Running from Within

Over 30 under 15

2012-01-18T21:17:00.003+08:00

Just a reminder to those out there who are followers of this blog through the Running Centre and any other news source, my blog has changed to focus in on specific training for 2012 and my goals as I have reached my 30's.

http://over30andunder15.blogspot.com/

My latest post is on all of the training and racing shoes in my rotation, why they are good for me and what benefits they provide.

Good Training!

Cheers'

New Blog!

2011-12-19T00:02:00.001+08:00

Decided I needed to create a new blog and leave this one behind for a nice change of pace. Sometimes we need to find a new way to rejuvenate us in our journey and I thought this may very well help. Check out and follow me at my new blog.

http://over30andunder15.blogspot.com/2011/12/2012-another-year-of-progress-goal.html

The title of my blog is "Over 30 and under 15? Take a look to see why that is.

Recap: Savannah a city of running and funning

2011-11-09T22:57:00.000+08:00

Cell Phone shot from Wayne Lamperski's Cell phone at 19.5 miles. LIFT OFF!

Here is a recap of the weekends events in Savannah, Ga along with 24,000 of my other running buddies.

I arrived into town on Thursday afternoon just in time to pick up my race packet and to meet my good friend Logan at the expo. Kent was still in limbo about actually attempting the race but after a 2.5 mile run that night it was pretty much decided there was no way he could do 13.1 miles unfortunately. After the disappointment of his run we hit town for dinner and then to some bars. Yea, I would say most of my runner crazy friends wouldn't go out 2 days before there marathon to have a couple tall boys.

On Friday I had to wake up and deal with a few hours of work from the hotel room which began to stress me a bit, I was ready to race and get away from all of it. At lunch time I set out to get a fresh cut from the barbershop for race day and then Kent I found some hole in the wall Mexican joint. While sitting at the bar, I ordered a Margarita and it was awesome! The owner talked to us about how the race course would screw over Savannah and tourism because they ran it through the ghetto and we needed to pack heat while on the course, sweet! Back to the hotel to wait for Karin and to enjoy the free wine in the lobby of kent's hotel, good for the heart!

Race morning Karin and I woke up at 4:30am before heading to the shuttles which took us about 35 minutes to ride into town. We were worried to say the least after we were about 4 miles from town and we saw a sign on the interstate that said "6 Savannah". Made our way to Kent's hotel to drop off a few things and prepare for the race. Off to the start, I grabbed a 5hr energy and popped it back for some reason, not the best choice on race morning since I never use them ha.

Spotted Joe Lanser quickly in the 1st corral and then it was "oh was that the start gun?" and we are off. Joe and I kept the pace kind of all over the place for the 1st few miles for some reason, the 1st mile was slow but I could care less, we had 25 miles to make up for it! Joe kept picking up the pace and I had to remind him of the 6:05 pace we agreed upon and after 7 miles miles I think that Joe really was getting to antsy to stay back with me especially after finding out we were in the top 12 or so for the marathon. He took off at 8 miles with some foreigner and he sailed away from me while I settled back into the prescribed pace. I tried chatting with other runners on the course but I could never get anything out of them, except fleet feet Savannah's Chris Ramsey. As the half marathon split off I was pretty much running solo minus one guy in front of me. The whole race I knew my stomach didn't feel great and after an attempt at taking a gel at 12 miles my stomach really bothered me and as I approached the 13 mile mark I started eyeing any porta potty I could find. Just after 13 miles I found one, hopped off of the course into a parking lot and took care of business then hit the streets again.

I picked up the pace quickly as I had two sub 5:50 miles while I was trying to make up the time I lost with my pit stop. I could see people ahead of me from a distance and I kept the pace steady from then on. My calves were getting very tight at this point and it scared me a bit so I continued to hold back, even though I felt I had more to give. My stomach continued to bother me the remainder of the race so at 15 miles I took a sip of water and called it a day, Gel at 6 miles , then half a gel at 12 miles and that would be it for the entire day. We hit some mega headwinds for the marathon portion of the race, it was crazy how a back street turned into a corridor of wind and your pace quickly would slow. I tried sprinting 50-60 yards off and on in an effort to keep my pace steady but even running as hard as I could I could only maintain 5:50's on that 50yard stretch into the wind. Hitting the highway I noticed there was a stream line of competitors ahead of me including Joe, let's go for it! I was fatigued and needing some fuel but I just kept grinding it out. Passing one, then another, I caught Joe just before 24 miles and told him to hang behind me and keep focused. I felt like all of the guys I passed were letting my block the wind but it didn't matter i felt pretty decent, I was determined to keep working to break them all.

As we hits the last mile on the streets I was getting pretty tired and wanting to see the finish ASAP, I asked a cyclist who was riding behind me how far away the finish was. Usually you get a "man you are almost there, its around this corner" but this guy destroyed me. I passed the 40k mark about 4-5 minutes before I asked him and then he says "uhhh you have about 2 miles yea, bout 2." thanks buddy!! On my way to the end of the race I saw Karin, Jess, Anne Marie and my grandmother cheering me on to break 2:40. I knew it wouldn't happen on the clock but on my watch there was still a chance. As I made my way around the bend I gave it everything I had while looking at my watch 2:39:40,41,42....2:39:52 at the line on my watch, I knew I in fact broke 2:40 with my actual running time, I am happy with that!

- That night we all hit the town to celebrate, good times for sure!

All in all I was very happy, I was dancing on the course, literally through some water stops, yelling at the people to get "hype" and to "put em up", I was fan favorite for sure amongst the leaders. Looking over my logs, my plan to use local races as speed work really paid off. I never really had any marathon training minus a few long runs and one attempt at MP for 4.5 miles on the green way. NYC 2012 may have me shooting to chop a few minutes off of my mark and maybe go into the Paul Mainwaring range of 2:35, who knows. Special thanks to Mary Jane, Stan and Wayne Lamperski for coming out and supporting me along the course!

Rock N Roll Savannah by nolimitrunna at Garmin Connect - Splits

Back in Action! Savannah 26.2 Miles to Rock N Roll

2011-11-05T08:54:00.000+08:00

This is my 1st time posting since my return back into the states and it is an exciting post to say the least. I am sitting at my work station at the Hampton Inn in Savannah, Ga just a couple hours before I turn in for a good nights rest before my extremelly early 4:30am wake up before venturing to the Savannah Mall to take a shuttle in to town for the Start.

For those who do not know I signed up for the Rock N Roll Savannah Marathon months ago while still in Australia hoping for maximum fitness by the time I arrived back into the US. My surprising brush with death that ended with a shattered arm, expensive bills, and a pretty slow recovery is where I am at right now. My comeback has been pretty good as my miles haven't been over the top as sometimes I GO FOR IT and increase my mileage rapidly to get my fitnesss caught up, but this time I didn't.

Race Website

The game plan for the morning is to drop into Kent's Hotel room before the race for a quick bathroom break and to drop off some clothes before snaking my way through 24,000 people towards the front. Say my goodbye's to Karin before I start my long journey and hopefully find Joe Lanser in the crowd. Either way by the mile, I should see Joe as we plan to pace together as long as possible. My hopes are that we can maintain sub 6:15's and then pick it up as the race progresses. My training has not pointed to those results for the Full Marathon but I have foolish hope and optimisim that i will be able to out something fairly decent with my lower mileage weeks.

Karin is also running in the half marathon, fresh off of a Half Marathon PR in NY but unfortunately after the race in NY her PF problems caught up with her. She is running the race for fun, but I wish her the best and hope that she can truly enjoy the Rock N Roll experience. Look for the both of us as well as Carolyn Maye, Dalena Custer, Michelle Hazelton, and Alex Wernikof out on the course with I freshly printed "TrySports" black and white team singlets!

Special Thanks to TrySports for providing some awesome racing gear, The Running Centre in Perth, WA for providing me with some Sweet Saucony Racing flats and to Mary jane, Stan and Wayne Lamperski who traveled to Savannah to cheer me on!

16,000 Miles to Home: Part Deux (Going back to Cali)

2011-08-15T09:53:00.000+08:00

SAN FRANCISCO

After departing New Zealand and anticipating the arrival back into my home country, once the plane landed the next few days of my life would change. Here I am in a suit, pulling 2 very large suitcases, I have a backpack filled to the brim and another satchel draped over me while trying to figure out the easiest way to get into the city to finally rest in my hotel room. After paying for my BART transit ticket, I was nearly to my hotel, I could feel the soft bed just in thought, since I had not slept very much on the plane. Onto the tram, "wow" I thought, there are a few more people on this thing than our light rail back home. This is just the beginning!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I am standing up on the BART, basically occupying 3 spaces, people begin to file in at each stop. I am sweating through my suit now, people are all around, this is insane, I need to click my heels and get to Kansas. Well I evaluate the situation and realize a lot of people have rainbow shirts and even face paint with similar colors. The final piece to the puzzle was a teenage whom entered the tram with his friends in some strange outfit with "Gay" written all over his face. Holy Ish, it's the one weekend out of the year I randomly book a flight to California for a surprise early return home and its Gay Pride Weekend.

Wow

View from Hotel Metropolis

It was an insane experience for me wondering the streets and seeing naked people just walking around. San Fran is slightly different than the conservative south I am used to. The culture is so open especially on that weekend, I do not have any bad feelings towards lifestyle selections at all, but it was just a culture shock to me, it blew my mind! I took a couple pictures from my hotel room (which was on the parade route) before I closed the curtains and passed out for 2 hrs. After my Friend Glenn arrived later in the night to the city we went out to grab a bite to eat. While waiting around I walked the streets a bit to just get a better knowledge of my surroundings and found a hole in the wall Mexican joint. It was amazing to say the least but we had an interesting experience waiting in line because the ghetto girls in front of us were the rudest people I had ever came across my life!

Fisherman's Wharf

After checking out the sights and sounds of the city for a few days, Mr. Carroll and I set off for the Muir woods and Yosemite National forest in our Ford Focus rental car. We slammed the car with all of our luggage from our stays in Australia and New Zealand. Exploring the Muir Woods was pretty impressive especially for being just 15 min outside of the city. The trees were huge, the surrounding bush was bright green and the sun was peaking through the tree towers. Since Glenn has plans to establish himself as a professional photographer, we took a lot of time to take pictures.

Since we had the rental car, I decided to make it my own Indy car through the rolling turns and tires screeched every 15 seconds, it was exciting, to me anyways haha. After taking some great pictures we hit the road for a long night drive into the Yosemite national forest. Once we arrived into the park around midnight, we stopped shortly after to sleep on the side of the road in our trusty focus. This car was beyond jam packed with 2 grown men, several extra large suitcases and sports bags. This trip was sure to have a stench by the end of it! This was the worst night of sleep ever, I had to hope out of the car 4 times to pee and I at no point was comfortable to sleep. At 6am I woke Glenn up eagerly to move into a different area with the possibility of finding a spot to take a nap.

After venturing into the Yosemite National Forest living quarters, we realized how many people came through the same week as July 4th. Car upon car filed through but thankfully we were able to get most of our sights and pictures taken before it was shoulder to shoulder with people on the trails.

In a short summary of the Yosemite forest trip I found out that Glenn. who keep in mind is an Eagle Scout, thought that Yosemite was pronounced "yo-se-mite" as in rhymes with "gross might", on my 3rd night without showering as I was washing my feet off in the frigid cold river I felt like Jesus, and I realized that in certain circumstances I do not need a large soft bed to sleep in after all. One of the adventures from our explorations was the small crack in our windshield that literally grew across the entire window by the end of our trip. We also had a very interesting last night in San Fran as I took the BART to the airport because our rental car was blocked in by another car and Glenn decided to take it in the AM before his flight left. While I was attempting to sleep at the airport under a bench, I realized that I in fact had the keys to the rental car and all of the trains were stopped until 2 hrs after my flight left. After all the stress I found an Asian gentleman whom barely spoke any English to promise to take the keys to the hotel for $10 and if he didn't do so I would track him down and kill him.

The trip across the world was quite the success was worth every minute and topping it off with my trip to California made it even more memorable. There is so much that I could elaborate on but you will just have to ask me in person if you run into me. To top everything off I ended my Independence Day in the luggage section of my childhood friends SUV covered in a tarp while he spoke to me mom. She opened the hatch and I popped up much to her surprise, tears were shed by my sister and my mom, it as great to be home and to completely surprise my family on such a big day. It was great to see so many people once again whom I had missed while away. Seeing my Granny and pappy also made me happy after all that they have done for me while I was away. One thing is for sure, I have a lot of special people in my life!!!

Enjoy some other random pictures from My time in Cali!

Aquarium in Fisherman's Wharf

San Fran from the Bay

G$ and the Focus after our 1st Night in Yosemite

View into the Valley from the highest overpass in Cali

16,000 miles to home: part 1 (NZ)

2011-07-29T03:57:00.000+08:00

Mt. Ngauruhoe summit. IN THE CLOUDS!

Auckland Sky Tower

After plotting out my trip back across the world months ago I was able to explore some fascinating places, many of which I couldn't even comment on because it would give away the surprise that I was in fact coming to town the weekend of July 4th as a surprise. While away, I was so fortunate to visit some pretty colorful sights and enjoy the sounds of some interesting personalities. All in all, I traveled from Perth, Western Australia to Auckland New Zealand, to San Francisco, California. My time in New Zealand and California consisted of nearly one month of not working and bumming around mostly, a rather eye opening experience as a back packer.

My friend Glenn (aka G$) traveled all around the South Island of New Zealand, complete with stops at the Rotorua thermal pools, Lake Taupo (IM NZ site), and the Tongariro Crossing. Most of the time it was overcast while visiting and it got pretty old honestly. One of the coolest things we were able to do was to Summit Mount Ngauruhoe on the Tongariro Crossing, which was one of the most difficult things I have ever encountered in my life. Once hitting the top of the Volcano with its perfect cone we set around and had a few beers to soak in the sights. On the way down, I thought I may literally die, after getting past the initial ice covered peak while sliding down at a very uncomfortable, potentially deadly speed, we had about 5,000ft ahead of us to reach our van. The night before our incredible journey, we arrived at the base and as I looked up, I saw the most amazing thing, stars covered the sky like a blanket, BRILLIANT!.

Rotorua Mud springs

One thing that was a new experience for me was back packing and living in hostels, most of which were inhabited by people who barely spoke English. The last hostel I was fortunate to sleep in consisted of 12 people in one single room which was about 15 x 18 in size, what a smell! On my last day in Auckland I hooked up for a long run with Josh Rawlinson, the guy who blew my doors off at the Run Auckland 10k. This was my 4th run in 4 weeks and surprisingly I was able to knock out 2hrs and 9 minutes without falling to pieces. Thanks again Josh, it was great to meet you and your wife, good luck on your quest for sub 1:10 in November!

Dreading the long flight ahead to San Francisco, I was so fortunate to sit in premium economy on the top deck of our 747. The guy who set next to me was awesome, a very well traveled person who was going to san fran for a bachelors party, so we had a lot to chat about. The food was great and the service was incredible, I think I had 4 jack and cokes, 1 gin and tonic and 2 glasses of wine in the 1st 2hours of the flight! (and champagne on arrival to my seat). Those of you who know me, know I can't sleep on planes so I figured why not just drink myself to sleep, well it still did not work! My adventures and pictures of California in part 2, enjoy some additional pics I took while in NZ

Sleeping Arrangement!

Rugby!

You read it yourself

View from the Rotating Sky Tower at Night

BLOODY NEW ZEALAND! Tales from Auckland

2011-06-20T08:06:00.000+08:00

You can't see the outer layer of my leg is missing along with my right butt Cheek scared up!!!

Three weeks ago I signed up for a 10k road race in Auckland, New Zealand, just excited at the chance to race in another country. I didn’t know about the course or the people that had previously raced it, but I knew that the winner had run 33:59 in 2010 so I had a chance at winning. As the day would unfold I would be able to add running up a volcano twice, running through rain and mud, and having a session with medical workers to my list of things done while in New Zealand.

The day prior to the race I decided it would be best to run from my hostel, to the race site so that I knew exactly how to get there the morning of the race. Sun was actually shining, I had just awoken from a nap and I hit the road in route for “western springs park”. After making it about 2.5 miles the roof just opened up from above and the rain just came by the buckets. All in all I ended up running 7.6 miles in order to find this park and run back in the torrential downpour. The night prior to the race I would once again wake up at 4am and fail to fall back asleep. After my flight through the night directly to Auckland from perth, I managed to not even catch 1 minute of sleep and go right into the Auckland morning. I had been lacking sleep critically, as I have been laying down around 11pm and waking up between 3 and 4am every night. The night of the race was no exception, in fact I just decided to go downstairs and have a small breakfast before the udder fatigue just begin to set in.

Arriving at the race most likely looking aged by 10 years I had a nice warm-up and the “Run Auckland” set up looked pretty legit surrounding the start/finish of the race. I tucked away my track suit behind some tents and made my way to the starting line realizing that I could not remember the last time I had actually put on deodorant because of all of this back and forth traveling haha. The gun blast off and people all fly out in front of me, but I take my time to aim in on the 2 front runners who have distanced themselves from the pack and pursue. We hit our 1^st kilometer in 3:12 which was all gradual uphill, just a bit too fast for me but I was able to tuck in fairly comfortable. We passed 2k in a slower 3:19 distancing ourselves from 4^th place by a good margin. I took the lead and began to push the pace just as we turned a corner to look at the wall that soon we would be running up. The course was on/around a dormant volcano so basically we had to run straight up the back side of this volcano twice for the 10k!!! After managing to get pretty heavily into oxygen debt the top 2 runners hit the 5k mark just in front of me while I was happily surprised to be a 16:53 with that climb.

Now for the juicy part of the days racing! I had 2^nd place in my sights as the eventual winner just broke both of us. This time we had to run around all of the 5k runners who were released 15 minutes after our race, what a chore! These people blocked the sidewalks completely so it was a zig zag for literally 5k which slowed all of us down and drained any extra energy that we could have had. As I approached the climb once again, my spirit was broken from the fantasy of winning, I could hear some foot steps behind me, then I heard breathing. Breathing from a little boy or a girl, holy crap! I knew that there was a local woman who had been winning some of the races overall in some pretty fast times but I didn’t think it could be her, it was of course. She just flew up the volcano with her short choppy strides while I looked like a freak extending my legs a bit too long and eventually I began a nice walking pace. Once I got to the top the woman was almost out of sight, I passed the 2^nd place guy who was bent over at the top of the hill and then heard someone quickly approaching. I found a heart somewhere inside and convinced myself to dig a little deeper and begin with some surges. I was making my way through the hundreds of 5k runners or walkers should I say. Jumping in the grass, sinking my feet into the wet muddy grass then back onto the sidewalk for a few brief steps before 2 more women completely blocked the sidewalk we were racing on. “Ok just 2k or so to go lets rock it man, don’t be a P^$$y, MAN UP!”. I am running downhill between all these people, I glance at my watch as the 9^th k clicks and I am going 4:41 mile pace at this point, woooo. Now to just plan my maneuver ahead between the 5 women half walking and running on this slippery wet surface. “I can make it between them before I hit the power pole, Oh Sh*t, I can’t make it”. So I take a sharp cut right as if I was Barry Sanders and then that’s when all hell broke loose for me.

I am bracing myself for this mega fall down hill on this rocky pavement, BOOM SKIIDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD. I am sliding on my right side just ripping into my knee and then I basically collapse into two women from behind almost knocking them over. They are in a panic, screaming, “oh my god are you ok, oh no, oh no!!!”. The only thing I am thinking is, “this is going to hurt later but I am not going to lose my 3^rd place, get up Chris!”. I pop up the best that I can and yell to the concerned women, “I will sort it out later!” and continue my onward drive to the finish. The guy behind me of course passes me on this stretch while I am gathering myself again so I pop in behind him. We hit the last 600m and we are running on wooden planks that can carry at the most 2 people wide and from all of the rain, the volcano surface has turned into mud and washed down onto the planks. We are slipping and sliding, at the verge of a fall at any moment, trying to dice between other 5k runners. We both slip off of the little wooden deck into the swampy mud but catch ourselves for one last blast to the finish 100m away. I know I have a lot more left in the tank so I roll past him to the line and wrap up my 3^rd place.

After the race I look down and see blood running down my leg and people begin asking if I am ok. The medics luckily were on hand and took me inside the ambulance to begin cleaning my wounds and wrapping them up. The outer skin layer of my anterior tib was pretty much removed completely and my knee has a few nice slices that will be some sweet war wounds to talk about in the future. After waiting around for 90 minutes for awards, they do not give anything out and I may point out that they provide no food at the finish, only one bottle of water! It was a long 3.5 mile walk back to my hostel with my leg all banged up and the on again off again showers. What an experience!!!! Up next is a hiking adventure over some snow capped mountains, hopefully I can stay on my feet!

Australia: Home or Holiday?

2011-06-12T21:42:00.000+08:00

As the time has quickly approached for my departure back home with stops in New Zealand, then San Francsico, I have had a lot of time to reflect. When I arrived in Western Australia, I was so excited to meet the people with the funny accents, to see some beautiful beaches and check it off on the list of things to see. After a couple months of gathering an understanding of the culture a bit, I hit the Triathlon season with a furry and my life was consumed to finally put forth the work in order to come out on top at the end of the season at Busso 70.3. Post Busso’s unfortunate happenings after the culmination of hours of sweat, fatigued, pain, and suffering, I have been able to take these last few weeks to reflect on life; life in Australia and the thought of a lifelong stay in Australia.

Spending much of my time in Australia on a bike, running or swimming, I have met so many unique people, people whom will stick with me until the day I die I am sure. These unique people sacrifice many of the facets in life that I really appreciate including nightlife, especially hitting the dance floor as many know. One thing we all have in common is the fact that we want to push our individual limits while motivating others along the way. As previously mentioned, I am leaving for New Zealand in less than 1 week time, where I am sure I will meet a few other interesting personalities, but for some reason I am not sure it will top my Australian experience. As Cody began to set up my “Farewell Party” or as Cody calls it “1 Less Bogan” (“1 less redneck” for the Americans reading), it truly hit me that I will undoubtedly miss this place. Thinking about the people I see on a daily basis who approach me with a smile, a handshake, or a hug makes me a bit sad.

While living abroad and attempting to create opportunities back home in the US, I have realized it is certainly difficult, especially with the time difference for communication. While I have dropped the bomb that I am leaving to many of my aussie friends, they asked me when I was coming back, as in coming back for good. Hmmm that’s an interesting thought to say the least, live in AUSTRALIA forever? What is holding me back, why shouldn’t I? It sounds like pure bliss sometimes, I can’t lie, but the fact of the matter is that I really miss those people who share my blood line and have the same surname. Perhaps there will be an opportunity to come back to my 2^nd home again in the future but for now I am concentrating on arriving back to the states in the coming months. Wait a second, home?

Home where I will be faced with the daily pressure from our corporate society and looked upon as a failure if I choose to enjoy life as opposed to working an infinite number of hours at an office? Wow, I can’t wait to get back to the rat race and worry more about the type of car that I am driving as opposed to opening my horizons with time spent next to my loved ones.

Recently I had a very interesting chat with a couple other “foreigners” who now call Western Australia home and I could just feel how passionate they were about living here. This place just does something to make you free, free in spirit and in mind, maybe it’s just the change that some of us need to reach our state of NIRVANA? Either way, I can see how this very laid back, coffee sipping, cocktail slurping culture can draw people into its web of natural beauty. The people I have encountered make my Australian experience the most grand in so many ways. My friends truly make training apart of their lifestyle in every way and the great thing is that their families/partners openly accept their dedication to improve upon themselves through sport. I have been in relationships myself where my companion just could not quite grasp the concept of leading a life of ambition to push the boundaries of my mind and body, but it appears as if most people are switched onto that notion here.

Northbridge Piazza

As a reference to how ideal this place is for me, I will simply state “NORTHBRIDGE”. Northbridge is the mecca for the nightlife in Perth, as it has more than enough to offer a person who enjoys getting out and socializing to the pulsating sounds of music. Pubs, eateries, clubs, even an outdoor movie area in the middle of the square, this place is what Charlotte’s “The Epicentre” wants to be. Minus the normal weekend occurrence of some drunken fights and a few glassing incidents, this place is pretty awesome; I just wished I had been here when I was about 19 and it would be absolute heaven! One thing I dread when heading home is the guys that sit in the toilet on a stool, bumping gangsta rap and asking for a tip to hand you a paper towel, it just doesn’t happen here. In fact I have recently experienced the comedy scene that Perth has to offer, then several different stops which many of my friends like to call their home base, each one just great and perfectly suited for the area.

Home? Home is where the heart is? Well is my heart here or there, another wrench tossed in my plans of course. Well my decision is final, this place is GREAT, and it’s certainly almost like a heaven on earth in several ways for me, but my heart is with the people who have been an integral part of my life, well, forever, FAMILY. I have been to some incredibly breathtaking places while being abroad and at times it hit me how much more fascinating it would be to have my mother or my little brothers here to share it with. Taking the biggest leap of faith and moving to Australia, even for the short amount of time I have been here, was the best decision I have ever made. Obstacles in my future have been knocked down just that much more, now knowing that I can succeed to the far corners of the world.

I can NEVER show enough appreciation to those who have taken me in as family since being in Perth. The Angell family has been the guiding light to get me through the dark, pitch black cave of life and out on to the bleached white sands of optimism. The gang at the Running Centre have been amazing as well, kudos to Raf Baugh for letting me grab some of his extra confidence, Jason Nuttman for giving me just a bit more swagger, Nathan Doig for finally enlightening me to something called style, and the members of Club Helena Valley for flogging me on those 2hr runs through the hills, then degrading me at the IGA for being a soft yank, I LOVE YOU GUYS!. I could, and perhaps will, write a book about my experiences here, from the amazing dedication that my coach Paul Mackay revealed, to the inspiring words from 2:13 Marathoner Ray Boyd provided me(poof), or perhaps the in depth conversation with Australian 1500m record holder Ryan Gregson about the state of my home NBA team the Charlotte Bobcats. So many memories, so many people; young, old, insightful, on the piss, flogged, and intense, in every fashion thought possible. In closing I can say without a doubt in my mind, I WILL BE BACK!!! I may not be coming back “for good” but expect a visit in the next 2 years.

Going to miss running along the river daily

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, THANK YOU FOR PRETENDING THAT I AM COOL ENOUGH TO TALK TO YOU WHILE IN PERTH and if you are ever on the East Coast of the US, message me, mi casa es su casa!

HBF: Run for my Lung 4k

2011-06-05T18:17:00.000+08:00

HBF Run for a Lung 4k

CL, Microwave (marc), and Cody

After two weeks of attempting to stuff myself with ice cream post Half Ironman, I decided it was time to race. Since I coach a group on Monday evenings who was preparing for the HBF Run for a reason 14k, I decided to sign up. At the last minute Cody convinced me to sign up for the 4.5k race, because I could most likely win some $ for a top 3 finish. Well I can go around and call myself a dreamer because that was far from the case!

I attempted a short speed session just 3 days out from the race to see if I could get my legs to turnover at all and it was minimally successful so I had a bit of false confidence heading into the race. Since January I had been training specifically for the Half Ironman and of course the half marathon distance, which did not include sessions of short intervals, so the 4.5k was a bit over my head. The goal was to line up with Thomas Bruins and Marc See, run on their heels as long as possible and to hope for the best to get 3rd place. Marc and Thomas had both recently over 1500m with times of 3:44 and 3:49, so naturally I thought I could hang with these guys(buzzer sounding reeeeeeeeeennnn).

Not the case, as we warmed up together I realized Chris Dale was also doing the 4.5k, as was Ben Green, all of whom are accomplished track runners to say the least, as well as they have an extra 8 years of fresh leg turnover on me. Just before the start I unveiled my best Raf "Radar" Baugh impersonation, with his 10 year old EMBROIDERED singlet that said "RADAR" on it, everyone had a laugh.

Marc See pushing the pace in front of Risely, Gregson and Roff at Nationals!

Inside the WACA at the finish

The gun goes off and so does the lactic acid throughout my body as my lung began to collapse. Holy crap, we are flying and I am, maybe…in 10th place about 1/2m into this run, “this was a mistake” and then “come man, focus” were thoughts going through my head with thousands of people on my heels. I hit the 1k mark in 3:02, then I caught up to Greeny finally at around the 2k mark, thinking my patience had finally paid off. Just as we approached the last mega hill, he just crushed me! My arms felt like I was carrying a baby on each side while I was running and my upper back was in pain, it almost made me forget that I also was not breathing ha-ha. Before I knew it we were entering the stadium and the finish line was just in front. Thank the lord it was over and done with but, come on, really, that was 4.5k? Greeny came over to me as I crossed and said we did like 12 minutes mate, that HAS TO BE SHORT. So here I was, running a race that was way out of my fitness and it was even worse because it was shorter than advertised, it was 4k!

Lesson learned, if you go into a race with expectations but you know what you have been doing (in my case, NOTHING) then prepare to feel the pain! I was 5th overall in 12:30, I was actually pleased with my time considering but at NO POINT was I relaxed or settled into a pace. What reason did you run for?Video<

After a month or two of consistent running the hope is to be able to run sub 16 comfortably again but at this point, I have decided to take a very non critical view to my training regimen. Next up is a 10k in Auckland, New Zealand, more my style at this point.

"Dance Floor" Lamperski's trials and triumphs at the Ironman

2011-05-11T15:34:00.000+08:00

2011 Busselton 70.3 Winner

Trash Talking the day before

It’s Thursday around lunch time and the mystery remains the same, “how am I getting everything to Busselton for the race?”. The last thing that needs to be on my mind is how to arrive at the race, but that’s the only thing that concerns me for obvious reasons. Thankfully some friends offer to assist me, my bike leaves with the Angell family on Thursday, I am set to leave with Lisa Seen on Friday morning and Katrina “the hurricane” is my race wheels, aero helmet, suit and computer. It may sound like a lot of stuff but after all, it’s an ultra triathlon event essentially and I opted to take more than enough for the trip.

Friday afternoon we arrive at the race expo extra early, hang out a bit with everyone who set up retail shop at the race. Hit the water for a solo 15 minute swim to make sure the wetsuit is fine and everything is just right. Katrina arrives sooner than expected and I go for my 20 minute shake out run while she moves her car so I could grab the remainder of my goodies. The Specialized bike mechanic transfers my cassette to the Zipp 909 disc Justin Ghosh let me use for the race, accompanying the Cosmic Carbone front wheel I swiped from Troy Main, thanks guys! Bike is checked in, wow this event is legit, and there are so many bikes in transition that have mega price tags! The event tops any triathlon I have ever done with the organization, maybe even better than the Duathlon World Championships that I competed in 2 years ago.


Busselton house backyard

Lil Wayne

Night comes, we all arrive for the “mandatory” meeting in which they mostly discuss the new drafting policy which has been extended to 12 meters, something of which everyone has been discussing for months anyways. I am freezing my butt off and head home for the final checklist of items, lining up my nutrition for race day then it’s off for a good night’s rest in my bunk room. 5:30am text from Raf wishing me luck and I am up, eating toast with cream cheese along with one perpetuem solid and 3 glucose tablets. Janna, J-murda and I pack the car, hit the road and arrive at 6:15am to hit the transition before the 6:45am closing time. Macka, Johan, and Sean O’Neil start at 7am with the Pro’s and the open field including Bean, Lajos, Big Brynt, Matt Illingworth, Katie Gibb and Rachel Smith leave just 2 minutes behind at 7:02. It was a huge boost watching my training partner/coach Paul Mackay jump out of the water in the top pack of pro men in 24 minutes, my focus was centered to understand my fitness levels and to finally rise up.

Macka

Its 8am, time to jump in the water for a quick splash, take a few pictures and then to start the race. Jason Rhine darts out in a blaze of glory as someone yells and he mistakes it for the horn, no worries J, I won’t DQ you! The horn sounds and we are off, guys throwing blows left and right, it’s a mass of chaos, I am swimming over people, I am getting kicked, it’s crazy. After about 400m, the waters clear a bit more and I begin to finally press on and make my way up my group a bit. At one point I could not tell if I was way off course or not as the buoy seemed directly ahead but I appeared to be the only one taking the same line, except the one guy who keeps zig zagging, bad mistake #1. I hit the beach and look down at my watch, 31:01, ahh not too bad, I had hoped for about 30:00 but it was my new best time by over 2 minutes for the distance anyways. Time to show the work I have been putting in on the bike, I remove the wetsuit, grab all of the nutrition in my helmet (flask, extra gel and powerbar) toss it in my tri top, toss on my helmet, sunglasses and rush out of T1. Everyone is stopped at the mount line with no forward progress, so much for my stellar running mount that was planned. Nonetheless, I am on the bike and moving finally, passing people right and left.


Just after my 100m warm-up

I notice one of the guys that frequents the running centre and rides the hills with our group is just in front of me. I quickly pass by him and begin my assault on the course, or so I thought. 5k into the bike when I am finally settled I decided to go ahead and have a sip of my roctane flask to stay on top of my nutrition so that I can actually negative split the course as planned. Wait, nothing is in that pocket, S#*t!!! nothing is in that pocket either, what happened? I lost ALL OF MY NUTRITION at some point between T1 and the 5k mark apparently, what to do now? All that races through my mind is the video of Luke Bell at Ironman Hawaii when he dropped his nutrition bag and continued anyways, ultimately passing out and being rushed to the hospital. Should I keep attacking with just water or scale it back? Ok, just stay with these guys at a safe distance, then try the E3 sports drink offered on the course at 35k, check. On the way back my average jumps since we finally don’t have the mega headwind, thank the lord! I hit the E3 station at around 35k and take a big swig of the bottle. This stuff sucks, I have never tasted it before but it’s my only option, another sip, 3 minutes go by and then it all comes back up. Sweet, I am vomiting on the bike, only have water and can already feel my glucose levels starting to plummet. The 2nd loop is a forgetful sight, I was somehow passing people the whole time but I felt like a turtle, I had no cadence and just felt like I was in some insomnia daze just wishing for T2 to get closer.

Trying to finish strong

Note to self, next time you decide not to tape extra gels on the bike, change your mind!!! All of those hard earned miles on the bike in the early morning hours, totally wasted, I cycled faster in my 1st half ironman attempt last year with one month of cycling under my belt! Staggering into T2, I knew the run could be very very iffy, so I Took my precious time to inhale a few glucose tablets I laid out “in case” along with some endurolytes. The lights are coming back on!!! Ok Chris, those long bricks you worked so hard at are going to come into play, relax and keep it consistent. Legs are burning a bit, lungs feel quite good actually, and energy seems to be coming around. I am afraid to look at my watch once the 1st K split beeps but I do anyways, “3:43”, wow, how did that happen? Keep it going buddy, maybe your race isn’t blown, you can still PR even though everyone is out of sight. As I pick people off on the course, I hear some remarks about my pace and how I will soon die, but it only motivates me. I fluctuate between 3:48 & 3:54 each K through 10k’s when I begin to slow a bit hitting mostly mid-upper 3:50’s until a random 3:46 at 15k which looking back was another bad mistake. After catching up to a younger guy who was a relay runner, he just tucked behind me to block the wind, I eventually asked that he perhaps jump up front since I had been racing well over 3hrs and he had been out there for 20 minutes but he refuses, so I drop the hammer for about 200m to break him, success, ahhhh yea that doesn’t feel so great now.

Nearing the finish of my 2nd lap, I noticed Steve Gleeson up ahead and surge to catch him, he is rolling and I throw some encouragement his way and tell him to jump on board. Mr. Gleeson had a heck of a race and he rolled past me with 300m left in his race to finish very strong, but I had another lap remaining! As I make the final turn past the finish line, I turn back to look for my race rival, Jason Rhine, expecting him to be well behind me, he literally is about 60m back! Surge or slow down and let the race come to me? I kept pace for a bit then decided that it may be best to slow it back a bit and just push in with Mr. Rhine. 6k to go and we are swerving in and around people on this narrow path along the beach stride for stride. Stay relaxed, we are hitting low 4:00’s, not too bad but slower than I wanted. As I hit the 2nd loop I could feel my upper left quad really begin to cramp and I kept telling myself anything I could to not give up. “USA, USA, USA, come on brother!!!” Here Jason and I were having pretty much awful races for both of our standards but we found enough deep inside to give whatever we had left to test our limits.

Macka and I

Several times I drop a surges thinking I would lose him but he always fought back stronger each time. Wow, this guy has some guts, I need to make sure I dig deeper than ever to pull this day off the best I can, hopefully winning this classic duel down under in Busselton while most of the athletes had no clue what was taking place. We begin to push the pace harder and harder hoping to break each other at this 4+ hr mark into our race but no one gives an inch. Less than 1k to go, come on Chris, all year this is one of the guys you have wanted to beat, dig dig!!! The crowd was fantastic, but as we approached the finish, many athletes were continuing on for their remaining laps and Rhine shot out like a dart when he saw his opportunity down the Shute as I mixed between people. I knew this would happen, but I also knew I had another gear I had been holding back and as we hit the grass I gun it. I was flying down the home stretch for my disappointing 4:30 finish, but in delight that I at least conquered one goal on the day. Somehow I was able to stagger home enough after my hamstrings massively cramped 5 meters from the line just in front of Jason. Looking back Jason and I dropped the pace from 4:11, 3:57, 3:49 and 3:43 on our last 4k’s in an effort to break each other, our own “Iron war”.

Institute of Sport celebrating

What a day, it let me reflect on so much in general, here I was concentrating so much on this day and look what came of it. One tiny mistake, if you call it a mistake even, mishap, misfortune or bad luck, either way, one small glitch in the system and things shut down on me, crazy. After the race, I thought about how running literally was so much easier, no swimming goals, or long cycles, just running, it’s simple. You can’t flat, your goggles won’t break and you won’t need to pack a lunch in your cycling jersey to complete a day’s training. After a warm shower, some much needed junk food and a nap, I felt much better and prepared to take on the next goal. I am not done with this 70.3 distance until I have conquered my goals of finishing a race the way I should, solid in every discipline. Today’s race was an ultimate failure in so many aspects but two components were in place, I finished and I even finished with a 7 minute PR.

Men’s Top 10:
1) Tim Berkel (Port Macquarie, NSW) – 3:51:27
2) Matty White (Magill, SA) – 3:52:50
3) Tim Reed (Lord Howe Island NSW) – 3:53:59
4) Josh Rix (Glen Iris, VIC) – 3:56:05
5) Jamie Whyte (Auckland, New Zealand) – 3:57:10
6) Guy Crawford (Napier Hawkes Bay, NZ) – 3:58:15
7) Mitchell Anderson (West Melbourne) – 3:59:55*
8) Leon Griffin (Kangaroo Flat, VIC) – 4:00:09
9) Lajos Varga (Perth, WA) – 4:01:14* - Worked his way through the pro field
10) Paul MacKay (Wembley, WA) – 4:01:28 - cracked the top 10!

Janna finishing

The night was wrapped up with, a chance meeting with some stoners next door, then to Varga’s for a funnel entry, before heading to the awards ceremony with a fashionably late entrance to swipe up a hot plate of food from the buffet! Congrats to so many people who competed on the day, but most importantly to the Mackay Institute of Sport athletes Janna Angell and the man himself, Paul Mackay. Janna knocked out an amazing bike split of 2:50 in her 1st attempt at the distance, and Macka defied all the odds to wrap up a stellar season with a 4:01, earning him Triathlete of the year honors and 8th in the Pro field. Shout out to Matt Illingworth who took out another stellar field with a 2:06:09 bike split! After the awards presentation, the real party ensued with the DJ pumping the tunes for a few more hours. Everyone hit the stage including “Dancefloor” Lamperski himself, suited up, skinny tie, stunna shades and dancing shoes. It was just a blast to see so many hardcore athletes finally letting loose and having a blast. Some of the events of the night will never be forgotten, some may not be remembered but it was truly epic in every sense of the word.

Amazing Busselton 70.3 Highlight video

5 DAYS FROM GLORY

2011-05-02T11:13:00.000+08:00

My race is for the people who doubt me, for those who might have seen a kid years ago who was seemingly brought up on the other side of the tracks and written off as worthless. This will be dedicated for everyone who has dreams in life, I may not attain my direct goals on the day but I would like to think I stand as a role model for hard work and taking that huge step to grab my dreams.

It is upon all of us, just 5 days away from the race that many of us in Western Australia have been working towards, 70.3 Ironman Busselton. So many of my mates have spent countless mornings waking up while its pitch dark outside heading to the swimming pool for a squad swim or to the roads for a group ride. How many times did we pump up our tires the night before and lay out all of our gear ahead of time, thinking about the long day that would lie ahead. Hammer bars, roctane’s, shotz, endurolytes, shotz, lollies, everyone has had their fare share of nutrition to get them through those 4hr rides followed by a moderate run directly after, then maybe an open water swim in the late arvo.

This race will show who has been putting in the hard work, as well who is fully prepared, physically, mentally and emotionally. I wish that we all put together our ideal race on the day but there are sure to be a few casualties along the war path. Pushing our bodies to these new heights really brings out the most amazing aspects in each of us. I would find it hard to believe that too many of us thought when we were kids that we would be out riding a bike for hours, then running for hours and also swimming for lengthy periods, but we are all doing it. Goals will be achieved and many will be at the finish line with the biggest ear to ear smiles as their goals were just smashed, meaning it’s time to nap the day away followed by partying the night away.

For once in my life, I can say, I am not shooting to beat this guy or that guy, but I am aiming to perform to the best of my abilities. Time goals are always in play, but with wave starts, weather, and malfunctions of the wildest kind, sometimes its tossed out of the window. I am racing for myself and my loved ones on the day.

Good luck to everyone who is competing at Busselton this weekend, may we have no swells, the wind to our backs and a light mist during the run. You will see me at the Awards/After Party, make sure you present me with a smile and the realization that each of us are blessed to have the health and option to even participate in such an amazing event.

PS: For those interested in tracking my results, you can go to Ironmanlive.com and there are updates along the way. I will post my race # on facebook once I check in on Friday.

Bravery: the truth in learning about existence

2011-04-15T12:47:00.000+08:00

"If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself….then truth will not be withheld from you. Or so I’ve come to believe.”

---side note--- for those aussies who don't like actual content in a blog, you may want to skip the read.

    This is a quote from a book that I read while on my journey to Australia from way on the other side of the world. We all have phases in life in which we are truly trying to find out who "we" as people really are. What makes me tick, what are my true flaws that I have been ignoring?

    Yesterday I was fortunate enough to go for my 2nd run of the day just before sunset and reflect just a bit on the situations and outcome of my life thus far. To some, it would appear as if I am a lost soul wondering the world in search of my "existence" and yes this is true in part, but I honestly believe that my life has been such an amazing lesson. Everyday I attempt to absorb what is going on around me, the people, the sights and the concepts of success. At an early age I saw how my family was struggling and the #1 focus going into adulthood was making $ and plenty of it. Now, I have come to terms with the obvious necessity of $$$ but also the tortures it can sometimes bring with greed.

     Sometimes I feel as though I am wise above my years, especially based on my how old I actually look, when other times I feel like a rambling 16 year old kid searching for answers. I can see what is important in life, it's not training for a triathlon or beating this guy, it's relationships. Sure through avenue's such as sport or business we can mix with people and began to mold ourselves to understand the inner being of others, but the actual act is not important. It's the in between chatter amongst people, your friends, co-workers and loved ones. I have realized that I am in one of the most beautiful places in the world, its breath taking at times even, but it's missing something. On my journey away from those loyal friends, loving family members and caring colleagues, I have finally stumbled upon my existence, why I am here and what I am supposed to be.

    The day I arrive home and greet my family in the little 3br 1 bathroom house I grew up, I like to think I will feel on top of the world. I may not be on the white sands of some exotic beach, but I will be where I am supposed to be. Sharing my life and my experiences with my family. Traveling 16,000 miles away into a new life is all it took me to realize where I need to be. It's funny, as I am building towards one of the biggest races of my life, I have been less and less focused on the competitive nature of it all, but more so on finishing off a couple more goals before heading home to pursue my real goal.

The amazing beauty of Down South: written in videos

2011-04-01T19:44:00.000+08:00

Kings Park from the Grass

Recently I took a holiday down south with a close friend of mine from the states(Karin Helmbrecht). We had an amazing time and saw some incredible sights along the way. I decided that since I had a fair amount of video clips I would just speak through them. Enjoy, hope you like the it!

The AWESOME general store we went to every morning

John's Amazing natural pool find

Pretty amazing huh?

Albany, Western Australia: Long rides, triathlons, and motels

2011-03-08T16:34:00.000+08:00

Visit to Albany

Weeks ago I decided that I wanted to travel to Albany, one of the southern most points on Australia's coastline. From my conversations with Cody and Janna, they loved the scenery of the small town, which I didn’t think would be too much different than Perth but I was way off. In route to Albany with Brandon, we were speaking about the triathlon we were soon to be competing in and he spoke about it being pretty hilly, one major difference from Perth which is fairly flat until you drive to the hills on the outskirts. The following is the recap of the weekend events, which includes as much entertainment as I could include within reason containing pictures and videos. (If you want to avoid the Triathlon recap and just want to see pics keep scrolling down!)

After some much convincing; Brandon agreed to meet me at my house around 6:15am on Saturday as opposed to 5am which he adamantly proposed!! Boom, we are on our way to one awesome weekend with friends in Albany! This place is not close, let’s just start with that, it’s a solid 5hr drive and to my delight it actually rained a fair bit and was cloudy, something I am starting to miss back home in North Carolina, clouds, rain, THUNDERSTORMS! As we traveled along, I wasn’t quite prepared for the recently turned 18 year old behind the wheel and his stellar racing, I mean driving skills with his Hyundai sedan. Let’s just say that double lines in the road mean nothing, driving with your knees at 120k is OK and drafting 1 meter behind another car is perfectly acceptable. I think the kid was a little too much in race mode as we moved along Albany highway but I knew he wouldn’t allow us to wreck so I just always made sure my seat belt was fastened appropriately just in case, thanks for the ride Brandon!

Once we finally arrived to our accommodation at the Metro Inn, we promptly found out that check in was at 2pm, it was 11am, what to do? Glad we woke up early and made a rush for our hotel haha. Oh well we changed in the GRAVEL parking lot at the motel and then hit the road to cycle the bike course a bit and look over the 10k section of the run for the race. We could tell the bike course would be alright as most of it was flat or gradual, with a couple hills and turn-a rounds and the run course would be fairly difficult with the rollers it had. After we were finally able to check into our room, we went for a swim shortly after we unloaded everything. The water was filled with seaweed for about 15 meters on the beach but got clear as we made it out further. One thing was certain, the water was much cooler than back in Perth, but I loved it! It reminded me of the water at the Lake Lure triathlon, a bit colder but similar. The reason it’s so cold is because the water feeds from the southern ocean which is in between Antarctica and Australia, along with the addition of actual cloud cover and cooler temps in Albany. Macka, Brandon and I swam out to a pontoon and designed our own practice course for the swim and dove into the cool water, I felt so much better than normal in the water, and I actually felt comfortable! We swam around a mini course and then practiced catching waves into the shore in case we had the opportunity during the race.

Ueli, Janna, Cody, Stevie

After resting up a bit back at the motel, we then met up with Cody, Janna and Kate for a nice jog along the path where the run portion would be. As we were running I noticed the most magnificent and full rainbow I had ever seen, which start at one end of the shore and ended on an island, AMAZING! (in Indonesia we found out, as opposed to being a pot of gold at the end, there is a “fairy castle” apparently, thanks Cecilia!). Back home again, shower time and then to search for a place to eat in this town, which seemed nearly impossible, especially since we had 9 people in our group! We quickly found a nice café which had outside seating and the night ended up being a success, I even ordered a “Smoked Salmon salad” with no extras to keep it simple and healthy!

After a bad night of sleeping, I awoke at 5am with Brandon and he was jacked up and ready to go as he hustled around the room preparing for the race. Fortunately I laid most of my stuff out the night before and just decided to keep a cool approach to the race, with no big expectations and therefore I was VERY relaxed, yet confident. We were blessed with some rain showers while warming up before the race, so everyone’s stuff in transition got soaked, which could make for a bad day sometimes. Onto the race itself, after climbing into my Orca wetsuit I recently acquired from Jason Nuttman, I was in the water, feeling pretty dang confident. Brandon, Macka, Sean, Ueli and Brynt raced in the open division, so they all got to go off first with just one wave of men behind them for all age groups. This was the first swim were I got pretty physical in the water with a few elbows and flying palms to make way in the water. I nearly panicked in the 1st 200m as we were all so cramped but after that I settled and tried finding some feet. I remember thinking, I am actually enjoying the swim portion and thinking about how I would be almost too soon on the bike! Breakthrough for me in my opinion, still not a top notch swimmer by any means, but I felt at home in the water and set a nice PB for the O distance at the same time.

Sunrise as I walked onto the beach Race Morning

Onto the bike, I knew with the course being 3 loops, I would be able to see all of the open racers after the 3 turn around points, which was motivating. My goals were to get as close as possible to the open athletes before the run if at all possible. I noticed Macka was pushing the pace up front which was no surprise to me and then I noticed Brandon and Ueli mixing it up a bit just a bit behind Macka. I was rolling past people initially and then realized that I actually beat some decent triathletes out of the water and a group of about 5 riders where pacing behind me while I was doing all of the work solo on the sweet set of Flash Point wheels that Scott Mison let me use. After some quick thinking, I pulled out a page from the Ryan Baugh/James Haycraft playbook and slowed back to let a few of them pass me and then I just stayed with the group for a good remainder of the race. It’s all about learning right? Why not save some energy for that run off of the bike and use some bodies around me to keep me pushing along during the bike? The best part about race was, knowing I was where I needed to be at every point in the race, on feet in the water and around people on the bike course. Over the last 8k I decided it was time to just set sail with some guy whom was wearing every aerodynamic product on the market including a disc wheel. My fastest portion of the race was the 16k and I ended up riding everyone in that small group off of my wheel pretty easily, did I leave too much on the course? Possibly….

The run was nice and smooth, I opened a bit quick with a controlled 3:22 1st k but kept it in the 3:30ish range from then on out with a 3:24k at 8k when I was breaking one of my rival age groupers. I felt very smooth but at times, I felt like I was honestly going too slow for the race, because I have the mindset of longer course races of which I am trying to understand pacing and patience. While running I was able to see everyone as it was an out and back 2 loop course, so I quickly noticed my coach Paul Mackay, better known as Macka, had a substantial lead into the run, until he missed the turn around and surrendered his lead momentarily. It was great to see Janna, Kate, Brandon, Brynt, Mick G, Stevie and Ueli out on the course; it always gave me a little boost. In the end I passed an age grouper that ended up being 3rd in my AG with 800 meters remaining thankfully. All in all, everyone came away with some positives from the race in one aspect or another. I know that from now on I am going to try “Glucodin” tablets in the morning before the race because it really got my glycogen up and the body prepared for battle. As a quick recap, I swam under 24 minutes for 1500m, biked right at 1:05 for 40k and then ran a 35:06 for the 10k portion, finished 2nd in my age group(missed the $) and set over a 2 minute PR in the Olympic Distance with roughly a 2:04:50. It great to see my training is really coming around and having my 1st taper week in training paid off big time!

After the race and the awards we hit the town for some coffee of course and a bit of food. For the 1st time since the 2nd night I was in town I had fast food and I went for it(4 months)! Hungry Jacks combo meal with a double cheeseburger, chips, frozen cola, and a sundae, it was well deserved! Once we hit up some local tourist shop, then next stop was off to the Natural bridge and cliffs.

WOW, how beautiful was this place, beautiful water, amazing rock formations and mountains at the edge of the water which were covered with the bright green arrays of grass and bush. I was able to soak up this place a lot and I made sure that I had more than enough pictures of everything. Watching the waves crash into these huge rocks was amazing, especially when the water splashed anywhere from 20-25 meters into the air!

After hanging out at the cliffs, when had an eventful drive to the wind farm just down the road. I have included some pretty cool pictures of this place, which I never really see back in the US. It makes perfect since to conserve energy with using natural resources to assist in powering a town. Just thinking about one of the blades falling off seemed pretty terrifying as we would have nowhere to go and everything in sight would be CRUSHED! Brandon snapped a pretty amazing picture of me at the windmill, which may be the new update to my facebook profile! The remainder of the day and night, Brandon, Ueli and I hung out, venturing the city a bit and settling into some great Italian food in town. Thanks to Ueli for providing us with some laughs and motivation with the wide range of videos you have on your computer!

After a too early bedtime at 10pm(Ueli and I are both night owls, while Brandon is an early bird), I awoke at 6am and decided to knock out a run with Ueli before breakfast. Upon leaving the motel he quickly pointed out the highest hill/mountain in the area and said “let’s go there, Yes?”, with hesitation I nodded. After climbing up the mostly gradual hill, we arrived at a lookout point fairly quickly and the views were great of Middleton beach. Ueli is traveling to Rottnest Island this week and we had a nice chat about what to expect and I highly recommended that he must snorkel! After showering, breakfast, Brandon and I hit the long road ahead back to Perth, with Ueli taking the scenic route with Kate back home. It was a great weekend all around, I was glad to have good friends around me as well as even more motivation to improve and prepare for the Busselton Half Ironman with Coach Mackay.

Looking ahead into the future for my blog post, I am going to compare and contrast two AMAZING triathletes of whom I have been able to train with recently, one of whom is my coach and current Triathlon WA Open points leaders Paul Mackay. The other will be Ueli from Switzerland, whom competed in Albany and I have mentioned several times in this post. One comes from a professional career in short distance triathlon and the other is solely an Ironman distance athlete who prefers the distance longer and the terrain more difficult. Two Professionals with 2 different mind sets

Transformation: Triathlon Style

2011-02-20T19:21:00.000+08:00

Dave Scott and Mark Allen battle: The best Ironman athletes EVER

15.7% to 8.6%: Referring to my body fat % when I joined up with the “PM Institute of Sport” to my measured reading last week. (Measured 4 weeks in a row on the same Tanita scale)

75.1 Kg to 76.3 Kg: Referring to my weight distribution with arriving here and my weight as of last weekend. (1.3Kg gain)

In a brief synopsis, I have lost 7.1% of my body fat, all while gaining 1.3 Kg in the process, meaning I am burning fat but gaining muscle. My guess is that the muscle is accumulating on my legs mostly as I have been riding much more consistently, spending hours in the saddle. I attribute this to my coach, my training partners, and the volume of my training as well as my new housemate whom helps me keep in check with my dietary habits. (note that after receiving the 8.6% reading last week, I gave it my best effort to gain it all back over a couple heaping dinners haha)

BEDSIDE PRE-RIDE

Upon my decision to arrive in Western Australia months ago, one of the short term goals was to put together a decent Half Ironman Race if it was possible. To this point I have done a variety of triathlons ranging from the super sprint to one 70.3 distance at the inaugural TryCharleston race in May 2010, which was a heat wave! Now that I realize it, it will be almost exactly one year to the day that I will be doing the Busselton 70.3 Ironman in Western Australia, from my 1st experience with the distance. Ever since then, a lot has changed and one of the main things that has progressed positively concerning the race is my all around training.

Just 5 weeks out from the 70.3 distance last year, I was notified of a comp entry into the event because I was on the staff for TrySports, whom was the main sponsor. As a challenge to myself and the staff, I gladly accepted the entry and decided I needed to buy a bike and perhaps starting swimming again. Needless to say, the event was a HUGE learning experience for me and as I crossed the line I said "never again". Well now I am ready to take on the challenge but this time I realize there are no real short cuts as I was optimistic about last year. To make myself put forth a proper effort I have even gathered a coach whose intensity in training is renowned all over “Dub A” aka Western Australia. To prepare for racing years ago he actually did 101 1/4m repeats on the track in a single day, just because Zatopek did 100 so he wanted to give it a crack!

The true transformation of my triathlon experience has affected several factors in my life, one of which is socializing. For those of you whom may know me from back home, I have always been a pretty social guy, trying to squeeze in that last bit of time to see friends or maybe to host some random party. Here I am in a place where I know few people and the ones I do know are so wrapped up in their training habits, besides the morning 1hr coffee break no one really has nightlife besides calling it an early evening. Sacrifice is something that many of us struggle with day in and day out. Are you trying to save up for that dream house or maybe that shiny BMW, what sacrifices will it take in order to make it happen? Same goes for triathlon; early bed times followed by an early wake up are required in order to satisfy a proper training regimen supplemented with adequate recovery time.

Fortunately for me I am able to train with some pretty stellar athletes who are dedicated to the cause and to making these sacrifices. It's very interesting to take a step back and look into the world of an endurance athlete, plain and simple, WE ARE CRAZY. But that's what I love about it, we aren't afraid to push ourselves to a new limit that so many fear. After reading an interview on slowtwitch.com about Kyle Pawlaczyk , I realized that I in fact cherish the fact that I am able to do so much in the world of sport. In short Kyle is an up and coming triathlon star whom slept on a blow up mattress for years and firmly says " I wouldn't trade it for the world" even though he actually has his masters degree. One hurdle that I see so many athletes face is having a significant other and spreading themselves thin in order to appease every facet of life, but thats a completely different blog post! Over this last year of my life I have made a point to take a step out of my comfort zone with any and everything in my life that I could. My logic in this is that by taking steps into numerous directions with my living situation, career, and athletic hobbies, it can only get easier from here in life.

Macca grabbing a GU in the Hills

Often times I am at a struggle against myself as to step out of that door at 5:30am in order to knock out my bike interval session or to hit the pool. We all have days of struggle but I have been working intensely on making this as a lifestyle by choice to see how far I can go. As people have asked me "Aren't you on a working holiday? There is a reason it's called a holiday Chris" I tell them that its life, hard work is a part of my existence. I will be posting later about my swash buckling career in the Australian workforce, but as a brief glimpse into my life I will provide a recap of the last 2 weeks for me, in terms of training and working. 14 days in a row I have worked one job or another or 2 to three jobs in the same day while fitting in my training sessions. It has been one heck of a run but I think I may be signing off at one of my casual jobs due to the fact that I never have time to see friends, see the country or even get the proper training in. Often times, I am waking up at 5:20am to head out the door and eventually riding my bike back home into the night to arrive at 10pm and right to bed. (as a side note, I have been busting my butt in order to save up some $ for an upcoming mini holiday session)

Thus far I have really transformed my lifestyle to mimic that of a champion or so I hope! People are in awe when they find out that after one job, I am riding my bike to the next, but its the grind and its apart of me. Some may judge me for this or that, but those who know me, know that putting in a 50hr work week isn't that unthinkable, even on a working holiday across the world or as some would say "Paradise". Thank you to all of the people who have had faith in me back home to push me to this new place and thank you to those new friends I now see on a daily basis. Let's see how this whole Triathlon thing wraps up on May 7th at my Half Ironman!

The Philosopher

City of Perth aka "THE MELTDOWN"

2011-01-30T17:55:00.000+08:00

“City of Perth: Cyclones & Bloody Heat”

Sunday was an epic day to put simply, it meant so much and so little at the same time. This would be my first Olympic Distance race since August when I had a stupendous swim, solid bike and a great run, today’s race was slightly different in several ways. My conflicts began pretty early on when I could tell the Tylenol sleeping pill was still holding its effects on me and I felt as if I were in some dream world while warming up with my mates. All the heavy hitters were in attendance, Macka, Jimmy, Sean O’Neil, Ryan Baugh, Jason Nuttman, Brynt, and a relay team of Matt Illingworth and Cody, so I knew that the race would be up to the caliber as it was at the Western Australia sprint championships. Now the funny thing is that I had no clue that this was the Western Australian Olympic distance championships until I received a text message from Ryan Baugh after the race.

The good news for me was that I actually won my first age group award while in Australia shockingly to me, especially after I got hammered at the sprint championships. As it lay out at the finish I was 3rd in my AG, missed 2nd by a mere 1 second and was off of 1st place by 1minute exactly. This is a huge confidence boost for me, because I can firmly say that if my T1 and T2 difficulties would have been avoided, I would be neck and neck with 1st in my AG. Now I include my recap of the overall race experience as well as the many conflicts I faced in transition from the officials.

    Starting off at 8am were the elites, wait, its 8:06am and they are still talking to all of us about the race course changes and etc. The longer we get behind, the hotter it is going to get as it is going to be a scorcher at 38-39 degrees (100-101 for you Americans). The course has about 10% of shade otherwise it is completely exposed to the sun and its brutal effects on the body. Finally in the water around 8:15am, about the time I am supposed to start, and then I make my way to the start buoys. People begin to sneak in front of me just before the gun goes off and its chaos. Kicking, pushing, bodies on bodies and as usual, I resort to just falling behind instead of fighting my way through. Falling behind a couple guys for the 1st half of the race, I am thinking to myself, “you aren’t even swimming hard, this may qualify as going through the motions at BEST”. I could tell that I needed some body glide in a bad way as the salt combined with the rubbing of my tri top ended badly. Finishing up the swim at the very end I have one person from the wave behind me blow past me, the last thing I wanted to see.

    Out of the water, running to T1, I have my gear ready to rock, and hopefully rock out my best bike portion yet. This week I put in over 400k on the bike, as I have recently moved to the other side of town and ride to work everyday. My legs were not super fresh, especially Friday and Saturday but I just had to get over it. While I nearly doubled my highest bike mileage ever, this also gave me more confidence with the time on the bike. Back to the race; I have the fastest T1 ever it seems and I am essentially out of transition when I hear people yelling at me. Official -“You need your bib number, your race belt”, Me – “no I don’t, that’s for the run, why is my body marked with numbers all over me then?”. Official – “its required, go back and get it or you are DQ’ed!”, Me- “this is Bulls**t, WTF, this is crazy” (imagine a very livid picture of me after a horrendous swim) . So I run back, with no bike to look for, but simply a navy blue towel, “oh that’s the wrong row, wait where was my bike mounted, uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”, I finally find my transition area pop my # on and head out to my resting bike.

     If any race officials are reading this, I wanted to issue an apology for the explicative language that I used. Alright onto my bike; about 1k into the ride, I hear “come on Lamperski”, it’s Jason Nuttman, whom earlier said he would pass me on the bike and I said NO WAY. He proved me wrong quickly as did Ryan Baugh who passed just seconds after Jason. I regroup and decide to commit to their rapid pace, we are going 46+ on some portions and I am able to hang with them for 2 of the 5 laps, then kaboom, I somehow lost them in the crowd, out of sight. Nuttman was on a mission to spank everyone while Ryan held on as long as he could. Despite everything, I believe this was my best bike section in a triathlon, I finished strong and was ready to catch some people on the run.

Nuttman in Action, attempting and succeeding in Buring me.

      Heading into T2, I am running around the other bikes and the same official screams at me, “you need to stop and buckle your helmet again, it’s a safety issue!”. I am inside the damn transition area, jogging with my bike in hand at a not so rapid pace, after my best running dismount EVER. Of course I stop and have to buckle my strap again, before she lets me move. After a quick shoe change thankfully I am running out of T2 and needless to say I am still irritated slightly. Unfortunately the explicit language intensified at this point while I am running out of transition basically bagging the whole Australia Triathlon rules system to any and all who could hear me.

    Onto the run, by now its about 36 and the sun is nearly unbearable, Cody yells out to me “everyone is dying on the run”, so quickly I decide to back my pace off and keep it at 3:30’s because after ½ way everyone will die and I should be able to maintain. Passing at the turn arounds, I see Ryan and Jason a nice bit in front of me, could I catch one of them? I kept the pace consistent all the way through and even used Cody once his relay caught up to me in order to catch Nuttman and give him a “good job” pat on the butt. Ryan outdistanced me a bit and I was unable to catch him, but there is always NEXT time Ryan! At every stop I tossed a cup of water on my head and neck to keep my core temp down and it was fairly effective. Once we entered the last straight away, I had a guy in my sights, which I know I could blow away as he kept looking over his shoulder, but for some reason at that point of pain and immense heat exhaustion, I decided to let him go. That in fact was Mr. 2nd place in my AG! After crossing I get dizzy and luckily get escorted to a nice shaded seat where I can relax with an ice pack.

     All in the entire race was great; it certainly left me with some notes for my memory bank going forward. It was motivating to feel a butt whooping out there with no clue as to my finish placing. The heat was just crazy intense and reminded me of the 2009 Duathlon national championships, its indescribable, as I thought about those people who run 26.2 miles like this is Kona, sounds INSANE. I had to rush off to work after the race and BARELY made it in as I was pumping up the hills with all I had not to fall off of my bike. After several calls and text, it made my exhaustion feel much better once I found out I placed in the Western Australia championships and infact won a 6-pack of beer, that I could not collect and they even pronounced my name correctly at the awards. Going forward I will be training with the PAUL MACKAY INSTITUTE OF SPORT, (he was 2nd in the elite race) which sounds like it will be very pressing with all of the training in preparation for the Busselton Half Ironman in May. After sending my weeks status on training, my new coach quickly pointed out how I tapered amazingly for this race with doubling my cycling mileage, increasing my swim distance and managing an insane treadmill 5k 4 days out, when most people were tapering. Crazy how motivation works huh, what motivates you?

Shout out to Janna Angell for a great race even through the heat, keep it up girl!!!

PS: sorry I have no real pics available of the race due to that fact I wrote this from work the day of the race. If I get ahold to some I will post, hopefully they will show how miserably hot it was.

Australia vs USA: Compare and Contrast (2 videos even)

2011-01-26T10:43:00.000+08:00

Australia Day, oh what will come of this? I have been told by many that it is a day of pissed blokes (drunk guys) whom often are looking for a fight and specifically often with foreigners, such as myself! What a good way to start off this most recent post, as today January 26^th is Australia Day, essentially the exact replica of USA’s red, white and blue extravaganza which we called “Independence Day” on the 4^th of July. This leads me into a possibly misinformed, debate able, skewed version of the way Dr. Lamperski(sounds good doesn’t it?) see’s it “AUSTRALIA vs. UNITED STATES”….(cue music) DUhh DUNN DUHH DUHNNNN……(bomb drop). Is it a coincidence that United States has more letters, I think not…

So all joking aside, let’s look at a serious comparison from country to country and I must also point out that I am focusing in on the Western Australia side of the country as I have not been over East to the tourist traps in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. From what I can tell, Australia as a whole is very much influenced by the United States in terms of style and music but not so much religion or work ethic. I knew before I ventured over to this distant land, that the price of “runners” aka running shoes to you Americans was nearly double the price back home, so I was preparing myself for a wealthy economy in which the cost of living was substantially higher. After I purchased a “triathlon” magazine at the airport for $13 I quickly caught on that I may be in over my head.

The list below is strictly based upon my simple observations in my 3 month tenure while in Perth, Western Australia. Examples were used from first hand experiences and could be slightly off in some standards. (WA- Western Australia)

Minimum Wage-

Ø WA: $15.00

Ø USA: $7.25

Median Household Income-

Ø WA: $72,800

Ø USA: $52,029

Dining Out-

Ø WA: $22 Cheeseburger w/beetroot and chips (no drink) in Fremantle, side note you get a glass that typically holds about 6 ounces of water and never get refills unless you do it yourself.

Ø USA: $9 for 2 burger mini’s, chips, and an all you can eat DELICIOUS salad bar at “Ruby Tuesdays” yummm, $2 soda (500ml) unlimited REFILLS!

Dining In-

Ø WA: $4.99 per Kg(2.2lbs) for Bananas, Shredded Cheddar Cheese $7 for 500ml

Ø USA: $0.45 per lb of bananas, Shredded Cheddar Cheese $1.99-$2.39 500ml special at HT always!

Rent/Lease-

Ø WA: living in a decent area near the city and sharing an apartment/flat with 2 housemates, expect $200 per week + utilities. ($800 a month).

Ø USA: I lived in the sedgefield neighborhood, which was close to town in a big house, huge deck and yard for $370 a MONTH, with having my own bathroom and balcony!

Mortgage/Real estate- Based upon a location that is about 5-6k from the center city and I have included 3 examples pulled from a local add.

WA: 1bd 1ba w/one parking bay $409,000; 4bd 1ba(wow) w/garage $1.369 million!; 3bd 1ba w/carbay $900,000 as noted in the add a “perfect starter home”

USA: My neighborhood back home was about the same distance to the center city and most of the homes sold for $200-$300k, that being said, they were family homes w/3-4bd and 2ba w/garage and a small piece of land.

Top Sports-

Ø WA: Cricket, Footie (AFL)

Ø USA: Football (gridiron), baseball

Spending Habits-

Ø WA: circa USA 2006(can’t go wrong mentality)

Ø USA: much more conservative after the recession hit us hard in recent years.

Cycling Cultures-

Ø WA: Literally 100’s of miles if cycling paths to travel. On a normal day I will pass 100 cyclist while cruising about 20-30k

Ø USA: Cycling paths HAHA (North Carolina) we have one loop called the “booty loop” which is somewhat safe and short of 5k in total length!

Petrol/Gas cost-

Ø WA: $5.00+ per gallon(but sold in liters)

Ø USA: $2.60 per gallon?

Cars-

Ø WA: drive on the left hand side of the road with the steering wheel on the right.

Ø USA: Drive on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the left.

Cycling equipment cost-

Ø WA: Standard Tube $10, helmet $190

Ø USA: $5, helmet $110

Running equipment cost-

Ø WA: Asics Gel GT 2160 $209.95, Yanks $19.95

Ø USA: $114.99, Yanks $9.99

Internet-

Ø WA: bloody horrible, everything is ran on a data plan using GB and you have to “recharge”, even YouTube is considered downloading

Ø USA: everyone has wifi (very high speed) and its cheap, around $30-40 a month? Plus you can download music ALL DAY and it never runs out!

Air Conditioning-

Ø WA: some people have it but very few seem to use it. It’s hot as heck, 100 degree’s out and people just sit and sweat it out somehow.

Ø USA: A/C is a must pretty much everywhere. If you don’t have A/C then you are in a bind of some sort, it’s cranking all day at your house and in your car.

Food choice-

Ø WA: Lots of Thai and Indian food, as well as subway and McDonalds!

Ø USA: Mexican food, I miss it so much! Sesame Chicken, nothing compares to this real Chinese crap down under.

Beer-

Ø WA: extremely overpriced! $9-10 for a normal pint! It seems that the some of the beers are only 3% alcohol as well? Why bother?

Ø USA: $4 for a pint sometimes $2 on specials, geez I miss you Ed’s Tavern!

Wine-

Ø WA: loads to choose from as wine country is just down the road, price is equivalent to the USA amazingly! Still haven’t seen 2 buck chuck

Ø USA: Standard, seems like less choices in some places, but Harris Teeter brings the heat in the wine section.

Fun Runs/Road Races-

Ø WA: $10-12 entry fee’s usually and $3 for club members! We did a New Years Eve 8k, it was $15 but included basically all you can eat sausage sizzle, muffins galore, 2 beers, lemonade and chips!

Ø USA: $20-25 for a 5k! We always get shirts back home but after awhile they pile up.

Weather-

Ø WA: HOT, HOT, HOT. 2 seasons, summer and rainy season. 100 degree’s (38) here at this and people casually walk around in business suits.

Ø USA: 4 seasons. I missed them all I think actually. North Carolina is a perfect moderate temp MOST of the time.

Oprah Winfrey, recently made an appearance out east and there was a huge uproar about it down under. People absolutely loved her, it was pure insanity actually, and she packed out the Sydney Opera house which boosted the tourism to come by 5 fold I am willing to bet. Before you head over here with your “USA” money keep in mind the cost of normal daily functions, they add up quick, as I soon realized while I arrived over here, found myself jobless and wondering where to go. I dropped $200 on a simple cart of groceries at the store one time and that didn’t include a package of thick steaks, a big honey ham or ever a couple bottles of wine, we are talking, rice, some frozen chicken, some ice cream, just the normal purchases.

BBQ in Jurien Bay

Western Australia is amazing, while most people truly are very friendly and outgoing, they all seem to assume I am from Canada; I am getting past that, simply because Steve Nash (NBA player) is the man. Ever since arriving I have been engrained into the coffee culture and it could be a death sentence for me. If I get near “Express or Epic” café’s I am done, how could I not walk in, order a $4 or $5 Flat White or Latte, accompanied with a delicious warm raspberry muffin? My remedy has been in the form of a drip/percolated coffee maker, along with the wonderful taste of fruit muesli cereal in the mornings. So all of this being said, it’s very expensive here but it appears that most people tend to make more money and often take extensive travel holidays all around the world, where as American’s must work work work and never enjoy the experience life has to offer while they slave away at a desk to make enough fake $ to build that 3 story home on the lake that they really can’t afford.

Another valid point to this extremely long but very interesting dive into culture, I think the Australians got something good going on here. Every full time position entitles you to 4 weeks paid holiday leave from the get go at a job. It’s insane to think as an American starting with that much leave honestly, plus they have a superannuation fund (essentially 401k) that you must deposit 9% of your check into for your retirement. After 7 years of employment you get 7 full weeks of holiday leave and someone told me that once you get to 10 years you get about 10-12 weeks of leave, utterly AMAZING! I could see how so many people have arrived in Australia, then get perks such as this and never make it back “home”. Asia and India are fairly close for travel as well, so it’s common for many Western Australians to fly over and live like a king for a couple weeks.

In CLOSING, Each country has its own strengths and weaknesses of course; our political structure is a completely different issue, while politics in Australia doesn’t seem to have that “politically correct” stamp of approval on everything. As another point, people do not randomly sue someone to hope for that easy meal ticket here. If you spill coffee on yourself, you feel like an idiot and then people piss on you (not literally) for doing so and you have a laugh. Back home it’s a law suit waiting to happen because you were texting while trying to drive your car, change the radio station and attempting to stir in some sugar, and in some indescribable way you spill a bit of coffee on yourself and feel the need to file a $6milllion law suit. I love the attitude of the people in Australia, typically upbeat and enjoying life, guns are banned here so that’s one less issue to deal with “ I have the right to bear arms”. Take it for what it’s worth; I hope that I have given some sort of insight on the cultures and how they operate in a different setting from one country to the next!

Below is a recap of my recent weeks Down under written by pictures....

Tree Top Walk: kings park

London Court

G$ the original gangsta aka G Star Raw

In thought at Sunset

Next Blog: What to write about?

2011-01-20T23:29:00.000+08:00

Its about time to update my blog, does anyone have any suggestions or perhaps an idea they would like me to write about? It's the 1st time I have asked this but I figure if anyone is reading my blog why not see what would be the most captivating to my 2.3 viewers out there.

I have had a couple suggestions so far including:

australian beer
the state of the economy in australia

what's next???

Rottnest Island: Adventures in Snorkeling and Sunbathing

2011-01-10T00:48:00.000+08:00

After my arrival to Australia a couple months ago, I was greatly encouraged to visit some phenomenal place called "Rottnest Island" which is 19k off the coast. In short, this place was amazing as several pictures show below (if you want to cut to the chase you can simply scan for pics).In a brief summary of the island, here are a couple exerts from our friend Mr./Ms. Wikipedia:

The island was given the name "Rattenest" (meaning "rat's nest" in the Dutch language) by the Dutch fleet captain Willem de Vlamingh on 29 December 1696. De Vlamingh described the indigenous marsupial, called a quokka, as a large rat.^[6]Ten Aboriginal prisoners were sent to Rottnest Island in August 1838. The Colonial Secretary announced in June 1839 that the island would become a penal establishment for Aboriginal people, and between 1838 and 1931, except for the period 1849 to 1855, Rottnest was used as an Aboriginal prison to "pacify" local natives. Aboriginal men were imprisoned for offences including spearing livestock, burning the bush or digging vegetables.
It has been estimated that there may be as many as 369 Aboriginal graves on the island. Rottnest was the site of an internment camp in both World War I and World War II. In WWI it was mostly used for German and Austrian enemy aliens, before being closed towards the end of the war due to poor living conditions

Upon researching information for this post I didn't realize that some many people were basically captive and/or tortured on the island getaway, crazy what they can turn into a vacation hot spot huh? Moving FORWARD, my good friend from the states Glenn came to Australia for a visit just a couple weeks back, so I knew we had to make a trip to Rottnest while he was around, after all when would he be able to do this again? After a very hectic couple of weeks, the decision was made to head to the island since I actually had a day free, so BOOM here we go! Screw planning this trip out days in advance as most do, we were going to wake up, walk to the train station, hitch a ride to Fremantle , buy our ferry ticket and spend the day hopping (not literally) around the island. Of course with this lack of planning we managed to miss our 1st train, then the ferry we planned on was full so we waited a bit longer, but all in all we still managed to make it in the AM time frame.

Upon arriving to the island, we noticed heaps of large boats just anchored next to the island were most had small rafts to take into shore after they finished off their floating margarita's. Next stop was finding a bike hire and after some frustration of losing our way, Glenn and I found the shop to hire some sweet single speed bikes. My bell was broke as well as my seat kept sliding down, what an awesome piece of machinery! Glenn was the navigation expert, so trusting his eagle scout instincts, I followed suit. We noticed loads of people walking their bikes up the hills and basically decided that we had to ride up the hills harder while making it look as effortless as possible, CHECK.

Great Hangout area

On to our adventure, we managed to ride the entire island by bike and then come back for more racking up 36K+ on these rag tag bikes, all the while toting around our full back packs, wearing sandals aka "thongs" in down under slang, and rocking it shirtless. The water was amazing and so clear, heaps of people were at the beaches, it was time to hit the water. After bailing out on paying another $25 on snorkel gear, we decided that our swimming goggles would be just fine, so we hit Little Salmon for the dive of a lifetime. I was hit by a small wave walking into the water because it was so clear it caught me off guard and nearly knocked me on my A$$. Upon further inspection (going under water) I took a single stroke and saw a school of fish in front of me, "WOW THIS IS AWESOME!". I found Glenn and mentioned that I wished we had a snorkel because I just can't hold my breath underwater like some people and then I hear a nice English woman say, " I have a snarkel on the beach, let me fetch it fa you!!!". Sweet I got a snorkel and manged to suck in about half of the Indian Ocean up my nose because I breathed w/o clamping my nose shut, OUCH, BURNING, BURNING!

Little Salmon Bay {favorite snorkeling spot} G$ on the far right

I figured it out thanks to my above average intelligence level and then explored. Without an underwater camera, the scenery is impossible to accurately describe. The corral and the varieties of fish were amazing, to simply put. We lost time and snorkeled for quite awhile before exploring the remainder of the island. We also realized that because we were caught up with exploring we completely missed lunch and hadn't ate since 7am! By the way there was only one water spout outside of the main jetty, so we were drastically dehydrating ourselves into nothing. After snorkeling a few other spots, we made it back to our 1st snorkel spot, where we were told promptly not to go because of the waves crashing against the rocks in the afternoon was dangerous. Naturally, Glenn and I had to dive in and see what it was all about, the warnings were pretty accurate as the waves really pushed you around especially if you stayed near the crest of the water line. Fortunately we were able to snap a few pictures of us snorkeling and even a funny video of Glenn falling onto some rocks.

Myself snorkeling against the waves

All in all this trip was great, we rushed back to make our 5:30pm bike drop off time and decided we should jump over to the hot showers in the villa section of the island. SUBWAY it was for dinner, along with a JUG of orange-mango juice we found at the grocery for $2 and a Mocha milk for $1!!! We decided to change plans and not take the late night 9pm ferry back into existence, so we managed to hop on the 6:30pm ferry home. The ride was rough with the boat bouncing from side to side, but our fatigue began to set in at this point, as well as our sun workout, which mostly soaked up my back. On the way back we were able to witness some amazing drunk ramble from some locals to the police as well as make new friends with 3 women, 2 whom were from Germany visiting and another who works at the mines and encouraged us as everyone else does to apply for a position within the mines to BANK some serious money.

In recap, this was an amazing trip, the pictures will do little justice, but I am fortunate to be able to say that I have experienced this island with one of my best friends. I hope to continue my adventure around Australia moving forward if things line up in order to allow me to do so. Up next, maybe a trip to Asia? Who knows, once I find that money tree, I will pick it dry!!!

The Beatdown: Triathlon Down Unda'

2010-12-24T12:18:00.001+08:00

Dec 19th: Western Australia Sprint Triathlon Championships

This past weekend after pressure was applied to sign up for the Sprint Championships in December I finally buckled and signed up the week of the race. Chatting with the locals, seemingly ever person was doing this triathlon even people who normally wouldn't do tri's, which meant bad news for me. With each person that I found out registered that was potentially another place in front of me. Since it was a shorter race, I ASSUMED that I could get away with the shorter distance despite my lack of triathlon fitness with the swim and bike, WRONG.

Luckily Ray Lampard was kind enough to let me borrow a set of his race wheels to hopefully make up for my lack of cycling lately as well as a "sperm" helmet also known as an aero helmet from Cody. I was decked out and ready to go, I set a new 5k pr the week before, so I knew my run fitness is coming around. We woke up pretty early, ghetto rigged our bikes to the bike rack we borrowed from Nathan doig and then piled 4 of us into the 2 door Hyundai hatchback and made our way to Rockingham.

We arrived in what I thought would be ample amounts of time to warm-up but I was wrong yet again. I didn't get to take my bike for that 3-4 mile spin I was hoping for, I actually managed to push my bike into transition and rack it up, before heading out for a quick 3/4-1 mile run. I saw all of the ballers gathering around the "Running Centre" tent and we made some small talk before they were calling waves to the water. Oh well I thought, no wet suit, then I saw Jason Nuttman and he offered his old wetsuit to me, so I quickly pulled it on and made my way to the water. As a side note, for all of you triathletes, do not randomly grab someones wetsuit that you have never used prior, that's a big no no. My goggles were missing, so I grabbed Cody's, went for a quick swim and realized they would not work, so I ran back to my bag with 3 minutes remaining to use Glenn's goggles.

Watching the open elite men and women start out in the open water was amazing, as it was just like the triathlons I had seen on TV. People were sprinting through knee deep water and diving in with their best butterfly technique and quickly jumping up for a few more meters to run. My wave was next, did I mention the one and only time I have ever done an open water swim in the ocean was the day they spotted a shark near us and we all had to get out after 10 minutes? Bang the gun goes off, we are running through the water, its utter chaos, people are everywhere and I honestly am not sure when to start swimming. I take a dive and swim a bit but notice most of the guys are still running, so I jump back up.

The swim was pretty uneventful, I remember just deciding to grab on to the feet of another swimmer assuming he would guide me to the front, well that wasn't the case. In retrospect, i should have gone out much harder in an effort to make my way towards the front pack to keep myself motivated. After exiting the water, i saw Glenn snapping some pictures before I jumped on my bike. My transition was not the smoothest but it could have been worse for sure. Immediately I began passing people and noticed a guy just in front of me with a disk wheel, "just stay with him chris" is all I told myself and we went through the 1st lap just 10 meters apart, check. After the turnaround, I was zapped, not sure what happened if it was my motivation or what but it was certainly slower. I was overtaken by 4 other riders on this section and wasn't taking chances on the turns as I had on the 1st loop. As a surprise to me, my running transition off the bike worked really well and I racked the bike up.

After attempting several times to slide my mizuno ronins on, I realized they were too tight so I literally sat on the ground and had to pull each shoe on, this made for a lightning fast T2. Looking back I remember I had a T2 transition of 19 seconds in Savannah and on this day I would safely say I was near the 50+ second range. Time to do what I know I can do now... run. As I flew past some of the women on the course, I tried to push harder and harder. Some people were on the left side and some on the right of this turnaround course and around 5 minutes in I remembered a guy putting his hands in the air and giving me this go to hell look because I was in his path. "Ok Chris, after this turnaround you are going to DEMOLISH this guy into the ground and give him a "good job" pat on the way past". I remember when I took off with about 2 miles remaining and I passed a group of Juniors running in a pack and they were all caught off guard by my speed, but I didn't have time for games, I HAD to catch this guy and show him my dominance!

So yes, I caught this guy and kept pushing on but after I passed him my motivation seemed to loose focus. Then I noticed what I had many times before, my shoes were digging into my foot. I was getting warmer and warmer, so I said screw it, the top is coming down. After pulling down my tri top, everyone began looking at me weird and people were yelling stuff to me. I finished the last 1/4m pretty strong to pass a couple people in the stretch and then I heard it. "Good stuff man, but I think you got DQ'ed for pulling down your top" - Cody. WTF, really, wow, I forgot this was actually a big championships of sort but I remember racing with no top at duathlon nationals. Luckily I didn't get DQ'ed but from what everyone else told me, they had NEVER seen anyone take their top down during a triathlon, so now I am the shirtless American bandit. Matt Illingworth caught on to my system as taking your top down in the tri will save minutes on the run ! haha.

Check out the video from the race: I am in around the 30second mark on my bike

All in all it was fun, but disappointing at the same time, I finished 31st overall and 6th in my division, it was a butt whooping. Jason Rhine, Jason Nuttman, and Ryan Baugh all got the best of me, not to mention the other athletes who were miles ahead of me as elite racers. Surprisingly I had the fastest 5k split of the triathlon in 16:26 with a slew of sub 17's just behind me. My bike portion wasn't horrible but on my garmin I had just shy of 23 mph, my downfall was T1 and T2 which made my combined bike split. The swim sucked but I know going forward I will do MUCH better and be more aggressive come January 30th at the Western Australia Olympic Distance Championships here in Perth. Thank you mates out there for truly giving me the beat down and christening into the world of triathlon in Australia. Come January I will begin riding and swimming more consistently in preparation for the next race and hope for improvement. Taking off 4 months completely from any triathlon training and one month into training I will take confidence from this performance.

Christmas morning there will be a 100k ride through the hills that I am optimistic that I can make, what a way to start the holiday with a gut wrenching, lung burning, leg bashing ride up into the hills.

Shout out to Sean, Macca and Jimmy for finishing 1-2-3 overall and a special thanks to Janna Angell for having an outstanding race finishing the run with a new 5k PR. Good on Ya!

Race Results Link

10 years in the making: {part deuce} Pimping cars, trucks, hogs & a failed business

2010-12-18T21:48:00.000+08:00

After my most recent post entering into the last 10 years of my life and delving into how I got where I am at this point, I hit a mini wall. Have you ever been inspired to do something and then after about half way into completion, just loose that focus? Well that's where I am right now, but I am sure as I tap away at this $300 refurbished Acer laptop (big $$$) it will dawn upon me while I started this in the first place(as a note excuse the random side bars that I go through, it actually helps paint part of my life). So here I am, its 2005 and I just purchased a little condo unit in South Charlotte, I fixed it up, it was my nest baby for 2-3 years I thought anyways. Managed to make it through some neighborhood mischief (break-in) and I never seemed to settle quite into place. I remember to this day, after someone smashed into my home and stole my belongings, I was carrying a hand gun with me frequently with an angry trigger to say the least. One time my girlfriend woke me up because she heard a noise and I was grabbing my pistol just as my roommate yelled out it was just him! Wow what an experience, he thought he was near death and I was thinking, am I am about to shoot someone?

Sorry for the side track, as I am moving along through the chain of command at the local running shop, I hear about a financial job where I could possibly have an "in"from a former rival cross country runner in college. Now, I am officially going to be a legit adult, I am getting into finance, dressing up for work, getting a 401k, and drinking coffee as a regular habit during break time. It was pretty exciting initially, I had always seen the people scurrying in uptown as I would occasionally pick up my grandmother(retired wachovia employee) during her lunch break to grab a bite at El Cancun. I was on my way there, business suits and slicked back hair, maybe some flashy shoes to go along with my proper suit and tie. Well not exactly, I was wearing button downs and polo's to work mostly, because it was REAL laid back, almost to the point where you didn't care as much, people even wore shorts and sandals sometimes!

During the last semester of school I purchased a newer vehicle (VW Jetta) and promptly decked it out with custom wheels and an insanely loud sound system, then I ran across a deal on a friends truck for $1200, so I went for it. Most people would have labeled it as a "POS" (piece of shh) with the paint half missing and dents throughout but I saw the beauty in it as I scrapped off the "Redneck" sticker. This was not the typical vehicle most business class people would drive around but after all I already had a car that was dependable, this was my "project". Managing to do most of the body work by myself, my good friend took the truck into his paint booth and sprayed it out for me, midnight blue with flake, it was SWEET!. Next on tap, the "Twinkies" also known as 20's, yep, I was rolling on dubs and I decked out the interior with a new MP3 player, custom console subwoofer, all new carpet and seat covers, tinted windows and flow masters! I was riding dirty in every way, most people would stare at my custom "whip" and wonder who was inside, not imaging a skinny white guy with glasses, bumping that new Nas CD. This was another side track, but it also gives you a sense of were I was coming from and my sense of style from the environment of which I was raised, on the west side of Charlotte, not a particular hot spot for the upper class.

New job, 2 pretty sweet vehicles, things are going pretty awesome for me, I have been piecing together my condo, something is missing. It's time to get my HOG! Well not quite a hog but close, a Honda Shadow chromed out with Vance and Hines pipes, man it was a beauty and bust your ear drums loud! One of my close friend encouraged me to get one with him so I pulled the trigger and well....he didn't! thanks Rob Dietz! This leads into my next juncture of life, "Running Happy" and "RunningOne", a new business venture with one of my closest friends. After running the Myrtle Beach Half Marathon in fun "joe boxer" bright yellow boxers with friends Beth, Kara and Rob, we noticed something spectacular. People LOVED the smiley face on our boxers and thus began the concept of "Running Happy". {For the next few paragraphs I will bold the font, so that I may paint you a much clearer picture of the ensuing chaos.}

My business partner and I had experience in the running specialty industry, we spoke about the common frustrations of the particular business and eventually THOUGHT that we could own and operate something that could really take off and be even better than anything locally. We started small with operating a coaching service to a group of about 30 people, which was exciting seeing some of the athletes improve rapidly with tons enthusiasm through the cold winter months. Phase one complete, phase two, let's begin selling products to our clients, how can we do this? Hmmm well why not just jump into the world of online sales, yea that sounds AWESOME! Wow things have progressed quickly, being a business owner was a dream of mine always, what could go wrong? We have an official business account at this point, 25k to use for products and whatever else we saw fit in the business. While working my full time job, in between breaks and lunch I was contacting vendors about product that we were seeking. Reebok and Fila came easy as we stock piled shoes into a spare room, along with hammer nutrition and fuel belts. Looking at the credit card statement and then walking into the spare room, I expected it to be filled floor to ceiling but not even close, wow owning a retail business is EXPENSIVE!

Often times I was the "NO" man, in the mix, every time that money was requested to be spent I essentially freaked out. "Running Happy" even established their own trademarked shirts, shorts and singlets for sale. Some sales begin to come in as the excitement and debt was building into a combustible bonfire. At some point with the chaos of a start up business, we decided it would be the best thing to just go ahead and look into opening our own brick and mortar location. After all, we were dedicated and wanted this to be a full time gig, with freedom to do what we see fit. As whispers around the running community built, more and more people found out about our plans to open a "new" competing store in the area. The local shops, did not take a liking to this very much and began to pressure our vendors to stray away from us. The pressure was truly on now, we scoped out a location(lease signed) for our new AMAZING STORE, looked at retro fitting fee's and thus finally signing for a small business loan. Luckily my business partner covered our A$$ and made sure there were loop holes in each contract if we needed to back out. My stress level was unbelievably high, do I really want to do this? it could burn bridges with some people as well as put me into tremendous debt. As stated there was a lot of "hear say" going on with old co-workers and random people in general, so I made a huge leap of faith and contacted one of our soon to be competitors and did I mention former boss, Tim Rhodes.

Makes the World Go Round!

   I still remember the day I walked into the store and my former co-workers were in shock that I even set foot inside. After breaking the shock with a big smile, while being very nervous, we discussed how I actually set up a meeting in an effort to clear the air about our intentions out of pure respect for a touted business man whom gave me a chance to start within his company. After discussing several of our conflicts, some which were very touchy, an hour or so flew past. There I was, sitting across from a well respected business owner, of whom I used to work for and he was being sincere with me about the hardships of owning a small business. To this day, I truly commend Tim for being professional during our one on one meeting, as well, I truly will never forget what he said to me as I left his office. "Chris, I want to see you succeed, I do, I just don't think you realize how difficult it is to run something like this. If you ever need something, let me know, but I am here to protect my business on the same note". Honestly, I could feel the sincerity in his voice and just the way he made eye contact. After this meeting I knew it was time to have a final sit down to discuss our future as small business owners.

   Eventually, the decision was made to scrap our new "Running Happy" store, but what to do with all of the product and etc, the debt had piled up. Wow, about year had passed since I purchased my home, I had a truck, car and a nice motorcycle sitting out front and the possibility of a new business in tow. Luckily we crossed paths with some other business men looking to expand their triathlon store from Charleston, SC called "TrySports". They wanted to open a new location, they had the money, I came to the table with experience and drive, a natural fit. After unloading some debt with traveling to some marathon expo's and selling our items, things began to level down a bit. Still nicely in the hole, I decided that something just had to go. I sold my car, FIRST, then I sold my beautiful hog, I had to pay for the debt somehow, right? After all of this, I still thought the best way to cap off the rest of the debt would be to open a new line of equity on my home, it wasn't for much and it was at a low rate. OK, things aren't what I thought they were going to be, BUT at least there was another option in the cards. Eventually after interviewing several times, I decided that my stable career in finance would have to do, the specialty industry just zapped any enthusiasm I had for it once before, I needed a break, just one job and to be normal. After all I think I was only 23 maybe 24 at this time?

   Crazy huh? things were really looking up as I was leading a pretty standard life, I even had a few toys to play with and living nearly stress free. Putting my stress level into words concerning this segment of my life would be difficult, but just to say it bluntly, I was having a pretty hard time with it all. Luckily I took a much needed step back and just led a seemingly normal life for a few more years until I found it time to really venture into something that was my passion. In this between time, I got back into my running regimen, somewhat, you could say. I was doing about as much as I needed to in order to keep most of the weight off while not limiting my weekend excursions into uptown Charlotte. After all when I was at school, I wasn't partying quite like a rock star as most did, I still needed to get it out of my system, plus I had a passion to just hit the dance floor.

  This leads into my last segment about my trial and error training sessions with my "running career" or lack there of. I was racing VERY frequently from 2005-2007, I would roughly say I raced 3 times a month sometimes 4 or 5, but my mileage was limited. Quite frankly it was almost NON- existent, I was running on Wednesday and racing on Saturday, but what else did I do on the other days? ZUMBA, yes I said it, I jumped into the world of cardio dance at the Harris YMCA heavily! Looking back I realized that I often ran the 2.75 miles to class and back so, let's chalk it up to 15-18 miles a week including races. Tuesday and Thursday nights upstairs at the Harris YMCA, yea I was one of 2 or 3 guys in their but I was mostly fine with that. For some reason, I felt more comfortable wearing my "Fueled by god" shirt to class, but I was rocking it out. Lots of women would come up after class and comment that I was pretty good, CONFIDENCE LEVEL bounces up one more notch! Fairly confident in my natural abilities, I managed to stay in the sub 17:30 range for the 5k's and then the unthinkable happens, 2 races in a row. Rob Dietz Smashes me at Tour De kale (17:58 for me) and then Cody Angell, the newly dedicated runner smashed me at the Summer Breeze 5k (17:26 for me). Time to train, sorry Zumba, I need to start running again, I miss you just writing this....seriously!

  This was a very extensive dive into my world, I would say the majority of the people that I know and began to know closely, would have no idea that I have been through a few of these life experiences. yes this entry was jumping all around like a Mexican jumping bean, pimping trucks to zumba class but it ties my life together through those difficult and educational years. King of the world, I had everything and more than I needed, was I ready to tackle the world of Proprietorship? HELL NO! I must say, looking back, I am so grateful that the attempt was faltered to open my own business. At 23 you think you know the world, I did, Now I am 28 and understanding the true structure of wisdom.

"Life's failures lead to life's monumental successes"

On Sunday morning I will be competing in the Western Australia Triathlon State Sprint Championships, who's who of triathlon will be competing, so I have no stated expectations, but to just give it my best.

Following my recap I plan to wrap up my "10 years in the making" installment where I will jump ahead to the past 15 months of my life and how everything drastically changed for the better.

"Taking the time to understand how you tick as an individual is a key to every one's life, we can cram our self into societies cookie cutter pattern and let life pass us by, OR we can reach deep inside and discover what tools we all have to offer in this huge world of the masses." - CL

10 years in the making: The highs and lows of Mr. Lamperski {part 1}

2010-12-13T23:22:00.001+08:00

HUHS Crew

After explaining to several people why I have traveled to Western Australia (even I, am still figuring this out), I had a thought about how my life has had so many layers and then I was thinking about this point in my life I was just starting my journey through college 10 years ago!!! You know how you can hear that certain song and think "summer 2002, Miami with the boys"? or you smell a scent and you think about that woman that used to come into your grandmothers house when you were like 12? Well I have had a few sights, sounds and smells like that, which have reminded me of these last 10 years of my whirlwind life. I want to reflect on a few keys points that have changed my life drastically for the better even though they may have not appeared to do so at the time( note: this is not based solely upon athletics but meaningful situations in my lifetime which have involved athletics often)

August, the Summer of 2000, fresh out of high school and making my exciting journey into the world of college academia. I remember when I was on the Harding University high swim team my senior year and we had our conference championships at Pfeiffer University in the fall of 1999. What a crap hole, I ragged on that place the whole ride home, who would think about going to school at such a small, run down place? Fast forward a couple months, I receive a call from the head cross country coach in the winter about running cross country for the university. Wow, I always thought I would play soccer and perhaps tennis in college if anything, but running? I applied to UNCG, UNCW, NC State, and Pfeiffer of course. After receiving acceptance letters from all of the schools and paying a visit to each I decided that Pfeiffer's small religious community was the best bet for myself as I didn't want to get drawn into the alcoholic haze of those larger universities, PLUS I could participate in college athletics with the Cross Country and Tennis Teams! AMAZING!!!

Check out the hair!

As the years rolled by, I made some of the best friends I ever could ask for, I will refer to them as brothers actually, I know that when it comes down to it they will always be there for me if I ever need anything. After college I found out that on the first day of XC practice my new friends were talking amongst themselves and all said "who is the new fat kid, look at his gut! There is no way the fat kid will make it today". After the captain let the reigns off, I took off and rolled everyone on that 1st day of practice, the fat kid was in the house and ready to rumble!!! Back then I had NO CONCEPT of training or racing, I would just go harder whenever someone else did in practice. As an example of our prime coaching in the early years, we did suicides in he gym or 50m sprints on the soccer fields. That showed the lack of running knowledge from our 23 year old coach who played college basketball and failed to realize we actually ran 8k and 10k in distance. Each year, I began to learn more and more about the aspects of real training and the pros and cons of each technique while researching online and in books. Since we were in a smaller conference setting I was fortunate enough to be named conference runner of the week twice, was named 4-time all conference XC runner, broke several school records in track, won a steeple chase conference title and even managed to win a collegiate cross country race at Erskine College. I had 2 brief stints with the Pfeiffer University Tennis squad, the sport I truly loved but ended up going back to running. My Senior year, I made one last attempt to capture my well rounded collegiate athletic experience with playing for the soccer team. After 13 years of soccer, my true passion from an early age, why not give it a go while running cross country? I learned quickly that both were very difficult with trying to maintain my goals and most importantly remaining injury free, so soccer was also out of the window and I dedicated everything to cross country out of respect for my team and our amazing coach Bob marchinko.

While in college I remember just floating by, making some C's, maybe some B's even, just enough to get through with no worries. Approaching my Jr. year it hit me, "I am paying thousands of dollars to get a mediocre education that I just don't frankly care about ". From then on I essentially made straight A's with a B or two mixed in, finally focused to get my money's worth before departing into the "Real world". I was ready to make my impact on society while making the big bucks with a bank in uptown Charlotte, after all that's the measure of success, especially in Charlotte. Seemingly everyone works for a bank or works with the banks in some fashion it seems. Upon graduation I finally found a full time teaching position at a Union County High School through the lateral entry program. My reason for getting into the teaching profession was simply because it seemed that the benefits were great with summers off as well my long time girlfriend at the time was teaching and it would fit into our schedules perfectly.

After about a month of teaching geometry, algebra and computer applications to 14-18 year old kids, I realized that since they were in the 504 or IEP program, that the teachers basically let them sail through school prior just passing them worksheets and asking them to be quiet. I wanted to truly make an impact on these kids life somehow, I tried my best to be an authoritative figure while also finding a common ground to bond with each kid. Everyday after school Ii was amazingly exhausted in every sense of the word, I would go home and fall on my bed and pass out for 90 minutes EVERYDAY, then wake up to study lesson plans late into the night. At this point I was not working out very much thus gaining weight and losing my fitness, along with gaining stress daily. One day I went into school and decided that it would most likely be my last day and expressed my conflicts with the principal in charge and he completely agreed that if I didn't feel the right fit, then I should venture elsewhere to find my place in the world, so I did!!! Seemingly taking a BIG STEP backwards.

Luckily, the local running shop "Run For Your Life" was grateful enough to provide me with enough hours to cover my bills in the meantime, while I searched for another position. After a couple months within the organization, I really began to love running as I would see several dedicated runners day in and day out. It was an inspiration, plus I was working with some of the best runners in town/country, Josh Baker and Vince Sherry, two UNC-Charlotte Alumni whom had achieved so much that I could only aspire to reach at my max potential someday. After doing very well at the shop, I eventually transferred out to the satellite location in south Charlotte and became the assistant manager. In my attempt to get ahead of the game and to be a responsible adult I put in a bid to buy a condo in south Charlotte then before I knew it, I was a home owner!!! Wow, what happened, No one else I knew from college had purchased a home yet, I was on the right path, or so I thought. After a 3 year live-in renovation process, my condo was finally looking pretty damn good, new floors, paint, kitchen cabinets, tile, lighting, sink, plumbing, you name it, I did it, mostly with the assistance from my amazing grandparents mary jane and stan, and also with help from wayne and robby saxon, my grandfather and uncle. This investment property was going to earn me some good $ for the down payment of my next house and everything would fall into place as it was, then BOOM....BOOM BOOM....recession time!!!!

Piecing together my home

My next entry will continue with the stepping stones to where I am and between this time, I would experiment with different ways to train for running, one of which was very interesting built around the cardio dancing concept zumba. Over the next 4 years, I broke away from the running shop in an attempt to open my own version of what I thought could be much more while operating an online running store and coaching a group. All of this happening while I ventured into the world of financial information within a credible institution.
My ups and downs would continue to bless me with life's true experience, lots of downs in order to understand how to take advantage of the "ups". Over this span, I am thankful that I can truly take a back seat and understand my journey in much greater detail and patience. Depression, fitness, god, drinking, ownership, coaching, unemployment, and taking a deep deep breath will follow in my next continued blog entry for

"10 years in the making"(part two).

Note of interest:* "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that men and women hold an average of about 14 jobs by the time they turn 40. The majority of these jobs are at the beginning of their working lives - when they are teenagers and in their early twenties. Job longevity tends to lengthen as the employee ages. However, longevity does not always mean that the employee is happy with their job.Kelly Services, a major temporary staffing agency, reports that almost half of adults are not completely satisfied with the requirements, lack of flexibility, risks and compensation of their current jobs"

Stay in tuned!!!

Journey 2 Ironman Western Australia recap

2010-12-07T23:01:00.000+08:00

In Route to Busselton!

As the weekend approached, I wrapped up a great week of training without any hesitation about the extremely lengthy ride to come on Saturday. On Friday night I ended up staying at Nate Dogg's house because we were leaving his residence at 5am on Saturday to meet up with other riders (only 2 showed). Before I called it a night, I spotted a book at Nathan's written by former multiple world record holder Ron Clarke, whom I discovered managed to set all of these amazing records while working a normal job and having a family to tend to after the age of 26. Pretty inspiring read before the ride!

Ready to ROCK at 5am!

Here I am at 5am leaving Nate Dogg's house, equipped with Hammer Gels, Shotz, 3 bottles, my camera, phone and mp3 player of course. It was freezing when we departed, unusual for Perth was the temperature, I think it was about 15 degrees, so it was about 50 or so for your people back home. I rocked out my TrySports gear and 2010 World Championship arm sleeves (thanks Kylee!). To keep me warm-up I also wore a 2XU vest with "the running centre" logo, it saved me big time!

The ride was EPIC to say the least, here is Nathan just in front of me leading the way just after Cody and Janna stopped on the freeway to greet us. Nathan was totally geared up looking like a pro rider out there, kudos for him for making the distance. he certainly had some rough patches but he survived enough to even throw a hard surge on me at 210k into the ride! We were so very fortunate for not having any flat tires or even close calls while riding 220k on the paths and freeway. After this ride I took a dip in the Indian Ocean and felt amazing!

View from our house stay in Yallingup, see the ocean?

Ironman swim finish

Ironman Western Australia swim finish, pretty intense! This is where I managed to lose my friends for the next 11 hrs, so I ended up getting in a long run and burning my face while spending $40 for brekky, but I had a front row seat to the Pro's racing as they ran past my patio spot while eating.

Break Your Limits

"Razor" Ray Lampard, had a cult in attendance as you would think they were a sponsor of the race because so many had "break your limits" shirts on. Great job to all of the "BYL" athletes who raced!
http://breakyourlimits.com/

While watching the race unfold, I was able to see Luke Bell numerous times around the course because it was a 4 lap spectator friendly layout. Here Luke was still maintaining his 2 minute lead until Courtney Ogden eventually overtook him for the strong win.

Amazing to watch some of these athletes come off of the bike and run sub 3 for the marathon!

Millions of dollars in bikes

  Kate Bevilaqua entering the finish chute for her breakout Ironman win over Bec Keat. She truly pushed herself to the limits as she was in complete PIECES by this stretch. She looked as if she was hammering from 5k into the run and she just kept chugging along.

  It was a great day for Western Australia, because the male and female winners were both locals whom had a lot of support. This was both very inspirational and eye opening watching my my 1st ironman event. I truly know that I am not ready for this distance and hope to keep my goal of attempting my 1st one after I turn 30, which is around the corner!

Ironman Western Australia Winners

  Here I am just before we depart from the event, my face is burnt and red. Many people asked if I had not thought about using sun screen and I said well if I had my wallet or phone or my bag ( sunscreen in it)which was left in the car, then I would have gladly used some. Thankfully I took a step back instead of getting upset over losing my friends among the crowd, I soaked up the experience in every way. I had a great run with a group from Perth and even added an extra hour on with Simon, a local cannondale and sugoi rep.

  I want to give a big shout out to all of you who have completed the half or full ironman distance. It really takes so much dedication to training properly for these events, I don't think the rest of the population understands. I even stood in amazement, thinking about how crazy my life sounds with my minimal training regimen and to think these people were doing much more than I, with normal lives.

  It was a treat to see people such as Matt Illingworth (whom pieced my bike together after arriving from the US) rock out a 9:30 Ironman, but the kicker is he biked 4:30! Last year he split 4:17:25 for the bike record! OUCH. Sweet T, the training beast managed to break the big barrier of 9 hours with a time of 8:59:57, AMAZING! Scott Thomson, a "break your limits" athlete, also ripped up the course with a 9:36 Ironman in his debut! He rolled to a 3:05 run split, great job guys.

  Life is truly a gift for all of us (forgive me for getting philosophical), I hope that I can push my limits or "break" them as well as these people have. We all have our own individual gifts, it may be just your charisma, or the way you bake food, but I believe that I have some talent as an athlete and want to continue pursuing some lofty goals ahead of me. After cycling for 220k, while pulling for about 70% of the ride, it really gave me heaps of confidence on the bike. I managed to sleep a fair amount and then run nearly 2hrs the following morning and then come back on Monday with a double run. My fitness is truly coming around and I am very thankful that I have been injury free as I have eased into my workout load the best that I can.

   This Friday night I am very optimistic that I am capable of setting a new personal record for the 5k, as I will be racing against my good friends Cody Angell and Nathan Doig at Challenge Stadium. Cody always bring out the best in me, so hopefully I can focus and not falter with pushing the both of us along to new heights. The goal is to run sub 15:20 if not a bit faster, with the ultimate goal by the end of summer to break 15:00 for the 5k. My workout last week went very well, so we will see how my legs recover from the long weekend with my 5k under the lights. Thank you to all of the people whom I have been able to train with while here in Perth. Wish us luck this Friday night! I will post the results ASAP.

One last shout out to Jason Nuttman, whom faced a heat wave as well as a brutal course at the 2010 Asian Oceanic 70.3 world championships, placing 5th in his age group! Way to go

"Inspiration is among us everywhere, all you need to do is take a deep breath to take it all in and face the realization of it"

Perth to Busselton = Complete

2010-12-06T20:25:00.000+08:00

Just a quick update before I get into detail, but yes I made the 220k ride down the paths and freeways to watch "Ironman Western Australia" on Sunday. Thankfully we had no flats on the ride and had a couple stops to just stretch and grab a drink. Shout out to Nathan Doig for completing the journey!!!!

"THE" Epic Ride: pre-ride hype to Busselton with 223k in front of me

2010-12-03T19:22:00.000+08:00

This weekend a small town called Busselton will be host to the Ironman Western Australia 140.6 event and I am very fortunate as I will be in attendance of my very first Ironman. The kicker is that I am actually riding my bicycle from West Perth, ALL THE WAY down to Busselton with a small group of riders. One of which is my friend Nathan Doig, whom took on the challenge of cycling this distance simply because it appears that most people believe it could be an impossible feat for a man who rides his road bike as much as he walks on water, which is very rare in this case.

To date, I believe that my longest ride is about 70 miles in total earlier in the year on my new Kuota K-factor whom I call "Wayne". "Wayne" continues to be the stout steed that I will ride on this epic journey through the 30+mph wind gust on the way to the Ironman. In all the ride will be at a minimum of 223k to Busselton but the funny thing is that we are staying in another town further south which is about 45k past Busselton, in all this journey COULD potentially be 270k of riding in one day! That's about 164 MILES to all of the Americans back home! Wish me luck as I hope to have the wind at my back the entire time, may I never run out of fuel or water, and I hope to make the epic ride on the same tubes I begin with.

Directions from Perth to busselton

The Ride of my life to be determined.

I hope to update my blog/facebook status once I reach my destination, so that I may enlighten those who hope that I die, get injured or simply make it in one piece will be able to know what happened. Planning to take my camera with me for some snap shots of the event.

Culture: Coffee Breaks, Cricket, "Set Top Boxes" & a new PR

2010-11-26T23:33:00.000+08:00

Life is Great Down Under!

One profound experience that I have had while living in Perth is the frequent coffee breaks. Yes, COFFEE breaks! Not your standard, dark roast with some hazelnut but some of the tastiest lattes and mocha’s that you have ever had in your life! It’s a rare occasion that you would finish a morning jog without someone saying, “let’s grab a latte or flat white" before preparing for your day. This is my style, my friends back home know what I am talking about as well, when I was unemployed and taking a different path a year ago I often visited the local coffee shops in Dilworth to just relax, soak up the atmosphere and research my new life that I was thinking of beginning.

I remember about 5 years ago when I on occasion made a Saturday morning run with the likes of Cathy Grable, Lori Hagemen, Sheila Wakeman, Aprille Schaffer, Julie Hardin and Kathy Abernathy, they really only met in the morning to have an excuse to have a 1hr coffee break on a weekend morning. I tried to soak it up, but I just didn’t have much girl talk for them, and most of the time they wanted to hook me up with someone, so I eventually faded away from the gossip scene(sorry ladies, you know I LOVE all of you!). So coffee here is not percolated or drip, it is all blended with some form of milk in a latte form, it’s so good that I never even add sugar or splenda to my warm milky, caffeinated heaven. Back to the casual environment of the coffee world here, the local café/coffee shops are EVERYWHERE. Literally next to each other in the competing market which is seemingly unheard of in the US. They do have some chains of coffee shops but there are tons of independent chains which I absolutely love and support! The people are like family there, they greet you and ask you how your day is and remember you the next time you come in and recommend certain picks of their own.

The shops are pretty much half full of people throughout the entire day around here through the weekday until everything closes and then moves to other outskirts of the town. Here is a dialogue of the culture here from many angles interpreted by Christopher Lamperski: “ ohhh mate I had a tough night last night, lets grab a coffee” “sure”; “Work is pretty slow, let’s grab a latte down the corner shop” “sounds good let’s go”; “ It’s 1:30pm on Tuesday and 100 degrees outside, let’s grab a mocha?” “Perfect, freakin oath!” I have yet to hear anyone deny a coffee break at any point in their day, people really love to take breaks and to just discuss anything or nothing, and it’s AWESOME! There is a small coffee shop that used to be a horse stable tucked down an ally way in west perth that I have visited twice now and I love it. There is always one man serving coffee up in this small place, but its done up very well, but thats not the kicker!

The man most likely in his 50's is always playing JAY-Z, so I know this is one of MY spots for sure, makes me want to open up a replica back home!I wished back home people would take some time to literally sit and enjoy a coffee with a good friend as opposed to working to get ahead of the Joneses new LCD TV , it puts life into perspective. This may be the reason that I haven’t met one person yet who seems slightly depressed or upset about work, their family or their financial woes, because well, they appear to have their priorities most lined up.

So there has been this huge build up about the “Ashes” match that has now begun down under for weeks. I was waiting for it to finally come to see what all this talk is about and here it is. Australia vs. England, in get this, five-----pause----wait--- 5 day matches, is this not the longest game in history? Well the before they even set foot on the turf, I figured I had better watch some cricket on TV! We did pick up an inflatable kangaroo that says “Go Aussie” in support but really, I am ready for the Basketball season to come through because its more my speed. One of my goals however is to catch a “20/20” match live, which is a faster paced cricket game that is complete in merely a few hours. Also on the agenda is to watch an AFL game in which my friend Nathan Doig is actually an official BIG TIME official.

Next on the plate, set top boxes! I come from a culture of pop frenzy where nearly everyone has high speed internet, cable, DVR, flat screens and surround sound, which of course all of them I had in North Carolina. I had an EXTRA subwoofer connected to my surround sound to make the movie experience extra intense even. As I sit on the couch to watch TV in Perth, I am looking at a tube TV that has a broken set of rabbit ears on top with a fuzzy signal on nearly every station. We fortunately get one clear station so far called “ten” which is similar to our fox network back home and it has a few shows we watch on it. It’s actually refreshing not having the world of 1000 channels at my finger tips as well as DVR to record anything I can dream of. Most of the people locally appear to have something called a set top box, which boost up to around 15-20 stations at most from what I gather, many of which are cultural channels that may not even use the English language, so let’s say for the sake of argument, 10 channels. Today Janna and I are setting out on an adventure to possibly purchase a set top box to provide us with a few extra stations with clear picture and sound. The kicker is that once you pay the $70 for the box, all of the stations are free, so it’s really a deal. Back home I was paying about $135 a month for basic stuff mostly but it included DVR and HD stations. While hunting for a cheap set top box, I am going to purchase some blank CD’s to burn some music on for our car rides and for the chance to play at home. My life is a soundtrack, I am always pumping music in some fashion depending on my mood it could be gangsta rap, country, easy listening, jazz or classical, so I need to have access to pumping my music up!

All in all, I love the culture here and I can see how my good friend Cody loved it so much as well. People are very happy with their possessions and most don’t appear to be in this rat race that America feeds off of. Instead of having a brand new Lexus, people will drive a Ford and save money for the coffee shop or their vacation to the coast of some other country. I hope that I can take this attitude back home, to really soak up life and make the most of everything without putting material possessions as #1 in my life. Before I head back to settle into the “real world” once again, I have several plans to travel as much as I can. Here is a list of places that I would love to hit on my journey back home, so if you have any tips, recommendations, connections for housing, or of course want to meet me and pay for my way I would appreciate it, so that I may truly soak up my journey and place in life.

Exmouth

Bali

Melbourne

Thailand

India

France

Italy

New Zealand

Where are we going next? Who is taking a step and meeting me?

If only money grew on trees!!!!

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Just before posting this blog, I was convinced to put my hand in the fire at a 3000m track race locally at Challenge Stadium. I ended up in 6th place even though I was seeded 13th on an estimated time of 9:05. After testing my speed, I know that I have a bit more in the tank for sure and in a few weeks I will be able to drop my time down substantially. 1k splits: 3:04, 3:06, 2:59

5k in 2 weeks! Goal to run sub 15:27

Shaving: Time and my face(update at the bottom)

2010-11-19T16:26:00.001+08:00

Leaving America for Australia, I had 2 main goals, one primary and one secondary, both of which were hard to describe at my age. My primary goal in leaving the country was to experience life outside of my little box and to soak up as much culture as possible. The secondary goal in my adventure was to train more effective than I did before with out any distractions that I may have had back home, just to reach my abilities. Over the last 2 weeks of my prep for leaving, many people asked me particular reasons for traveling, "are you going for work?", NO, " are you going to become a professional athlete?", YES! well no not really, that is in the back of all of our dreams whom are competitive by nature, but the simple fact is NO.

To shave or not to?

Moving away to experience life by job hoping or sleeping on couches, is something that a normal teenager or college kid would do, but here I am nearly 30 years old chasing some kind of a dream. I left some amazing people back home and some good connections with employment to pursue whatever this is. Like anyone who attempts to be rebellious or adventurous, I chose to not shave or cut my hair for the remainder of my stay. As of right now, my semi beard is growing by the day and nagging me even more. I have always had dreams of a full thick beard, to be a manly man, but plain and simple, its really hard to grow a legitimate blond beard! Plus it becomes itchy and tough to sleep with especially now that it has topped 100 degrees (or 38 degrees for the aussies). So at this point in time, its a big decision, whether to trim my facial hair because its nagging me or the realization that I may not be able to get a fairly decent part time job because I look like a bum. What to do what to do?

As far as shaving time, well that always is the goal isn't it? I mean do we every feel like we have tapped completely for all of our ability? I know I haven't, I would consider myself lazy in a bit, i have opted for the social scene over the grueling training sessions that have separated the men from the boys so to speak. Maybe its time I buckled down and became one of these men who make that BIG jump? Yesterday and today i was fortunate enough to converse with Ryan Gregson whom is only 20 years old and is already the Australian National Record holder in the 1500m run with a 3:31:06. He was very carefree and easy going, he even knew Nelly was a part owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, most people in Charlotte don't even know that! But at his invitational breakfast he spoke about his training and surrounding himself with people to give him confidence and build him up throughout his young career. Now I have found a place where I can train with some very solid runners/triathletes who push each other to the next level. Recently while cycling around town with a couple mates, on different occasions I saw a couple of riders who rode in the Tour De France, back in town just doing some training rides. The talent here is deep and I think can be tapped even more than it already has been.

Random Shot of a training session at sunset

Surrounding myself with these people will make me better for sure, but to what extent, i have no clue. I have always heard I had a great natural ability but what does that mean, and how far can that take me? So far I have done a couple running, cycling and swimming workouts, and so far I have been virtually blown out almost every time. So when do I start shaving this time? Will it come when i shave my face and my head? When I was a collegiate runner at lil Pfeiffer University, I remember having long locks that i had braided up into corn rows and then shocking everyone by having it all shaved off before the end of the season. Well it seemed to really help as I won my one my 1st college race and then I even pushed deeper at the conference meet the following week with a 7th place performance by 15 seconds from a 3rd! Hmm maybe I should shave my legs as well, it seems to work for the triathletes right?

So all in all, shaving time and shaving my face, true questions in life that we all must face. Will I shave my face? How much time can i shave off of my 5k, 3k, 10k, marathon, half ironman time? Pun intended, Time will tell. As far as my journey here it has been very interesting, now facing the fact that I NEED to be employed in order to rent out my own place or move in somewhere that has a bedroom so I can give my friends some additional privacy. Life will take me where I need to be, it has thus far and the path hasn't been too bumpy. An exciting update is that next week I will be working three 8 hour days at a local cafe washing tables, dishes and pans! Crazy how back home I would have NEVER considered something like this and now I am happy to just be apart of something to earn some $. Apparently some of the certifications I hold in the states do not directly convert over here and in order to be a personal trainer I may have to pay nearly $3k for some courses, if this is ultimately the case, I will have to find a new temporary profession.

Check out my bottle cage, the only way to recover!

Calling everyone who may read this post, I urge you to yell as loud as you can at me to motivate me to pushing myself and shaving time, to tap my potential. If you hear about me sleeping in or passing on a run, I give you permission to call me a lil girl or whatever term you would like to choose to light the fire under me.

In other news, Saturday night I am heading to the Perth Velodrome, to watch some serious racing, this will be my first time watching an indoor cycling race so it will be interesting.

http://www.westernaustralia.com/au/Pages/Event.aspx?n=Perth_International_Track_Cycling_Grand_Prix&pid=9010910

In short, isn't everything about shaving? Shaving just a few more pounds off, shaving just a few years off of my retirement off by saving money, shaving certain people out of your life to move on to the next step, shaving a bit from that entertainment fund to buy that house, and finally shaving your face to look "professional".

Stay Tuned for more updates! PS: I decided to skip my 1st race down under, a triathlon in Bunburry simply because I know I am not in shape to compete at the level I would like to race at. No need in forking out a bunch of $ since I haven't been working and barely any fitness to back me!

So I buckled after looking at the hideous growth of fur on my face, I trimmed my beard! I now resemble Craig David but with slightly lighter skin even with a bit of tan.

Yes, that just happened!

Western Australia: A place to grow as an athlete

2010-11-15T12:17:00.000+08:00

Recently some of you may have seen where I have been posting about "Club Helena Valley" on facebook or perhaps on my athleticore account. Basically, through The Running Centre in Perth, I have been able to connect with some of the best local and national athletes around. Thankfully my old friend Cody Angell is a sales and marketing manager at the shop and he has introduced me to several amazing people who have been more than supportive in my journey Down Under. So many thank you's to Cody and Janna Angell for hosting me and to several of my new mates at the Running Center for being so kind and forgiving to me for my general ignorance.

One cool thing that will get my networked into the active members of the city is being attached to the running center's blog center ( http://therunningcentre.com.au/?page_id=14 ) check out the last name on the page, the tourist! Hopefully some people will be able to see my view points from my experiences here and how they relate to my experiences back home. Onward to the insane athletes that I have been able to jam with a bit on some training sessions of late.

G$, a common term I used back home has been used once again with the introduction of Gerry Hill. I have been fortunate enough to run with Gerry several times and 1st hand watch his toughness while racing a 10k on the track after hitting the 1st mile in 4:53! Gerry has been training for a year solid and he managed to knock out a 2:37 at the Perth Marathon for 2nd place overall, I pretty legit time. I believe that Gerry and I are at similar levels of fitness for the 15k distance and below, so it will mean that we will be pushing each other to the limit. My goal is to see where I can take my level of triathlon while also pursuing some major PR's on the track this summer. As of right now, Nathan Doig, Cody, G$ and myself appear to be on similar playing fields with fitness so the goal is to work together perhaps for an upcoming 5k to see if we can chip away at our personal records.

Neil Berry, our Prefontaine impersonator

Right now, my 5k PR is 15:27, G$'s is 15:28, Cody's is 15:31 and Nathan recently ran 8:42 for the 3k, so if all goes according to plan we should be able to push each other. I need to trim down a bit of weight to blend in with the gents here and become more efficient to reach my goals. Just a couple of days ago I was running with a young buck named Neil Berry aka berrylicious on a 15k tempo run from the shop and I was digging a bit deeper than normal to stay on his heels and I felt confident with my effort. 2 days later Neil belts a 14:47 5000m for a massive PR!

If I continue training with these guys, I have 2 options:

Continue improving and take my racing to another level
run myself into the ground and get injured

Let's hope that with the assistance of these amazing athletes I will reach the 1st option. Aside from my track goals, I have also been fortunate to train with Ryan Baugh as he has been dragging me out to the local pool for some sessions. I realized I am very rusty in the water and that Ryan seems to be an underrated triathlete because he is fairly new to the sport and is very modest. It's INSANE to think that Ryan just began triathlon last year and knocked out a 4:20 half ironman! With some additional training this year he is aiming to trim nearly 10 minutes off of his time, so I plan to continue training with him so that I can Knock out a huge PR for myself at Busselton.

I will continue updating my progress as a continue to pursue some pipeline dreams while down under. The next goal is to friend a paycheck as I have been trying to make contacts so that I can eventually move out into a new flat and off the pull out sofa! The goal continues to remain vehicle free the entire journey, I will either run, walk or cycle to my destination!

Busselton 2011: 1st step in a Conquest

2010-11-11T22:44:00.000+08:00

Update: Just received an email about getting an official international entry into the Busselton 70.3 Ironman in May 2011!!!

http://www.busseltonhalf.com/

Now that I have an official goal to look forward to, the training will begin commencing!

My conclusion for this new training cycle will be that it will be much easier to produce a fast time over a 5 month training cycle as opposed to the 5 week cycle I used in my 1st attempt at the 70.3 distance.

Initial Goals to focus on:

Ride more
Find the perfect aggressive position that will allow me to run off of the bike
Ride more
Train for a half marathon race (as opposed to simply relying on some running base as I did before)
Ride more
Swim long course and build my endurance

Hopefully by focusing on these goals I will be able to drop my 70.3 time substantially unless something unfortunate happens along the way.

Since some local Western Australian Triathletes set the bar high, I have some goals to shoot for next year. Nuttman I am coming for your time Mate!

After a couple more weeks of settling "Down Under" I plan to jump into some sort of a race, most likely a 3k on the track, my 1st since 2004 at Davidson College. I have not been working on my speed but I have high hopes that I can tuck behind a couple guys and grit my teeth to break my old & weak PR of 9:17.

Special shout out to Cody and Janna Angell for being amazingly hospitable since my arrival down under. So far everyone I have met in Perth has been amazing, more updates to come!

Diving into the Australian Culture (or observing it)

2010-11-10T00:14:00.000+08:00

After arriving in Australia this past Thursday evening, I felt like I fell off of a cliff, landed on some rail road tracks and then was quickly smashed by a freight train. In short, the trip truly took every bit of zest out of my system. Frankly I am still surprised that the people I ate dinner with that night thought I was anything other than a prick because I was short and brief with conversation. Luckily, Friday morning I was able to muster up enough of "me" to meet some of the running group for "brekky" and a latte at Bruce's cafe' next to the running centre. As the days have passed, I have began to feel more and more like myself thankfully.

Ryan, Rosie, and Janna Friday AM

Fighting sickness just before leaving the states did not help my transition down under, as I have been coughing up green stuff for nearly two weeks and I am honestly surprised that I have not progressed with my sickness. I have been feeling like I really need a solid anti-biotic to knock everything out and I was chatting with Janna about the local pharmacy's during her off day on Monday. In Australia, the drugstore's are called "chemist", it sounds a bit sketchy to me, but its a legit place for vitamins and medicine. Initially I am thinking of some odd ball drug dealer who has a little shack in the back alley and people call him "the chemist". Janna seems to be about tired of my coughing up a lung and spitting globs of mucus out on the pavement at this point, so I am trying to rest up and take a solid dose of "Ultra preventative" pills I brought from the Greenapple Sports & Wellness Center.

Marcus and Alba Barton Look alike's

Cody pre-race

Friday was a struggle for me mostly, I tried napping and also tried running, which both were very ineffective. Trying to nap when the sun light is out, really through me off and then running with my weak and broken down body proved to be a bad decision on my part. Once the late afternoon arrived, Janna and I met Cody and Neil aka Berrylicious at The Running Centre and promptly drove to one of the local tracks where the WA marathon club hosted a 10,000m race. Cody was registered and hoped I could pace him through the 5k in just over 16 minutes while obviously my body had different plans so I was relegated to calling splits and taking pictures. Gerry aka G-money was also racing the 10k, his first on the track so I was cheering him on and updating each as to their positions in the race. Roberto Bussi, the local road racer was looking to hit the sub 30:30 mark in order to qualify for the Emil Zatopek 10,000m on the track later this season, so we knew it would be a fast race.

Sydney Olympic games High jump pit

It was exciting watching a track race again, I was half out of it but it still was pretty cool. I missed some of Cody's splits for him and mostly took crappy photo's but I tried none the less< G-money went balls to the walls from the start with the leaders and hit 4:53 at the mile and still managed a 4th place finish and sub 33 10k. Cody ran a very even race, basically leading some guy for 22 laps around the track whom was wearing an ipod and then eventually sped off over the last 1/4m to put a nice gap on him. 32:46 was Cody's official time, good enough to win a toolbox at the end of the night. I was ready to leave as the weather was actually pretty cold and not what I anticipated.

10k Start

Cody & Gerry battling

All in all everyone did very well and then we had the after party at "Macca's" aka McDonald's, yes I said it. 8 of us made our way to McDonald's were I ordered a double big mac and Cody picked out a milkshake. I was able to experience the locals to a whole new level while eating with my new friends. Some younger people ran into the building, making all kinds of noise, obviously very intoxicated. this is when I realized that the drinking age is 18 here and I was notified that many of the teens had some serious drinking issues, from what I could see was evident.

Oh man I really want a cheeseburger, it has been so long!

On Saturday morning we met up at the running centre just before I would embark on my 1st driving experience "down under". I had to take my bike across town to Matt Illingsworth in order to have it pieced together so that I can start training.

Here I am just before starting the Hyundai Accent, driving on the left hand side of the road, and shifting gears with my left hand. It was weird to say the least and the funniest thing of all I thought of was, can anyone just get a car and drive? I mean I don't have an international permit or insurance, oh well, keep it on the hush

Janna showed me how to get to a small town called SobiacoWTF

Tastings burger in Sobiaco

Yummm

After we left the cafe', we found our way to the market, and this my 1st experience in a farmers market in all my years actually. Wow was it insane, people everywhere and fresh fruit everywhere! The prices were much cheaper than they would be at the supermarket so Janna and I picked up a few things amongst the chaos.

We made our way to our final destination, "woolworths" which is a grocery in Perth that Janna prefers. It was basically like any traditional shop back home with a few exceptions of course. I noticed they had a section labeled "cordials", what the hell is that? I look closer and it looks like dish soap or something, so I had to snap a picture naturally. Ok, so I find out its basically like a concentrated drink mix that you blend w/water. It's actually pretty tasty and similar to any fruit drink back home.

Gerry and his family kindly invited all of us over to their home for a dinner feast of sorts. We had some kind of excellent fish accompanied with vegetables, potato's, some cheese and a good portion of bread. I wanted to check out this whole Vegemite thing, so Gerry hooked me up with a bit on my bread. Boom! It was actually good, not sure I anticipated that but it was. He said that I could not lather the bread with it as I naturally would have but just spread it very lightly. THANKS AGAIN to the Hill family for hosting us, the food was amazing and healthy to boot!

Vegemite! Not too bad, try it out sometime! The enormous bowl of fruit and vanilla ice cream to follow was the real treat. Freshly cut fruit is always good and when its topped with ice cream, its heaven. I may ask the Hill family to adopt me simply because they have a pool, make a feast at dinner time and have cable tele!

Perth, Western Australia....My new homeland with lots of Pictures along the way

2010-11-06T17:11:00.000+08:00

View of the mountain range somewhere near Arizona

Some peaks from 30k in the air

This entry will be a recap of my journey across the pond of sorts, while providing some new pictures and updates of my status in Australia. The 2.5 days of total travel really really took its toll on me the 1st couple of days Down Under. It hits your body so hard that its difficult to really enjoy those first few exciting days, especially for me because I only slept about 2-3 hrs over the 46 hr journey from Charlotte, NC to settle in WA. I snapped a few pretty cool pictures of some mountain ranges from my 1st flight across the country, no significance but I like mountain ranges and I hope you do as well!

What's wrong with this picture?

An additional note to the picture above, after settling into my window seat from the QC to LA, I kicked something with my right foot and looked down. This is what I saw, that's always a good sign on an airplane right? You pieces falling apart at my feet haha

To the left are my new Skull Crusher headphones that really helped my trip go by a bit smoother. I debated on ordering the official "snoop dogg" version but when I found the exact model without the Dogg father's signature on them for a cheaper price I had to go that route. These headphones nearly drown out all outside noise while providing an amplified mini sub woofer to pump out those bass busting beats that I prefer at times.

Here is a nice shot of what I did for about 11hrs in LA while at the airport. I got into that cool swanky, "Air New Zealand VIP Lounge" and felt like a rock star for a couple hours as there were only about 10 people hanging out w/me. As the night progressed I was accompanied with about 130 other people, so i didn't feel so cool anymore but I did manage to have about 4 sandwiches, lasagna, 2 jack and cokes and 4 beers while kicking back.

After arriving in LA, i was stuck in no man's land because the air New Zealand section was still closed due the huge time gap in the time zones. I just laid on top of my bag until people finally came out and everyone rushed to the line. This was the 1st and only place I had to surrender $50 for checking my carry on bag which was too large for the overhead bin. Due to an error, I was able to ship a 47lb bag and my tri bike across the world for FREE!!!

After waiting for eternity, we were called from the VIP lounge and escorted down to our flight by the concierge. We were able to straight shot to the front of the line and take our seats, which was pretty cool. Since this was the longest flight that I had ever taken, i had hoped this would be a "baller" plane with all the bells and whistles. Since I was able to get an aisle seat I was stoked because I knew I could hop up and down as much as I wanted to stretch out the legs. The Air New Zealand 767 was very nice and satisfying to me as it was a brand new plane with our own personal TV's and a fair amount of room. I was VERY FORTUNATE to sit next to a very personable couple who were flying to New Zealand for vacation to stretch for 2 weeks. They were from San Diego and seemed to be very well traveled as I spoke about heading to Malaysia as a possibility, the gentleman had even played golf there once. This flight went by very well for me, I popped 2 ambien and slept for a maximum of about 2 hours some how? I just cannot get comfortable sitting up I guess, but oh well, i watched 4 movies along the way.

Check out the h20 and mountains

2XU compression(blood circulation)

Upon arrival to Auckland, NZ, I said my goodbye's to my new friends. I had a 7.5hr layover so i attempted to leave the airport to explore the city but was unable to do so, because a baggage snafu with my bike and bag, which took almost 2hrs to clear up.

The final flight from Auckland to Perth, was pretty horrible. I had no desire to watch anymore movies and just couldn't sit still and I could not sleep at all. I was completely exhausted but to no avail, sleep was not an option! The last 3 hours of my 8hr flight were miserable and I hoped in and out of my seat like I had ants in my pants! After about 40 minutes of going through security and grabbing my luggage, i was greeted by my AWESOME excited friends Cody and Janna Angell in the parking lot. I looked and felt like Sh*t, I almost couldn't crack a smile because I felt as if I had been beat to hell through the process of my travels. After arriving at my new homestead by the river, we had a nice pizza dinner in the park with some really cool locals who I found out were amazingly talented in their own individual specialties of endurance sport.

Neil (aka berrylicious) is about a 15:00 5k guy, Marc See is a former state champ and 3:47 1500m guy, Nate-dog just won a 10k and apparently used to roll 3k's in mid 8's, then Gerry (aka - g-money) just rolled a 2:37 marathon after one year of training. This will be awesome group to mix it up with, hopefully I can kick this sickness and get fit quickly so i don't get left in the dust.

AND FINALLY! Check out the shot off of my balcony of downtown Perth! The Swan river lies right in front of the city and after a short walk you can see it plain as day from Kings Park. Cody and Janna found a pretty sweet spot close to his running shop as well as close to the cycling/running paths which wrap all around town and apparently run up to almost 100 miles.

Check it out, the Noosa Asics, named after a big Australian triathlon and some kick a$$ new balance shoes which have followed suit. We don't get many cool color options in the states for running specialty shoes so i may be rocking so pretty serious rays of color for the next few months down under.

Another Blog to follow very shortly after this is posted!!!

" Ladies and Gentleman, could you please refrain from leaving your seats and please make sure your belt is securely fastened!"

2010-11-03T07:57:00.000+08:00

"We will be experiencing some pretty rough turbulence for the next bit, everyone must stay in your seat and buckled, especially children please!!". When this is announced 4 different times in a 5 minute span and the pilot comes over head to say the final "SIT DOWN", it is what every passenger wants to hear. Perhaps we are about to go down in flames, the plane is already shaking a good bit as it is and there is more to come? I was comforted to remember the wise words of TrySports mechanic Rob Morgan, " the plane can land with one engine, if it makes you feel any better". The turbulence passed and I managed to read for a VERY brief period before trying to take a short nap while glancing out of my window seat.

Unfortunately I am not able to provide this blog with pictures that I snapped along the flight and post flight, some of which are humorous. Thankfully I purchased some new headphones that block most outside noise and the rattling and shaking of our luggage just above our heads did not bother near as much as it would have otherwise. The flight as a whole was the most turbulent flight that I have been on in recent memory. As this would be my shortest flight at 5 hours and 30 minutes, I fully prepared myself as if this was a puddle hopper and it went by fairly quickly, surprisingly. I managed to sit next to a guy who had some ridiculously kicking breath and he never even talked to me, he mostly slept, that's some serious breath! There were a couple of kids just a few seats in front of me, they were hopping around and laughing, usually it would irritate me but I had the trusty Skull crusher headphones!

Traveling from Charlotte I made a few notes on my PC about long distance traveling in general after I enjoyed an oh so delicious gourmet Burger King $9 breakfast combo and my experience from Charlotte to LA.

· As a favor to everyone, when I have children of my own I will not take them on flights just so people can enjoy their traveling experience. I am sitting out in the food court area of the Charlotte Douglas international airport and this baby is going buckwild while her parents are just eating away. I can’t imagine if they were on my 13 hr flight from LA to NZ, I may very well strangle someone.
· Traveling with a mini notebook makes it much easier to fit your drink & snack on the tray while trying to navigate through your PC. I know firsthand as I have a seemingly HUGE Acer Laptop PC dwarfing my tray as I am walking a tight rope with my drink sitting on top of my ACER ready to fall over at any moment.
· Noise deadening headphones have already helped my flight experience tremendously. The SKULLCANDY, “Skullcrusher” headphones I special ordered are working great minus the dead battery for my “amplified power bass boost”.
· While checking my bag and Kuota K-factor Race bike at the kiosk, my grandmother accompanied me just to assist with all of my luggage(yes I said it but she is not just any ol grandmother!). She knows how I don’t always get the fine details and for such a lengthy trip, she wanted to make sure things went according to plan for me( thanks GRANNY!). While playing 20 questions with the ticket agent assisting me, somewhere in the mix they forgot to take my payment for my luggage! So far so good, Karma may finally be helping me out! Cody’s expense for luggage and a bike = $600, Janna’s expense for luggage and a bike = $150, Chris expenses = $0.

After arriving into Los Angeles, I was trying to figure the appropriate terminal to head towards since I did not yet have a ticket from LA to Auckland, NZ. After making my way out of the terminal and down the street, I ended up at Air New Zealand's check in center. Only one problem there were about 25 people sitting on the benches and the floor waiting for the workers to come out. Initially I was thinking, "Did I miss the Air New Zealand strike somehow? am I stuck here? Sweet, to the beach!". Hey when you have lemons, make some kickin lemonade right? Long story short, I laid on my bags for about 40 minutes before we were able to check in. One of my bags was too big and too heavy so i had to check it last minute and actually pay the $50 fee! I tried asking about the Charlotte Running Club discount but apparently they had never heard of it.

As I checked this bag in the last second, i grabbed a couple things I wanted for the flight while numerous people waited behind me. I forgot about my blanket as well as my camera chord so that I could upload new photo's from each stop in my trip! Freakin A, oh well. Once I was in the terminal, knowing I saved at least $150 on baggage and knowing I have a 10 hour layover, I was heading right to the VIP lounge

Stay tuned for pictures to follow this post, it will be so much more vivid as well as a short video of my wait for the "air strike".

Thank you, Thank you! Farewell Party + Big Fun 5k

2010-10-27T11:51:00.000+08:00

After speaking with Rebecca Thomason just weeks ago about my departure to Australia, she offered to host a "farewell" party in my honor at her household. She basically set up everything on her own, with giving me freedom to invite friends to enjoy the gathering with. I am so thankful and most importantly fortunate to have so many amazing friends like Rebecca to celebrate my journey with.

Once at the party, we all realized that this scavenger hunt was some serious business, as it involved a lot of running around all the way to the uptown area and back, all the while in costume! I decided to pass and stick around to catch up with some old college buddies to play catch up the best we could in an hour's time.

As the farewell gathered more and more people, I was very delighted to see that so many people showed up to enjoy just a last hoorah for me. Check out some of the pictures below to see how much fun it was!

I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who came out to have one last laugh with me. It was a very special time for me and I don't take my friendship for granted with each and everyone of you. After the scavenger hunt was complete I was greeted with some cash in hand from the proceeds of the party, which made me pretty excited knowing that this would more than likely be enough to ship my bike down under! Thank you thank you thank you

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

As a conclusion to this post, I woke up saturday morning bright and early after about 2 hours of rest and jumped into a 5k that started directly across the street from me in the Blakeney Shopping center...The event was amazing in fact, one of the best local 5k's I have ever seen put on in the area. I knew that if certain precautions weren't made, that the course could be cut slightly short simply by taking a few corners a certain way. The course is USATF certified but I think a few of the turns were taken sharply to trim the course down a bit. As a disclosure to all interested/current clients of PRC, my preparation for the race was extremely against the rules of all recommended advice I would typically give.

My warm-up included, waking up, walking across the street to get my packet, walking back and then taking a 15 minute hot shower, followed by a 4 minutes run in the treadmill, then a 15 minute rant with various people before realizing the race was to start in a mere 2 minutes. As the bad decisions piled up, I decided to go ahead and take off my shirt, it was only 40 degree's out, why not? Arm warmer's and a hat, fun times. In short the gun fired and everyone took off directly uphill out of the shopping center. I was getting left right away by young kids, old men, women and maybe even a few baby joggers. there were 2 things that I realized about a 1/2 mile into the race;

I was behind Justin Breland and Kent Morris by a fair amount, just basing off of our current 5k times, I should certainly be in front of them, as well as the grey haired guy in front of them with basketball shorts.
Pezz was pretty far up the road on me, crap I need to pick up the pace or I will get rolled by a girl!!! She is legit, yes I did have an excuse to fall back on from my lack of sleep and wealth of hops in my stomach, but I had to man up.

I managed to pass Pezz at the mile mark, debating on whether to help her pace or to continue on, I decided to catch up to some other guy who was sporting triathlon gear and went out "balls to the wall" with the ballers. I was feeling surprisingly great, so I decided to just basically sprint for about 200 meters to lay the law down so to speak. After I hit about the 1.5m mark, I realized that the rest of the race I would be completely alone, maybe I should push it? na cruise control to stay in front of Pezz was all i really cared about, so as I approached the line not having wore a watch, I was completely surprised to see 15:49, 50, 51...15:56!

Big South 5K 2010
                         Charlotte, NC 10/23/2010
             UNOFFICIAL Results by Queen City Timing Services
                 RESULTS POSTED ON www.queencitytiming.com

Place Div/Tot  Gen/Tot  Name                Ag G Bib   City         St Chiptim Guntime Pace  
===== ======== ======== =================== == = ===== ============ == ======= ======= ===== 
    1   1/23     1/420  Matthew Elliott     25 M   858 Rock Hill    SC   14:45   14:45  4:45 

    2   1/11     2/420  Ricky Flynn         23 M  1472 Lynchburg    VA   14:53   14:54  4:48 
    3   2/23     3/420  Jordan Kinley       26 M  5621                   15:33   15:33  5:01 
    4   3/23     4/420  Chris Lamperski     28 M  1058 Charlotte    NC   15:56   15:57  5:08 
    5   1/51     1/435  Stephanie Pezzulo   28 F  1486 Waxhaw       NC   16:17   16:17  5:15

My new approach to racing will not involve a garmin but by racing off of feel alone as it seems I have been able to adapt to paces much more appropriately in that manner.

Pictured with the Eagle is a good friend, Scott Helms who left from uptown Charlotte with a headlamp on in the early AM to make it in time to run the course in order to complete his 20 miler along side PRC member Dusti Jensen. great to see both of them knocking 20 miles out like it was nothing!

Blowing Rock: Road trip to Moses Cone

2010-10-13T12:42:00.000+08:00

This past weekend, I gathered up a couple friends to accompany me to the mountains for a couple of reasons.

to hopefully see how amazing the NC mountains look when fall is here and the leaves are completely changed
get in a solid run up a mountain with perfect weather as a break from the norm in Charlotte.

After some confusion, we ended up departing the house around 6:50am in route to Blowing Rock Website, making our 1st pit stop at 6:54 am to get Mr. Chris his coffee and a few snacks for the road, while Kent Morris was still trying to wake up as seen here.

Special thanks to Bmac for providing us with the gas mileage of his Sweet Honda Fit as our chariot to the mountains. Initially I was nervous/excited at the possibility of Ryan Bender joining us as he was planning on 20 miles at a sub 6 pace and I know that none of us were really up for that but I was thinking if I could make it 13 miles I would be pleased, but Ryan had family come to town and had to back out. Billy was pumped to join us, but his decision to stay up till 2am for the Braves playoff game did not end up well and he had to back out the morning of also.

As we approached blowing rock, we all were getting pumped to hit the trails. Kent had never been to Moses Cone and was anxious to check it out and it had been a year since I was last there from what I remember. After we jumped from the car, we realized, wow, we are all a bit tight from the ride up and had to take a few extra minutes to loosen up our muscles and joints. I decided to go with the old school bandanna look with my 2XU Compressioon Race Socks which seem to keep saving the day for me lately. We headed on our journey from Bass Lake up to the Manor for a few minutes before heading up to the fire tower. Upon arriving to the fire tower we encountered an older man who appeared to be just slightly in another world (possibly from some form of plant smoking) and he seemed to keep chatting/checking us out(awkward), so I just jumped on the steps of the fire tower and said nice to meet you buddy we got to roll.

Once to the top it was a great view of the mountain range and we were trying to figure out what certain areas were from far away. Kent said it reminded him of back home in Lynchburg, Va when he used to train in the mountains during high school in the 1970's. Brian made a magnificent effort to at least climb to the top of the tower to have a brief look out. on the way down our pace didn't seem to drop by very much, we just kept it consistent. Kent wanted about 10 miles so he went straight back to Bass Lake while Brian and I took the path to Trout lake and back up to the manor before finishing up at Bass lake as well. After arriving at the lake my Garmin appeared to finally kick in the right pacing as we were going about 6:45's the last mile.

After finishing, I really felt like I had to do more and just asked if they wanted to knock out an extra mile. In my head, I thought, let's push it Chris, but I was also thinking, lets not mess up that calf that has been giving me fits. Kent, brian and I hit the path around the lake for one more loop and I commented that i planned to push it a bit as a heads up. We eased into the mile loop(or so i thought) and I saw the garmin at 5:42 around 1/4m in and I hit the 1/2m at 2:48 as I began to really pick it up. At that point, I basically said, let's see if you any wheels Chris, don't be a pussy, MAN UP and get it done. I took off in search for the possibility of running my 15th mile in sub 5 realizing I needed a freaking 2:11 last 800m! As I finished and my back was getting tight, I passed our starting point for the mile and had to run another 85-90 yards before my garmin hit 5:06. If I had a Timex, it would have been well below 5 but luckily the garmin saved me from false info. All in all I ran a 2:18 back 1/2m which I was VERY satisfied with.

To add to just a great day to be out running, we bumped into a couple other runners hitting the trails for about 13-14 like us and one of them was former D1 NCAA XC champ Josh McDougal running with his dog.

The 3 amigo's hit Woodlands BBQ where we had a very nice young lady as our waitress. The food was plenty and we even went high dollar and got a pitcher of Coors Light. Making our way into town, it was good people watching as about 85% of the people were over 60 years old but friendly of course. It was beautiful day, so we all set on a bench overlooking the town with dozens of other people, sipping apple cider and eating ice cream (Brian). It was a great day away from the norm but by the time we found our way back to Charlotte we were pretty much exhausted. I had a 40th B-day to go to for Scott Helms in 2 hours time and needed to figure out dinner, shower and some sort of a nap. Long blog short, we had a blast and I am fairly certain that Bmac played enough Ska music to last me at least until I get to Australia on the car ride.

Special thanks to the Mizuno Inspire, 2XU race socks and Garmin for making my run fun and successful!

To end my Blog Entry, I only have one question for anyone who may read this, WHY DO WE NOT ATTEMPT TO MAKE MORE TRIPS TO THE MOUNTAINS? I never hear anyone say, why don't we take a fairly short drive to see some amazing scenery and to also get in some great running? Let's break free of this Concrete city!

Running for Ta-Ta's

2010-10-09T09:01:00.000+08:00

About 6 weeks ago i decided that I wanted to set a goal of running a decent 5k once again since I had been mainly trying my hands in the multi-sport arena this spring/summer. Since TrySports was sponsoring the "Run for the "Ta-Ta's" 5k in Wilmington, NC, I figure why not give it a shot?

Perhaps with some training I could be under 16 once again and if things went according to plan, I could get down into the 15:40 range in this 6 week span. Well after some very surprising workouts in basically a 2 week span I was feeling more and more confident. I managed a stellar (for me) 4 x 1 mile track workout in Charleston, SC and then an even more surprising sub 22minute tempo on the Common Market solo run. After all of these events seemingly lining up for a fantastic 5k performance I headed off to West Jefferson for the Blue ridge relay with my new teammates "Bear in Mind". After a spectacular trip with new friends, I was left a bit fatigued but I felt confident that this would be my best post BRR recovery yet. WRONG.

Something flared up in my calf and Achilles on both legs and I was VERY limited with my training regimen. This really left me at a loss as I was finally gearing up to be in great shape before I ship out across the world. Now here I am running very 3rd day at a far from brisk pace for anywhere between 3-5 miles. I was fortunate to attempt using a new product on the market called the "helix calf sleeve" to see if it could help at all. Well long story short, i was walking by 1.75 miles with a big knot in my calf. Luckily after speaking with Dr. Clay Gasparovich at Greenapple Wellness, he worked on my legs the best that he could.

My legs began to feel better after the use of a laser, the graston technique, and kineseo tape. After making progress Dr. Scott Greenapple, said he would like to give acupuncture a shot also. {Acupuncture is the stimulation of specific points on the body by a variety of techniques, including the insertion of thin metal needles though the skin. Acupuncture needles are intended to remove blockages in the flow of chi and restore and maintain health. The needles are solid, and contain no chemicals, as in western medicine. These disposable needles serve only as an antennae to allow transfer of energy through a point in the body.}

Never having acupuncture before, I was a little nervous and when he was sticking these needles inside on my leg I was just a bit freaked out honestly. Directly after the therapy I felt worse, as my leg was in a bit of pain, so I was still skeptical. The next day arrives, t-minus 1 day until the 5k and I manage to squeeze in 3 miles with BMAC at 7pm before meeting Jordan and Sarah at the local pub. Race morning, BMAC and I awake after our comfortable living arrangements at the Hilton, get some coffee, the usual dynamic warm-up, 3 miles to warm-up and some easy strides. i was feeling GOOD, wow what happened? I felt like a new person actually, what to expect now? Does this mean I can go out harder? What's the plan? "Chris you haven't ran much in 2 weeks! don't go crazy".

Once the race started, it was CHAOTIC as we caught up to the back of the pack women and the swerving commenced. In and out, on the curb, whoa i almost ran into someone, stop, side step, surge the gap, hop over a dog, past a little girl and we are about 1/2 mile into the race. My plan quickly became to stick with the front pack as long as I could until the chaos cleared a bit and they took off. At the 3/4m mark, it was on point when they took off, most of whom have run sub 15 for a 5k on the roads before. I settled into a groove and kept going w/no watch to look at only effort. Rounding a corner I noticed that Jordan was on the sidewalk as I passed by, secretly hoping he would hop back in to help me out, and he did! He led me out to catch the next pack which was successful and he just kept it in cruise control from then on.

Approaching the line I thought the clock said 16:30, but it said 18:30, meaning I was at 15:30 in reality since we started 3 minutes back. I knew I had a lot more in the tank so i got on my toes and hammered home passing some local guy with his teammates cheering him in. Afterwards I found out the guy I passed was a now pro triathlete and current Aquathon national champion. This made my day and has led my confidence to really build before I head out. I want to send out many thank yous starting with trySports for providing me with a race to actually mark as a goal; Greenapple sports and wellness for somehow allowing me to run, BMAC for a fun trip (another tower over here!) and Jordan Kinley for helping me catch the pack in front of me! Onward to more training!

BLOWING ROCK LONG RUN IN THE AM!!! Blog Post sure to come from the trip

Family- the hardest part of leaving

2010-09-27T11:05:00.001+08:00

This weekend a few things began to hit me as I am approaching my departure date for Perth, Australia on November 2nd. One, I really need to round into better shape before hitting this new continent because some of the locals are waiting to race me already and have sent me several messages about bringing my "A" game. Two, organizing everything that strips most of the stability that I have worked so hard to achieve has been very unnerving & difficult. Three, I will really miss my family and many of my close friends whom I surround my self with on a daily basis.

Out of these 3 things the one that really affects me the most is #3 on the list. My family has always been VERY important to me, thus the reasoning behind sticking around the general Charlotte area my entire life. After 12 years of being an only child my mother decided to bring in a beautiful little girl as an addition to the family, as time passed I would be blessed with 3 much younger brothers also. Being the Big Brother to these amazing kids has been a duty that I have tried to fulfill in every way possible which has limited my opportunities in other regions that I had thought to once pursue. Conquering the hardest part of my new journey was allowing myself to "let go" of some of these obligations that I have set upon myself.

Just thinking about having a Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, my own B-day, Easter, and July 4th without my family sounds wrong just typing it right now. Not only will I miss my incredible family but I miss my family of friends who is my support system and my saving grace at times. Yes I will be gone merely one year BUT who knows what holds in store beyond. If things pan out, I may travel to another country for a stint. Opening my eyes to new horizons and trying to understand my potential in life has been an incredible journey. My hope is that when I travel abroad, I will join up with some amazing people who will open my eyes even more to what my true calling in life is meant to be.

I just want to send a HUGE Thank you to all of my family members who have been a crucial part of my life and have helped mold me into the person I am today. To so many of my incredible friends, thank you for all of the laughs so hard that it hurt my stomach and for the many days I needed you to pick my up from being in a bad mood. I will miss so many people that have touched my life, thank you for supporting me through this crazy, incredible, absurd, stupendous decision that I have made.