Racing out of state takes a lot of prep, extra time (taking a day off work to travel), and a never-ending stream of expenses.  I was originally going to ship my bike but decided against it because of expense and risk.  Most airlines (except Frontier) charge $100-$200 each way to ship a bike and it has to be partly disassembled, boxed, or in a hard case. And there is the very real risk of damage.

I decided not to risk it and reserved a Specialized Ruby (48″) from a local bike shop in Mission Bay.  I’m taking a chance with that, too, but I figured I’ll only be on the bike for about 2 hours so how bad can it be. Plus, I feel better knowing I wont be worried about my new bike (which still needs a name but that’s a different post).  I rented from Zumwalt’s Bicycle Center in Rolando and the guys there seemed pretty cool.  They offered to swap out the bike pedals for mine (I’m bringing my own) and take 30-45 minutes and tune the bike for a custom fit before the race.  Super!

So I’m all set. I registered for the race months ago, have a reservation at The Dana Hotel (about a mile from the race), have a bike reserved, have researched the course several times, and feel about as ready as I’ll ever be. This is my first Olympic distance race so I really don’t know what to expect but hoping the altitude training in Colorado will pay off.

I’ll do a short run, light bike ride, and one full mile swim this week and that is all. The remainder of the week will be about resting and making sure I haven’t left out any packing details. Should be an exciting race!

To make it harder, we took a detour on the way up and rode to the highest point of Old Stage Road, a steep climb that doesn’t last too long, but will give your legs a great workout. Then we turned around and headed up to Jamestown. See map below for our route in blue (started at point A on the right).

I had three goals for this ride.  To get hill training, practice refueling while on the bike, and continue to get used to my new pedals (Look Keo 2 Max – in white).  Eating and drinking while on a road bike is WAY different than on a mountain bike, mainly because of the weight of the bike.  Since a mountain bike is so much heavier, it is more stable and easier to control with one hand (while the other hand is getting water, handling a Clif Bar, etc). But road bikes are so darn light (especially carbon) that it feels like nobody is at the wheel when I let go of one side.  It sounds like this should be easy but it’s not!

I learned two important things about eating while on a road bike. One, that it is easier to refuel while climbing uphill than going downhill.  You would think it would be harder but it’s actually easier because when you are going uphill, you are going slower and therefore have more control over the bike.  Second, that you should eat with your left hand and control the bike with your right (at least for me).  I keep my right hand on the handlebar because if I’m going uphill, I’m probably in the lowest gear in the front (controlled by the left shifter), which means I won’t need my left hand for shifting.  Any gear adjustments are likely to be to the rear derailer, which is controlled by my right hand. Walla, time to eat!

As for getting used to the pedals, I still have some work to do.  I made the mistake of trying to clip in while starting uphill (stupid) and fell over.  Dave was right next to me and had just clipped in himself when I fell over on him so down he went, too. I won’t have a whole lot more time on the bike before San Diego so I’m crossing my fingers.

Overall, it’s really hard to complain when you are surrounded by such stunning scenery that you forget about how much work you are doing.  One more reason I love living in Colorado.  I also did a bit of research and discovered that La Jolla Mesa Drive has a 2 mile elevation gain of about 650 feet, which is much less than the 1370 feet gain of Old Stage Road so now I’m not so worried!

Last Sunday was my first triathlon of the season, the BlasterBlast, sponsored by the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO.  The course was a fairly flat sprint distance that seemed a tame enough race to kick the summer off.  Dave came with me, which made it a hundred times more fun than getting up early by myself.

The swim was 750 meters, an easy distance for me since I used to swim the mile in college.  When you register for a race, they typically ask for your estimated swim time so they can slot you in a heat.  I am always super conservative because I figure I would rather have to deal with slower swimmers than get in the way of a faster swimmer. But what has happened (several times now) is that I end up in a heat that 1) starts almost an hour after the official race start and 2) includes swimmers who are much slower than me and I have to navigate around and try to pass. I was on the tail of the guy in front of me every time he got to the pool wall and a polite swimmer would have let me pass. But he kept pushing off anyway so I had to slow way down and do breast stroke so I didn’t get kicked in the face.  Next time, I’m going to be more accurate with my swim time so I can get in a faster heat.

It was a cool morning and I was worried about staying warm after the swim so I wore two layers for the bike (over my tri suit) and planned to strip one off during the transition to the run. The bike leg was 200K (12.5 miles) and it was the worst course I’ve ever been on.  The path winded around downtown Golden, which crossed lots of main roads, had a lot of hairpin turns, and was pretty much the local bike/walk path.  Lots of pedestrians, walkers, and really narrow two-lane trails with very little room to pass.  And lots of dogs!  I would rather crash my bike than hit an innocent dog or person which means I spent most of the bike course going very slow.  It didn’t even feel like a race.  But it was a beautiful day so I figured I’d just have a good time and look at it like a good workout.

For the run, I really wanted to keep my inner layer on instead of the outer but my bib number was pinned to the outer shirt and it would have taken a few minutes to undo the pins and repin during transition so I skipped it. The run was an easy 5K (3.1 miles) and it was over pretty quick. The last quarter mile was a cruel uphill climb back to the school.  My legs felt like anvils after the bike so it was a bit of a slog and I need to figure out what is going on with my legs because that happens every time.

Overall, it was a fun race and I met some great people and one incredibly inspiring woman. Patty Townsend is in her 60’s and has been running triathlons for 10 years! Holy smokes I want to be her!  She agreed to let me interview her for my blog so look for an interview in a later post.

Thanks to Dave for getting up early, for driving, letting me use his shirt to dry off after the swim (while I ran to transition), and for taking pics and being my champion.  Next race is the Olympic distance San Diego World Triathlon on May 12^th!

1999 and 2000 were crazy years when fledgling start-ups with no revenue were getting bought for millions, investors couldn’t throw money at start-ups fast enough, and unproven companies celebrated epic  IPOs.  No sooner had the industry recognized and labeled their own frenzie as the “dot com boom” than it came crashing down.  First to go were over-valued e-commerce sites like Pets.com, which raised $82.5 million in an IPO in 2000 and collapsed nine months later. eToys raised $188 million in its IPO the same year and died 16 months later.

Next to topple were the businesses that relied on those sites, like Exodus Communications, a major data center provider (both eToys and Pets.com were customers).  I worked for Exodus for a year after they acquired the start-up I worked at for $280 million about a year after we launched.  Exodus stock split 5 times in 2000 and then they filed Chapter 11 (twice!).  Like a domino effect , the impact eventually worked its way back to the source and affected investors.  Skittish venture capitalists scaled back their early-stage investments and began to demand more from start-ups looking for funding (silly stuff like revenue, a real business model, and a seasoned team).

Throw a deep recession on top of that and the world of start-ups suddenly got very conservative and serious.  Many really cool companies with innovative ideas died on the vine because they couldn’t get funding and didn’t have the revenue to self-fund.  Entrepreneurs went back to corporate life for a paycheck and venture capitalists used their funds to save existing portfolio companies instead of looking for new ones. But things are looking up.

Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram marks the beginning of another tech boom and is evidence that both investors and consumers are optimistic enough to start refeeding their appetites for innovation.  And once again, it’s all about scalability.  So how do you take scalability to the next level and top the last decade?  Think cloud-based storage, mobile apps, content creation, big data, and platforms that leverage the vast influence of millions on social media.  Instagram satisfies enough of these categories to claim a billion dollar price tag, yet still has no revenue.  This is a huge signal that the market is confident enough to risk putting potential first and revenue second.  Since start-ups are all about risk, this makes right now a very exciting time for entrepreneurs!

Start-up history is paved with defining moments and Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram is definitely one of them.

I had some favorites last year and they’re on my list again.  The Lookout Mountain Tri is beautiful with a gorgeous (but hard) bike and run through the mountains. My Way or The Tri Way is fun because you get to pick the order you want to do each leg of the race.  I do the swim part first so I can get hassle of getting in and out of a wet suit out of the way first.

April

4.29    BlasterBlast Triathlon in Golden

May

5.19   5^th Summer Open Tri, Union Reservoir

5.20   Fort Collins Tri, Ft Collins

June

6.2    Boulder Sunrise Olympic Tri, Boulder Reservoir

6.3    32^nd Longmont Tri, Centennial Pool

6.10  Denver Tri

6.30  Lookout Mountain Tri, Golden

July

7.22 Boulder Irongirl Tri

7.28 My Way or the Tri Way, Aurora

August

8.5  Boulder IronMan 70.3, Boulder (gulp)

Race season goes through October but I’ll play Sept and Oct by ear and see how the 70.3 goes.  If you’re planning to do any of these races, let me know!

The author, Jennifer Wang, did a fabulous job of articulated BlogFrog’s mission to help brands and social influencers create and engage in like-minded communities and conversations.  She interviewed our brand clients, blog partners, channel partners, and employees and went deep into the history of the company and the evolution of our products. You can read the full feature article, BlogFrog and the Power of Moms on their website.

This feature, along with our recent announcement on closing $3.2 million in funding, makes March a pretty tough month to beat.

This weekend was a divine exception. Two gorgeous, amazing, sunny grab-your-bike-and-some sunscreen-and-get-your-butt-outside days.

Dave and I went for a mountain bike ride on Sat afternoon and my friend Rebecca and I did a 12 mile hike along the Mesa Trail this morning.  Usually, we hike from Eldorado Canyon to Chautauqua Park , which is about 6 miles.  We leave a car on either end and drive back to the starting point.  This time, it was such an awesome day that after hiking to the Ranger Station at Chautauqua, instead of driving back to Eldorado, we decided to just turn around and hike back.  We talked the whole way so it’s more like 5 hours of therapy than hiking.

I love how when the weather turns warm, I get to rediscover the beauty and inspiration of living in Colorado. I love our health-minded, sports-devoted, dog-loving, tofu-eating, start-up-driven town and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

The idea of partnering with influencers to reach a wider audience is not new.  It’s why brands use celebrities in print ads and physicians in commercials.  But there are millions of far more influential consumers out there leading normal lives, quietly producing content on blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social channels. BlogFrog’s technology platform allows consumer-facing brands to activate these social influencers based on topics and products they genuinely care about anyway.  This creates a relationship between brands and consumers that is based on conversations, not advertising.  It’s a pretty cool idea and we’re excited that Grotech and our other investors see the big game at play here.

The new infusion of capital will allow us to take this vision to an entirely new level.  Not only will we broaden our set of features for consumer brands, we’ll build more tools for bloggers that help them increase their reach, create communities for readers, and even make money while they do it.

It is an incredible time to be an entrepreneur and I am so proud and honored to work with such an amazing team. A guiding principle of our company culture is to encourage every employee to be the CEO of their job.  Whether they develop code, work with clients and bloggers, or write website content, every person is empowered to take charge.  And they do! If you are interested in joining our team, check out our jobs page.

Huge thanks to BlogFrog’s existing investors, Grotech Ventures, partners and employees, and to our amazing customers.  This is just the beginning!

My niece Delaney was born the smallest of the small.  She was twelve weeks premature (that’s three months!) weighed 2 lbs, and spent the first few months of her little life in an incubator that regulated her oxygen and kept germs out so her lungs and other organs could mature.  My sister could touch her and hold her, often through rubber gloves that extended into the incubator.  They were occasionally allowed to take her out so she could have skin-to-skin contact with her parents.

She is a fighter.

They brought her home, but because she had been fed thru tubes while being incubated, she didn’t develop a normal relationship with food.  She was never hungry, didn’t take to nursing, and didn’t like foods with strong smells.  In fact, what she ate was so visually negligible, my sister would weigh her food before putting it on her high chair and then weigh what was left to track if she had eaten anything. She was tiny and her way of fighting was to stick close to momma.

By the time she was 5, her growth metrics were still below what was even measured on the charts for height, weight and length for her age. The doctors said if she didn’t start eating, it would begin to affect her brain development.  So they put in what became known as “the button”, a feeding tube that went from Delaney’s stomach to a machine that pumped a nutritional mixture into her belly while she slept.  She was on the feeding tube for three years.  She was still small and fragile, with delicate features and a bright round cherub smile. She liked quiet toys, drawing, and a permanent spot in her mother’s arms.

She spent years in physical and occupational therapy to help her muscles and reflexes behave like normal. She wore special orthopedic shoes to help support her growth and glasses to help her vision.

As Delaney grew stronger, so did her fight.  She fought to be in the school band (played flute and then baritone) and her mom fought the school system for teachers who would give her the special support she needed.  She got into weight training and drills in school and today is a typical teenage girl and a total tomboy. She fought with school administrators and eventually won a spot as the only girl on her school’s football team.

She’s an inspiration in my eyes because of her dedication to having a normal life just like anyone else. Now, whenever anyone ever tells me I fight like a girl, I think of Delaney and take it as a compliment.

I started running in 2008 (ran my first and only marathon so far in 2009) and started getting into triathlons last year.  Things were going fine until a mountain biking trip to Moab, UT with the family in July.  Within the first hour of what turned out to be a 6 hour trek in 100 degree heat, I had fallen and injured my wrist.  It hurt but wasn’t anything I couldn’t deal with for a few hours so I kept riding.  By that night, my wrist was swollen and turning blue and I knew something was up.  I skipped biking the next day and visited the local urgent care.  Turned out it was broken so they put a temporary cast on it and I sat by the pool the rest of the trip.

I thought I was done but a year and a half later, my wrist still hurts and I can’t do push-ups without swelling and pain.  I’m starting to train for triathlon season and I’ve even had to adjust my strength training to omit certain wrist-bearing exercises.  I don’t mind a little pain but some athlete friends seem to think there are enough experts out there that something can be done.  One more thing on my to-do list.  Then I inadvertently went too crazy with weights and pinched a nerve in my shoulder.  Two weeks of heating pads and physical therapy and that’s almost back to normal.  A nasty flu set me back a week in Jan and now I’m in bed with a heating pad on my neck from goofing off on the trampolines at  JumpStreet in Thornton (which was a total blast).  Its minor and I’ll get over it but it just seems to be one thing after another. What gives??

I’m young and healthy and I’m not ready for things to start falling apart. Not yet! Injuries can result from accidents, training too hard, exhaustion, improper form, and just bad luck. Or they happen when we push our bodies beyond their limits and its a sign we should back off a little.  I don’t want to back off so I’m going to first try to figure out how I can improve the supporting systems instead.  And that’s doing things like getting more rest, eating better food, using quality supplements, and spacing workouts better. And maybe I can back off just a little.  A tiny bit. Just to see. Stay tuned.