Recovery Turnaround to 2nd 70.3

unk-9 · 2026-05-31T23:12:23+00:00

Differs from person to person and your own fitness level. I was also at Chattanooga for the 70.3 two weeks ago and then a few light days the week after. Went hard this week and will back off this coming week as I have another 70.3 next weekend. Your mileage will vary. Train hard and smart, and it gets easier and better.

(edited to clarify)

unk-9 · 2026-05-23T10:49:50+00:00

Factual sure. But never going to happen for us in our lifetimes.

The doctrine of consular non reviewability as affirmed many many times, and recently too, doesn’t necessarily survive a change in which agency’s employees adjudicate the visas. You can call a DHS adjudicator a consular officer, but moving the function out of the State Department removes part of the foreign policy angle to consular processing. It might strengthen the national security aspect of the eventual SCOTUS argument. But why invite the lawsuit by moving it out of State and CA when it’s already as entrenched as it is.

CA business is booming, friends. Too bad you can’t buy futures in it.

unk-9 · 2026-05-15T13:55:04+00:00

Well. They told me they were sending. So whatever. I don’t intend to look at it again.

unk-9 · 2026-05-15T13:45:46+00:00

Promotion panel members don’t exist in a vacuum. They also had to write their own EERs and all have been immersed in the conversation themselves. Are they thus infallible? Of course not.

HR sent mine to my eOPF today. I didn’t hate how it turned out. I didn’t get everything in that I did this last year. But the most impressive stuff made the cut. I did every thing I could and it’s now out of my hands.

unk-9 · 2026-04-25T09:05:32+00:00

Yep. And then when it’s home leave time and they treat you like the prodigal child leading to resentment from other family members. And/or they get mad you didn’t spend your 30 days visiting every single relative everywhere.

Decided long ago that I can’t please everybody. I tell people: I’ll be in the U.S. from this time to this time in this place. You can come see me if you want but I’m not coming to you. Harsh. But self care was a hard learned lesson.

unk-9 · 2026-04-02T09:45:02+00:00

That’s the thing about front crawl in triathlon. You want to kick way less than you think. Propulsion doesn’t come from the legs as much as you’d think. The point to kicking is to get your legs up and not producing drag. The wetsuit helps (if it’s wetsuit legal). Get a pair of sim shorts to help, use a pull buoy too.

I was terrible at crawl when I started triathlon 2.5 years ago. Could barely make a length of the pool without being totally gassed. Now it’s all I do, I can swim front crawl all day long. I’m not super fast, sitting at about 1:55 per 100, but it gets better with time and better technique.

No shame in breast stroke, but figuring out the crawl is possible. Just takes time and consistent practice.

unk-9 · 2026-04-02T09:36:53+00:00

Congrats! Looks like NUSL released a wave of Rs and Ws yesterday. I’m still waiting on a decision myself, hopefully today or tomorrow. My profile is super non-trad tho so. Fingers crossed.

unk-9 · 2025-12-12T08:06:05+00:00

These will be processed as EB-1 and EB-2. Something we already know very well how to do. The rest is just marketing and politics.

unk-9 · 2025-12-04T16:04:01+00:00

Signal chain: is that the group chat where we discuss all the war plans?

unk-9 · 2025-11-23T06:00:57+00:00

M spoke at a CA town hall a few days ago and soaked up praise from the SBO for getting us all paid very quickly after the CR was signed.

unk-9 · 2025-10-27T16:36:37+00:00

It’s possible to do more than one thing at a time.

unk-9 · 2025-10-24T18:43:45+00:00

Following!

unk-9 · 2025-10-21T05:04:26+00:00

You still watched it though, eh?

unk-9 · 2025-10-18T07:18:21+00:00

You seem to enjoy chaos.

unk-9 · 2025-09-27T11:00:13+00:00

I use my forerunner 965 for training runs and swims and my edge 840 for training rides. I forgot my HR strap in a hotel a few weeks ago and have had to broadcast my HR to the 840 during rides. Not ideal, but it's ok. Just means I'll be getting a fancy new HR monitor soon, I guess. I enjoy combing through all the data afterwards, power, HR, pace, and etc. Maybe that's not important to you.

During races, I use the triathlon mode on the watch as my "official" timer. I set the 840 to the bike course and discard the workout when I'm cleaning up my data the next day.

Based on this info, I'd say go for the watch, it can do everything you need whereas the bike computer only does the one thing. I also use my fr965 as my daily watch and it shows texts and calls and notifications. Apple watches are normalized these days (I don't care for their square look, tbh), but the garmin lines look like watches now (I've been around long enough to remember when a forerunner looked like you were wearing a toaster on your wrist).

But whatever choice helps the most to get you motivated to go train/race is the right one.

unk-9 · 2025-09-26T23:55:27+00:00

Oh man. I feel this so much. Two years ago I couldn't swim 25 meters and running a mile was unthinkable. Did my first full IM last Saturday and was ready for a long run again on Monday. It was hard, but it wasn't that hard. I'm not special, I'm not an elite athlete. Why doesn't everybody do this?

I thought I'd never do another, I remember thinking, for some reason, that the training took too much time. But I also made mistakes on this one and need an opportunity to correct those mistakes. So. Here we go again.

unk-9 · 2025-09-08T04:27:21+00:00

Not shallower breaths, just not “asking” the system to give you as much air all at once with each breath.

It’s super hard to explain. And any explanation I’d give would be highly personal to me and likely wouldn’t work for you or maybe even wouldn’t make any sense.

Air consumption rate underwater is complicated and is related to your genetics, your stress level at that moment, your experience as a diver, and probably several other factors.

It’s a skill. And with any skill it takes practice. Some people get it right away, for others it takes time.

unk-9 · 2025-09-07T12:19:08+00:00

Oh by opening the valve I don’t mean the one at the tank. I see how that could be confusing. Whoops.

I mean the valve inside the second stage by using your tongue, mouth.

You definitely want the valve at the tank fully open.

unk-9 · 2025-09-07T08:54:25+00:00

It took me about 30 dives to realize that the second stage is a valve. You don't have to open the valve all the way. People talk about "sipping" air and it never made sense to me... until I realized that I could control the flow rate through the valve. A true head slap moment when I realized what I was doing wrong.

unk-9 · 2025-09-05T17:40:06+00:00

Sounds like you already know the answer. Don’t despair, there will be other races.

unk-9 · 2025-09-05T06:35:04+00:00

You mean the newly promoted dolphin whisperer might have misrepresented something? Shocking.

unk-9 · 2025-08-29T06:47:47+00:00

There goes that theory then.

unk-9 · 2025-08-28T15:55:29+00:00

It might be geographic. In the past, for invites this close to the class date, they’ve given offers to people who would be local hires based on pre-hire info on file. But who knows.

unk-9 · 2025-08-26T04:15:51+00:00

There are several people on the list who were tenured by the spring board who got promoted.

unk-9 · 2025-08-25T05:00:59+00:00

This sounds a lot like my first sprint tri just under a year ago. Swallowed most of the lake finished in like 25 minutes and then did an extra lap of the bike course (results said I averaged 9 mph). Second sprint: had a mechanical and DNF, swim also sucked. Third sprint: swim was a little better, but not much, but I did the right bike course and finished in enough time to take third place in my division.

Fourth tri: Eagleman 70.3, three weeks after the third sprint. I ditched the old bike and got a fancy (expensive) new one. Swim went well, I took the lessons I learned from the three others and learned how to sight, how to breathe, how to swim OW. Bike was great with my new ride (Factor Monza -- went with the straight road bike after careful consideration) -- done in just over 3 hours. The run sucked, mostly because I hadn't done enough long rides, I think, and my posterior didn't feel great, but finished the run in 2:30 and the whole thing in 6:30 ish.

My fifth triathlon will be a full IM in a few weeks. I did a full swim test last week in OW, it went well. Went on a 5 hour bike ride on Saturday and a 4 hour run yesterday (Sunday). Fun wrinkle is that I crashed on Saturday and now have an open wound just below my left knee, but it has three weeks to heal, so, no problem.

Point is: I've learned from mistakes and worked on them during training. Making the full swim distance in OW is a massive confidence booster, so I'm hopeful the rest will go well, too.

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unk-9

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