Race report - my first Olympic distance triathlon in Portage Lakes, OH

The Portage Lakes race was my "A" race for the year, meaning it was the most important race for me in 2012. I have not been able to do the Olympic distance back in June in Deer Creek Park and there were a lot of "firsts" for me in this race, including first open water swim (in a race), first wet suite in a race (I had little practice on vacation in Canada this summer), and finally first Olympic distance race! This was almost too exciting and I was a bit nervous before the race. Having done three Sprint races in the past two years it was a big step up. The Olympic distance triathlon includes the following: 1,500 m swim (0.93 miles), 40 km bike (24.9 miles) and finally 10 km run (6.2 miles).

As it turns out there was another first in this race with the time 2:22:28. I won in my age group and was 9th overall :-). Results are posted here. I was hoping for the podium, but the first place was a nice result to have.

I started my taper 7 days before the race gradually shortening training rides and runs and swims, but kept doing workouts at race pace intensity or faster. Four days before the race I dropped all cross training, two days before the race had complete rest with no active work at all.

Portage Lakes is only 2 hours drive from Pittsburgh, so I decided to drive on Saturday and found a real nice camp ground in the park where I slept in my Honda Odyssey minivan. I removed all middle row seats and folded down rear seats and got myself 8 feet by 4 feet of sleeping space. I put a mattress inside of the car and slept like a king, except I could not sleep too well (always a hard thing for me to do before a race). It was about 48 degrees at night (9 Celsius), but I had plenty of warm and fuzzy things to keep myself in comfort. This was my first time sleeping in the car, so for a moment I thought - is it possible to suffocate with all windows being rolled up? I kinda knew the car is not airtight and all, but still.. who wants to die before his A race :-) ? On iPhone I googled up few articles and made sure I will be ok as it turns out there are some pretty detailed articles on the subject, here is one example.

On race morning I woke up at 6am (my race start time was 8:30am), ate half of the cooked yum potato, hot tea, whole wheat flat bread with about 3 tablespoons of peanut butter, an apple and left the camping site. It took only 10 min to get to the race where I setup my gear for transition. About 1 hour before the race I ate little more flat bread and seeds+nuts bar with tea and 20 min before start ate one GU gel with little bit of water.

It was still very cold in the morning and I feared the swim, considering that it had been only 48 degrees at night. But then to my relief the announcer said that the water was 72 degrees - much much warmer than the air and the swim was still wet suite legal! Lots of folks got into the water for warm-up, but I waited and only got into my race uniform 20 min before the race start. I did a little bit of warmup for 5  minutes, but nothing major. I think it must have been about 60 degrees at the time of the start and about 70 degrees at the time of finish.

Here is a brief video of the transition area. I do want to make a mental note to myself about the mistake I made on the swim - I did not water my goggles and just put them dry. This made the fog so bad that I could hardly see anything after the first 10 min of the swim and it did not occur to me to kick on the back to clean and adjust those darn goggles.

The swim consisted of two loops around buoys and swimming in wet suit was nice. To my surprise I even passed few people on the swim (and yes, there were folks who passed me on the swim). The swim part did not feel too hard (like it did for my Sprint pool swims). But the most difficult thing was to swim straight. I wish I had GPS with me to record all zigzagging I did... Regardless, my swim split was 29:58, which includes 1 min run into the transition area, which translates into about 1m 46 sec per 100 yards. Not a  bad result for me, but I guess this is a big help from the wet suit. I was the 5th out of the water in my age group.

Transition from swim to bike was easy and took 56 seconds. As always, I kept shoes clipped into the bike. I had the 4th fastest T1 in the race and that is considering the fact it was my first time pulling the wet suite off in a hurry - I did not practice this science before :-). I guess the other thing that helps is not to have socks when biking and do the fly mount on the bike.

It was very cold for the fist 15 minutes of the bike while I was still wet from the swim and did not warm up enough. I biked hard, but not all-out hard to keep something in my legs for the run. Not a single person passed me on the bike, except for one guy 29 years old (according to his markings on the leg) who kept passing me after I would pass him for the n-th time. About 20 min into the bike I took one GU gel and 10 minutes before completing the bike took another GU gel. During the bike I had consumed almost a full bottle of Gatorade, which I carried in between my aerobars. The bike course had few hills. My bike split was 1:12:57 - fastest in my age group, which means 20.4 mph average, but considering hills this is not bad. In fact, the roads were open to traffic during the race and I had to pass a car on the left using the incoming traffic lane once on the hill when that car was stuck going slow behind bunch of riders who were walking bikes up the hill. There were a handful of other times when cars in my lane made me adjust speed a little bit. Overall the traffic was not bad at all, but it could have been even better without it.

T2 took me 45 seconds - that was also the 4th fastest T2 in the race. I planned to run in socks, but during transition setup in the morning decided to run with no socks, just like I did all Sprint races. This seemed to be a great decision as my Kinvaras felt very comfy during the run. I never run in training with no socks - only when racing.

The start of the run felt hard, but in about 10 min I finally got my legs back from biking and settled into the pace going at constant speed (at least I felt it was constant). The funny thing about my past two Sprint races was that by the time I started running well and feeling good and increasing the pace, the race was over. Here on 10K run I had a lot more time to run in a "normal leg condition". I decided not to wear my Garmin GPS for the race as it is a hassle to put it on and did not want to lose any more time in transition than I had to. On the run I also passed a lot of people and only one guy passed me in the last 50 yards on the finish line, but since I saw his marking on the leg stating he was 32 years old and not in my age group, I did not bother to out-sprint him, although I feel sorry about it now as it would have been a fun thing to do (easy to say it today - not so sure I had much left in me yesterday). My run split was 37:50, which is about 6:05 pace - second in my age group. This is faster compared to my Sprint races, but not surprising - for one, the run course was mostly flat, plus I increased intensity of training runs this summer. In training I ran intervals of 800 yards at 5:30 to 6 min pace and this seemed to help a lot. This season was the first time I started doing a mix of intervals, hill repeats, tempo and long runs. All the previous years I did not feel ready for this kind of work and simply ran at comfortable pace anywhere from 7:30 to 9 min depending on the distance with long runs on weekend.

Here is me 30 minutes after the finish and after having lots of oranges, bananas and watermellon pieces :-).

So far this was all good stuff. Now about the bad stuff. One VERY negative experience that most people got in this race was that the the run course was totally screwed up. In one particular spot nobody knew exactly which way to go and there seemed to be no race official to direct people. I had to stop three times (!!!) on my two big loops and ask for directions and exit to the finish as people seemed to go into different places. The turnaround points had no timing mats and no officials. No, I did not see anybody cheat, but one could if he wanted to. Because of the poor markings of the run course, I thought I only needed to do two big loops and two small loops and was sprinting to the finish only to find out that I had to do one more small loop, after which I accelerated to the finish and found out I had to do one more small loop, after which I did not have much strengths to accelerate anymore as I was not sure how many more small loops they will tell me to do, but thank goodness that was the last one. Whoever designed the run course, needs to be educated on how to do it properly and draw proper pictures before posting on the race website. Now I am looking at the top overall winners of the race and it shows that #1 and #2 runs for this 10K are respectively 1 min 22 sec and 2 min 42 sec slower than the world record for 10K. How realistic is that that the guys did 1,5K swim, 40K bike and only came within 1 or 2 min of the world record meaning they ran at 4m 27 sec pace for 10K in triathlon? The 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist Alistair Brownlee ran an incredible 29:07 this summer to win the Olympic triathlon race in London. At the same time if you look at the results for this race, you can see that two of the top 10 finishers ran this 10K in 29 min and 27:42. I guess they should have represented USA in London then - these guys ran faster than Alistair was in London! Very very disappointing. I bet you some top finishers likely did not do 4 small loops as I and others were directed to do. I don't pretend for the overall win, but it just shows you that not only I was confused with the run course.

I was 11th fastest overall on the bike, but only 19th fastest overall on the run and 37 overall on the swim. I am usually almost as good of a runner as I am a biker, but the results this past weekend show me being twice as far from the top on the run as on the bike - at least compared to other folks. At the same time being 37th on the swim out of total of 88 is an improvement for me as I am usually in the second half out of the water - and yes, I did see plenty of people cutting corners on the buoys during the swim with nobody stopping them.

I find it interesting to compare my results to the results from this summer Olympics in London. In summary, I swam 76% slower than the first place Olympic winner, biked 24% slower and ran 30% slower.

Race results were not announced until Monday afternoon, so I took home and snapped last two pics on my iPhone while driving:

What's next? Well, next year I plan on doing Half-Ironman race or two, plus a couple of Sprint and Olympic races (perhaps one of each). I am not sure yet. In the meantime, I definitely need to work on my swimming and I already found a swim / triathlon coach - Kimberly Schwabenbauer to help me with that. I will describe my swim learning experience in a future post.

I also got myself a new pair of Newton Gravity shoes, which I did not even wear leading to the race as I am so used to my Saucony Kinvara, which I love, but want to experiment with shoes as I am feeling some tension in the front part of the sole of my right foot - near middle fingers (could it be the front part of the plantar fascia?). Usually it is the back part of it that causes problems, so I am not sure what is going on. I feel this every time for a couple of days or even more after high intensity runs.

Filtering offensive internet content for your home network

I have three boys - 13, 11 and 6 years old. They are all active internet users and I was looking for ways to protect them from offensive and explicit internet content.

First thing I wanted to do was to setup a home proxy server that would only allow pre-defined domains to go thru the firewall. However this would require always-on computer and would cost me $100+ each year to keep it plugged it for power and cooling. Plus all manual install and maintenance.I did not want that cost and complexity.

Second thing I thought was to install Firefox plugins to filter content. I even used it for a little while, but it is a mess to synch between different computers, plus kids can start using other browser (Chrome or IE) to work around it. Plus it wont work on mobile devices.

I have looked at some other options, but then I stumbled upon OpenDNS.com! You only need to configure it once on your router and every device that uses your router would use this preset DNS server. You do not have to do any config at all on any of your home computers or mobile devices (as long as you do not manually override DNS config). The next step is to create a FREE account on OpenDNS.com and setup your filtering preferences. there are few predefined settings:

And you can also use Custom to setup any level of granularity and control over what you want to be filtered. Works beautifully! Free, easy to setup and fast! Can't beat it!

Sprint triathlon in Youngstown, OH

Yesterday my son Misha and I went to Youngstown, OH to race sprint distance triathlon. This was second time Misha raced in his life and he took second place in his age group - only 4 seconds behind the first place! And that is considering that his training was a year of gymnastics, plus school phys ed classes :-).

I took an overall win with 1h 4m 1s (across all age groups with total 95 finishers). Complete race results here. This was my third triathlon race ever and all of my races so far were sprint distance. I was sure surprised as hell to take an overall win. I was gunning for the first in my age group :-). When we got home we got a second set of medals from our family :-).

The morning of the race we got up at 5 am and drove for little over one hour to the place. The race started at 7am, but when we arrived at 6:25am we had plenty of space in transition area and I used the very first rack to the exit to put my bike on. I think this helped me to get the best T-1 time of 30 sec - that is 12 seconds faster than the next best T-1 split. My T-2 time was 36 seconds - not bad, but it was 13 seconds slower then the best T-2 time in the race. I ran with no socks, but need to figure out a way to put my running shoes faster. I do use rubber laces on my Kinvaras, but it still is taking forever to put them on.

The swim part was 500 yards and my time up to a transition entrance was 9:22, which means took me 9 min 12 sec to swim, which is 1:50 per 100 yards. Very slow. Just the day before the race I set my personal best swimming three consecutive 100 yards in 1m 35 sec with 20 sec rest in between. I think if I had a chance to swim at least 10 min to warm up I could have done much better, but the time between heats was only few min.

The bike part was 12 miles on a slightly hilly terrain in the city and in the park. I pressed on the bike - not quite an all out effort, but close. It was a lovely ride with beeeeeeautiful scenery in the park - and half of the ride was on a very good pavement. My bike split for 12 miles was 34:09, which is 21.1 mph average speed (33.9 km/h).

The run was 3 miles on a pretty hilly terrain and I finished in 19:26, which is 6:29 pace. Not bad, but right after I finished I realized I could have pushed much harder on the second half of the run. First half was quite hard (I always think at the beginning of the run - why do I even do this stuff?), but just like back in May, I should have gone all out in the second half and I just held the pace only sprinting the last 100 yards, instead of gradual increase of pace all thru the second half (mental note to myself). On the up side, I think I can maintain this pace in the Olympic distance on 10K run without a problem. That is unless the bike leg (which is twice as long) takes too much more out of me.


Taper.
I did a short taper before this race - did absolutely nothing on Friday and swam 2,500 yards on Saturday with no biking and no running two days in a row before the race (not considering an hour long game of ping pong with Misha - looser was to vacuum the first floor in the house and I just had to win that battle :-) ). Starting 9 days before the race I stopped all cross-training work. No pullups, pushups, etc. Overall felt very strong on race day with no signs of fatigue.The week of the race I had a total of about 12 hours of training while the week before that was my peak for the year - 17 hours in one week. Thanks goodness my runners knee issue is almost gone now for two full weeks. I still do not do long runs yet, only up to 6 miles at a time (in under 20 miles per week), but it seems like I can get back to normal mileage of 25+ miles per week.

Youngstown newspaper "The Vindicator" published an article based on my interview about this race. Here is the copy they mailed to me (click on the image to enlarge):

Next race is in September - Portage Lakes, OH. Can't wait to do my first open water swim and the first Olympic distance there!

The best part of the day was having our friends over and Anatoliy teaching me a master class on how to cook Uzbek Plov dish. Here is the final dish, I will post a complete blog on how to cook plov.

The Perfect Mile

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It

Just finished the audio version of this book. Absolutely one of the best sports books I have enjoyed so far. This book is beautifully written and you can't put down once you start it! The plot is real and fascinating! The story tells how three runners in 1950s attempted to break the 4 minute mile barrier, which was once considered to be impossible. Those runners were Roger Banister of UK, John Landy of Australia, and Wes Santee of US.

I do not want to spoil the book for you and tell who was the first runner to accomplish this goal, but I bet even non-runners would love this book. You just can't find too many stories like that, with so much drama, action and amazing examples of the best that humans have.

Wikipedia has a great article documenting the history of the one mile records. SPOLIER ALERT: Do not look at it before you read the book! Here is the article.The current mile record was set in 1999 and is 3:43.13. Amazing.

All this one mile stuff makes me want to try how fast can I run one mile. I will try some time later this year and will post my result. For now I am curios - can I run at least 5 min mile? This year my best pace per mile was 6m 27sec during the 3 miles run at the sprint triathlon (for those of you unaware this run is after 500 yards swim and 14.5 miles bike). My average pace at the marathon last year over 26.2 miles was 7min 43sec per mile. Compare that to the world record marathon pace of 4min 43 sec per mile! Isn't it crazy?

MS150 bike ride 2012

This past weekend I rode my bicycle with Multiple Sclerosis fundraiser. This was my second year riding at this event and it was a great experience - just like it was last year. I rode as part of the Vocollect BlueStreak Team. Here is our team photo from the event (taken on the morning of day 2 - I am second from the right):

On the day 1 of the ride (Saturday) we started from Zelienople, PA and rode to Meadville, PA. I took a century option and rode 102 miles in 5 h 47 min. This year route was different from last year and had more hills plus headwind in many parts of the ride. My Garmin GPS showed total elevation gain of 6,327 ft, but training peaks log downloaded from my Garmin only shows 5,650 ft. I am not really sure why there is such significant discrepancy between the two numbers. Perhaps someone can explain why my Garmin Forerunner 305 shows different elevation and even pace from what is calculated by trainingpeaks using the data downloaded from Garmin? Anyway, the average speed on day one was about 18 mph and 17.59 mph according to trainingpeaks. Here is the complete GPS recorded route for day 1 as seen on my trainingpeaks profile. Does anybody know if the drop in heart rate on such a ride is normal? As I had a late start and was passing riders in first three hours I felt motivated to push harder, but towards the end of the ride when I did not see anyone in front of me for long periods of time I think I dropped the pace and effort level went down. I would love to know technique to maintain the effort in this situation (without the use of power meter). Shall I constantly monitor heart rate during the ride to maintain intensity? Overall by the end of the ride I was very tired and did not feel like doing much of anything for the rest of the day (except working for about 1 hour on my presentation for webcast on Monday).

The same thing happened on day 2 - good pace and heart rate in first half and as I passed most of the riders and had nobody visible in front of me the heart rate and intensity dropped. On second day I rode 64 miles in 3 h 8 min with average pace 19.9 mph according to Garmin. Here is complete route with pace and heart rate data for day 2. Again, you can see how the heart rate drifted down after the first half of the ride and then went back up towards the end when I pushed to the finish line. The best part was that after this ride on day 2 I felt very fresh and ready to do it second time (ok, may be not the whole thing).

From nutrition perspective on both days I had nothing, but a bottle of water for the first hour, then I had one bottle of Gatorade per hour, plus one banana per hour, plus one chocolate energy bar or Gu gel per hour. This amounts to about 300 calories per hour starting at second hour of each ride on both days. This seemed to work well, except the process of eating all that food was slowing me down quite a bit. I wonder if this was a little too many calories per hour? Probably it was - especially for the 65 miles. May be next time I do 200 calories per hour - Gatorade + one banana or one gel per hour.

There was, however, one thing that did not work well at all during both days. And that is I forgot body glide (chamois cream). I wont go into much details on what happened, but just a big mental note to myself - never forget body glide for long ride again :-).

Here are some photos from the event I took on my iPhone:

1 week in India - Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad

Last week I was visiting India on business while hosting seminars for IBM partners and customers in Delhi, Bangalore and Hydarabad. I also met few customers while being there. This was a great trip. The primary objectives of my seminars were to educate local community on the new capabilities of the WebSphere Application Server 8.5 and how it is differentiated against Open Source competitors, such as Tomcat, JBoss and others. I think the messages resonated very well.

This was my 3rd visit to India. Last two times I had a little more time to explore the country and posted some photos here: Mumbai - Elephanta Caves and the city. Unfortunately the schedule during this one week visit did not permit for any sightseeing (I flew on 9 different planes and spent about 38 hours in the air from Sunday to Saturday), so the only photos I made were in hotel and the airport. Yet, one could always be creative even with those photos. Here are some of the photos I took:



This one was taken in Chicago Airport - walkway between terminals:

The first human-powered circumnavigation of the Earth

This post is going to be very emotional.  I am completely blown away and struck in awe. No, I did not complete the journey around the earth myself (although I am typing it as I am sitting on the plane from Delhi to Frankfurt and total distance I traveled over the past seven days by plane is enough to circle the Earth as I have taken total of 9 flights and spent about 38 hours in air plus about 15 hours in airports waiting for connections). Being on the modern airplane in a comfort of a seat, eating warm food, relaxed, answering emails on a laptop and dozing off when desired is easy. The reason I am blown away is the “Beyond the Horizon” book I just finished reading few minutes ago. The book is written by Colin Angus (http://www.angusadventures.com) – the Canadian adventurer who completed the journey around Earth in less than two years using his muscle power alone. No motors, no sails – only the power of his arms and legs. He traveled total distance of 43,000 km from Vancouver by bike to Alaska, rowed thru the Bering Sea, biked and trekked all across Siberia via Moscow to Portugal, rowed across Atlantic to Costa Rica and biked back to Vancouver. This was done on a tiny budget with very little sponsorship and support from outside. The book is an amazing documentary of his travel and is utterly captivating. I could not put it down until I finished it (this redeye flight from Delhi to Frankfurt is 10 hours). He also has produced a documentary movie (can’t wait to watch it when I get home!) The experiences in the book are hard to believe – but even if only tenth of it is true, it is still amazing (although I do not doubt any of his writing – it is just hard to imagine these things are even possible). 

 The book is very well written and is a truly one of the best documentaries I have ever read. It reads like a thriller J. For those of you who know me, in the past 10 years or so I almost stopped reading fiction writings. I feel like wasting my time reading fiction (with few exceptions). Fiction can be entertaining, but it is still a fiction. On the other hand scientific books or documentaries fascinate me. They are “real”. Documentaries are especially special as they show what humans are capable of doing when focused and persistent. This book is very inspirational. Here is a short video from this trip around the world - a snippet form the full documentary film.

Next time I am doing something hard, I will remember the struggles Colin had. It has been my dream for the past few years to go on bike from Pittsburgh to Washington DC. Now I am certain that I will do it (hopefully with my kids).  I think it is only about 300 miles, so should take less than a week to complete.

I am typing the end of this post now sitting in Frankfurt airport and looking at the new Airbus A380 – the Dreamliner. Too bad it is not what I will fly back to US. But Boeing 747 is not too bad. Better than rowing across the ocean for 5 months… or not?

Sprint triathlon race today in Boardman, Ohio

This morning I raced in Davis sprint distance triathlon in Boardman Ohio. Complete race results with splits are posted on this site. This was my second triathlon race ever and I loved it! The race was very well organized. While riding and running we did share the road with cars, however I did not have to stop at any intersection as police and volunteers were blocking the traffic when needed. The weather was just perfect - about 65 degrees, almost no wind, overcast, nice water temperature. Most of all - new place to ride and run is always fun.

The distance was very short - 500 yards swim, 14.5 miles bike and 5K run. I finished in 1h 11 min 51 sec and took second place in my age group (35-39 years - there were 10 participants). There is still a lot of space for improvement - especially on the swim part, but also on the bike and run as I did not push to the limit today. Plus, I did not do any short distance specific training in preparation for this race (other people probably did not do it either).

My swim was quite slow - 1 m 55 sec per 100 yards. I should have pushed harder as I can maintain this pace for about an hour and here I swam for only 9 min 30 sec total. In my age group I was 4th in the swim, but out of 98 total participants in all age groups, I was #41 with my swim time (10m 26s including the running part to transition area). The fastest swimmer was 6m 47s - again, including the running part. I was 54% slower (assuming that the run from the pool to transition was the same, the difference is even bigger). Need to work on my swim pacing and speed.

The bike leg felt very good and enjoyable - I averaged 21.9 miles per hour (35.2 km/h - this is 4.6 km/h slower than the average speed of the last year Tour De France winner who had to ride a LOT longer and had a LOT more climbing :-). In my age group I was second on the bike, but out of 98 participants, I posted 8th bike time (overall) and was about 14% slower than the first biker.

My run felt hard at the beginning, but second half got much better and my average pace was 6 min 41 sec per mile. The run course was almost flat with minor rolling hills. I probably wont be able to maintain this pace for 10K, but we will see on June 3rd :-). In my age group I was second on the run, but out of all participants (all age groups) I was #13 on the run - that is 28% slower than the fastest runner.

As far as transitions - this is my best discipline :-). I was 4th fastest on the T1 with 22 seconds and 18th on T2 with 32 seconds - the reason being is that my foot was stuck in a shoe as I ran with no socks. Will probably use socks next time as I got two blisters.

My oldest son Misha went with me to the race today and provided spiritual support. We woke up at 5 am, drove for about 1 hour and were among the first ones to setup the transition area at 6:15 am. Here is what transition looked like at that early hour. It got totally packed one hour later. Because I showed up early, I was able to get a good spot. Usually at larger races they pre-assign spots by the race number.


After transition was ready, we went to register, got the body markings (race number on both arms, swim lane on right leg and age on the left leg), listened to the race director who explained the rules and logistics and watched first few heats start. I started at 8:12am - that is 3 hours after I woke up. For breakfast I ate PB&J sandwich with 1 cup of orange juice, while driving drank another cup of orange juice and ate a banana. While waiting for my heat start I ate two more bananas and sipped total of about 12oz of water. Total from 5 am till wave start at 8am fluid intake was about 4 cups. Felt perfect on the course - no GI issues of any kind. I had very similar pre-race protocol for my marathon race last fall and did not have to go to the bathroom for the entire length of the race (3h 23m). So this seems to work well for me. During this sprint race I did not eat or drink anything at all. I took one sip from the bottle while on the bike - just in case, but it was unnecessary. I think I will leave bottle in transition next time to shave off weight from the bike for the sprint distance.

Since I was in the 4th heat, it was fun to pass people on the bike and on the run. But the hardest part of the entire race to me is always a first 10 minutes of the run off the bike. I did do some bricks in training, but not at the race intensity. Misha was waiting for me at the finish line.


Once the race was complete, Misha and I went to award ceremony and I was surprised with my second place finish :-). Since this was my second triathlon I have never taken "podium" before (too bad they did no have a real podium :-). There were only 10 people in my age group (small race), but still it was nice to receive a medal. My Pittsburgh Triathlon Club also won a "bragging rights" award against the SteelValleyTriClub. There were about 13 folks from the PTC - we took a team picture and that was a nice touch to the day.

2 days in Madrid, Spain

Few weeks ago I went on business for 2 days to Madrid, Spain. IBM held an education session for a few hundred of our IT specialists from all over Europe and I presented several topics for 6 hours all in one day - boy, that's a lot of talking. I do not understand how teachers in schools can handle this much talk every day?

My hotel was located 20 min from Alcala de Henares, the birthplace of Salvatore Cervantes, so I downloaded his "Don Quixote La Mancha" into my Kindle and read it on the plane from Pittsburgh. You should have seen my dreams when I fell asleep after reading that book! It was a mumbo-jumbo of the Don Quixhote phrases mixed with the airplane related stuff - all in the usual surreal "dream" style. In short - I did not sleep too well :-).

The best part of the trip was that I met my schoolmate Saglara. She now lives in Madrid and I have not seen her for 25 years (ouch!). Although she has not changed much :-). We walked around the city center and went to some interesting places that I would have never otherwise found if I was there alone. For example, we went into the 130 years old cafe where they serve soup (not tea!) from the Russian samovar. We also visited the market where they sell "jamon" - thin slices of ham.Saglara graduated from university as a journalist and we had a very interesting discussion. She recently translated a book about transerfing from Russian to Spanish (book link).

It was interesting to talk about different esoteric teachings while walking on the ancient streets of Madrid and I took few pictures along the way:

This was my second time in Madrid. My photos from the first visit in 2007 are posted in this album.

IBM Impact in Las Vegas, Nevada

All this week I was at the IBM Impact conference in Las Vegas. This was quite a trip. Original plan was to arrive on Saturday morning and rent a car to drive to Grand Canyon, but since my presentation was not completely ready, I canceled the car and worked on my session all Saturday. On Sunday I presented a short session to IBM Business Partner pre-conference and then on Thursday had my WebLogic and JBoss competitive session for the general public. The conference itself was excellent. There were a number of cool IBM announcements found on the Impact site.

IBM holds conferences in Vegas every year and between Impact and other conferences, this was my 12th time in Las Vegas. However I love it each time I go there - this is like going into the animated movie. The replicas of the world wonders are sometimes better than the originals. All the fountains, music, people, energy on the strip. I also love running on the strip in the morning before the conference start. This year I ran every other day and biked in the gym and swam laps in the pool on days when not running. Since I missed my long run on Sunday, I moved it to Tuesday and ran 10.5 miles on the strip that morning. Felt great afterwards! First 5 miles were a warm-up and then I ran a bit faster in the second 5 miles with 7:15 min / mile pace.

Having been so many times to Vegas, I have never visited Hoover Dam or the Grand Canyon. Saving this for a family trip some time in the future :-). Last year while on the plane to Las Vegas I took a picture of the Hoover Dam from the airplane:

The conference was in Venetian Hotel. If you have never stayed in Venetian - you should. The rooms are simply amazing. Here is a virtual tour of the room and a floor plan of the room where I stayed - this is one hell of a room for one person to stay !!!

However the highlight of the trip was not the hotel. On Sunday one of my best friends - Victor Pleikis flew in to Vegas from San Jose, CA with his wife and we met for dinner at the Brazilian restaurant and also played roulette for 10 minutes where I quickly lost my $10 and Anna (Victor's wife) won $20.

The other cool thing in Vegas was my trip to the CIRQUE DU SOLEIL show "Ka". I have never been to their shows. What an amazing show it was! It totally blew my socks off. Just imagine a high quality music (on-par with Pirates of the Caribbean), mixed with excellent lighting effects, elements of the movie projected on the semi-transparent screen that drops from the ceiling at different times, mixed with ballet, martial arts, dance, acrobatics in the air, rotating stage where you could see action a-la google-earth at different angles as it rotates (people suspended on ropes so they do not fall of that rotating stage), very cool costumes, nice looking decorations, smoke, folks shooting real arrows, humor and bunch of other things coming out at you for 90 minutes. This was by far the best show I have ever seen anywhere. You can have a look at the short review of the show on their site here.