Saturday 9AM cycling course 9/19/09

46 miles with 3,342 feet of climbing!

TT makes the NY TIMES

A Huge Shout Out to the TT Women!

Congratulations to Megan for winning the Westport Sprint triathlon and also congratulations to Kristin for winning the Toughman Half-Ironman!! Great work ladies! You rock!

Westport Kiwanis Minuteman Sprint

So you're three weeks into training for an Ironman event 2 months hence, but there's this cool sprint race that your team does each year. You can't taper for it because it will cost SOME amount of IM training; you can't miss it, because it's a local event. So...you probably do what I did: ride long the day before (71M for me), hope your legs recover from that ride and the prior weeks' training, and attack the sprint like your pants are on fire.

Attack I did, some 10 minutes after everyone's favorite dolphin impersonator, Megan, led the women's field into the water and through the course. This IS a swimmer's race given the disproportionate length of the swim (1/2 mile) relative to the other events. But I swam hard and exited the water in...who knows? Forgot to start my watch. Out onto the bike course, I POUNDED the pedals, flew around the 5-miles as hard as I could and headed back to transition. Unfortunately, I somehow lost my transition location and cursed as I tried to locate my towel and race flats. Finally, I found it, switched shoes, and FLEW out of the parking lot angrily. Unfortunately, I have no times for the bike or run as I still did not get my watch to go, but I assure anyone reading, I was way faster than last year on these two.

I was able to catch everyone except one strong swimmer, Shane Meehan from NY, who won. But I was content with 2nd overall given how good my legs felt on both the bike and the run. Megan won for the women and was 4th overall. We saw several other clients at the race and it looked like everyone had a good time. This is a fun race if you like running red line for the entire time (39:01 for me this year).

The Charter Oak Challenge -- Giving Bridgeport students a better chance

Today I was able to participate in what is clearly an incredibly valuable cause.

Don't get me wrong -- riding to help combat all the diseases that ravage us is very important.

But how wonderful it is to ride for the future -- and that is what the Charter Oak Challenge is all about.

Andy Boas, the founder of the Charter Oak Foundation, has a strong sense of mission. What he and his comrades have done is nothing short of incredible. The focus of Charter Oak is education.

Although Charter Oak has a college scholarship program, what I see as fundamentally unique is that they have helped to create a Bridgeport school that qualifies for public funding yet also gets private financing (from the Charter Oak 501c(3) non profit company). The children start currently in 5th grade and more grades are being added each year (next year there will be a 5th, 6th and 7th grade). Each child costs $10,000 a year to educate. Charter Oak makes up the funding shortfall that is not covered by the government. Approximately 70 children are in each grade. These children are getting a great education in a beautiful environment with excellent teachers and an organization which acts like angels watching over those in need. The entire community appears to be uplifted by this -- it is inspiration.

So, I have been sick for what seems like a long time -- 5 weeks of downtime starting the second week of August due to a viral illness that turned into bacterial bronchitis/sinusitus. Yes -- I did not start training again until this week, and have done so very slowly. Not being able to breath is no fun. 20 minute runs Monday-Thursday followed by a 45 minute indoor cycling session Friday and a 1 hour session Saturday. I was in my own little world of "this sucks."

So Saturday evening my wife and I went to the Charter Oak foundation off-site in Litchfield County. We got to listen to the founders and families who drive this forward. They all love to bicycle (which is great) but even more, they truly believe in the need to help those in need. Andy Boas has more than a full time job, a family, and yet has created what is clearly a strong community of organizers/givers/volunteers. This Challenge is a unifying act for a team that is very unified in its cause, through its actions, and with its shared moral compass.

And thus Sunday morning, after a wonderful night's sleep, I went on a 65 mile, 6000 foot climb ride from West Cornwall CT to Westport, and stopped worrying about myself. Although I had to use the bronchial dilator oh let's say 10 times, I felt completely compelled to ride. And I could not think of a better group of 40 co-riders to bicycle with than the Charter Oak Champions. From Rob "Bonnie's hero" Adler to Paul "don't scratch them in public" Able to Vanessa from Achievement First to our two Westport Staples Seniors who rode alongside Andy Kaplan and me the entire ride to every TARGETraining person on the ride -- including Nolan Menachemson and Dan Price (along with all the Charter Oak riders all of who ride because it is fun), it was a great group of folks that made its way down the beautiful ride designed by Harold Kamins (who by the way is a past president of A Better Chance). We did hear that Libby Kaplan had a slight mishap with one of her tires but we believe all is OK.

The Charter Oak experience knocked me out of my doldrums. They helped heal me -- pretty much instantaneously. And I hope that next year a bunch of you will join the Charter Oak Challenge -- it is an absolutely worthwhile endeavor and a fantastic cycling and community building experience.

Thank you to the Charter Oak family and to Andy Boas.

ps I heard Max L. got 2nd at Bear Mountain -- any other good results?