September 30th, 2008 Scott
Nervous energy before the start
Last weekend was my first Okinawa ‘reverse’ Triathlon. What happens is that there are several triathlons on marine corps camps on Okinawa and because they use a swimming pool instead of an ocean, they reverse the order of the events to make it work more smoothly. So, we do the run first, then the bike, and finish with laps in a pool. Starting 120 athletes in a pool all at once wouldn’t work very well so this is their solution.
Many of my tri friends who have done ‘reverse’ tris told me that they hate it so I had a bad attitude about it going in. That attitude combined with these less than ideal distances: 10k run, 15k bike, 175m swim. The race would be over before we got on the bikes and there wasn’t enough distance for us that do well on the bike to make up any deficit lost during the run.
Rainy T1 on to the bike
After doing it, I now understand. The course goes around the flight line on Futemna MCAS (marine corps air station) and it wouldn’t be possible to do that with a 5k run. We then did two 7.5k laps around the flight line on the bike, and 7 laps in the 25m pool. I think 3 bike laps and two times through the pool would’ve helped balance out the legs, but it was still a fun course. The run was full of challenging short, steep hills and the wind made the bike very challenging as well.
My goal in the run was 45:00 and then do whatever I could after that. I’ve done a stand alone 43:00 10k, so I figured a 45:00 should be possible. I held the pace well for the first 4 miles or so, but started slowing down at the end. Apparently the group bike ride the day before was too much (although it wasn’t for another guy that went with us…he beat me by 4 minutes or more in the run) for my legs. I felt okay, but just couldn’t hold the pace and heart rate both.
The bike was interesting because my legs were shot, but I still had more than most since I passed a ton of people. I averaged 21.8mph in a twisty, windy, technical wet slippery course. I was pleasantly surprised that it was that fast.
The final 5minutes in the pool was uneventful except that I need to learn how to do flip turns that change lanes. I saw how others were doing it after I finished so I’ll be able to work on them for the next one.
I would’ve placed 2nd in the 19 – 29 year group and 4th in the 40 and over group. Out of 34 30 – 39 year olds, I placed 12th. That was a strong field of 30 somethings where the top 7 spots overall came from. It’s the weakest in division result I’ve had, but I really don’t run very well yet and still placed 17th overall out of 100 or so entries. I was especially surprised at how well I did relative to the young kids and the old men (I’ll be there next year…)
Here are the road bike division results:
Women 12 to 17
Place Name City Age Overall Time
1 Claudia Hattman 12 87 1:53:05.8
2 Gabrielle Hattman 12 91 1:59:30.9
Women 18 to 29
Place Name City Age Overall Time
1 Monica Meese 24 31 1:23:49.5
2 Marlena Supina 19 42 1:29:47.5
3 Rachel Anderson 28 44 1:30:33.7
4 Ashley Zdancewicz 23 55 1:34:07.0
5 jamie trembearth 26 63 1:37:22.5
6 laura bruzzese 27 64 1:37:35.6
7 brooke kelly 29 83 1:48:11.7
8 Christen Cilley 25 92 2:16:33.7
Women 30 to 39
Place Name City Age Overall Time
1 Totsumi Rie 38 23 1:21:55.9
2 April Noke 32 29 1:23:27.4
3 kyoko toyota 33 34 1:24:59.0
4 vanessa bartley 30 43 1:29:56.6
5 Brandi Sellers 33 46 1:31:23.8
6 michelle sprauge 31 53 1:33:24.2
7 Erin Harding 35 67 1:38:23.3
8 Amy Longhenry 32 71 1:39:05.3
9 Christa Leggio 33 73 1:39:39.8
10 Jennifer Hesselberth 36 76 1:43:07.8
11 ikoko oishi 36 85 1:49:18.2
12 tara miles 39 86 1:49:58.0
Women 40 and over
Place Name City Age Overall Time
1 Yukiko Delatte 44 54 1:33:54.1
2 tomoko kurose 42 79 1:46:35.7
3 tammy dockins 46 82 1:48:04.9
Men 12 to 17
Place Name City Age Overall Time
1 Tristan Bunch 12 89 1:55:32.1
Men 18 to 29
Place Name City Age Overall Time
1 hajime tomashiro 28 8 1:16:18.9
2 rui moriya 20 12 1:17:42.3
3 Jefferey Bentley 23 18 1:19:47.6
4 naoki yamada 26 24 1:22:13.2
5 Tom Yost 28 33 1:24:52.2
6 andrew charness 20 35 1:25:51.8
7 John Ragan 23 38 1:27:37.8
8 Evan Johnson 24 40 1:28:40.3
9 jun sayakura 25 45 1:31:13.5
10 william kelley 28 49 1:32:03.1
11 Erik Goff 26 50 1:32:46.6
12 dai yamashiro 19 57 1:34:53.5
13 jon peralta 19 61 1:36:24.2
14 Morgan Gillette 23 62 1:37:00.6
15 Brandon Lauret 25 78 1:43:37.6
16 Michael Croley 24 88 1:53:59.5
Men 30 to 39
Place Name City Age Overall Time
1 Joseph Galvin 36 1 1:06:47.8
2 Jason Misner 34 2 1:09:39.7
3 garrett ianocone 32 3 1:10:20.5
4 takuro kimijima 31 4 1:10:22.7
5 koji tokumine 38 7 1:15:05.1
6 trevar teeselink 36 9 1:16:26.5
7 Mitshurio Tsuda 36 10 1:16:36.8
8 Robert Gordon 36 11 1:17:41.5
9 Masaru Nakajima 31 13 1:18:12.1
10 seth lewis 30 15 1:18:18.3
11 christopher bateman 32 16 1:19:14.6
12 Scott McGlynn 39 17 1:19:43.4
13 Rob Clemens 39 20 1:20:56.8
14 Adam Leggio 33 21 1:21:52.5
15 yuichiro tamaki 38 22 1:21:54.3
16 charles miles 38 25 1:22:27.0
17 Rodolfo Quispe 39 27 1:23:19.0
18 rin suko 37 28 1:23:21.1
19 Matthew Yiengst 34 30 1:23:35.3
20 Toyohira Gouji 37 32 1:24:04.8
21 Yuuki Funakoshi 37 37 1:26:37.9
22 Montonga Takaya 33 39 1:28:37.0
23 Perry Johns 33 41 1:28:48.9
24 Kinjo Tsukasa 31 48 1:32:00.9
25 Robert Scrivner 38 52 1:33:13.7
26 Tetsuo Oyama 36 60 1:36:17.3
27 Takahiro Namizato 36 69 1:38:49.9
28 Toyama Kyotomo 34 70 1:38:57.0
29 Tsuyoshi Yamada 34 72 1:39:07.5
30 Akihito Vesato 38 74 1:41:51.5
31 Mitsuru Ushiroyama 38 75 1:42:30.9
32 shigekatsu shimoji 33 77 1:43:18.8
33 Makoto Higa 36 84 1:48:29.6
34 philip kendill 37 90 1:57:08.4
Men 40 and over
Place Name City Age Overall Time
1 hibeo myagi 44 5 1:13:19.3
2 Trevor Lennard 42 6 1:14:43.4
3 tom brinegar 44 14 1:18:15.5
4 Paul Wilkinson 42 19 1:20:28.8
5 jon wolfe 46 26 1:23:13.6
6 John Vandevelde 48 36 1:26:00.1
7 Shinji Kinjo 45 47 1:31:47.6
8 satoshi myagi 40 51 1:33:01.9
9 Toshiaki Fukushima 46 56 1:34:52.8
10 Toyama Yoshiyasu 43 58 1:35:34.3
11 Sadao Nakamura 58 59 1:36:08.5
12 Robert Shafer 42 65 1:37:44.9
13 hitoshi cume 53 66 1:38:14.0
14 Robert Pellosma 42 68 1:38:31.2
15 Henery Dockins 44 80 1:46:39.9
16 Yoshimasa Kikuyama 43 81 1:46:48.6
Posted in Triathlon | 4 Comments »
September 22nd, 2008 Scott
See the low table in the back?
This week we ventured down the street to a local restaurant. They had about six tables, with half of those the low kind that you sit on the floor next to. Interestingly, this seating area was raised so that the level of the tables throughout the restaurant were all the same. Turns out their speciality is ramen noodles so they had several different varieties of ramen. We did the miso and I had garlic fried rice. I also had some dumpling potsticker type things that I don’t remember what the name of. Overall, very filling and inexpensive meal just a block from our apartment. There are two other restaurants equally close we’ll have to try sometime.
Our japanese lessons are paying off. I could read one word on the specials sign and I was able to ask what it meant. The only problem was that I couldn’t understand the explanation. Oh well; more lessons should solve that problem. Our teacher is a very old woman who weighs all of 75 pounds and teaches out of her house. She has stacks of things lying around the house that must be decades old. The only clear spots are an old couch and the two card tables that we sit at to take our lessons. She is a very gifted teacher but she doesn’t speak much English. She knows English well (was married to an Anglican Pastor), but speaks mostly in Japanese which can make the explanations and stories a little hard to follow, but will likely help us learn faster in the long run. This week we got through about 2/3rds of the writing of the Hiragana alphabet. That is one of two alphabets they use in addition to the 2000 or so Kanji characters that make up the written language. Each hiragana symbol is a very specific artistic drawing that is difficult to replicate. Megumi-san laughs a lot at our first attempts. She mentioned one day that she used to be a pilot and flew F-104′s for the Japanese government in research studies. I thought I had misunderstood her until she pointed out a picture on the shelf of a very much younger Megumi-san sitting in the pilot’s seat of an F-104 in a pilot’s suit. I was stunned that this little old lady living in what looks to be slightly above poverty level used to fly F-104′s. What a world.
Earlier in the week Gina found a big spider in the guest bathroom. I store my kites in the bathtub in there and it must’ve crawled into one of my bags the last time I was at the beach. It was hanging out on the side of the tub and took a while to catch because it would JUMP everytime I got anywhere near it. Ultimately, it jumped right into the tupperware bowl you see Gina holding. It was erie because I approached it on the wall where it was and it jumped and flipped in the air to land perfectly in the bowl in the opposite diretion it had been hanging on the wall; all in an instant.
Gina didn't like posing for this one
Gina’s expression says it all. this spider was HUGE. However, we saw one even bigger on Sunday when we went to a local temple cave and saw one the size of a dinner plate on the way into the cave. I’ll have pics up for that later after I process them off the good camera.
Posted in Health and wellness, Okinawa, Okinawan Culture, People | No Comments »
September 13th, 2008 Scott
I was approved this summer to replace/upgrade my kiting quiver. I started kiting in 2000 on a Wipika Free Air. The latest Naish kite at that time was the AR5. That seems like a long time ago. My current quiver was all Naish kites, a 8.0 Boxer II, a 12.0 Aero, and a 18.0 Aero II. My board was a Mauricio Abreu Wipika 144 wakestyle board. It took me a long time to get that quiver put together and I thought it would last me forever. The year after I added the Aero II is when the SLEs started coming out and everything I had was suddenly old school. I got into bicycle racing and had a broken hip one summer from that and a separated shoulder the next season so I haven’t been kiting much the last two years. In that time it would appear that many refinements to the SLE design have come about and after much research I decided that a quiver of 2008 Naish Cults would be the way to go along with a 140 Naish Sol board.
Big Winds in Hood River set me up with a good deal because the 2009 Cults just came out and I ordered a 10.5, 13.5, and 15.0. They have been sitting in my back room waiting all week for wind and with the typhoon hitting Taiwan this weekend, we are getting 18 – 27 mph winds here in a perfect SE direction for our beach. I waited til I saw locals going out though because I didn’t know if typhoon fringe winds were dangerous or okay to go out in. With 18 – 27 range I would’ve put up my old 12.0 Aero and hung on for dear life during the gusts and pumped like mad to get through the lulls. It would’ve been a hard day of kiting.
I put up the 10.5 Cult thinking it was a little light for that kite, but it’s almost dead onshore here and I’ve had enough bad first experiences with new gear to know that going out a little light was the safe way to go. This is the first kite I’ve had with the octopus system (only one place needs to be pumped) and I think it’s a great idea. I don’t think I’ll like it much if I ever have to remove a bladder for a patch job though. That internal plumbing must be a bear.
After a quick assist from Gina, I put the kite up, grabbed the new Sol and stepped out far enough from shore to put the kite into a power dive and try to get out. I worked it hard to advance as much as possible and was going somewhat slow, but when I tacked back I realized that I had been going WAY upwind and had gotten well clear of the shore in just two passes. I also very quickly realized that it was impossible to oversheet the kite in the lulls (I had a bad experience testing an SLE last year and kept oversheeting it — poor set up) and at the same time I could tame the biggest gusts just by straghtening my arms. The next thing I noticed is that the kite turned brutally fast. It was faster by a long shot than any kite I’ve ever flown. However, the huge depower range made that speed forgiving because you could just shut the power off if you turned it too quickly in the power zone.
In a matter of minutes I felt more comfortable on this gear than I ever had on any set up I’ve ever used, and this in probably some of the most challenging gusty, mixed chop and swell conditions I’ve ever flown in. In a word, the session was buttery. It would’ve been anything but that on my old gear. After crashing the kite and watching it relaunch before I even tried to put in bar input I felt confident enough to try a small jump. I set up for what would’ve been a simple hop on my old gear just to get a feel for the kite placement in the zone and the timing of the pop on the board. My old gear would’ve put me no more than a foot or two off the water and maybe covering 5 – 10 downwind on the landing. Well, this small set up turned into about a 10 foot high jump that floated downwind a good 30 feet. I can’t wait to see what happens when I really crank into it on a good day with a swell to launch from.
Overall, I can’t be more pleased. This was the first board after many tries that actually worked better than my antique gear and the kite is on a whole new level from my old gear.
I can’t wait to get out again. This stuff rocks!
Posted in Hobbies, Kiteboarding | No Comments »
September 6th, 2008 Scott
Two weeks of school have gone by and with the alternating day schedule we use here, I’ve seen my students five times. So after only five rehearsals we performed at the first home football game last Friday night. It sounded rough and weak, but we ended songs together and only had to restart one a couple of times. More importantly, all my students arrived on time, and only two stands were left out afterward. These two accomplishments are huge considering that most of my band are freshman and this is their first experience playing at a football game.
My freshman have very good fundatmental skills and I’m confident we will have a strong sounding band once we get a few rehearsals going. We have two more football games with the last one being homecoming. I hope to have the field show complete and ready to go by that time. It’ll be fund if we make it and stressful if we don’t.
Thai Goddess
Ferris Wheel
Gina and I went out for dinner to a place called ‘American Village” near Gate One of Kadena Air Base. It is a collection of restaurants and shops that cater mostly to Japanese tourists. The young and the hip also hang out there. It’s much like an American mall would be in a sub-tropical climate; many of the shops are outside and there is a very nice beach along one side of the area. We could eat at a different restaurant there once a week and take all year to hit them all. This time we picked a Thai restaurant that sits right under the gian “Coca Cola” ferris wheel. It sounded like we were on a ship with the motor for the ferris wheel grinding away in all the walls. The food was very good, and the Thai goddess cut out at the entrance was entertaining.
Gina and I started Japanese lessons with a wonderful little old lady who teaches out of her house. We meet with her twice a week for 90 minutes and she speaks very little English. The books we are using look to be at least 20 years old, but we are learning the fundamentals which is just what I want. Megumi-san looks as though she has lived in this house for decades. It reminds me of several older relative’s homes I’ve been in that have decades of stuff in stacks taking up most of the available space in the home. As is japanese custom, we remove our shoes when entering and she is insistant that we use the slippers by the door that are for guests. While this too is common, I suspect that a lot of folk have worn the slippers I use (the only ones big enough for me) and it’s more disconcerting that putting on bowling shoes because at least you one that something got sprayed in them to kill any germs that might be lingering.
From now on I remember to wear socks to Megumi’s house. Mistake made only once.
Our homework this week was to memorize the pronounciation of the 40 or so japanese letters in the Hiragana alphabet. Most are pretty easy, but the tough one is a cross between an L and an R which is why they mix them up in English…they only have one and it sounds like both.
Posted in Military Culture, Okinawa, Sports | No Comments »
