Abracadabra

Shiny Stockings

Personally, I’ve never cared for how Abracadabra turned out. Shiny Stockings is quite nice though. Right click and ‘save as’ to keep the file for yourself.

Enjoy!

The marine corps bases here have a system of calculating a head index that takes into account temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and sun light. From this data, they will post either no flag, a green flag, a yellow flag, a red flag, or a black flag. Most days this week have been black flag by 10:00 AM. That indicates that no physical fitness activities outside are to be undertaken. Even though the air temperature might be around 88, with the sun and humidity factored in, their system has registered a high of 120 for a couple of bases this week. Any number over 90 seems to generate the black flag. You can see what the current conditions are for yourself.

We have about a week left here before we leave for our summer travels. We will be heading to Washington for a couple of weeks, then going to Germany to visit a friend for a short week. After that, Gina travels to Los Angeles to visit with her sister while I go to Ireland for  photography workshop. I’m looking forward to all of it.

I’ve settled on my athletic goals for the upcoming school year. I will enter the Izena 88 Triathlon, the Tour of Okinawa 85k Road Race, the Naha Marathon, and the Ishigaki Olympic Distance Triathlon. Izena is close to a 70.3 or half-ironman distance and will be my first long course race. The Tour of Okinawa is a challenging bicycle race that I’ll enter to support a good friend of mine who wants to do well in it. The 85k course is very hilly and consequently very challenging. I will do the Naha Marathon in hopes that I finish strong rather than weak as I did in the Okinawa Marathon early this Spring. And finally, the Ishigaki Triathlon is one I’ve wanted to do for three years but haven’t been able to due to scheduling with work obligations. This Olympic Distance race will be my #1 priority race for the season. がんばって！

One US Dollar equals about 6 Chinese Yuan. This conversion made it challenging to calculate the value of things. We eventually figured out to divide everything in half, then again in thirds to get a rough estimate of US value. All three of our guides told us they average monthly income is 2000 yuan. However, a very small ordinary apartment costs about 1.5 million yuan to purchase in Beijing or Shanghai. That would be the equivalent of an American earning $333 a month trying to find an apartment for $250,000. We saw thousands upon thousands of apartments and easily 50% of the cars on the street were expensive European models (BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, etc). These cars cost about double the cost we would bear. Apparently they have high import tariffs or luxury taxes. Time and time again George would quote prices that were about double what my estimates would be ($50,000 – $150,000 per car). Neither Emily or George (our Beijing guide) could afford to live in their respective cities. Each of them had a 60 – 90 minute train commute each day to get to our hotel. Based on how they dressed and the nature of their jobs (likely a pretty good job and they got good tips) I’d say they were upper middle class.

So who lives in all those apartments? If you have to be rich to afford a 500 square foot studio, where do people who earn less than 2000 yuan a month live? If that’s the average, there must be a lot of street people…but I didn’t see more than a couple of obviously homeless people the whole time. I did see A LOT of people and I was also in places where homeless people might congregate, but just didn’t see them. I did see baggage x ray machines at the subway stations and Tianamen Square. I also saw police and army personnel in most public places. We had to go through security checkpoint to get back into the city of Shanghai after a drive in the country.

All three guides were very quick to always point out or explain why China is the greatest country on earth or why China is quickly becoming a very important country on the worldwide scene. This felt a little like government sponsored patriotism to me since it all seemed very similar from all three of them. Emily explained that she had to go through a one year training program to become a guide. At the end of the year, she had to pass a test that she estimated only 10% of the students who took the course passed. Of those students who passed, she estimated that only 10% actually got jobs as tour guides. Seems extreme, but in a place where there are 1 billion people, the job market is likely fairly competitive. Still, that means that Emily is 1 of a 100 who wanted her job.

Because of the ‘one child’ policy and the cultural preference for boys, there is an imbalance in the population. There are more men than women. In the cities, a man can not hope to get married unless he owns his own apartment. Review my figures above to see why this is especially difficult and why many men still live with family (and consequently have a failure to launch).  Married couples who are each ‘one child’ themselves from the policy are now allowed to have two children and couples in rural areas under certain circumstances can have two children (but only if you were born in a rural area…so you can’t move from the city to get a bigger family). It was fairly interesting to realize that we never saw a family bigger than three in a place where we saw more people in one place than anywhere else we’d been.

A foreign teacher recruited to come teach English at a private school might make 5000 yuan a month. Still not much money.

Facebook is blocked in China. Needless to say, I also refrained from checking my DoD email account while there.

All three guides had somewhat disparaging remarks about Japanese people. Basically, they felt that everything Japan has ever done was something that China did first, and did better. These sorts of comments where made about architecture, food, written language, etc. I don’t think they even realized how it sounded….it was just a matter of fact to them:

“Well you know that the Japanese writing system is actually Chinese, right? Well, almost. They could only learn about 3,000 characters”

“Actually the Japanese learned how to make pagodas from us.”

All of it likely true, but it struck me as most likely that they don’t think to highly of Japanese folks.

George explained to us that Tibet has no right, privilege, or need to be freed. It is part of China and China has done a great deal to improve Tibet. End of discussion.

George was baffled as to why American electronics companies will not market their products to him. He likes American products and would buy lots of them if they would just sell them in China. I explained to him that in the news that week I had read a story about how most American companies can’t wait to sell to the world’s biggest market but the Chinese government won’t let it happen. He laughed at me because he found this story to be absurd. It would be impossible for that to be the problem. He was insistent that it was because our companies don’t want to do business in China. It’s all a matter of perspective I suppose. I know Apple wants to sell stuff to him (and they are starting to). Perhaps George is more interested in F-22′s. I could see why Lockheed-Martin might have a problem with selling him military grade equipment.

Chinese people have no socialized health care system. If you have a good job, you can get insurance. However, a great many of China’s people are self employed farmers. If they get seriously ill, there is no recourse for them and they are refused service. Can you imagine not even having the ability to go to an emergency room to get treatment? People argue about health care in the states, but the bottom line is that you can get care if you need it. Ultimately, the hospital may have to ‘write off’ the costs if a patient can’t pay but that cost is transferred to higher bills for the rest of us which means higher insurance premiums (hey…we were all already paying for poor people’s health care…now it’s being handled by the government instead Blue Cross). In China they have none of these issues. If you have no money or insurance, you receive no care.

Bottom line is that China is a powerful old country that is doing very well in modern times. They have different priorities than we do, but they have a different culture than we do. It was most certainly a modern, first world economy that I saw. Unlike Cambodia and Vietnam where you could clearly see that they still live in an old (third) world economy, China looks and feels like a force to behold. Obviously there are freedoms we take for granted that simply aren’t possible in a Communist country, but our guides felt like many of our ‘freedoms’ were simply to dangerous to be allowed and they felt confident and safe with how their government dictated their lives. Our government dictates much of our lives as well, it’s just delivered in a package we are all familiar with seeing. I’m not advocating that their system is inherently good or bad (or evil), I’m just trying to point out that perspective makes a huge impact on perception. George found it insane that I could own a gun. I find it insane that he can’t freely browse the Internet.

George is either happy in his Communist country or he’s been taught to be happy. I’m either happy in my Democratic country or I’ve been taught to be happy. Either way, we’re both happy.

There were two other tour groups of Americans and at least one other individual traveling alone doing similar itineraries. We crossed paths with these people from time to time before meeting them all again on the return flight on the closing Sunday. When Gina and I had originally gone into the tour agency to book the trip, we had anticipated going in one of the advertised group packages. Having travelled in a group to Vietnam in 2008, we knew that there would be some issues with traveling in a group we would have to put up with but felt it was worth it to make sure all the details were already planned. However, we ended up booking a trip that was just for the two of us. We also were able to modify certain aspects of the trip to fit our personalities because we were not doing it as part of a large group. So, for the same cost as the group package we received all the same benefits but were able to customize the trip. For example, we had an English speaking guide meet us at each airport. This guide and our driver picked us up each morning and dropped us of each night when were were finished. At the conclusion of that city’s stay, the guide took us all the way to the security screening at the airport. The large tour groups also had a guide, but they had to share this guide with 20 – 30 other people. We had our guide to ourselves and consequently had a lot of time to discuss culture, politics, economics, and history with them. We also were able to move to each tourist spot on our own schedule. Sometimes we’d stay longer if it looked more interesting and sometimes we’d move on quickly if the site didn’t mean much to us. This sort of flexibility was not possible with the large group tours. This proved to be especially useful for the government mandated Jade/Silk/Pearl/Tera Cotta factory stops when we could get back in the van as soon as we were done with the walk through. Some of the other groups spent several precious hours at these tourist traps only to find their time at the Great Wall or the Terra Cotta Warrior Pits significantly curtailed.

I will cover the aspects of this trip from three perspectives: The Tourist, The Traveller, and The Photographer.

The Tourist
The tourist in me had a fantastic trip. We had only two minor poor services issues the entire time. Everything went smoothly and without a hitch from checkins, transfers, meals, purchases, etc. It was a remarkably smooth and professionally organized itinerary. At our first stop in Beijing we saw Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, and a live Kung Fu based show (a la Broadway or Las Vegas) on the first day. On the next day we visited the Great Wall (using a cable car and a summer bobsled), the Summer Palace, and a Chinese Acrobatics show. On our final day we visted the Lama Temple and a Hutong neighborhood (complete with rickshaw ride). It was a tourist’s dream visit. In Xian, we spent the first day visiting the Terra Cotta Warriors and the Great Mosque (including a cool trip through the Muslim Quarter) with a dinner theater presentation of ethnic singing and dancing. The next day we transferred to Shanghai were we saw Yu Garden and the Bund. We crashed in our room late that afternoon and ordered room service. The activities had finally caught up to us and we needed to take a break. The next morning we traveled to Lake Tongli to visit the ‘Venice of the East’ and then had an evening cruise on the river in front of the Bund and the Pudong skyline. Overall, an exceptional collection of sites to see. However, it was exhausting. For us non-city folk, a visit to New York, Washington D.C., and Chicago in eight days would be equally daunting and exhausting.

The Traveller
This trip was better suited to the tourist than to the traveller. Granted, if you are going to be in Beijing and likely never be there again, you should go see the Great Wall. However, the traveller would’ve spent time finding the spots nobody else knows about and trying to walk as many kilometers of it as possible. The traveller would’ve also stopped in some of the many villages on the way to the wall to meet people and find out more about how they live. Unfortunately that was difficult since our driver sped through these towns in excess of 60 mph. The traveller also would’ve wanted to eat with the locals as most of our meals were set up for tourists and Western tastes. Often we’d go to a restaurant full of locals and interesting looking food only to be lead to another room full of tourists easting very shiny glazed goods stripped of all the nasty stuff Westerners scorn (bones, intestines, etc). One of our guides took my comments to heart and we did eat with the locals one night for Beijing Roast Duck, but he still made sure the other menu choices were easy on Western style stomaches. The traveller got tired of being in the big city…and I really mean BIG city. Beijing is 11 million, Xian is 6 million (a small town by Chinese standards) and Shanghai is 18 million. These place are massive and along with that comes the issues of too many people in too small of a space. Cars and pedestrians alike share no sense of courtesy. To get where you want to go you have to be the most aggressive.  Gina was thrown out of the way by an old woman trying to follow her guide as we waited for our tour boat. Our driver in Shanghai sported a secondary horn that sounded like a factory disaster buzzer as well as a PA system he could use to tell people to get out of his way. He wasn’t shy about using either system. The next time I visit China, I will go as the traveller and only use the big cities as a port of entry and exit. I want to see the rural areas and take the time to enjoy them without being shoved out of the way by someone else.

The Photographer
The photographer took a new set up for this trip that worked much better in the dynamic environment of trying to take photos while surrounded by tons of people who don’t care about your photo. I bought a Canon 7D last fall and kept my 20D as a backup. When I went to Kyoto in the Fall, I realized that taking pictures of tourist spots with a tripod is very, very challenging. The tripod takes up too much space and time when there is an ocean of humanity around you. It is especially cumbersome if you are trying to stay in contact with a tour group on a tight schedule like I was. So this winter I purchased a monopod & tilt head and a Blackrapid camera strap. The monopod was my substituion for the tripod but allowed a little more speed and also easier to carry on a sling. The Blackrapid strap allowed me to carry two cameras comfortably on either hip and be able to bring either one up to my eye in an instant to take pictures. I generally kept the 10 – 22  wide angle zoom on the 20D and the 17 – 55 2.8 IS on the 7D. This combination allowed me to quickly and easily take both wide angle and normal range shots. It worked extraordinarily well and I can’t recommend the system enough. The cameras were always quickly within reach and yet comfortably out of the way when not in use. Occasionally I’d swap out the 17 – 55 with my 70 – 200 2.8 when I needed to get in a little tighter or wanted to shoot from a discreet distance. I’m torn on how useful the monopod was because it was only used on the 70 – 200 shots when the shutter speed wasn’t hand holdable. My IS on the mid range zoom negated any advantage for the monopod and the wide angle also never found the need to be stabilized. If only my 70 – 200 were IS then I’d be set.

I took about 3500 shots with approximately 1000 of those as 3 shot bursts for potential HDR use later. As of this first draft of writing, I’ve only gone through the shots once and only a couple really stand out to me so far. This is much different than my Vietnam and Cambodia shots where I found a great deal of interesting possibilities on the first look through. I’ll have to comb through them in more detail to see what else might be sleeping in there, but for now I’m little disappointed. Most of the shots don’t even look good enough for postcard use let alone a large format print, but only time will tell.

It don’t want to ever run a marathon that way again. I do, however, want to run a marathon again and in a such a way that I finish strong. That is the primary difficulty in running a race this long: figuring out a pacing strategy that gets you to the end without leaving too much time out on the road. I certainly was at the wrong end of the stick today for I was on schedule for a 3:45 until mile 18 and then it all fell apart. Aerobically, I felt fine but my legs were sending me pain signals I didn’t know existed. Even more interesting is that they were hurting in completely different ways that they would in my long runs during training preparing for the race. During those runs, my glutes would get very painful followed my my hamstrings. Today, neither of those muscle groups caused any problems. My knees and upper ankles were killing me today. Both IT bands acted up and created a great deal of irritation and I had cramps occur on the outsides of my lower legs above my ankles. I didn’t even know I had a muscle there because it’s never been an issue before during training.

I think the IT band issue cropped up because of my taper the last two weeks. Less running meant less stretching and they tightened up. For me, as long as I consistently stretch my IT bands after runs, they stay happy. Since I was running less, I was stretching less. I’ll remember to do more stretching next time during a major taper like this.

The course had a lot of hills and my training didn’t include any hill work. Consequently, I have some toenails in trouble tonight and I’m sure I’ll end up losing at least two of them.

As for the race itself, the organization and the fans were awesome. The Japanese do an excellent job of organizing sports events like these and this one was no different. Handling 11,000 athletes must be challenging and this organization did a great job. We had timely shuttle busses from the parking areas, clear staging pre-race, and smooth handling of medals and certificates at the conclusion of the race. Within two minutes of passing the finish line, I had a certificate with my name, finish time, active race time, and overall place in the race. They have the data handled very well.

Along the route, a multitude of Okinawans lined the course offering water, tea, brown sugar, salt, otter pops, soba noodles, candies, oranges, lemons, and bananas. The official race support had water every 5k, but there was plenty of water to be had from individuals along the course in between the official areas. Plenty of spray cans of an ‘icy hot’ type material were available for help with sore muscles. Unfortunately, the overspray sometimes would get in your eyes as you ran by and that stung (and not in a good way).

It was mostly fun but I’m looking forward to doing another one that is completely fun.

The next week I ran 12 miles and still enjoyed it as well. The next day I signed up to do the marathon with them and a few days after that I had a coach draw up a training plan for me based on my personal best times in the 5k and 10k over the last year and all the triathlon training volume I’ve had.

I now do a 6 mile run at a medium pace, speed work on Thursdays, and the long easy run on Sundays. I fit in the swimming and cycling when I have time and energy. The last few long runs have been 12, 16, 16, and 18 miles respectively. I’ve also started doing a 20 minute ice bath on my legs after each long run. The first dip in is painful, but it really helps the recovery process go more quickly.

Fortunately, I’ve not really had any major injury issues come up. I tightened my laces too tight a few weeks ago in my right shoe and now I have some major tendon irritation on the top of my foot. That was solved with some creative re lacing of the shoe to release the pressure on that zone. The shoe looks funny, but it’s working just fine.

Bottom line is that I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to complete the marathon, but I know that I prefer to ride my bike, and I know I’m better at riding my bike as well.

Maybe an IM tri is the works someday…depending on how this marathon feels when I finish.

I’ve gone on my long runs with another guy training for a marathon that last two Sundays and I’ve done well on the 10 mile run last week and we did the 11 mile run today in 1:39 (actually 11.5 miles). That’s about 7 mph average which is good enough for a 3:45 marathon pace. Of course, that’s assuming constant speed to the end which is unlikely. Nonetheless, I’m starting to think I could do a marathon. He’s training for one here in early March and I’ve decided I’ll try it with him. Should be interesting and different from my previous bike race or triathlon training. I’ll continue with biking and swimming of course, but the focus will shift to distance running. It should be good for me as long as I stay away from injuries. So far so good on these last two.

At school, I’m co-chairing the lead of the Far East Music Festival this year which means I have a thousand little details to coordinate and take care of before the week of the event (the last week in April). I’ll be happy when I can tie up all the loose ends from that project when we get to May.

At home, I’m trying to catch up on my back log of photo editing from the last few events like the Kyoto trip in November. I’ve also finally gotten all my printer settings dialed in on the new Epson 3880 and my two favorite papers. Upgrading to Snow Leopard was a hiccup in the process, but now everything seems to be working out well and I’ll start churning out some of my newer photos to put up around the house. I’m also firing up a new photo-blog that I’ll post my better shots on to share via the web. This blog is a little different focus so I’ll publish the photo blog at another location. Check back for the link when I get it done.

New Year’s Eve is just around the corner and I hope the new year brings health to everyone. I intend to be more frequent about updating this blog as well as my new photo blog. After living here a couple of years it’s difficult to remember that what seems normal to me will likely still be interesting to people who don’t live here.

I think I prefer the old course for several reasons:

1. The bike leg was 5 laps instead of 8. It’s challenging to keep track of 5 laps let alone 8. Also, the old course was faster; perhaps a bit more dangerous though.
2. The run leg was three mini out and back loops which gave you three opportunities to gage your progress against your competition. This course only lets you see them once and also is one great big climb and then decent.
3. The long run in T1 is a pain. I didn’t feel it at the time, but my feet were bruised up from that. I could’ve thrown on some shoes but it just isn’t worth the time and you don’t notice the pain while in race mode. I did the next day though.

My results were good. I finished 5th overall, 4th for individuals, 2nd for 40+ age group. I was beat by 17 seconds in my age group. I was about 150m behind Mat Lubbers the entire run. If I’d known that was for first place I might’ve dug in a little harder. However, my training wasn’t race specific leading up to the event and I was just happy to be in such a good position. I figured I should just hold on and keep from blowing up and I had fifth place locked up. Looking back at it, I had some issues in T2 and a slow start to the swim that could’ve easily made up that 17 seconds, but hindsight isn’t very effective race strategy.

This course was the same as last spring so I was able to do some direct comparisons. My swim time was way better and this swim was in big swell and chop. Some people turned around at the first bouy and went back in. The DoD has a system of signals regarding safety for getting in the water. On the morning of the race, it was only one level below condition RED (when nobody is even allowed in the water). The wind and waves made it fairly dicey. Also, the wave action stirred up the sand so there was no visibility a the start, lap, and finish. I hit a rock twice (once during warm up and once in the race) that was only inches below the surface but I couldn’t see it due to the silt. All in all, my swim must be way better. Gina says I was 4th or 5th out of the water.

I rode the bike within 10 seconds of last year’s time, but I did it with much less effort this year. Because hadn’t done any race simulations or bricks leading up to this event, I worried about how my legs would do after the ride so I took it a little easier.

In the run, my calves were twichy for the first kilometer and I worried about cramps. I settled into a comfortable rhythm that had me holding a 4:10 pace at 162bpm. For me, that is very fast at a very low rate. I typically lose a lot of speed in my runs after a hard bike. However, I’ve been focussing on speed work in my run training for the last 3 months or so and I think it’s really starting to pay off. I ran the whole leg under 165 (typical race pace rate for me is 175 – 180) and still ran a 20:15 5k split. In training, I’ve hit 19:15 for 5k on fresh legs and at a much higher rate in training so I’m very pleased with that result. I also have been lifting consistently this fall and that is helping me with my endurance and effort. I’ve gone from 2 pull ups to 10 and my hip flexor work has improved my form in the run even when tired so I’m keeping more efficient to the end of the race. My overall time was within seconds of last spring’s, but my overall effort to get there was easier (except for the swim…I had a much more challenging swim this time as did everyone). That time got me around 10th overall last year and 5th this year. Part of that is because turnout was a little lower, but also part of that was the swim was likely a lot slower for everyone.

We had good weather and the Torii Station MWR folks did a good job of hosting. I usually leave fairly quickly after a race so I missed out on the food. I would’ve stayed if they would’ve mentioned that there would be food. Also, I wish the race brief would come far earlier so we get an opportunity to warm up before starting. Virtually every tri I’ve done wants to do the briefing right at the time I want to be warming up. That’s frustrating because the beginning of the swim is hard enough with a proper warm up. It’s truly intimidating when you are overwhelmed from the sprint start because you couldn’t warm up.

I’m not sure when my next event will be. I found out that Ishigaki is the same day as the start of Far East Music so I’ll be working. I have some time to train and choose something starting next March though.

This was my second event with the Garmin 310xt and it performed very well. Unfortunately, the GPS doesn’t work well in the water. I figured open water swim would track but the water must mess up the timing of the satellites. Also, it’s not quite as accurate with altitude as my 705 (I think it’s calculated rather than pressure based) so the climbing stats in my log are way off. I do like the auto-multi sport feature for the race though. You just hit the lap button at each transition and it automatically knows to go to the next sport in the que.. The display can be programmed specifically for each sport. Currently though, there is a bug that doesn’t allow for auto-lap to function at the same time as multi sport. Too bad because counting those 8 laps on the bike automatically would’ve been nice.

Torii Fall Triathlon Full Results

The homecoming game was on Oct 3 and since then I’ve not been as busy, but still neglected the blog. This week Gina and I moved into a house from our apartment. We no longer living within spitting distance of the ocean, but it’s still in the same neighborhood and we can still see the ocean from our dining room window. The cool part is that it is a real HOUSE with a garage. The space feels huge to us after leaving a 1300 square foot apartment and moving into a 2200 square foot house. I no longer hit my elbows on the shower walls.

Triathlon training has been going well. I’m down to 161 pounds and the weight lifting routine is starting to pay off with faster swims at the pool. I don’t get fatigued as quickly and am able to maintain a much better pace through 1000 – 1500 meters. I have my favorite (and first) triathlon coming in a couple of weeks: the Torii Triathlon. This one is a 1000 meter swim, 30k bike, and 5k run. Those distances suit my strengths so I hope to do well. Gina’s roommate from college will be visiting us during that time so she’s going to enter it as well so she can be known as an international triathlete (I suppose a trip to Canada would be easier, but we don’t live there so it wouldn’t be as much fun!).

When she and her husband get here, we are all taking some time to be tourists. We are spending a couple of days in Kyoto which I’ve since found out is THE place in Japan to go for fall colors. I am excited to get the camera gear back out and take some photos. I recently updated my camera (to a Canon 7D) and my printer (to an Epson 3880) so I’m anxious to see what the prints look like from this trip.

First quarter of school ends next week. Even though I say this every year, it still amazes me: first quarter is already over? That went by way too fast. I feel like I’m just starting to get into a groove. It’ll be summer before I know it.

It’s late and I’m tired. I’m off for now, but I promise to get some more interesting stories about Okinawa and Triathlons posted soon. I have to share my experiences with my Garmin 310xt as a traithlon (here’s a hint: it’s good).