Tag: food

The Riddle Run 10

Today was the 10th edition of the Riddle Run, a 28.35 mile ultra-marathon fun run. Last year I showed up fairly unprepared but I still cranked out a decent run. This year I felt much more prepared than ever before. I just ran a good trail marathon in December, and I’ve been doing a long run almost every weekend since then.

Sunrise at the Riddle Run

Sunrise at Lake of the Woods park

This year’s Riddle Run set another registration record with 125 people signed up, though I don’t think that many showed up. The temperature was similar to last year (20˚ at start, 33˚ at finish), but last year there was just a light dusting of snow on the ground (which melted during the run). This year there was about 4″ of mushy snow covering the entire trail. Running in mushy snow is quite the challenge.

Snow covered trail

But what was more concerning to me than the snow was that I badly bruised my shin while mountain biking last Saturday. I’ve run twice since then (Sunday and Tuesday) and both times my shin caused me pain with every step. As it turns out, my worries were misplaced. My bruised shin didn’t bother me the slightest bit.

Shortly after 8 a.m. the runners gathered to listen to Jeff Riddle (the run’s coordinator) give instructions. Then we were off.

Run coordinator Jeff Riddle explains the rules

Runners listen to Jeff's instructions

The snow was tough. I started slowly, chit-chatting with others for the first mile or two. I finished my first loop in 43 minutes. By the second 4.05 mile loop (of seven) the snow was packed down a little bit, and that allowed me to run a little faster. My second loop was around 40 minutes, as was the third. I ran the fourth loop with Chris (who recently whooped me a the Siberian Express) and Matt (last year’s Riddle Run winner). They both stopped at the end of the lap with 16 miles total, as they had both planned to do.

I was still feeling very good and I was running a steady pace. There were two other guys with roughly the same time as me (though we weren’t running together as we chose to run the loops in opposite directions at times). I stopped at my car to grab a bite to eat at mile 8, 16, 20, & 24. I drank a lot of Gatorade throughout. It worked, as I never ran out of energy. I took an Endurolyte tablet each time I stopped in order to try to avoid the muscle cramping I experienced at Tecumseh. This also worked, as my muscles never cramped.

Each of the last two laps I walked up two of the hills. This was the only walking I did the entire time, and it probably only slowed me down by a minute or two.

At 24 miles Jeff told me I had the fastest time so far by a couple minutes. Most of the runners didn’t run all seven laps, they stopped early. There was a crowd of these runners gathered around a campfire near the finish line. They all began to cheer as I began the final lap. I continued the same steady pace I had been running all morning. Then came the surprise of the day… something that’s never happened in six previous marathons/ultra-marathons. I picked up the pace the last mile as I approached the finish. Not just a little, but a lot. In fact, my last mile was the fastest mile I ran all day. I still had some gas left in the tank.

I finished. I was the first one to do so. The crowed cheered as I crossed the “finish line” and pelted me with snowballs. This wasn’t really a race, it was more of a fun run, but Jeff declared me the winner. The first place male in the Riddle Run gets a traveling “trophy” (which it turns out is a roll of toilet paper signed by each previous winner).

Jeff awards Rob the 1st place travelling trophy

Jeff awards Rob the traveling “trophy”

After the run I changed clothes, ate a delicious cupcake, and warmed up by the campfire.

Jeff's wife baked delicious cupcakes for all registered runners

Jeff’s wife baked a cupcake for every runner

Post-run campfire

warming up by the campfire

Ken and his dog Cayenne finished about five minutes after me. Then Jason was another five minutes behind Ken.

Cayenne was one of two dogs to run the full 28.35 miles

Cayenne was one of (at least) two dogs to run the full 28.35 miles

Pat Mills was pelted with snoballs upon finishingPat Mills was pelted with snoballs upon finishing

Pat was the next finisher. He too, was pelted with snowballs.

Just behind Pat were Becky & Ellen, the first two women. They were running together. Becky crossed the line first in a photo finish.

Becky & Ellen were the 1st & 2nd women to finish

Becky kicks Ellen’s ass (just kidding)

Jeff awards Becky the 1st place travelling trophy

Jeff awards Becky the women’s traveling trophy

The women’s traveling trophy is a little stuffed buffalo. It’s nice, but it probably couldn’t be used for wiping in an emergency, like the men’s trophy. Well, at least not more than once.

It was a good time. The run was hard. The times were slow. My winning time was 4:56, the second slowest winning of the 10 Riddle Runs. I’m moving around now better than ever before after a run this long. I take that as another good sign. Now that I’ve survived the Riddle Run I took the plunge and finally registered for the Illinois Marathon. I’ve been planning to do it, I just hadn’t registered yet. Now I just need to avoid injury for 2.5 more months.

Interestingly, the Riddle Run winners were also awarded the chance to register for the 30 mile Clinton Lake Ultra in March, even though that race is already full. It’s a nice perk, but I’m probably going to pass on it. I’d love to race Clinton, but it’s two weeks before the Illinois Marathon, which is my primary objective for the first part of the year. I wonder if this award is transferable, and if so, how much I could get for it on eBay… Just kidding, Chris.

The Carpenter Park Cyclocross Race

Photo by Eric Smith, all others by Melissa

On Sunday Melissa and I headed to Carpentersville, a northwest suburb of Chicago, for the Carpenter Park Cyclocross race. This race is #4 in the Chicago Cyclocross Cup, a weekly series of races each fall.

Cyclocross is a fascinating type of bike racing. It began a hundred or so years ago as a way for road cyclists to maintain their fitness in the off season. The race organizers go out of their way to make the race as hard as possible. The races have…

bumpy grass,

steep hills,

lots of turns,

barriers to run and jump over,

sand,

etc.

Riders make loops on a relatively short course for a set amount of time, kind of like a criterium. Cyclocross bikes are kind of a cross between road bikes & mountain bikes. They basically have the frame of a road bikes, but wide knobby tires and cantilever brakes to allow mud/grass/leaves on the tires to pass through.

This particular event had multiple races for different categories of riders. I raced twice, first in the Masters 30+ race in the morning, then later in the category 4a race in the afternoon (this is why I’m wearing long sleeves in some of the photos and short sleeves others).

The masters race lasted 45 minutes and it was exhausting. Cyclocross is anaerobic–a 100% effort the entire time. I started towards the back of the pack and moved up several places during the race. Passing is a challenge, because there are so many tight turns. I ended up 19th out of 31 riders in the 30+ division. My friends Greg & Gene raced at the same time, though in different divisions. Gene was 18th in the 40+ division and Greg was 4th in the 50+ division.

Between my two races we watched our teammate Anona finish 4th in her first cyclocross race, the womens category 4 race.

The mens category 4a race was much bigger, with 52 people starting at the same time. I got off to a bad start and spent most of the race wasting energy passing people. Fortunately this race was only 30 minutes, and it went much faster. I finished 29th. Two other local riders fared slightly better. Nick was 7th, and Dan was 18th. They both intended to ride the cat 3 race, but they arrived too late and rode the cat 4a race instead.

After the 4a race we checked the results and we were about to leave when I looked up and saw Erik the Bike Destroyer riding the cat 4b race, so we stuck around and chatted a bit with him as he collapsed onto the ground after the finish. Ah, cyclocross.

So, I wasn’t terribly successful, but I finished both races (unlike my 1st cross race) and I had a great time. I’m still pretty new to this. These were my 3rd and 4th cross races and they were good learning experiences for me. I’ll probably try some more this fall.

After the race we made the obligatory stop at Veggie Bite in Chicago. We met my cousin Scott and his lady friend at the Wicker Park location (to which we had never been). It was much busier than the south side location where we’ve gone before. The BBQ tofu was fantastic.

The Falls

My body still on Central Daylight Time, I woke up early last Sunday morning in Portland. My flight back to Champaign (by way of Chicago O’Hare) didn’t leave until 1 p.m. so I had a few hours to do some touristy things. My first thought was to check out downtown Portland. I found some brochures in the hotel lobby, but unfortunately most places opened late on Sundays. Instead I packed up and checked out of the hotel at 7:30 am not really knowing what was going to come next. Sometimes this makes for great adventure, and other times it’s a big let down.

At first I did head to downtown Portland just to look around a little. I got caught up in quite a lot of traffic, both auto and pedestrian. I quickly realized everyone was headed to the Portland Race for the Cure. I pressed on a few blocks when I started thinking to myself, I should run the race. I was a little bit tired from the previous day’s triathlon, but it was only a 5K run and I can do that in my sleep (I think I actually did do that in my sleep a few times during college when we had 6:30 am practices). Then came the minutia of finding a place to park, finding the race start, dealing with registration (if it was even possible on race day), changing clothes, flying home sweaty and gross, etc. I quickly lost interest.

My next plan was to head out east of town on I-84 to the Columbia River Gorge and maybe Mt. Hood. It was drizzly and foggy all morning, so I never did see Mt. Hood. The river was nice though. The trip got interesting once I turned off the interstate onto a “scenic highway.”

I came to a waterfall along the side of the road and decided to go take a look at it. I didn’t really take anything with me other than my camera, because I thought I would get right back into the car. Then I realized there was a short trail up to the base of the waterfall.

Wahkeena Falls

Once I got there I realized there was another trail to the top of the waterfall.

There were 11 switchbacks on the way to the top

The view near the top of Wahkeena Falls

Once I got there I realized the trail kept going and going.

I hiked about 1.5 miles uphill before turning around and hiking another 1.5 miles back down to my car. The forest was very beautiful.

Thinking my adventure was probably done for the day I continued down the scenic highway just a scant half mile before coming across another waterfall and accompanying trail system. This waterfall was even more impressive (and correspondingly more touristy) than the first.

Multnomah Falls actually reminded me quite a lot of the waterfall in San Ramon on Ometepe island in Nicaragua.

Multnomah Falls is the second highest waterfall in the U.S.

Again I hiked up to the base of the waterfall for a closer view. Again I continued on to the top. There were a number of unprepared tourists hiking the “1 mile” trail up to the top, quite a few of whom I passed on the way up but not on the way down (i.e. they turned around). Hiking 1 mile isn’t very challenging. Hiking 1 mile that gains 600 ft of elevation is.

By this point I was running short on time so I was really moving up the hill. My legs weren’t really sore from the previous day’s triathlon, but the next day my legs would be quite sore from this hike.

The view from the top was spectacular. There was a little platform that went right out over the water and you could watch it falling off the cliff.

Amazing.

On the way out I noticed several other tourists at the falls wearing their USA Triathlon Age Group National Championship finisher’s jacket, just as I was. We smiled, nodded, and continued on our way.

I made my way back towards Portland. Along the way I stopped for a veggie burger at Burger King. My bike was still assembled so I packed it up into the suitcase in the BK parking lot. I arrived at the airport 90 minutes before my departure to find half of the airport wearing the race finisher’s jacket. What an adventure.

The C4[2]

This past weekend I travelled up to Chicago to attend a Mac software development conference called C4. This was the third year the conference was held (named C4[2], the previous two editions were C4[0] & C4[1]), though it was the first time I attended it.

It shares much in common with WWDC, Apple’s annual developer conference, yet there are many stark contrasts. WWDC has been growing at an unmaintainable rate. This year there were around 5000 attendees. This C4 conference had 170 attendees, including many well known and respected names in the world of Mac software development. Both conferences include technical presentations on various development topics. WWDC sessions are presented by Apple engineers, but C4 sessions are presented by other application developers.

C4 is not widely publicized and I just happened to find out about it by reading other developers’ blogs and Twitter posts. I quickly became excited and signed up a few hours after registration opened, which was fortunate because it filled to capacity a couple hours after that.

The trip started last Friday morning when I rode the Pocket Rocket to the train station in Champaign. Melissa accompanied me on her bike to see me off. When we arrived at the station I folded up the Pocket Rocket, put it in a big nylon carrying bag, walked in, picked up my ticket, and sat down in the waiting room. The Amtrak train was almost an hour late, but before I knew it I was showing the conductor my ticket and boarding the train. This was a somewhat new and interesting experience for me, as I had never ridden on a train around these parts.

I arrived in Union Station in Chicago and headed straight to the food court, as it was past lunch time by now. I lucked out to find a Mexican restaurant, where I could get a veggie burrito, connected to a Cinnabon.

After partaking in the delicious meal I headed outside, unpacked my bike and rode off. I had a little time to kill before the start of the conference so I took a quick trip over to the lake shore path. Next I hit up the Michigan Ave. Apple store. I arrived at the hotel where the conference was to take place plenty early and waited around for a few hours. Lots of other conference attendees were arriving during this time and I chatted with a few of them. The conference started with a dinner and a couple opening sessions. It was after 11 pm before the conference ended. I whipped my bike back out and rode about four miles north to my cousin Scott’s apartment, where I would be sleeping. Or so I thought.

I arrived. We caught up a bit and talked about bikes. I met his friends. It was now approaching midnight and his neighbors were still having a raging party upstairs. The music was unbelievably loud and people were literally jumping up and down. I finally fell asleep somewhere between 1 am – 1:30 am. The party was still going on. Thank goodness I can sleep through anything.

I woke up bright and early at 6:15 am. At some point Friday evening a bicyclist from Chicago I knew from races we have done together contacted me and suggested I join his team for their Saturday morning training ride. I hadn’t been expecting to do this sort of thing, so I was a little unprepared, but I like to be spontaneous. I met riders from the XXX Racing team at Wicker Park and we took off heading north.

Chicago has ridiculous traffic, lots of stop lights, and plenty of potholes. I had been wondering how these guys trained in this and I got a crash course (not literally) in big city training. A group of nearly 60 (3-4 times the size in my normal training rides) rode about 25 miles to Highland Park. It was a pretty easy pace on the way up. Half (including me) turned around and headed back to Chicago. The ride back was a lot crazier. It basically turned into a road race where 20 or so riders were all jockeying for position at 28 mph. Meanwhile traffic was all around us. We had to slam on our brakes for a couple stoplights. It was a little more dangerous than my typical training rides, but it was never out of control. I handled it pretty well on my little bike and I got lots of surprised comments about how well the bike did. I love this little thing.

I ended the 50 mile ride back at Scott’s, then showered and biked back downtown to the conference. There were more interesting talks all afternoon. Between talks, during meals, etc. I met lots of really interesting people who were working on a wide range of projects. There were developers who worked solo in their spare time, people from small, 3-15 person companies working in small teams, people (like me) from medium, couple hundred person companies, all the way to people from Adobe, which employs thousands.

That night was a pizza party, where I met more interesting people. Again I rode back to Scott’s late. Again his neighbors were throwing a wild party. Again I fell asleep despite them.

I slept in slightly longer before Scott and I took a ride down the lake shore path all the way to his office at the University of Chicago. We almost went past Barrack Obama’s house, but Scott couldn’t remember which street it was on. I tried out his fixed gear bike and he tried out the Pocket Rocket. It was an interesting experience. After my recent purchases, a fixed gear bike is really the only kind missing from my collection… but I’m not in any real hurry to get one. It was a little too weird for my tastes. I never really felt safe and secure on it the way it do on… well, any other bike.

I attended more conference sessions on Sunday afternoon. The conference ended with a coding competition, somewhat similar to the defunct MacHack conference. Eight or so developers showed off simple iPhone programs they had written using GPS/location functionality with the theme “paranoia.” There were apps detailing crimes that had take place near you, all the way to a “spy” stealth distress beacon. The eventual winner was a little off-topic, but was technically interesting so most attendee voters overlooked that detail. Somehow it combined an iPhone, a Wiimote, and a Mac to build a simple gesture based drawing program. The contest winners were awarded a MacBook Air, and dozens of software applications donated by conference attendees (including a free copy of my application Mathematica).

The conference had ended a few hours before my train was to depart back to Champaign so I rode around downtown for an hour or two.

Chicago’s Magnificent Mile

The Sears Tower

After my joyride I returned to Union Station, packed up my bike, and went straight to the food court… only to find everything closed. What? It was 6:45 pm. In a panic I went back out and walked a couple blocks, lugging my heavy backpack and my bike in its bag with me. I found several restaurants. All were closed. Ridiculous. Time was running out so I went back to Union Station, bought $10 worth of overpriced junk food, and boarded the train home. The Fig Newton’s were good, but I would have preferred dinner.

The ride home was fairly smooth. I fell asleep pretty quickly in my exhausted state. When I woke up a short while later I set an alarm on my phone to ensure I wouldn’t sleep through my stop in Champaign. It worked. Another short bike ride later I was finally home and very quickly fell asleep in my comfortable bed.

So that was my weekend, and as Melissa speculated, I was rather proud of myself to have done the entire thing without the assistance/hinderance of an automobile.

The Pizza Dilemma

Homer Simpson: “I like pizza. I like bagels. I like hot dogs with mustard and beer. I’ll eat eggplant. I could even eat a baby deer. La la la la la la la la la la. Who’s that baby deer on the lawn“

As some C4 attendees are complaining on Twitter, ordering the right kinds of pizza for a group of people presents challenges. There are people who like meat. There are people who like veggies. Some of the meat eaters won’t eat veggie pizza. Some of the veggie eaters won’t eat meat pizza.

In this particular case there was apparently an abundance of veggie pizza and not enough meat. That’s unfortunate for some. On the flip side, I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I’ve eaten pizza in a group who has ordered all meat pizzas, except for one cheese, and everybody goes straight for the cheese… leaving a hungry vegetarian and a bunch of uneaten meat pizza. This has happened to me literally dozens of times in the past 10 years (mostly in college).

The solution to the pizza dilemma is obvious, yet people often get it wrong. Order fewer meat pizzas and fewer veggie pizzas, while adding a boat load of plain cheese pizza. Sure, cheese may not be the favorite of some meat eaters or some veggie eaters, but they will eat it. Some may argue they won’t… but those people are wrong.

So instead of running out of meat pizzas and having meat eaters go away hungry, or (as is more often the case) running out of veggie pizzas and having the veggie eaters go away hungry, everyone will be able to eat cheese when their favorites run out and nobody goes away hungry.

The Salad

Today at work for our monthly “birthdays and anniversaries” lunch we had make your own salad with breadsticks, and brownies for desert. Also, there were the largest cherry(?) tomatoes I’ve ever seen.

I sometimes amaze even myself by the shear quantity of salad I can put away. Anyone who has been to the Olive Garden with me can back me up on this.

I have been vegetarian for over nine years now, though I was a closet vegetarian most of my life. Salad has always been one of my favorite foods. I still remember piling huge quantities of salad onto my lunch tray in elementary school. I would fill four of the five tray sections with salad. The lunch ladies initially gave me a hard time about it, mostly because they didn’t think I was actually going to eat it all. They eased up after a few days when they realized I could and would eat it.

That having been said, salad still isn’t an entree, and vegetarians do eat more than salad :)

The McJoneses

Our last name is terrible. Every email I’ve sent for the past five years has included a phonetic pronunciation of our name, yet nobody can pronounce it. Nobody can spell it. Crappy computer systems from the 1970’s (like those used by airlines, credit card companies, etc) don’t allow enough space (16 letters), nor do they allow hyphens (nor even spaces), so it all gets squished together and chopped off at the end.

When we would go to restaurants and give our name to the host[ess] to be seated it took more time to explain the name and how to spell it correctly than it did for a table to open up. At some point we got so frustrated that when we went to a restaurant we just started using the names of people we know. Then we started using random names. The problem with this is that we actually had to remember which name we used on which occasion. It was simpler to use the same name each time… but what name would it be? It had to be easy to spell & pronounce, like Jones. But we wanted something a little more unique (and perhaps a bit silly).

We settled on McJones.

I’m pretty good at keeping a straight face, but I nearly lost it the first time we used this name at a restaurant. It’s just such a ridiculous name, yet it met all our criteria. We’ve been using it for four or five years now, and it never fails to provide us with amusement.

“McJones, party of two, your table is ready.”

Rob Raguet-Schofield
(rob ra gA skO fEld)

The Vegan Fast Food

After my first cyclocross race last fall my cousin Scott took Melissa & I to Veggie Bite on the south side of Chicago. It is one of the few (only?) vegan fast food restaurants around. It was interesting (if a little weird) to see healthy, organic vegetables prepared so as to resemble some of the most disgusting foods I can imagine (e.g. gyro, philly cheese steak, meatball sandwich). Anyway, the food was good, and Scott seemed to enjoy it despite being an omnivore, so that says something.

We returned from our vacation in Nicaragua yesterday. On our way back to Urbana from O’hare Melissa wanted to stop for dinner at Veggie Bite. Much to my shock & horror she chose the most unlikely thing on the menu, a chili cheese dog. The food was actually very good. As we were leaving I picked up a vegan chocolate shake, which was one of the best shakes I’ve ever had.

Two of Melissa’s favorite juices, mango & carrot, combined into one

Vegan chili cheese dog, vegan taco & french fries

The Night Before the Madison Marathon

We made it to Madison, picked up Melissa’s race packet, checked into the hotel, and ate dinner at the Olive Garden. Soon we will complete the pre-marathon ritual by watching American Flyers then go to bed. The marathon starts tomorrow morning at 7:10 am CDT. I will attempt to post updates of her progress either on this site (http://rob.ragfield.com) or on Twitter (http://twitter.com/ragfield).

If possible I will try to post some photos as well, but that will be a little more difficult. The problem is that I’ll be blogging from my phone, but there’s not a good way to get photos from my camera onto my phone (yes, my phone has a camera, but it sucks). I have all the hardware necessary to transfer the photos using two different methods, but neither method has the necessary software to work correctly. I have an iPod camera connector, which will download photos directly from a camera to an iPod, but this connector is not software compatible with the iPhone. Additionally, I have an Eye-Fi memory card for the camera that can automatically upload photos, but only to the internet (not to other WiFi enabled devices like my iPhone). I would surely love an easier way to transfer the photos.

Anyway, check back tomorrow morning and prepare to hit the refresh button in your browser.

Apparently one of the parking spots outside our hotel room is off limits…