NYAC All Sports Banquet
As is my tradition I made my way to the airport less than 48 hours after finishing my last race of the season. No Kenya this time (that would be Sarah Groff), and no Japan either. Nope, no major intercontinental journeys for me this year; just a short trip to New York City for the New York Athletic Club’s annual All-Sports Banquet. Each year the NYAC honors its athletes that won national or world championship titles, or represented the United States as part of their sport’s world championship team (that’s me!).
After the short flight and a couple of hours of me trying to figure out the New York City subway system (I’m admittedly not a skilled big city person) I finally made it to the club on Central Park South. The NYAC supports a bunch of Olympic sports including wrestling, track & field, soccer, rowing, fencing, modern pentathlon, water polo, judo, swimming, table tennis, as well as its newest sport, triathlon!
The dinner was a lot of fun with the guest of honor being Bill Walton of basketball fame. For those who don’t know, Bill was a standout at UCLA during John Wooden’s tenure as head coach. He was later drafted by the Portland Trailblazers where he won an NBA championship, and finished his career as a Celtic where he won another championship. He’s one of the best basketball players of all time and, as it turns out, a great speaker as well! It was a great night and lots of fun – as Sarah Groff recently wrote in her blog, us athletes are truly fortunate to have such great opportunities and great supporters like the NYAC.
Leave it to Jarrod and me to being new levels of maturity wherever we go.
New York Athletic Club
It looks like I haven’t posted in 25 days – oops! No, I’m not validating my own theory that a lack of blog posts indicates some sort of season ending injury…I’m doing just fine! In fact I’m headed out to Europe on Tuesday for a couple of weeks of racing in Hamburg and London.
I do have an exciting announcement: I am now part of a new program by the New York Athletic Club designed to support Olympic hopefuls in the sport of triathlon! The New York Athletic Club has a long history of supporting Olympians and Olympic hopefuls in sports like water polo, track and field, and wrestling (to name just a few) and I am very happy to be a part of the NYAC. A few other athletes in the program are Jarrod Shoemaker, Sarah Groff, Bec Wassner, and Laurel Wassner.
The NYAC logo…I love the winged foot but if I’m going to have it on my uniform I better start running fast!
Here are some pics of what’s happened lately:
My parents came to visit after HyVee. We went to the top of Pike’s Peak – 14,110 ft!
We took the cog railroad to the top.
I went up to the Retul studio in Denver for a bike fit with Todd Carver. I think we made some good changes and I’m excited about my new position.
Since HyVee I have been doing a lot of training on the bike with Mr. Mark Fretta. On one of our rides he found a dollar and got pretty excited.
Ten Reasons Why Shimano Di2 is Awesome!
In pictures (but a few words, too):
Reason #1: no more cables for the derailleurs! The derailleur cable routing on both my bikes is gloriously empty. No cables means no more dealing with ‘stretching’ and adjusting the shifting all the time. Which brings me to reason #2…
Dialing in the shifting is a breeze: just press the small button on the indicator console (see picture) and the rear derailleur goes into ‘micro adjust’ mode (indicated by the red light). Use the shifting buttons to make micro adjustments until the shifting is dialed in.
Reason #3: shifting is a incredibly easy. Those may look like shift levers but they are actually just buttons. Press them like you would normal shift levers and small motors in the front and rear derailleurs do the work for you. Also, since there are no levers there is no shifting noise. This means you can be somewhat stealthy when you attack out of a group – no more clicking noises! You won’t announce your attack to the whole peloton when you drop it down three gears. (Reason #4)
Reason #5: You can shift the front derailleur under full power. So if you crest a hill and need a big gear fast just press the button and continue to hammer – no need to let up while the derailleur moves. Speaking of the derailleurs, the whole Di2 system is always aware of what gears you are in for both the front and rear. As you move through the gears with the rear derailleur, the front derailleur automatically auto-trims to prevent chain rub. That’s reason #6.
The Di2 battery. You might wonder, “What if the battery dies?” That brings me to reason #7: When the battery dies the front derailleur stops working first and you have about 50 shifts left for the rear. This should be enough to get you home. In my opinion this is better than the analogous mechanical situation where your derailleur cable snaps and slams you into the hardest gear you have.
Of course you should never be caught with a dead battery since you have this indicator console – it flashes red when your battery is about to die. With 1000 miles of riding per charge (that’s approximate) and 1.5 hours to recharge, you should really never have any power problems.
Reason #8: no more bar end shift levers on your TT bike – just sleek, aerodynamic buttons.
Reason #9 is, in my opinion, the coolest thing of all: Shift buttons on the aero brake levers. Ever get caught on a long climb in your TT bike and have to reach out to the aero bars to shift? Well that’s no longer necessary!
Reason #10: the Di2 rear derailleur. You won’t find more precise shifting on any other component group in the world. It’s just that good!
