Octavianworld: Cesar Brea's Weblog, continued.

All The World's A Stage, Triathlon Edition

My son Ben and I participated in the Dover Sherborn Boosters annual triathlon this past Sunday.  We really enjoyed it.  It was his first, and my first in 22 years.  Well over 300 folks competed, well-mixed in age and gender.  They seemed like a pretty competitive, well-trained bunch to us, judging by the 95%+ who had lean cheeks and wetsuits and fancy bikes and bags that said "Boston Triathlon Team". 

After the race, I was curious to get a better handle on how we'd done.  All Sports Events  had done a great job of running and timing the event, and their table of results was very detailed and useful.  But I wanted to see it a bit more visually.  The All Sports Events folks were kind enough to share the data file, and with a little fiddling to parse and convert strings to times, I got to this (click on the image to launch the Tableau Public interactive visualization):

 

Before the race, as I shivered un-rubbered on the beach waiting for the swim to start, I overheard a couple of guys my age talking about how now that they were in their forties, with their kids a little older and with more control at home and work (a state of grace I'm not yet familiar with), they had more time to train, especially on Saturday mornings. 

Plotting 6th-order polynomial trend lines through the data revealed an interesting, if weak pattern that seems to confirm this life-stage effect, for both men and women.  Average performance improves radically as you move from your teens to your twenties, declines as the realities of family life intrude in your thirties, improves once again as you rediscover your inner narcissist child in your forties, and then begins to decline again as Father Time eventually asserts himself (though with plenty of variance around the mean to give us hope).  Like Shakespeare said, more or less.

Here's a regression, using R:

So, it helps to be a man, and under 60. Beyond that, it's likely about how hard you train, maybe your native gifts (VO2max), and possibly equipment, none of which I had data for. In short events like this, how well you can swim, and how efficiently you manage transitions, also really matter. But I didn't create variables for those in the regression.

What do you see?  Thanks again to the organizers and volunteers for a great event!

Please sponsor me for the 2012 NLG Bike-a-thon, Appeal No. 358: 2007 Ride Recap #Autism

Hi folks, a reminder to please sponsor me for this year's NLG Bike-a-thon!  Here's the link to the donations site.  Below for your reading pleasure is my recap of the 2007 ride.  Thank you!

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"Friends,

Thank you all for being so generous on such short notice!   

Fresh off a flight from London that arrived in Boston at midnight on Friday, I wheeled myself onto the starting line Saturday morning a few minutes after eight .  Herewith, a few journal entries from the ride:

Mile 2:  The peloton drops me like a stone.  Dopeurs! Never mind; this breakaway is but  le petit setback.  Where are my domestiques to bring me back to the pack?

Mile 3:  Reality intrudes.  No domestiques.  Facing 47 miles' worth of solo quality time, I plot my comeback... 

Mile 10: 1st major climb, L'Alpe de Bolton (MA), a steep, nasty little "beyond classification" grade.  I curse at the crowds pressing in.  'Allez! Allez!' they call, like wolves.  A farmer in a Superman cape runs alongside.

Mile 10.25: Mirages disappear in the 95-degree heat.  (First time I've seen the Superman dude, though.  Moral of this story: lay off the British Airways dessert wines the night before a big ride.) 

Mile 10.5: Descending L'Alpe de Bolton, feeling airborne at 35 MPH

Mile 10.50125: Realizing after hitting bump that I am, in fact, airborne.   AAAAARRH!!!

Mile 14: I smell sweet victory in the morning air!

Mile 15:  Realize the smell is actually the Bolton town dump

Mile 27: Col d'Harvard (MA).  Mis-shift on steep climb, drop chain off granny ring.  Barely click out of pedal to avoid keeling over, disappointing two buzzards circling overhead. 

Mile 33:  Whip out Blackberry, Googling 'Michael Rasmussen soigneur' to see if can score some surplus EPO

Mile 40:  I see dead people

Mile 50:  I am, ahem... outsprinted at the finish.  Ride organizers generously grant me 'same time' when they realize no one noticed exactly when I got back."

 


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You Heard It Here First: "SGM"

From the Weak-Attempt-at-Punditry-Department, here's an attempt to coin a term for hot new theme to track:  "Subject-Generated-Media", or "SGM" for short.  It's inspired by Red Sox ace pitcher Curt Schilling's blog, 38pitches.com, which is simply brilliant.  I've learned more about pitching reading Curt's posts than I picked up in the past 30 years of being a fan.  Curt is a terrific writer, and he brings out the best in his friends, too.  For example, here's a recent comment on this post, by former Sox Kevin Millar, whom Curt fanned quickly in a recent spring training game:

Well I must say that Curt is right on with the curve ball talk.I have been ragging on his curve ball for a few years and today he called my bluff.

1st ab he shook 3 times and I had a feeling he was shaking to the curve ball but still didnt have the balls to sit 1st pitch curve ball on Schilling. Then, I did call time out, telling Tek “What the hell is Schill doing shaking to the curve ball?”, and bam! sure enough here came this hanging curve ball (Curt: I beg to differ, the first one wasn’t hanging) I watched for strike 1, and couldnt pull the trigger. Then schill came back with another (Curt: which I did hang) whiched I pulled foul (Curt: into the vendor selling lemonade, which for anyone sitting along the 3rd base dugout knows is no surprise, Kevin hooking a pitch foul) and yes he threw the 3rd one in a row which I layed off.

I then had a feeling he was going to throw all curve balls to me, as pedro martinez did to me the 1st time I faced him last year and i struck out on 4 in a row. But Schill caught me guessing and struck me out with a heater in.

So all the trash talking I did to him and all the text messages I ragged him with, he got me and I couldnt look at him after the AB, even though i wanted to laugh

Kevin (Curt: I can hook a fastball better than anyone but Sheffield) Millar