Royal Caribbean Cruise vacation

From November 23 till December 2nd my family went on a cruise vacation (some photos can be found here). We all had great time and it is hard to say who loved it the most :-). This was our third cruise vacation - we went with Royal Caribbean on the Explorer of the Seas ship.

First time we went on a 2 day cruise vacation in 2001 from Ft Lauderdale to Bahamas. The ship was medium size, but we liked it, although the cruise was very short because the main part of that vacation was spent in Orlando visiting all the parks.

Our second cruise was in January 2011 and it was totally awesome - the main reason was that we went with our friends and this turned out to be the trip of a lifetime! Here are some photos from that trip. We were on the MS Nieuw Amsterdam ship of Holland America and visited 4 islands. The ship was great, food was amazing, islands were good, but the company of friends was the best part of the trip.

Logistics

We sailed from Cape Liberty Port in Bayonne NJ and it took us 7 hours to drive there from Pittsburgh (including 1 hour rest stop) - we departed Pittsburgh at 5am and were at the port at noon. Boarding process was super quick. Same with departure - perfectly organized and super quick. Parked car right there in the port about 100 yards from the boarding/immigration tent and paid $171 for 10 days. I did search for cheaper parking, but after reading feedback on 3 hour delays with departures decided to park right at the port.

Previous cruise was sailing from Ft Lauderdale and it was a hassle and too much cost to fly all 5 of us from Pittsburgh to Ft Lauderdale a day in advance, pay for the taxi to hotel, pay for hotel, pay for taxi from hotel to the port, on the way back pay for the taxi from port to airport, fly back, pay for parking of the car in Pittsburgh airport. Half of the cost of vacation is just spent on flying and driving to the ship. Not worth it. Better spend this time and money on the ship. The only disadvantage is that first two days are spent in sea and it is cold outside, but they ship offer plenty of things to do inside.

• Day 1: Sailed from Cape Liberty Port
• Day 2,3: At sea
• Day 4: Labadee (Haiti)
• Day 5: Samana (Dominican Republic)
• Day 6: St Thomas (Virgin Islands)
• Day 7: San Juan (Puerto Rico)
• Day 8,9: At sea
• Day 10: Arrival to Cape Liberty Port

Ship

The ship was built in 2000, but looks great, although you could see some very minor wear and tear in the cabin, but not in public spaces which are maintained in perfect order.

We had full ship of about 3100 passengers with about 680 kids on-board. The best part of the ship design is the central street at level 5 that servers as a alley where you can walk, visit shops, bars, cafes, etc.

There is a lot to do on the ship, including free ice skating (not huge, but big enough to have fun), rollerblading (very small area on 13 floor outside), rock climbing, basketball court, 3 table tennis tables (most of the time it is too windy to play though), foosball, small library, family game spaces with table games, arcade (for a fee), teen and kids rooms and clubs (free), cafes, bars, etc. Drinks are pretty expensive and there are plenty of drinkers, but I have only seen 1 drunk guy in 10 days. Each evening they run a show or two - ice show and/or evening event with dancers, comedians, etc. Comedians were mediocre at best (ok, they sucked), but dancers, singers and music was great.

Pools are fine for kids, but too small to do lap swimming. Here is complete info about all amenities on the ship. Note this is 3rd largest from the top. There are two classes of ships above this one and they offer even more facilities.

We did have some sea conditions and 7 days out of 10 you could feel the ship rolling side to side and rear to front. It was not too bad, but you could notice and I did not enjoy this part as I prefer solid footing. Some people felt a bit sick, but most folks were too drunk to notice :-).

There is WiFi on the ship, but at the cost of $0.50 per minute we only used minimum for kids to get homework from the school website.

Food

Food was great. It is all included, but you could go for dinner to extra-fine Italian Palomino restaurant for $20 extra per person (we didn't). We took 8:30pm dinner time, but it was a mistake to do it so late. It should have been 6pm.

I gained about 2 pounds during these 10 days as it was my designated recovery time from training and I did nothing in terms of running or biking - just a little bit of swimming in the sea. Misha went to gym every day (or so he said :-).

Labadee

We liked all of the islands. Labadee was one of the best among all of the islands on either cruise. They have gigantic zip line about a mile long, but we did not make it there due to timing. However we did go to the water park in the sea - climbing and sliding down large inflated icebergs, etc. We all had a blast. Food was free on this island.

Samana

In Samana we went onshore for 2 hours and paid $20 for 1 hour tour of the city on the motor taxi with short stops in a handful of scenic places. Did not go to the beach.

St Thomas

Here we took catamaran to sail to the island 4 miles away from the port to snorkel and watch sunken ship, corrals and large number of underwater sea life - all beautiful. Even my 7 year old son learned snorkeling right there on the spot and jumped flippers first from the 2 meter high catamaran into the sea! I was impresses how brave he is! Just like NAVY Seals jump down feet down into the sea. :-) He never did snorkeling, and was scared at first 9even though he can swim), so I taught him on the spot and we both enjoyed full hour looking down. Sasha explored sea floor on his own without my supervision and totally loved it. It was first time snorkeling for him and he did super well.

San Juan

Here Misha and I went on the horseback riding tour thru the rain forest for 4 hours (with about 90 min of riding). This was the longest and by far the most fun ride Misha or I had on the horse! This was amazing trip. Horses are beautiful and you can feel their power and will. Scenery was amazing and we saw wild monkey, wild iguana.

Life on the ship

My wife loved evening time as she could dress up and dress up the rest of us :-). I felt like 25% of people on the ship were Russian speaking (probably not true). Cruise director was very talented and funny guy from Australia and he said we had folks from about 60 countries on the ship (including crew members). We met few Russian speaking families - great folks. We also had waiter at dinner from Odessa - Russian speaking Ukrainian (hi Konstantin! if you are reading this). Turns out he is sailing for over 10 years and his family still lives in Ukraine. He is also a poet and we enjoyed his advice and company at our dinners.

Overall it was great family time, despite the fact that 90% of the time kids were busy with their new friends in kids or teen rooms or just running around the ship, bathing in pools and jacuzzies. Everyone was happy (99% of the time anyway) and we will remember this vacation for long time.

Braggart goose tale - a lesson for triathletes

TRANSLATION

BRAGGART GOOSE
(Uzbek tale)
- Here I am, - was bragging the goose, - I can fly in the sky, and can swim in the water, and can walk on land.
- So you can fly in the sky. But can you fly like an eagle? - he was asked.
- No, I can not fly like an eagle.
- So you can swim, but can you swim like a fish?
- No, I can't swim like a fish.
- Can you run on land like a horse?
- No, I can't run like a horse.
- Well goose, - he was told, - why are you bragging then?

LESSON for Triathletes

Do not brag too much if you can't swim like Phelps, bike like Lance (sorry...) or run like Bolt. :-)))

Race report - Half-Ironman 70.3 Rev3 Cedar Point

On September 8th I raced Cedar Point Rev3 70.3 Half Ironman in Sandusky, Ohio. This was my second Half Ironman distance with first being Eagleman 70.3 back in June. The race was a 70.3 distance, including 1.2 miles swim (1.93 km), 56 miles bike (90.1 km) and 13.1 miles run (21.1 km). I finished with the time of 5:11:04. Total number of people participated was 706, including 104 in my age group.

This was my "A" race for the year and since it was my second 70.3 distance, I was better prepared mentally and physically. Full race results can be found here. Here is the analysis of my times:

Two weeks before the race I had cold with running nose and cough, but I trained thru it and ignored it since there was no fever and I felt more or less normal.

In preparation for this race I did bike chain cleanup. I also bought new Continental 4000s race tires and put them on both front and rear. These are highly rated and are puncture resistant. My old tires were the originals that came with the bike and they had over 3,000 miles on them with visible signs of wear.


The race was held at the Cedar Point amusement park and start and finish are right next to the park entrance with roller coaster and all the park fun going on:

Swim

The swim was supposed to be held in Lake Erie, but because of strong winds and high waves it was moved half a mile (or more) away from transition to the inner harbor on the other side of the island. The race was wet suite legal and water was relatively clean and not too cold. I felt pretty good on the swim and as always did not push very hard. However one problem was that I zig-zagged quite a bit and had to get back to the proper position quite a few times during this swim. I did practice sighting in the pool and do not lose much speed when I sight, but I did not do it often enough and I think this contributed to getting off course. I passed few swimmers and few people passed me.

The best thing was that this was a time trial swim start. In other words, we did not start the heat all at once, but rather walked at our own pace thru the timing mat - two people at a time and your time starts when you cross the mat. This made for a comfortable start and helped to avoid the mess. This race was a little bit unique for me as I was not as nervous as usual. For whatever reason I felt pretty good and relaxed, waiting for the start.

Things to do for the next race:

• Keep working on swim technique and speed (drills, intervals, etc.)
• Do 400 and 800 tempo swims (for this race I only did tempos of up to 200 yards)
• Work harder during the swim in the race. I took this swim at moderate pace, but could do better next time.
• Do dry and wet warm-up before the race start (this time I could only do dry warm-up).

T1

Because the swim was moved over half a mile away from the transition, it took quite a bit of running to get to T1 - all bare feet on asphalt. However my T1 time was better than top 5 overall finishers of the race (!!). This was the first time I used the service offered by strippers - those people do not dance naked, they rather take your wet suite off in a matter of seconds. I ran quickly to the T1 and got on my bike in no time. As always I had my shoes clipped on and this helped to save time in transition. Bare feet in bike shoes - as always. I never use socks on the bike in triathlon races, but I would use socks for the "pure" bike race if I did one. Since I do not have a road bike, I can't really participate in "pure bike" road races. May be it is time to get a road bike so I can do it? Something to think about for 2014.

Bike

Bike was almost as flat as Eagleman race with very few small hills on the way. This was my first race ever when I had heart rate monitor and GPS on me. Here is the bike report from my Garmin watch - click to open interactive dashboard:

Overall I felt very good on the bike and did not go all out - saving some steam for the run. I did do several long rides of 2.5 to 4 hours and it helped a lot. However 99% of my bike training is on my recumbent bike, not even on the real bike, so it is hard to compete for the podium without training on the real bike and without intervals.

 The wind at times was extremely strong blowing from the side and some times into the face, so the bike time is a bit slower than expected, but still better than my last race. Notice that the average RPM on the bike is exactly 90! I passed a couple of hundred people on the bike and about 5 people passed me. Loved it.

T2

T2 was good and smooth. I definitely wanted to put on my socks and this contributed to slightly slower T2 time compared to top athletes. However it was totally worth few seconds. Here is the picture of transition area as it looked before the race:

Run

The run during the Eagleman back in June felt very very hard, so I was curious to see how it will go this time, considering that I was running quite well in training and shorter races. I started out at the pace of 7 min/mile, then involuntarily slowed down all the way to the crawling 9 min/mile towards the end of the race as you can see in this Garmin report (click for interactive dashboard):

The run felt good until about mile 5 and then it started to get harder and harder very quickly. However the air was relatively cool and there was no sun, so I kept running. I did walk on most of the aid stations, but never stopped in between. It felt better compared to the run at the Eagleman, but was still a very very hard run. I could say I more or less fell apart on the run. I watched GPS and in second half simply could not hold the pace at what I wanted it to be. In training I can run 13.1 miles with 7:30 min/mile pace, but this race was a minute slower than that. My full marathon pace was 7:45 min/mile back in late 2011, but I ran 4 times a week then and only 3 times a week with lower mileage now. Could that be a problem?

Things to do to improve the run:

• Longer tempo runs - faster than race pace - repeats of 2, 5, 8 miles. 
• Tempo runs race pace for 10 miles and above.
• Increase long runs to about 18 miles (up from the longest of 16 miles and average of 13 miles I did for this race).
• Participate in run races - in the past 30 yars I have only done one run race - Lake Erie Marathon back in 2011. May be I should do 5K, 10K, etc. There are many races in the Pittsburgh area. Need to have a look and plan for it.

 

 Nutrition

For breakfast 2.5 hours before the start had half a cup of almonds, banana and orange, slice of bread with a table spoon of peanut butter and strawberry jam, cup of green tea and then sipped water. Had half a cup of apple sauce.

I had 1.5 bottles of Gatorade on the bike and about 0.7 bottle on the run (at aid stations). Took gels every 40 minutes on the bike and run. Did not have to use restroom during the race and overall nutrition seemed to work well.

Logistics

Drove from Pittsburgh to Sandusky on Saturday morning - took 3 hours to get there. Slept in the car at the RV camping site on the back of the Cedar Point amusement park. It only took 5 minutes from that camping spot to the race start by car. The camping site office folks said I can just use their parking lot for free. The only problem was that it was noisy with all the amusement park rides and stuff up until about 11 pm. On the up side, this small camping site has free shower room, toilets, etc. All clean and nice. This is where I took shower after the race.

Two night before the race I did not sleep (bummer - never happened 2 night before). The night before the race I could not fall asleep on my own (again!) and had to take a risk with one tablet of Melatonin - never used it before. With this I got about 4 hours of sleep and woke up at 6am. Felt good - no residual effect from the tablet, so will definitely use it next time - will take one tablet about 3 hours before bed time on race night.

Oh yes, got this medal at the finish line (both sides shown):

Training and taper

Here is TrainingPeaks report on the training leading up to the race.My annual training plan was auto-generated by TrainingPeaks.com. You can see training hours on this dashboard (click on the image for full size picture).

Trip to Bratislava, Prague, Budapest and Moscow

The past two weeks were really exciting! It was planned weeks in advance and I could not wait to start this sequence of "roller coaster" events taking me from one place to another in a crazy fast pace.

It all started on Saturday, September 7, when I drove to Sandusky, Ohio for the Cedar Point Half Ironman race. The race itself took place on September 8th (race report to follow later). After the race on Sunday, I quickly took shower and barely had time to drive to Cleveland airport to board flight to Vienna, Austria. I knew I wont break 4 hours at this race, so I had no time to return to Pittsburgh in time for departure. On Monday, from Vienna I took a taxi to Bratislava, Slovakia. Worked there on Tuesday - meeting IBM customers and partners, and had 2 hours to walk around the historical center of the city. This was my second time in Bratislava and I enjoyed it as much as the first time. The city center is small, but very pretty as you can see on these pictures (click on the image to open Picasa album):

On Tuesday after having worked all day in Bratislava drove for 4 hours to Prague (on 2 weeks old BMW X6 car owned by Martin - the local IBM sales rep). In Prague I worked on Wednesday running education session for IBMers and met one large IBM customer in the afternoon. Then on Wednesday evening flew to Budapest, Hungary and hosted education session for IBM business partners on Friday morning. I had 6 hours before my next flight from Budapest to Moscow. My new friend Balint, who is IBMer in Budapest gave an amazing tour of the city. Looking at these pictures I am sure you would agree that Budapest is totally awesome!

After that tour of the city, on Friday night I flew to Moscow and worked part of the week in the IBM office in the beautiful downtown while spent weekends with my parents. On Saturday we had 14 relatives who came to visit us. Some of these folks I have not seen for 18 years!!! Here are few photos from the mushroom hunt in Russia:

Came back to Pittsburgh this Monday and now back to work. Ohh well...