Lets hear it for sound! Surround Style!

Ok well im not proud of this but I have been the owner of a surround sound home theater system for the better part of 2 years now. Well ok thats not what Im ashamed of, what im ashamed of is that fact that for one reason or another I have never been able to hook up the rear channel speakers so I have never had the joy of the "surround sound." That all changed last night as I hooked up the 3 rear speakers (no Im not confused my sytem is a 6.1 setup) as well as the optical input from the 360. SO now I have surround sound for my movies and for my 360!!!!!! Ok so I popped in Oblivion and WOW. My TV has pretty good speakers but this is just freaking cool! At one point I was standing outside in the rain (this is in game people) and I could hear rain drops all around me. IT was AWESOME!!!!! I cant wait to get into some better situations like caves where i will be able to tell where people are by the sounds they are making. SO in short captain obvious says "hey boys and girls surround sound kicks regular stereo sounds butt!"

Cheers!

Same ol Same ol

That pretty much sums it up. I dont have that much to say about things as this past week has been pretty slow. I recovered well from the Tri and will more than likely do arace next tuesday. 2 mile run 10 mile bike and then another 2 mile run. Its at wright patt and will work very well for me to go there after work. SO thats cool. SO I need to spend more time on my bike. On a side note though I have now swam a mile straight in the pool without stopping. And then I did it again yesterday! SO thats pretty cool. Other than that lisa and I started playing Champions of Norath return to arms (thanks jason!) and Im still playing oblivion. Thats about it. Oh I am getting totally excited about silent hill which opens this weekend!!!! I think lisa and I will go see it on saturday maybe at the lebanon theater! Should be cool!

Cheers!

Im still ALIVE!!!!

Well the tri is over now and I feel pretty good. Here is my post race wrap-up!!!!

Winning time for the whole event was 1:02:32 my time was 1:26:51 which gave me a finishing place of 99th overall and 11th in my age group out of roughly 300 participants. So its not too shabby a finish for my first tri in 7 years. Yes 7 years. SO here is the tour in pictures. Also I would suggest clicking on some of the pics for a better view. Enjoy!


Here I am at the start of the swim. If you look close you can see me in the lane on the far left all the way at the top crouching down getting ready to enter the water. Yup thats me with all kinds of ambition and oh guess what I just realized??? I forgot to use my inhaler at all. Yes its at this moment that I realize that breathing is going to be an issue for the next hour and a half. IF you look really closely you can see an expression on my face that basically means "oh crap im an idiot!"


Ok just keep looking for the purple swim cap b/c thats me. They totally botched the swim start and really didnt release people well. This can be seen by the fact that their are 6 swimmers in this shot including me. This is not the way it was supposed to be. And as a result I got pretty beat up in the water.



Here I am a few meters later coming to the wall and getting sandwiched by a couple of other swimmers. The one on the left im trying to pass and the one on my right is trying to pass me. This was just not working.



Here I am basically stuck because their are too many people around me and I cant get under the rope to get to the next lane. However it is a good pic of me treading water waiting for a path to clear. If I look annoyed its b/c I was.


This is a great shot of a guy I just passed trying to swim over me. WOW that was fun.



Ok so the swim is over and here I am coming off the bike. IT was soooo freaking cold that I could not feel my fingers at all. My second transition was awefull almost 4 min in the transition area b/c I couldnt do anything. I had to get sara to unbuckle my helmet b/c I couldnt do it and some random guy saw me struggling to get my shoes on and offered to tie them for me. IF he had not done that I would not have made it out of the transition. To look at the pic you wouldnt know that it was like 28 degrees outside but it was. I just wasnt prepared for the cold.


Ok here I am at roughly mile 3 of the run (a 5k is 3.1 miles) I felt surprisingly good during the run and really cranked it out despite being really tired and thanks sara those gloves totally helped me feel better. I loved the run course it snaked throughout the miami campus and was really fast. SO that was a great way to finish.


Speaking of finishing heres the line. WOOT! I did it!!!! SO thats the tri in pictures. All in all im happy with my finish. It was my first in a long time and a good learning experiance. Also it helped me identify my weak link which is the bike right now and I feel I can improve that quite a bit. like a lot. SO thats cool. Im already pumped for the next event which I have not found yet but am totally looking now. Again thanks to everyone who has supported me in this process through gear help or just a kind word or even those few who came and froze their booties off to watch me. Thanks everyone your great!

Cheers!!!

Last day before race

Well its friday and that means the race is tommorow!!! I am excited and scared all at the same time. SO what kind of pre race prep am I doing you might ask? Well their is tons to do actually.

First thing this morning I checked the weather forcast for oxford OH on race day. The outlook is not so good. Between 8-10am the high temp is supposed to be 35-37ish and factoring in winds of roughly 15 mph (yikes) gives me a feel good temperature of about 27-29. WOW do I wish that was in celsius and not farenheit. SO its going to be really really cold. This is really throwing a wrench in my works b/c right now my race clothing is all designed around hot weather and keeping me cool SO I might have to alter it some as my top right now is a ultra cool sleeveless singlet. I will either have to put a jacket on to keep my chest warm or swith to a long sleeved cold weather jersey which I will not like in the run at all. SO I have that to think about. Next up I started to work on my pre-race checklist which I will list for your viewing pleasure. After I printed out draft one my first thought was "dang thats a lot of crap to take." SO here it is.

Misc. Clothing
º Post Race Clothing
º Singlet
º Tri-Shorts

Swim Items
º Cap
º Goggles
º Spare Goggles
º swimmers Ear

Bike Items
º Cycling Shoes
º Floor Pump
º Helmet
º Socks
º Spare Tube
º Sunglasses
º Tire Levers
º Water Bottles
º Wrench Set/Tools

Run Items
º Running Shoes

Everything Else
º Camera
º Champion Chip
º Directions to Race
º Energy Bars
º Energy Drink
º Garbage Bag
º Race Number Belt
º Towel for Transition Area
º Transition Bag
º Walkman/CD Player/Ipod
º Water
º Wrist Watch

Its amazing how much gear you need just to do one event. I guess its not that bad though if you think about the fact that its really 3 events crammed into 1.

SO what do I have left to do today.

1. Stay hydrated. - Im only drinking water and gatorade today
2. light workout - im thinking a nice 30 minute easy spin on bike
3. Shave my head - my hair is soo long
3. Shave my legs - yeah i do that.
4. Mount my bike computer - yeah I still have not done this
5. get my gear together and packed
6. final tune-up on bike - get my gears working like butter!
7. good night of rest - i have a feeling this is not going to happen.

I will probably make a final weather check but I doubt its going to make that much of a difference and thats that. Well for everyone who has been following me on this wish me luck and I hope I have some good news when I post again.

Cheers!

3 days to go

Hi every-o-n-e todays blog topic is brought to you courtesy of my inhaler. When the going gets tough the tough shoot meds in aerosol form directly into their lungs so that they can breath easier! Albuterol ask for it by name!

SO seriously ive got 3 days left till the tri and things are picking up. I ran 2 miles hard yesterday at lunch and basically did a run to failure type of run. Why you might ask? B/C thats how I plan for the last two miles of this tri to go. Mile 1 of the run will be recovery and transition from the bike. Then mile 1.5 will be fast (I hope) and then the last .5 will be, if I can, an all out sprint from my old days of running 800's in track. Of course this is just a plan and subject to my bodies approval.

After I got back from work I made it out on the bike for the first time and yeah im sore today but not as bad as I thought I would be and the bike is running like a dream. Shifts really well and my aero tuck is surpsingly comfortable. I can totally hold it for 30-40 min.

Today I did another timed 400m swim. All I gotta say is I needed some good news and I got it today -- 7:32 for my 400m!!!! I tried swimming it two ways. One more power and flailing about and one more calm and slower strokes but better form. Well in true Knodel fashion flailing about won as my better form time was 8:50. SO I feel good knowing how it is that I am going to be swimming this sat. I also feel goood that if nothing else I have dropped my time by like 1.5 min since I started swimming a month ago -- not to shabby.

Now onto what I know about the race. Well a lot of info has been e-mailed in the last day or so and one peice is the current participant list. right now their are roughly 240 people signed up with registration closing friday night. Out of those 240 that I know of currently their are 13 guys in my age group which is 25-29! SO thats pretty cool and to my surprise I am right with most of them in the swim time and even on the lower end. Hopefully I will have the hootzpuh to keep up a solid pace throughout this whole thing and who knows maybe I will make the top 3 in my age group. That would be pretty cool.

Dont know if I will get out on the bike today although I really really need to. Their is always the indoor trainer which totally sucks but what else can I do. I still need to get some more actual bike miles in so that I can do my final tune up maybe tommorow night to have my bike in tip top shape for sat.

I hope this is not all that boring for most of you and I should have quite a few good pictures after the weekend so that you guys can see what all my hard work got me!

Cheers!!

Best Quest Ever!

Ok I almost wrote a post that was going to basically say I was hosed in my current game of oblivion Oh yeah and just in case anyone was confused --

The elder scrolls IV Oblivion is the 4th game in a series of Role Playing computer games made by Bethesda Softworks. I am currently playing this game on my xbox 360 and anyone who reads this post should know that I am not speaking about myself but my character in the game. SO no I have not personally been turned into a vampire and no I have not gone wandering around the country side killing other vampires and stealing gems from magicians. This is in the game people!

-- end disclaimer--

Ok so when I played morrowind (the game before this one) I basically made the decision that I would not go back on a save. Basically if I made a bad decision that was life and I should not use a previous save to get me out of a bind b/c thats not real life. SO that being said last week while playing I was turned into a vampire (in the game people in the game) This might sound cool at first as you get tons of status bonuses however the down side is that if you dont feed everynight you become a crispy critter in the day light -- ANNNNNDDDD since shops are only open during the day as well as most everything else in the world this makes life really hard. also makes it hard to travel as you can only travel a night. SO I set out to find a cure for vampirism. This quest ended up really being a lot of fun and a total struggle all at the same time. However last night I finished it and I had a real sense of actual accomplishment and like I had cured myself and that it actually mattered. This is a really rare feeling in a video game but it does matter b/c now I can go anywhere and do anything again without fear of burning up while outside. Also this quest has got one of the best glitches in the game attached to it and that is at the end of the quest you get a reward of 500 gold. which is a lot of gold in the game for one quest so far. Well the glitch is that as long as you keep asking about the reward you keep getting it. SOOOOO in about 45 min time I went from having roughly 640 gold to 1.5 million gold. In short. Im set for money for the rest of the game which is a really nice feeling and im no longer a vampire which means that people will once again talk to me and that the vampire hunter that was on my tail will have to find someone else to hunt now! Yes the game is that deep and that cool.

Back to reality. 4 training days left till T-day. today I plan to swim and then get on my bike after work. I think I need to try to ride everyday this week even friday regardless of the weather b/c as luke pointed out yesterday the weather might not be ideal on sat. and I will not be able to use that excuse in the race. Tommorow I will probably set up my transition area in my garage and then do a brick with a transtion to start working on that. Time is running out and hopefully I will be better prepared then I feel right now.

Cheers!