates) questions/jokes:

"Your best friend gets kidnapped, and your only chance of raising the ransom money is to win a game show. On which show do you stand the best chance to win?" This question had my highest reply rate. Answers ranged from Survivor, to Legends of the Hidden Temple, and Guts (yes, the Nickelodeon shows from many years ago). 

I had to look up what you won from this game show-apparently things like a cd player and trips to space camp. I am not sure how much your friend is worth, but hopefully he/she is worth more than a cd player with 30 second anti-skip technology.

"Two bucks in your pocket as you walk home from a night out. What do you get to munch on from a corner store on your way back?" Everything from roasted salted almonds to water. 

"You win a $100 gift card that is only good for products found in a skymall magazine. What do you get?" Gnomes, robes, harry potter wands. This, when responded to, lead to some entertaining conversations.

Overwhelmingly, I would have to make the first contact. I have no idea what other rates for other people are like, but my guess is that 95% of the time, I started the conversation. What does this mean? Not sure, other than I guess that men are supposed to make the first move in the internet dating game.

Now, for the chatting bit-my takeaway from it was that you had to be "always on". What I mean by that is you can't delay sending a response back. If you are involved in a conversation, you can't stop to focus on your work, not respond for a few hours, etc. If you do, then the opportunity is lost. Heaven forbid you don't talk for a day. Your chance is over. Oops.  

If you find yourself interested in someone, you have to move from the chatting function on the app and into textual relations. This involves the asking/exchanging of numbers. This is just as awkward as in real life. Finding out what is the appropriate amount of time to chat within the app to share your number was tricky, but once you do it, you are committed. If you give your number out, and don't get a text or phone call, game over. You can't return to the chatting function once one of the parties has the other's phone number, that just is desperate. 

If you have reached the point of exchanging numbers, then you have a decent chance at actually meeting the person in real life. AHHHH TERRIFYING. Not really, if you have any social skills. But almost always entertaining. From this app, I have gone on a few dates. Takeaways from them:

1) Most people don't look like their photos. In the words of Nate Dogg (RIP), "Look real close because strobe lights lie." Of course they are going to pick the best looking photos of themselves. That's why my photos are of Brad Pitt. Close enough. The first person I actually went on a date with was definitely way more attractive than her photos-out of my league attractive. The rest varied dramatically. It is also hard to tell how tall someone is from photos. 

2) You have to know why you are going on the date, and some idea of what the other person wants. If you want a relationship out of it, and the other just wants a hook-up, then both people are going to go home unhappy.

3) Have a plan to do something after the date if it is going well. Why have a definitive end time to a date? If places are still open, then take advantage of it.

My opinion of the whole thing? It is incredibly difficult to build something organic from nothing. I gave it the old college try, but I think I am going to go back to enjoying training, coaching, and teaching, and worrying about trying to entice women later.

Darwin Awards and New Years Resolutions

For the snarky and snide (or for those who are looking for a good laugh), the Darwin Awards are an endless source of entertainment. Stories of how people perish by welding gas containers that contain fuel, or how you can die when you look down an elevator shaft provide endless entertainment and cringe worthy moments to procrastinators and those who have a lot of daylight to waste.

It is at this time of year that people make some form of minor commitment to become a better person. Why the connection to the darwin awards? Because human beings have a chance for self improvement; most mistakes don't cause an elimination from the gene pool. Here are some things that I would like to improve upon, and if I don't, I hopefully won't end up with a fitness of zero.

1) Be more willing to do or say something. In the past, I have walked away from doing things that I was unsure of. Someone once told me "that is just who I am". If I perceived the risk of the action too high, or the outcome uncertain, then I would take the safe road. It is my goal to change that. I need to be more willing to act with less concern for a consequence. If I have another chance, I will not let it slip away.

I remember my mistakes, now I need to fix them.

2) Call and write more. Too much of the contact between my friends is impersonal-text messages, online messaging, etc. With these, it is difficult to tell tone and inflection, making it difficult to understand the true meaning of the speaker. So if I have your address, expect a letter. And maybe a phone call. I promise I am not creeping, just trying to stay in touch. Throw your address in the comments if you want something handwritten.

3) Eat healthier. I plan on going "paleo"(for those that are unfamiliar with this term, it means to very loosely eat how a cave man would eat-lots of protein, vegetables, nuts, etc and stay away from refined grains and sugar) for a month or two. The reason why I put it in quotes is that I am only going to go partly paleo-I will continue to eat the food that I already have in my cabinet (I have probably a month or two of food stocked up with rice, pasta, cereal, etc), but only buy paleo foods at the grocery store to restock the cabinet/fridge. I also am going to make lots of exceptions to this diet. I go home every Sunday (and sometimes other days) for family dinner, and my mom's cooking (and dad's bbq'ing) is delicious. If a friend wants to go out to get a meal, I will eat whatever I want. So pretty much this only applies to the meals that I prepare.

Notice no grains and dairy. Unfortunate. 

At the end, hopefully I will be running this fast and sveltely. 

4) To use a total cliché, don't make people a priority who make you an option.

Source. One of my favorite images/memes.

5) Race hard and don't be afraid of bonking during a race, because it will eventually happen. With the exception of the past two weeks, I have had a very successful offseason and past season. The hours will continue to build through the coming months, and I have decided some of my races for the spring and summer. I will be returning to Escape from Alcatraz, and I will be racing at ITU World Championships in Edmonton. For these races (and whatever other ones I decide upon), I am going to push myself harder within the races and see what my real limit is.

 For training, I am continuing to work with Martin Spierings, and I also just joined a local triathlon team sponsored by Every Man Jack. The team is filled with dedicated, very fast athletes who are consistently at the top of the podium in every distance. It is headed by Ritch Viola, who recently won both Ironman Tahoe and Ironman Arizona. I am very much looking forward to training with the team and racing with them this season.

Real Running

Running has exploded recently. There are 5ks, 10ks, color runs, run for various charitable causes, etc. Individuals/corporations have convinced enough people to run while they are bombarded with food coloring, being chased by people dressed up as zombies, etc to be profitable. Mostly these events are not "competitive" in the sense that they do not draw the fastest crowds, but are for fun.

Given that it is Thanksgiving, people obviously need to run to burn off all of the empty calories that they are going to be eating afterwards, so most communities have some form of a "Turkey Trot". Piedmont is no different, and for a town of roughly ~10,000 people, the race has around 2,000 runners each year. Typically, in the crowd, there are some fast runners, mainly college kids who are coming back, and some parents in the community who are very fast.

Earlier this year, I had won a smaller edition of a similar race in town, that had only attracted ~700 runners, and none of the typical faster runners. I had been flirting for the past few months with trying to make myself into a "real" runner, someone who actually maybe kinda sorta doesn't always hate running and might actually enjoy it from time to time when the moon is in the third phase of Saturn but under the watchful eye of Scorpio.

I put effort into my longer runs, and my runs were more consistent, and after this short experiment with running, I decided to put myself in with the self seeded runners at the front of the Turkey Trot.

Typically at these smaller community races, kids like to line up at the front and take off at the gun for about 20 yards. That is fun and awesome, until the rest of the field comes behind them and then this happens: 

The rest of the field comes bearing down on them like a pack of hungry zombies. Kids get knocked over, limbs fly everywhere, and then it's the end of the world.

The race had a small section just behind the start line where you could self seed if you thought that you were capable of running the course under 18 minutes, and with about 4 minutes to go to the start of the race, there were only two or three people in there with me. Then a few more showed up, and then came a few more, and there ended up being about 10-12 of us in the front corral. 

Some of the runners in the front corral.

At the start, we took off. There was dead silence except for the pounding of feet against the pavement, and the breathing of the runners. This was no joke. 

Through the first half mile, the race is pretty flat/downhill, and the group only stretched out a little. I put myself in a group of three that was behind the front group by about 3 seconds heading into the first uphill. Living nearby, I run these hills all the time, and I figured that I would be able to make up ground on the uphills, and my weakness, in comparison to the other runners, would be the flats. 

I was wrong. These were actual runners. I only pulled one guy on the first uphill, and one person behind me shot up the hill and took the lead and gapped the field by a few seconds. This was going to be a race. 

The first mile had a net elevation change of zero (see course map), and I was through in 5:35, and sitting in about 7th place. I had already lost sight of the leaders, but I was just behind two runners, so I wasn't alone. 

The second mile started out flat, and then proceeded up a long, steady incline. Again, I hoped that my legs would allow me to make up time on the people in front and to gap the runners I was with, and again, I was wrong. I only pulled back one person in front, and I was passed by another, so my overall position didn't change. With the uphill, the pace slowed to about 6:10. 

What goes up must come down, and seeing how I was bigger than most of the runners in front of me, I hoped that my heavier mass would allow me to get down the hill faster than them, since I was incorrect about my perceived strength of running uphill. 

And I was wrong again. These were actual runners. The pace quickened down the hill, their cadence was super high, and they flew down the hill. The gap between the runners in front of me widened again, and they were away. The last mile split was ~5:20. I held on to my spot to finish 7th overall, 3rd in the 20-29 age group with a time of 17:04. 

Trucking up to the finish.

My sister also ran in the race-her first road race. With no prep, some walking and talking with friends, and running part of the way with a friend's dog, she finished her first 3mile race. I am proud of her, and hopefully she will get bit by the running bug as I somewhat have.

A post race picture where Katy, one of her friends and I were clearly not ready for it.

Slightly more prepared.

Things to take away: real runners run fast. There are more of them out there. I have a lot of work to do if I want to make up that ground. Keeping healthy will be key. I am currently dealing with a bit of heel discomfort/pain that comes and goes, and hopefully I will be able to sort that out as I push on with the offseason of training.

Now that coaching water polo is over, I will try to keep this more up to date. Thanks for reading.

Let's make life as inconvenient as possible

When we fly, we are told that in the name of safety, we need to take off our shoes, we can't wear belts, and that, save for a few, no liquids can pass through the security checkpoint. We unpack our laptops, and pull whatever we have in our pockets out to be scanned. We then pass through either metal detectors, or a scanning machine that produces images that look like this:

When we are finished with this dance, we frenetically put our shoes back on, shove our belongings back into a backpack, and run, holding our pants up to our gate, hoping that the 45 minutes we stood in line to be verified that we are not a terrorist didn't cause us to miss our flight.

Initially, I did not have a problem with all of these procedures. Anyone can google the anarchist's cookbook and using a few simple chemicals, injure, maim, and kill.

These security protocols are slowly spreading to

Best Motivational Videos

So there are a bunch of motivational videos out there on the internet. Below are my personal favorites.

Do not be afraid to fail. Embrace it. And then get up from that failure and get better.