Race Report: Triangle Triathlon - I Could Get Used to these Sprints

Race Report: Triangle Triathlon - Posted by Doug Van Wie on Wednesday, July 18, 2012

 I Could Get Used to these Sprints 

After a disappointing professional debut several weeks ago at the Philly Tri, it felt good getting my first win of the season in front of the hometown crowd. This was my first Sprint distance race in over a year, and I forgot how much fun they are. There is no pacing or strategy, just all out racing for a little over an hour. I drove down to the race site near Holly Springs early Saturday morning with teammate Josh. We got a preview of the bike course on the way in and warmed up our legs with a long trek from the parking lot to transition. I felt especially good splashing around in the water before the race and enjoyed the company of my teammates and training partners. With the race this close to home, the majority of the team were either racing or spectating. I felt long and smooth on the swim and was able to open up a 2:00 lead. The first mile or two of the bike was spent weaving in and out of strollers and spectators making there way into the race. Just when I started to get frustrated, I spotted my wife among the stragglers and couldn't help but laugh and wave. It turns out the overflow parking was several miles down the road and the shuttle only brought them about half way. I pushed hard through the bike, determined to stay in front going into T2. I did just manage to hold off Greg Thompson and James Haycraft, but they came off the bike right behind me. My run workouts have been steadily improving over the last several months, so I felt confident I could crush the last leg. We turned off the road onto the trail still fairly close together. The majority of the run was on dirt and gravel, which made me glad I had done plenty of trail running in the Carolina North woods. I got really nervous when I reached a turn around cone a little past mile two that I mistook for the halfway mark. I had pushed really hard up to that point and wasn't sure I could maintain my speed. Thankfully the trail gave way to the pavement soon after the turnaround and I was able to power through to the finish. My 17:43 run split was second fastest in the race, and a high point of my season thus far. The win gives me confidence that I hope to build on with my next couple of Olympic distance races.

From KK: Psalms 46:10

We haven't updated our blog in a month of Sund'ys, as I always say. I've been busy wedding planning (July 24! Save the date!), working and trying to figure out where in the world we will be six months from now.

I am still waiting to hear back from the law school applications I sent out in November. I could find out as late as August, potentially, but praying like crazy we will find out in the next couple of months and be able to plan ahead little bit. We will start looking for a house, Doug will have to start looking for a job, and we will have to find a doggie park for Mamie as soon as we hear something.

All the uncertainty of the mid-20s angst is exciting some days and completely overwhelming others. Through all of it, I feel so blessed that my angst lies in planning the wedding to marry the greatest person I've ever met and being able to go back to school to do what I want to do. As Hinkie, my grandmother, always says, my cup truly runs over.

I have to write and rewrite Psalms 46:10 and make myself remember it throughout all of this. "Be still, and know that I am God" always helps me take a step back, a deep breath and realize I am not in charge of what will happen. I will only be in this position once in my life and to live it up. And that's what I intend to do. I'm taken care of. Remind of this when I'm pulling out all of my hair.

We have moved up in the URL world. You can read about our upcoming nuptials at our new site kkanddoug.com. We've also updated the playlist if you are sick and tired of this one. Yay! I am so ready for July! and 100 degree weather. Snowmageddon is getting old and it's not even snowing here.

Home again, Home again, riggidy jig

Well, I guess we're going to have to change the sub-head of our blog. Ours is no longer a "life abroad." After spending a week in Charlotte, we are now in Dothan en route to our final destination of Birmingham, Alabama. Our lives are much less exotic these days, but we are having fun nonetheless. The month-long train trip was supposed to be our big vacation after 6 months living in Spain. It turns out the fast pace of our trip was more exhausting than we thought, and we haven't been able to really relax until now.



Greece was amazing. Everyone we talked to recommended a short stay in Athens to maximize our time in the islands. We scoured the map weighing the pros and cons of each island (nightlife in Mykonos, scenery in Santorini) and decided our best bet would be Poros because of its close proximity to Athens. It turned out to be a great place and we got that at the perfect time. An international boat show was starting a few days after we left and brought with it the start of the high season. We managed to see the boats coming in, yet still pay the low season prices and have the island practically to ourselves. I'd say the highlight and lowlight of Poros would be the temple of Poseidon. Just like my dad, I'm a sucker for "twine ball" historical monuments. When I saw Poros was home to a temple built in the 7th century BC, I made up my mind to make the trek up the mountain. KK reluctantly agreed to join me on our bikes.




A quick side-note: all I wanted while living in Spain was a scooter. It didn't quite fit in our budget so I relegated the thought to my dreams. Then on our trip I decided renting a scooter for a day in Greece would be my one treat to myself. While KK shopped at all the posh European shops I was content to fantasize the wind whipping through my hair while I zipped around a curvy clifftop road overlooking the azure Mediterranean. My dreams were quickly dashed when the scooter lady told me I had to have either an international driver's license or an motorcycle license from the US. Having neither, I hung my head and walked away with two beach cruisers complete with baskets on the front.

Back on the mountainside, going was a lot tougher with bikes than it would have been on a scooter. I comforted KK during the stretches where she had to dismount and push her bike with visions of a beautiful temple with amazing artifacts. I thought she might turn around and return to the comfort of the beach and cold Mythos beer, but she is a trooper and kept going. We finally got to the top, parked our bikes and looked around. Ivory sculptures, Doric columns, and richly decorated pediments are all things one would expect to find at a famous Greek temple. Instead we found a few crumbled stones and scattered olive trees. Apparently all that remained of the once great temple were the foundations and these were mostly covered by excavation equipment. We snapped a few photos of KK pretending to smile with a hazy view of nearby islands in the background and began our rapid decent back to sea level.



From Athens, we returned to Barcelona for a day and a half before flying back to the States. We had a few short hours to wander the streets we had grown to love, but spent most our time haggling with the bank about transferring our money back and repacking our worldly belongings.

Since returning home we have caught up with both our families, most notably the two new babies. We went straight from the airport to Kara's house to see Hayes, who is already showing the signs of a great swimmer: flailing his arms and peeing in the water. We met Sims at the beach in Florida where we spent Mother's Day weekend. He is precious and got to show of this summer's most fashionable baby beachwear.


Our lives now take us to Birmingham for the foreseeable future. We are still homeless and unemployed, but other than that we're having a great time. KK starts her LSAT prep course in July and it looks like I will be coaching and hopefully doing an internship.

From KK: It's All Greek to Me

Verona to Florence. Saw David, ate gelato and watched the sunset on Ponte Vecchio

Florence to Ancona- four hours on a train

Ancona to Patras- 22 hours on a ferry and slept on the floor of the disco in the ferry because we were too cheap to pay for a cabin

Patras-Athens- 4 more hours on a train

Athens tomorrow then off to the Greek islands!

We are having to read Greek by sounding out sorority and fraternity names. We tried to find our hostel today by reading the street signs like "Omicron Psi Lamda Mu. This is it!"
Pathetic.

From KK: here we go loopty loo

We are still going...whew. Since we last posted, we have been to Prague, Czech Republic; Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary; Zagreb (Plitvice), Croatia; Ljubljana, Slovenia; and back to Verona, Italy.

In Prague we saw the castle and all the other major sight-seeing points. The Charles Bridge was beautiful, but packed with tourists and street artists, so we got away from that as soon as we could. The weather was perfect and we spent much of the day getting lost and wandering around the Old Town, New Town, Jewish Quarter, and Little Quarter.

We tried to be adventurous and go to a Czech tavern for a typical lunch and a beer. I wound up with a hotdog soaked in vinegar and Doug got something strangely resembling Crisco, because that's exactly what it was. A big ice cream scoop of pork fat on a plate. He ate it because "It's food and we have to pay for it anyway." I like to remind him, that's what we call sunk costs. It was almost as gross as watching him eat the tripe. Nevermind, nothing could ever be that gross, but this was a close second.

That night, Kurt Cady, who was still travelling with us, went on a pub crawl, so Doug and I got a couple of Czech beers and walked down to watch the sunset behind the castle.

The next day we went to Vienna. We stayed with a couple from the U.S. who showed us around the city and took us to a wine festival in front of the beautiful Rathaus (City Hall) with a bunch of Austrians, who by the way are the nicest people we have met so far. Every where in Austria, we could of course look lost, and someone would come up, help us translate, and send us in the right direction.

Another highlight from Vienna was getting to see the opera in Vienna's famous opera house, the Staatsoper

Of course, we didn't show up in full length white gloves, a chauffeur, or opera glasses, but instead waited in line for a few hours to get 4€ standing-room only tickets with the other groundlings. We saw An Italian in Algeria by Gioachino Rossini. It was a really neat experience, but the standing part got pretty old after having walked all day every day for the past two weeks.

We left Vienna and Kurt and headed for Budapest to stay with one of Doug's middle school friends who left Charlotte in 7th grade. She was a fantastic host. After four hours in Budapest of trying find her number on a piece of paper that Doug "misplaced," trying to find a non-existent internet cafe to look her number up again, figuring out the exchange rate from euros to forints, having a payphone eat of money six times, trying to figure out which side was Buda and which side was Pest, we thought Budapest was going to continue to be that stressful.

We finally got in touch with Kinga and she had a big, typical Hungarian meal of some sort of beef with paprika and noodles. Whatever it was, it was great. We had whatever the Hungarian word for strudel is for dessert. It restored our faith in Budapest.

After dinner, she took us to the top of Buda to a Palace and we did some slightly dangerous wall shimmy-ing and fence jumping and got to a look-out where we could see all of Budapest lit up. It was really cool. Doug and Kinga were much braver than me. All I could think of was falling off that roof two years ago on the mission trip and that maybe I had pushed my luck enough and that this was a bad idea, but I survived. Sorry mom.

We spent the next day wandering around the market, the shopping street and Hero's Square before we headed to the Turkish Baths. We bought tickets for the metro and, unbeknowst to us, we bought the wrong ticket.

When we arrived at our stop, the ticket officer stopped us, told us we bought the wrong ticket (that was, by the way, only 2 euro cents more than the one we bought) and fined us 12,000 forints. When we told her we didn't have it, she called the police. We were sitting there with horrible visions running through our heads of Hungarian jail cells when a woman came up and gave us the rest of the money we lacked. Praise the Lord for that lady. It was terrifying and really just annoying.

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing in the Turkish mineral baths and I was asleep by 9:30 that night.

From Budapest, we went to Croatia to see Plitvice National Park. The guidebook write that I so love, Rick Steves, said he thought he had seen everywhere in Europe, then discovered this place and realized he had a lot left to see.


Doug and I both agreed it was, hands down, our favorite place in the world. We took the long hike that is about six hours and never got tired for a second. Rick Steves describes it as the Grand Canyon meets Niagra Falls. Pictures will never do it justice. There is a little wooden boardwalk almost at water level and it winds through the forests, around the lakes, up the hills and the entire time, from any place along the way, there are at least four waterfalls in sight.

We got in to Ljubljana, Slovenia that night, slept in an old prison turned trendy hostel, trucked through the rain and got a train out the next day to Verona via Venice.

Silvia and Viola, for whom I was an au pair, picked us up at the station. Viola didn't kick me or tell me to go away or anything! I couldn't believe it. She wanted to play with me and even tried to get Doug to take off his shoes and jump on the couch with her in her Ariel mermaid costume. I had to hold him back.

We got to go see Nonna (Silvia's grandmother and the nutso lady I lived with when I was here) last night too. She force-fed Doug some cookies, rattled off to him in Italian for a while and showed us her new piggy bank. It is a tin can with a Jamaican rastafarian guy on it smoking pot. I haven't laughed that hard in a while. It really made me miss all the Nonna-isms from last year. She still has her "Support Bitching" magnet in her house. I'm glad to see things haven't changed.

Every time I picture her, it is wearing the Carnivale mask, hiding behind a telephone pole, waiting for me to come out of school with her precious grandbambina, ready to give her espresso. She didn't give me any new lectures about how I was going to die like Pavarotti because I didn't put sugar in my coffee or anything, so that's an improvement, just that I need to feed Doug more.

We are about to go ride bikes around Verona then head out for Florence. We will try to write soon!

From Doug: Ich bin ein Berliner

Another whirlwind update. After Switzerland, we started our tour of Germany and the the Netherlands. Munich was great, we spent most of our afternoon there napping and relaxing in a huge English garden in the middle of the city. Of course we made time for a few stops at the many biergartens. We spent the next day cruising up the Rhine and spent the night in the lovely town of Bacharach, a sleepy village famous for their Riesling. There we stayed in a B&B where the Fraulein served us homemade marmelade and honey. This was also supposed to be our rendezvous point with Kurt. Even though he didn't show up at the predetermined meeting point, we found him a few hours later at the spot we both guessed he would be: the local irish bar.

This past weekend we were in Amsterdam staying with KK's friend, Damion. Determined to show us a uniquely Dutch experience, he reserved us tickets to a huge party on Saturday night. The party took place in an old oil refinery tank and the DJs had the entire place pulsating and reverberating with sound and lights. Saturday was also Damion's birthday so we celebrated at his apartment before heading to the party.

Now we are in Berlin for the day. We got in yesterday afternoon, and knocked out the touristy sights (Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, etc.). Today we are going with our couchsurfing host to tour around the city a bit more. This evening we will be going to Prague to begin our excursion into Eastern Europe. Well, got to run to meet Kurt at Checkpoint Charlie.

From Doug: Swiss missed

This will be another quick update, as we are staying with our friends Rachel and Gabe Hendrix and preparing to make some delicious fondue. After our first long day of traveling, and our first train mishap, we've had a marvelous day at the foot of the Alps.

The plan was to take the train from Barcelona to Montpellier to Geneva to Bern to Herisau. If everything went smoothly it would have been 11 hours on the train. A lot of time, but necessary to get through Spain and France to our first stop in Switzerland. We made it as far as our first change of train before we made our first mistake. Some trains require to reserve a seat beforehand, especially on longer trips. They told us in Barcelona that they couldn't make the reservations for other countries, and that we would have to wait until we got to France. Of course, by the time we got there the train was already full.

This forced us to add stops in Avignon and Lyon, which turned out to be great little cities, especially Avignon, home to the pope for a while during the Great Schism for all you history buffs out there. We got to see more of the French countryside, but didn't get in to Bern until 11:30 so we decided to call it a night. After trekking our way through a protest outside the Bundeshaus and down the side of a mountain we found a hostel that of course was full. They referred us to the "cheapest hotel in Switzerland" that had us walking back up said mountain and through said protest. The hotel turned out to be fine, just a bit pricey.

Today we got in to Herisau around noon, enjoyed an amazing picnic lunch on a sunny hilltop, then took a skylift up to the highest peak in the area, S¨åntis. The views were incredible. We were lucky enough to have our picture taken by professional photographer/artist Rachel. We also got a sneak peak at her and her husbands' exhibition which opens tomorrow. Tomorrow we head to Munich after a morning stop at Neuschwanstein castle (aka the Disney castle). We will post photos whenever we get a chance.