Social media, ODTUG, and you

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

Well, my younger, taller, smarter brother-who-isn’t-really my brother.  I am of course referring to my almost-doppelganger, Martin D’Souza.  

Why am I mentioning a non-EPM Oracle ACE Director and fellow ODTUG board member on this blog?  Well, there is the resemblance (I actually don’t think so but I’ve had people ask me how things are in Calgary and I live in the US of A), but it’s really because of what Martin has done:  he’s put ODTUG’s Oracle blogs on Twitter.

Social media – useless or awesome?  Discuss.

Yes, Twitter, the place where people go to get bullied, follow vapid, shallow, and beyond-useless celebrities, and of course look at pictures of cats.  At first blush, it does seem all a bit pointless if you have but a scintilla of a brain, but in fact it is of value for sharing technical information.  As an example, ODTUG has a Twitter feed, ODTUG’s EPM community social media leader Jennifer Anderson has a Twitter feed on all things EPM, and even yr. obt. svt. has a feed.  All of what we post is serious (well, mostly) and I’m pretty sure we don’t fall victim to Twitter’s more pernicious attributes.  The push nature of Twitter makes sharing information easy.

ODTUG and Martin make it better

And now it’s even better, thanks to Martin.  He has generously donated his time and expertise to build a dynamic feed of blog posts to your actually-quite-useful Twitter account.  Awesome, not-bro!

What does this mean?  

ODTUG has blog aggregators for each of its communities:  Apex, BI, Development, DBA, ADF, and of course our beloved EPM.  Before the Twitter push feature, you had to visit the ODTUG website.  While there is nothing wrong with this approach, it takes time, it must be actively done, and it is not at all great on a mobile device.  

And now?  Get a Twitter account, install the application on your device, and away you go, getting useful information without even lifting a finger.  

Get there firstest, with the mostest

Still reading?  Why? Shouldn’t you be off following @orclepmblogs?  Looking for tweets with the #orclepm hashtag?  Not spending time reading blogs…whoops, okay, keep doing that.

Seriously, every man jack of us is busy, sometimes ridiculously so.  Staying abreast of technical news, information, and announcements is a vital part of our jobs.  The work Martin has done for ODTUG makes it all that much easier.  

Be seeing you.

Collecting Fares on the Honor System

Connecticut’s newest mass transit system, CTfastrak, is off to a great start.  The bus rapid transit system running from New Britain to Hartford is carrying up to 10,000 passengers daily.  Mind you, that’s coming off of its debut week when all rides were free.

In fact, it’s the fare collection process on CTfastrak that makes it innovative:  it’s on the honor system.

Unlike most buses, CTfastrak passengers pay before getting onboard, purchasing tickets ($1.50 for 2 hours’ use) at the stations or online.  This reduces the “dwell time” at each stop as passengers can board through any door. A similar system is running in NYC on certain “Select Bus” routes and seems popular.

But without paying a fare to the bus driver as you board, how do they know you have a ticket?  Ah, there’s the rub.  The “honor system” relies on “Fare Inspectors” making random checks.  Getting caught without a valid ticket means a $75 fine, though in these early days they’re mostly giving warnings.

Only a handful of US transit systems have adopted the honor system for fare collection, including the San Diego Trolley and the MUNI subway in San Francisco. In Minneapolis getting caught on a bus without a ticket is a $180 lesson in “doing the right thing”.

In Los Angeles the Metro had so many problems with free-loaders they converted to turnstiles. Even a $250 ticket for fare evaders didn’t encourage payment, resulting in a $9 million loss in ticket sales. And the fare there is only $1.50.

On Metro-North fare evasion doesn’t seem to be a problem.  If you don’t have a ticket they’ll just throw you off the train (at the next station, of course).  Or get an MTA cop to issue a fine.

Until a few years ago you could buy a ticket on the train for the same fare as on the platform.  That meant wasted time for conductors and a “money room” at Grand Central processing a million in cash each week.  Now if you don’t have a ticket and buy one on the train, there’s a $5.75 - $6.50 penalty… even on a $2 ticket.  Senior citizens get a break as do those boarding at stations that don’t have ticket machines.

The bigger problem on Metro-North is uncollected fares. The railroad admits it loses money by not collecting all tickets… but less money than it would cost to properly staff trains with enough conductors to collect them all.

Most infuriating is when trains from Grand Central leave Stamford.  Everyone can see that dozens of commuters got off there and scores more got on.  But the new arrivals’ tickets are seldom collected unless conductors have issued seat checks to the original NY passengers.

Watching someone traveling from Stamford to, say, Bridgeport get a “free ride” is like watching someone shoplift in a store.  You just know you’ll be paying more to subsidize their larceny, with neglectful conductors as their willing accomplices.

Paying for Malloy's $100 Billion Wish List

There is no question that Governor Malloy’s proposed $100 Billion transportation plan for our state is, as he puts it, “bold”.  The question is, is it achievable?  When asked which projects are important and should be prioritized, he insists it’s “all of them”.

Really?  Is turning little Oxford Airport into an international terminal, just 58 miles from Bradley, as important as fixing Metro-North?  Can we really spend $780 million on bike and

The 118 yr old Walk Bridge

pedestrian thoroughfares when we don’t have money to repair crucial bridges on the New Haven line?  And is spending $1.6 billion to widen I-95 from Stamford to the NY state line even necessary?

The problem is, the Governor’s plan isn’t a plan.  It’s a wish list, with something for everyone in the state.  His “plan” is of unknown origin.  Nobody has vetted these projects to say what makes sense and what doesn’t.  Nor has the Governor offered any ideas on how to pay for them. Instead he’s created a panel of experts tasked with coming up with those answers by the end of this summer, an unenviable job indeed.

As my Daddy taught me, “there is no free lunch”.  And there is no way to pay for any of these projects without significant pain.  A $100 billion plan would cost each man, woman and child in this state $27,800 to pay for it.  Even spread over 50 years, that’s $556 per person per year.  Are you in?

Even the Governor admits that highway tolls wouldn’t be enough, covering only one-third of the total cost.  And we know how popular tolling is.  So where else do we get the money?

Among the alternatives… a sales tax increase, higher gas taxes and real estate transfer fees.  Anything on that list to your liking so far?

How about “privatization”, in effect selling off state-owned roads and bridges to private companies, allowing them to charge whatever they’d like to use them?

Is it just by chance that this alternative is being floated by former Malloy campaign manager

Occhiogrosso & The Governor

and top aide Roy Occhiogrosso who just happens to now be working for a firm, HNTB Corp,  that specializes in such deals?  What does Mr. Occhiogrosso know about the Governor’s plans that we don’t, but should?

Privatization has been tried before.  In 2006 cash-strapped Indiana sold its 50-year-old East West Toll Road (“The Main Street of the Midwest”) to an Australian–Spanish conglomerate, netting the state $3.8 billion in return for the right to operate the crucial highway for 75 years. (PS:  Goldman Sachs earned a reported $200 million just for brokering the deal.)   In the first year of operations, tolls almost doubled. Surprised?

Let’s face it:  Governor Malloy is very shrewd.  He gets to look like Santa Claus, dolling out transportation goodies across the state while being able to blame his financing strategy team for assigning the costs.  This entire debate warrants very close scrutiny because, whatever its outcome, we will all be paying for it for many years.

Stupid Programming Tricks No. 23 -- UNC, Sub Vars, and DATAEXPORT

Is The Stupid is spreading?

Nope, this Stupid Trick is pretty good.  I am however continuing my pattern of stealing good ideas highlighting all that is best in the Essbase world with this ostensibly-simple but quite useful Stupid Trick from Martin Slack.

Migration, drives, and DATAEXPORT

I and many others have covered using DATAEXPORT as a way to get data out of BSO cubes.  There are quite a few issues when writing to relational tables (it always appends, performance isn’t all that great, batch inserts amazingly do not work with 64 bit Essbase, etc.) so the most common way is to write to flat file.  As one might guess, writing to a flat file usually (I suppose one could write to a default location but who does that?) requires defining a drive name with syntax that looks something like:

DATAEXPORT "File" "," "c:\\tempdir\\samplebasic.txt" "#Mi" ;

And yes, before anyone gets too excited about me using MVFEDITWWW, aka Sample.Basic, as an example for this, this technique works with Really Big BSO Databases (so RBBD?) as well.

Moving on from my justification of using Sample.Basic, can anyone spot the issue with the above?  I’m sure the more perceptive of you note that I am pointing to an explicit drive (C:) and directory (tempdir).  What happens when I migrate this awesome bit of code from my VM to something real?  Or, more to your real world needs, what happens when you write something like this on your development server, which uses the C drive (‘coz you are nuts – who uses that drive for anything data-related, but I digress yet again) and move it to something more real, like the D or E or F drive over in QA and Production.  And what if you’re exporting data not to a local drive but to a network mapped drive (the purpose of exporting data is to make it available for some other process, likely on another server, to transform)?

You change the code.  But of course you shouldn’t.

Here’s the What You Shouldn’t Do approach:

NB – I am using UNC names as I may very well want to push this output to another server.  At least if I hard code this I can, with only a bit of change, flip from one server to another.

Some of us devil-may-care Essbase hacker types believe (in the immortal words of a consultant I knew long, long ago), “There’s no test like production” and, I suppose in an insane way that’s true.  However, this blog’s audience is of the Best and Brightest and we B&Bers know that one never, never, never does this.  Right?  Right.

So with this in mind, what’s the obvious way to get round this?  Essbase has this cool bit of functionality called an Essbase Substitution Variable.  One could hard code the explicitly defined file name (full path including drive, folder path, and file name) to a Sub Var, but then the issue would be that if you have more than one calc script writing out a DATAEXPORT, you’d then have to have those explicit path Sub Vars for each one of the files.  And even worse, if the different environments have different mapped drives or different local drives that bump up against the development drive definitions it all gets a bit horrific.

Wouldn’t it be better to not hardcode much of anything except the file name and maybe part of the path?  And get away from explicit drive names?  And even explicit folder names?  Yes.

Sub Vars with a twist

So if the obvious (isn’t it) way to solve hardcoding of path names is to use Sub Vars, and the even better way to avoid hardcoding path names is to use a Sub Var that only specifies the drive and the path, how oh how oh how to do it?  It isn’t obvious.

Start with easy

The most straightforward approach is to simply put the entire path into a variable as per below:

And then in the code reference it like so:

Does it work?  Oh yes:

That’s great but as noted to use this approach for more than one DATAEXPORT target, one would have to have multiple variables and that’s messy.

So if we think about strings, and how they can be concatenated, it seems reasonable that a concatenation of a variable that specifies a drive and folder path with the file name should provide the string that Essbase needs and be flexible at the same time.

What to do with the double quotes is a bit of a puzzle.  The non-variable approach is to wrap the path and file name in double quotes, the HardcodedPath variable has that explicitly named file in double quotes in the variable value thus passing the quote delimters.  The question then becomes how do you handle the leading and trailing quotes when part of the path name is a variable and the other a hard coded file name that requires that terminating double quote?

No Joy in Mudville

Let the name of the variable below be a clue.

Oddly, on validation, it passes:

The doom and gloom text box is not from EAS but instead yr. obt. svt.’s idea of humor such as it is.

So, it syntax checks but when executed, nada:

We now know that, at least so far, a variable with the double quotes as part of the variable value works, but when those double quotes are wrapped around the variable value (which does not have those quotes) it fails.

NB – For those of you who might think the file was written out with the name &MappedDriveFails\tempdir\samplebasic.txt because everything within the double quotes is treated as a literal, I am here to tell you that it is not; it simply doesn’t get written to disk.

We are now at the Stupid Trick

Before I go any further, here are some further oddities.

Can you get round double quotes altogether?  It validates…

But it doesn’t work.

And you cannot hardcode the path and then terminate with a double quote (not totally sure why you want to do this, but I note it for the sake of completeness).  It does validate…

But doesn’t work.  I wouldn’t put a lot of stock into Essbase’s DATAEXPORT validation process.

The not so obvious answer

Really, this is not obvious, at least to me.  Hopefully not you, either, else I will feel even more stupid than I usually do.  Which lately is quite a bit.  

Here’s the approach as taught by Martin:  put a double quote at the beginning of the variable value and then do not use a double quote to terminate the file name in the calc script.  It sounds and looks really wonky but it works.

This bears repeating

Don’t put a double quote on the end of the file target.  Let me restate that – the variable value has a leading double quote – "\\epm11123\c$ but the terminating file name does not have a terminating double quote.  It looks something like this:

DATAEXPORT "File" "," &MappedDriveWorks\tempdir\samplebasic.txt ;

Again the variable value is "\\epm11123\c$. That’s a leading double quote.  Pay Attention Because This is Important.  As is the (how many times have I stated this?) the fact that there is no trailing double quote.  See, I told you this was a Stupid Trick.  And I think I told you twice.  At least.

Let’s look at the results

Here we are in the EAS variable editor:

And then, in the calc script, do not use a trailing double quote (so the third time I mention this?).  

Here’s the proof (I of course expect you, Gentle Reader, to believe absolutely none of this so Happy Testing):

Ah, you say, surely this can be dealt with by putting a double quote into the calc script itself and then using &MappedDriveFailes which does not have a leading double quote.  That mimics what’s done above (at least in theory), right?

Alas and alack, although of course it validates it doesn’t work.

Going back to what works, how the calc script editor handles the lack of a leading double quote is a bit amusing:

So the approaches that don’t work do validate, do color code commented lines as green, but again don’t work.  The approach that does work does validate (although again this isn’t much to write home about), doesn’t handle color coding, and then does work.  Terrific.

This is what I love about Stupid Tricks

What’s the criteria?

1. It is pretty useful.
2. It is not obvious.
3. It is clever.
4. It really doesn’t make sense, but it works.

I think this use-double-quotes-here-but-not-here approach hits the mark on all four points.  Going forward, I won’t specify DATAEXPORT paths any other way.

Thanks Martin for letting me steal your idea.

Be seeing you.

Oceanside 70.3 a TRI ing day!!

With my sabbatical season in full swing, this past weekend I partook in my first half ironman triathlon. I'm now back in LA and conveniently Oceanside is the setting for the first major ironman 70.3 event of the season so as it was just down the road I figured I may aswell cruise on down 5 hwy and give it a crack. I have to admit I was pretty excited to give this particular distance of triathlon a crack as the distances of the respective swim bike and run seemed manageable for a first time while being advantageous to decent cyclists. The timing of my first attempt was influential in choosing Oceanside as after coming of the back of the Australian summer of racing I wanted to make the most of my ability to still be intouch with pedaling reasonably well! So with that all in mind when I finished my final road racing commitment 5 weeks ago I decided to jump back in the pool and pull on the sneakers and get myself ready for oceanside 70.3, I had thirty five days to snap into some sort of triathlon shape!

Preparation 

Off the back of the oceania TT championships I was fortunately is reasonable TT condition by my standards. With this in minds and such  limited time to turn myself into a triathlete, I decided to not to bother trying to change my approach to training to much! Instead, I simply continued with my cycling training ‎as usual and incorporated some short swimming and running sessions to do nothing more than adapt me body atleast biomechanically to these disciplines. My theory was pretty simple, the advantage I had was that all my cycling training had given me a good sized endurance engine. I saw this as an advantage from the point of view that assuming I took around 4hrs for the tri then my body was well and truly accustomed to that type of strenuous and physically taxing effort thanks to my years in the peleton. The biggest weakness I had was the fact that I hadn't swam more than a few strokes or run longer than a few miles at a time in around 7 years. Since I began cycling basically. So the challenge I saw was using my strength to turn my weaknesses into lesser weaknesses and at the same time not losing any of my strength on the bike, well seemed like the most logical approach to me! The plan I came up with was pretty simple, swim 2km in the pool straight 3 afternoons a week after training rides as a nice recovery session, and on the alternate 3 days do a light 30minute jog at 6minute mile pace. My rational around these two sessions was again very simply. Firstly for the swim I knew that I could easily do it in 30 minutes and if I trained hard I might do 27 minutes so didn't see any point training hard for such a small gain and instead would just make sure I could swim the distance easily. The run on the other hand was a leap of faith. I knew if I tried to run 13miles at such short notice it would firstly destroy me and secondly severely compromise my training on the bike. I therefore decided I'd simply give my legs and body a bit of a taste of the pace I'd like to do the run leg and then cross every finger and toe that I would be just tickedy boo on race day!! I did this program religiously for 4weeks and then race week decided to through in a little race rehearsal as I realized I really had no idea what was in for. I therefore devised my own version of what triathlete's call a brick session for the tuesday before the race consisting of a 2km swim, 90km bike and 30minute run. The reason I chose these distances was I knew I could swim and bike that far comfortably but also knew if I tried to run any longer than my trained 30minutes I would run the risk of taking on huge fatigue and not recovering intime for race day, I wanted the suffering of the half marathon to be a complete surprize!! I didn't want to know what I was in for. I won't tell you the specifics of the splits I did for the brick session but it gave me the confidence that if I had a good day I'd do 4:05 at best and 4:15 at worst. When tucked myself into bed Friday night I went to sleep feeling pretty confident I could achieve my target of winning my age group the following morning.

‎
Race Day

The alarm blazed to life at 4:45am and I sprung out of bed surprisingly bright eyed and bushy tailed! Waking up with so much enthusiasm at such an ungodly hour gave me even more confidence that it was going to be a great day and I was straight into my pre race routine. I was staying a mere 500m from the transition area where I had to check my bike in at 6am so there was absolutely nothing to stress me out before the race as I relaxingly consumed my gluten free chia seed porridge and a chopped up banana for my Pre race meal. At 5:45 I grabbed my backpack and bicycle and walked out the door champing at the bit to get down to the transition and set up my little possi. I'd been along the previous evening to scope out the area so I knew exactly where I was headed and was pretty excited off my allocated rack. I was positioned right at the very end of transition which was the first racks when you left the swim exit so was easy to find in my anticipated post swim delusional state! I arrived at transition and quickly get all my things lined out, bike shoes and running shoes, bike, helmet, glasses, number belt, all meticulously placed to limit my transition time as possible. I'd made the decision to put my bike shoes on in transition and also put on socks as appose to doing it the Tri way while in motion on the bike! I knew this would cost me a minute or so but having the same feeling in my feet as I've had for years on the bicycle would make up way more than a minute out on the road. Also while I knew I'd lose time on the first transition I'd make up for in the second as I would be so much easier to pull on my sneakers with socks on, I was pretty happy with this plan! The thing that I was most proud of though was remembering to bring baby powder with me to set up my stall!! I laid out a big towel and placed my shoes on that, bike shoes first and running shoes behind. I left around 1 foot of space at the front of the towel and drowned it in baby powder. My plan was that I would stand in the powder while I was putting my shoes and socks on and ensure my feet where as dry as possible so I was pretty pleased with myself for thinking that one up!! Oh I almost forgot I also unintentionally found out the best way to make friends with people in transition at 6am in the morning before the race!! All you have to do is take a track pump into transition!! I was amazed at how many people where in needed to put air in the tyres and hadn't come prepared! The bright yellow pump I'd borrowed from my mates at peddlers fork in calabasas went here there and everywhere in transition that morning to the point that I had no idea where it was going. It always came back but was quickly gone again and everybody so so so friendly when they borrowed it I really felt like I was fitting into the Tri community nicely, I was growing more and more in confidence about the day ahead. At 6:30 transition had to be cleared and I headed to get myself ready for the swim. As always our cannondale sports marketing lovely lady lauren celli was there to help out in anyway possible and had a pass for the VIP ironman area where I could get my wetsuit on and get ready for the start in piece right at the start line! Things couldn't have been more stressless and relaxed for before my maiden 70.3 adventure!
‎

Swim
The guys at xterra had provided me with there latest technology wetsuit so I knew I had as much of an advantage as anybody in the field. Exactly 15minutes before my start time of 7:05 so at 6:50 I started to get myself into my snazzy silver and black speed suit. As I pulled my legs and sleeves up I drowned a redbull to give me one last little boost and pick me up before hooter sounded for the start of my wave. This 15minutes went so slowly! I just wanted to jump in the water and get stuck into the race, it was a great sign and when your not prepared the opposite occurs, yo feel like time is racing by!! Finally I was in the way and the countdown began, 5 4 3 2 1 horn!!!! And we were off. 

My swim strategy was pretty simple, go hard for the first couple of hundred meters and ideally get out infront, from the I would settle into a rhythm until the final 200-300m and then bring home a little. I did exactly that and I was quickly clear with a couple of guys, I felt great in the water and I knew I was on good pace. About 8 waves of people had started ahead of my wave and after about 500m I started running into traffic. From here it was a complete slug fest where I lost count how many bodies I quite literally swam over the top of, pushed of the shoulders, pulled there legs or whatever else I had to do to get past. I was definitely being a bit of an a hole but I was on a mission and wanted to get out of the water as quickly as possible! As I approached the final few hundred meters a strange emotion came over me and was one I would surprisingly feel later on the bike aswell. I simply couldn't way to get out of the water and get on the bike, not because I was fatigued, no to the contrary! Due to the swim being such a slog fest of holdups with traffic I couldn't actually swim hard so was more frustrated than anything else as I couldn't push myself, I simply wanted to get on that bike and turn those pedals in anger and burn some energy! Right on Que and and anticipated schedule I exited the water in just over 28minutes, so far so good, my expectations based on preparations were on track, I was even more confident now of executing my race plan! Into transition and all went smoothly, I ripped of my wetsuit in a matter of seconds which was a relief as I hadn't practiced that at all!! Oops!! Stood on my baby powder soaked towel and effortlessly pulled on my socks and shoes. I clipped on my race number belt, on with the sunnies, helmet over the top, grabbed my bike and headed for the exit of transition. I was now on my home turf for the next 90km!


Bike
The bike course was an absolute beauty and one i knew 80% off lie the back of my hand. Last off season I spent one month training on the roads around oceanside and the streets on and around camp pendelton I frequented quite often. Another reason for excitement was the opportunity to finally let loose on my brand new cannondale slice 2. This bike is an absolute beauty where Cannondale's engineers obviously spent years developing. Like all cannondale's TT bikes it feels extremely fast in a straight line but what excited me most about this particular model is the way it handles underneath you in corners and up and down hills. On this missile I simply don't feel the need to touch my brakes as I want to rail every corner!! Well rail it by standards which isn't that crazy fast but feels good for me, I just feel extremely confident on this bike. The other feature is how Greta it feels while I'm climbing. Historically TT bikes have had a reputation and feeling to match that they are absolutes dogs when it goes uphill. Well this bike bike bucks that trend as when you hit a long climb or share rise and burst out of the saddle the slice 2 responds like the evo road bike and feels simply awesome! Year sure cannondale is my sponsor and I'm loyal to them but in all honesty this bike has absolutely blown my mind as far as it's performance goes and I was could wait to wind it up!! The other exciting thing about race ay of course is having all the race wheels dialed in and speed lid protecting your melon. Your bike not only looks awesome with a 80mm deep mavic cxr 80 and matching rear disk but it also feels fast, its such a great feeling riding a fully kitted out TT rig, very very exciting actually!
  
Anyways back to the bike course and having some local knowledge. This proved to be pretty crucial as on the bike I still had a bucket load of traffic to navigate my way through. I knew my bike split would be +/- 2:05 depending on whether I really jammed it or not so quickly and surprisingly easily was straight into that 43-45kmph speed average.the only issue I was faced with on the bike was again traffic like I'd encountered in the swim, there were people everywhere and it required all my peleton skills to duck in and around all the bodies on bikes to maintain my pace. As i roared through the camp ground and the stretch of road that the wednesdays worlds champion is crowned each week I reminisced about the day on the ride when Taylor Phinney, Sean Bell, Keil Reijan, and I would lead out Cal rutchlow for the sprint. He won it every single week and man it was fun despite my effort at the time brought a giggle and smile to my dial for a few seconds! By around the halfway point of the ride I was through all the age groupers from the waves ahead and I had some clear road ahead of me. The next group on the road would be the pro women but for 10km's or so I enjoyed some piece and quiet on the road between the famous trestles surf beach and the back gate to re enter camp pendelton. The other key aspect of the bike leg was also nutrition as it was when most of the food for the days race would consumed. I had come up with a pretty simply plan for this. I had 2 large 800ml drink bottles which each contained 100grams of carbs, 20grams of protein, and 100ml grams of caffeine. One bottle was to be consumed in the first 45km and the 2nd was to be consumed in the final 45km, simple!! I was confident that these bottles would contain enough energy to pretty much get me through the entire event. Sure enough at 45km I finished of the first bottle, as I entered the back gate at camp pendelton all was on schedule. Also one other crucial piece to my nutrition plan was 2km decent at around the 75km mark with a 40kmph safety speed limit. The pace felt like you were walking and must have looked like at a NASCAR race where all of a sudden the car is moving so stupidly slow!! Anyways it was great as I took the chance to slam down a block of cliff blocks and have a good drink as basically I had nothing else to do, just had to quite literally role it out. The annoying thing was all the pro women I'd just passed on the climb barreled past me as the rule was only for the age groupers and not enforced for the pro's, anyways didn't matter, was great to get that Tucker in and get it swallowed without being rushed, a luxury you often take for granted in bike races!

After enjoying a little time of solitude out in the open road my days target on the bike course being the pro women were now coming into sight. They had started 22minutes ahead of me and I knew if I caught them then I would be a long way ahead in my age group. Historically the fastest age group athlete had achieved the same time as the leading pro women so by catching the women I knew my lead was already somewhere in the vicinity of 15-20minutes. I started to pick them off 1 by 1 and as approached the final 25km the realization that still had a half marathon to complete after the bike leg! A run that would be double double the distance of any run I'd done in the past 7years! So with that I had a decision to make. Do I push on at this pace and shoot for a 2:02-2:03 bike split and risk blowing to prices on the run? Or do back it off a little and aim for a 2:05 and give myself the best chance possible to have a decent run and ensure I win my age group? Fortunately I made the intelligent choice and backed things of and started resting up the pins for the unknown that lay ahead! I tossed and turned in my mind with my ego wanting to go as fast as possible on the bike and common sense telling me that it's important to win the race and not worry about an ego boosting bike split. So the final 25km was extremely enjoyable and fortunately due to the predominant down hill still very fast even with my foot off the gas. The funny part was with around 10km to go I got the same sensation as I'd gotten in the swim, I was now ready for the bike leg to be over. Well there were a couple of reasons for this! Obviously I hadn't taken the time to test out my flash new tri suit sugoi had prepared for me and especially given myself the chance to get used to the very minimal chammy they have! So that meant my under carriage was a little on the tender!! But really the other sensation I was experiencing was that I was well and truly ready for the bike leg to now be over. I wasn't pushing hard anymore, I was recharging my batteries for the run to come and I simply wanted to get stick into it. In a strange way the fear of the unknown that lay ahead had an equal amount of excitement and anticipation of just what might happen to me during that 21km with nothing but my 2 feet to carry me. Anyways I was still n the bike and I still had to pedal some final km's and finish of that all important 2nd drink bottle of fuel. When I finally rounded the port on the final few hundred m's to transition the I took my final gulp and I was bursting with excitement to start the days long jog! I hit transition and as id anticipated this one felt extremely fast. My split was again exactly in the ball park I'd anticipated at 2:05 so I was stoked with that. My bike shoes were quickly relieved of duty from my feet and my mizuno running flat were on in a flash. In fact I surprised even myself with my speed in this transition that I paused for a moment as I was sire I'd forgotten something!! I hadn't, I was obviously just getting the hang of all this and while I hadn't down any practice transitions at all I had done plenty of visualizing how I'd do the transition and it was amazing to me to see how much that helped me nail it on race day. I was now headed into the great unknown!


Run
Like the swim and the bike I had a plan for the run and it was pretty simple, try not to blow up!! Kimba Tedro had given me some great advice and told me that my first 2miles should be my slowest and build up from there. As a usual fly and die guy this was a hard one accept but I took kimba's advice as she is always very good with giving tips and headed out on the run relaxed and at a pace I felt was holding plenty back and as later in the run would show, it was dam lucky I took her advice!! Once out on the course I started to get plenty of support. The crowd I think felt sorry for me ad I was running right smack bang in the middle of the top 8 women. Talk about the thorn amongst a big pile of roses!! The pro men were up ahead and the age groupers were now some 20minutes behind so everybody just thought the logical thing, this poor block is miles behind the pro's! Good on him for sticking it out among the women! It was pretty funny hearing there feeling sorry for you encouragement. Little did they know I was absolutely brimming with confidence and excitement. I hadn't lead anything since the oceania TT and on that occasion Micheal Heburn ultimately got the better of me in the final km's! I remember how nice it felt to be on the podium that day but also how much it hurt not being strong enough to hold on for the win. Well today I was finally out in front again and had a chance at a victory and I was determined to not let it slip. As I turned the top marker on the first lap of the run, I had done as kimba suggested and taken it steady and was feeling great. 

Along the run route there were aid stations every mile so basically 3 each way on each lap. My buddy Todd Skipworth had given me great advice to just role through all the aid stations nice and slowly and take on water and a couple of gels int he first lap and a half. I took Todd's advice and again it proved to be pivotal. Out on course my supporters from cannondale and sugoi were all cheering me along which was great. It's awesome when there is support out there but it's always more special and motivating when you here you name. As I began my 2nd 11km lap I felt Great. It seemed my steady pace was paying off and keeping up the fluids was proving pivotal. I was now however entering the great unknown as I hadn't run this far for almost a decade. I simply hoped that the engine I'd developed over the years in rowing and cycling would be enough to keep the biomechanical movement of the running technique I'd worked on for 5 weeks going! Also at this point I felt so good I decided to start upping the pace and driving for home as mentally I believed I just had to get to the final turn around at 5km to go and that part would be a freebie! Surely regardless I could survive from there? At roughly the 15km mark I noticed my legs getting a little sore! I didnt have any injuries but I could just tell that were now some 30minutes over my usual training run time and were attempting to raise the white flag. I was actually happy to feel this, I expected it and was surprised it hadn't come sooner. I'd promised my mates no matter what I was put myself well and truly into the hurt locker on that run leg and that was now exactly where I was headed!! I finally reached the top mark and was really starting to labor. Still I also now only had a little under 5km to the finish and could almost touch the finish line. This feeling drove me another 2km the boom!! It finally hit me!! I was going crosseyed!!

I'd always wondered just what it felt like to be stabling along in the final stages of marathons and triathlons when you see it on tele. Always just wondered at what point does that kick in and do you really no longer have control of how your legs function with the rest of your body. So like so much of the day when then questions were asked I was wrapped I'd pushed myself to that point and so intrigued as to what was going to happen to me. The next thing to save me was the redbull tent situated around 1mile from the finish. I could see it up ahead, it seemed to take an eternity to arrive and by the time had dragged me to that point the coordination of any sort of technique was gone, I was simply throughing one keg in front of the other. I have to admit redbull really did give me wings on Saturday! I walked through the aid station and slammed a couple of cups of the magic potion and admired the view for a brief moment of which redbull had obviously taken great care in ensuring was top class, much appreciated by this weary triathlete! Once through the station I had my legs back but of course it was short lived however it did drag me another 800m or so until I literally started getting tunnel vision and loosing color, I was on the verge of passing out! I succumbed to walking again for 50m or so and so so fortunately had my legs spring to life once again and start carrying me toward the finish shoot I could clearly see in the distance about 600m. I fixed my stare on the ironman banner and simply focused every tiny bit of energy I had on putting one foot in front of the other. Again that final stretch seem to take an absolute eternity which in reality it did, I'd dropped off almost 2minutes per km in those final few km's so was going pretty slow! Anyways that didn't really matter as the only important thing was I was moving forward.

When I finally crossed that ironman finish line off course I was spent. I had absolutely wrong every last bit of moisture I could from my body during the event. Lauren, Jaime and nat were all there to meet me at the finish and give me the knows I kind of knew but was so relived to here the confirmation, I'd Won!!! I had no idea of the pacing I was running at so but I assumed it was slow. I therefore was so excited when I realized i'd run a 90minute half marathon! That was simply what I'd hoped for, even with all my confidence deep down I didn't think I pull that one off. I had completely dodged a bullet on that one and gave me some hope that perhaps my running can be worked and I could be more competitive in The sport. That however was going to have to wait a while my body will take some time to recover from that prevent on Saturday. With the win came my expected slot allocation for the 70.3 worlds in my age group which I was so incredibly excited about. I had an absolute blast at the triathlon in Oceanside not just with the event but more importantly because of all those who came out to cheer, was just an incredible incredibly fun and enjoyable day. So that was my first 70.3 triathlon, done and dusted. I came in in what many would say was underprepared and in many ways I was however on the flip side of that I believe the way I managed my training and timing made me as well prepared as was possible under the circumstances and that gave me huge confidence. I'm hooked, I'll be on the startling again very soon looking forward to seeing what I can do against everybody else in Austria on august 30, jolly rippa of a day!

Cjw
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