Since 2001 the Richardson Farm in Northern (near Antioch) Illinois has been doing corn mazes in their field. The notable ones are the celebration of the 100th anniversary of flight in 2003, the sox world series and the 20th anniversary of Superbowl XX (you know, the one the Bears won).
Recently they started a remote field, and this year's remote is Chief Illiniwek (pictured at the right). I may have to take a flight over it before it goes away....
Whew. What a great race!
Long story short... Improved on my swim (cut almost 5min off), a little on the bike (1:30 faster), and about 2:30 off the transitions.
This concludes my 2007 triathlon season with 1. Too much other stuff going on this summer. Next year I will probably do 2 international distance and 2 or 3 sprint distance, but may not do the Chicago race next year.
4am.
What's the "O" stand for?
If you want to track my progress, Accenture has a tracking site.
I have to be ready to go before 5:45 (everything in transition), but my wave (#48 out of 53, I think) doesn't go until 9:29. It's almost like a hospital--hurry up and wait.
See you on the dark side of the moon.
I belong to the Mount Prospect park district fitness center. They have a nice facility with a pool, weight room, standard exercise machines (treadmill, elliptical, etc.), an indoor track, and a few other things. Their membership prices are very reasonable, and include discounts on any classes. During the year, I will use just about everything that they have--I'll run indoors in the winter, lift weights (not as much as I should), and swim in the pool.
So why am I boring you with these details? Every year, for about 2 weeks in August, they drain the pool, clean it out, and repair any broken equipment. This year they are closed for the entire month of August as they are replacing all of the pump equipment (or so I have been told). This has caused more confusion as they had to temporarily switch the men's and women's locker rooms (there is some equipment in the ceiling of the women's locker room). The nice thing about this is that the outdoor pool that is about 5 blocks away from my house opens up in the mornings for lap swim during this time. The water is a little cold, but it's fine once you get moving, and it's actually pretty neat swimming in an outdoor pool.
Wait, did I say outdoor pool? Has anyone seen the storms that have been hitting in the mornings the last two weeks? Outdoor pools aren't generally open when there is lightning, and even if the storm is done by 6, there usually isn't anyone there until later in the day (and certainly not for lap swim). Because of this I have only been able to swim two out of the six times I am supposed to swim. Unfortunately, this happened to me last year, too. Maybe they should reconsider doing it at a different time of the year when either a.) I don't need to use the pool, or b.) when there is less of a likelyhood of storms.
It's a good thing I'm beginning a taper and am on week 17 of the program...
I noticed today that my windows machine at work--the one that is constant on--had a clock that was off by about 2 minutes. This was odd in that I knew I had enabled "Internet Time" (no, not that silly thing Swatch came up with)--the Microsoft name for the network time protocol (NTP).
Apparently the default is to check every 7 days. I suppose with the median of computer users, that's Good Enough (tm), but I like to know what time it is (does anyone really care?). It is also annoying when my laptop (linux) and my desktop are showing different times. A little searching and I found the appropriate registry key to change so that I can set it to something more sane for this computer.
WARNING: Unless you know what you are doing, don't mess with your registry. yadda yadda yadda.
Here's the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\
TimeProviders\NtpClient
Value: SpecialPollInterval
Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Data: Seconds
Now back to your regularly scheduled emptiness.
I've been sitting at the same desk--err $50 plastic banquet table--and in the same chair (another $50 office depot special) for just over 5 years. During that time I have had 3 different names in the upper left hand corner of my paycheck, and 2 different signs on the door (the current company is too <adjective> to change it).
According to the news today, there will shortly be a 4th name to worry about.
Maybe we can eventually get some real desks and chairs (I've been saying that for the past few years since the first time the name changed).
