But, if you can, get some extra sleep two nights prior. Rest is an edge, and once you’ve put in the work preparing to compete, you’d be foolish to give up such an easy advantage.

On Sunday, after two nights’ sleep, I’ll jump into San Francisco Bay to race in the 2009 edition of the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon. My training this year has been better documented than in the past, but I’ve made different choices, too, so not sure about comparables.

In 2005, my only previous Alcatraz race, I finished 181st among the amateurs, with a time of 2:52:45. The links in that old post are dead, sadly, but I have a printout of the 2005 results. 49:52 for the swim, 6:51 for the first transition (which includes a run of a half-mile or so), 56:29 for the 18 mile bike ride, 1:41 for the second transition, and 57:56 for the 8 mile run, including the sand steps/ladder in 2:17.

Thinking ahead to Sunday, I don’t expect much better for the swim, which put me in 655th place then. Again this year, I did enough in the pool to know I can finish it…but not much more. Realistically, I’ll come out of the water with plenty of people to chase.

I’ve been racing on the bike this year, which is new to me. Consider my 2005 words:

I wonder what’s it like to just race on the bike… it was fun to pour on the pedals with the streets closed to cars.

That’s what led to my starting bike racing last year, actually.

I commute on my road bike over much of the bike course quite regularly, so I have no excuses not to have a great ride, and I expect to. Still, not sure how much more time I can gain over my 2005 split, which was 63rd among amateurs that year.

I’ve been running a bit less, with fewer dedicated hill repeats this year. Several of my tempo runs have been excellent, though, so I’m hoping to gain a little time there, too. Not sure I can better my 115th place run from four years ago, but the pace is doable.

I was conservative in my 2005 predictions. I don’t think I’m being too aggressive now in saying I believe I can do better than last time, but Sunday will tell the story.

The top two finishers in Cat 4? My friends Gregory Coleman and Kenneth Norton. I warmed up with Ken, who provides evidence. Both of them flew up the hill ahead of me. My computer measured the distance at 3.75 miles, despite the advertised 3.5 mile race. I was paying attention because fog swallowed the top of San Bruno, leaving only a few dozen meters of road visible in front of you. I don’t know the course well enough to know the finish section yet, but the fog helped overall: just focus and turn the pedals.

I joined ZteaM Cycling this weekend to provide a bit of extra motivation for this 2nd year of racing. That doesn’t give me more time to train, but fewer excuses, perhaps. Thanks to Gleeco for suggesting I join him in the San Francisco-based chapter.

One more cycling note… had my first crash today, during an Early Bird crit race this morning. Someone went down in front of me, and I went over that rider’s bike. Banged my left side hard enough to sting, but was able to re-join the pack the next lap, and overall I’m fine. One positive note about riding in cold weather: my jersey ripped instead of my skin.

San Bruno Hill Climb photo courtesy of renroublard; view the original or simply click thumbnail for larger.

One physical note: with its hefty margins, this book felt either stretched out beyond its true length or (charitably) ready for note-taking.

If I’d read it at the beginning, I might have saved Ken a few questions during the year. Still, even though the “Essentials for Cycling Competition” weren’t new to me, this book is a welcome addition as a reference book that reads well and is organized smoothly.

In the last race of the season this morning, the 48th annual Mt. Tamalpais Hill Climb, I finished in 48:39, which put me in 12th place among the Cat 5 riders. I may have enough experience now to qualify for Cat 4, just based on starts. Since today’s time would have placed me 12th (still!) in that division, I don’t know whether I should push ahead or not.

L’Étape is one full Tour de France stage open to 8,500 amateurs a few days before the pros come through. The roads are closed, and you ride the exact course…if you can finish it. The time checkpoints are ruthless, apparently, and the organizers make a point of picking one of the legendarily difficult stages each year.

I enjoy climbing, but I’m not blind to the fact that my training would need to ratchet up to about double what I’m doing now before this fantasy race would be realistic. Convincing the wife to join me in France wouldn’t be hard, despite her personal revulsion at the catalyst for such a trip.

If you really want to soak in the ethos of cycling, specifically climbing, enjoy the guest post from former pro rider and current team director Jonathan Vaughters. Read the whole thing for tidbits like this:

…the most important parts of bicycle races are always uphill. The tactical genius of those who stealthily hide behind the dolt plodding away into the wind up front is lost on hills. Hills put bike racing back into the realm of Darwin and the grunting cave man. The laws of nature rule on the hills, and only the strong will survive.

and

Training and techniques will make you suffer slightly faster up hills, not suffer any less.

Next Sunday, I’ll try to suffer as fast as possible on Mt. Diablo. I rode the course and the extra grueling 4.5 miles up Summit Road this morning. Glad to have the lay of the land, but I’ll be thrilled to stop before Summit road next weekend.

Google News finally answers some of publishers’ questions, and promises more information in the future. Wow…I spent a fair bit of time trying to deconstruct this for News.com 3-4 years ago.

Academic PDF, which I have not yet read, but plan to: “The User Experience of Software-as-a-Service Applications” (link is to HTML abstract)

Jon Udell goes LazyWeb with “Parsing human-written date and time information, and the commenters come through, especially with DateJS.com. Not the only solution, though. I’d never heard of GATE, but looks useful. I’ve used solid implementations of this type of parsing at I Want Sandy, 30boxes.com and a few other places. Wonder how many rolled their own, or started with DateJS, GATE or similar utilities, and built from there?

Ken Norton makes his Scoble video debut in Google Announces Offline Docs. Ken, good job, but the laptop in hand was a bit tough. And now we know where this tweet came from.

During the last year or so I was at CNET, I pinged the legal team a few times about a corporate policy on blogging by employees. Didn’t happen while I was there. I realize it’s not so simple when you’re a media company — but it didn’t have to be that hard, either. So I noted the BBC’s Guidance -
Personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites, including the section on blogging. Good for them: more media organizations should follow this lead.

Speaking of British media companies, the Guardian impressed me in two ways last week. First, by creating the position of head of the Guardian’s development network with the goal of “offer[ing] data and tools for external developers.” Second, by hiring
Matt McAlister to inaugurate the role. Good luck and have fun.

Brief notes on Charlene Li’s 2008 SXSW presentation, “Social Strategies For Revolutionaries.”

Stefanie Olsen talks with John Battelle a couple of weeks ago. For when you can’t keep up with his blog, a distillation of some of the topics he covers and thinks about for FM.

I know storage isn’t free, and photos add up, but still surprised to get an email from BrightRoom telling me it’s the last chance to order some race pictures. I’ve bought a few before… wouldn’t you at least keep shots of customers, even if you dump all the other finish line photos? Of course, the email is remarkably promotional, and short on details: “Your Run Wild 5k/10k photos are going into retirement: SALE details below!” Will the photos disappear, or will you simply charge me more in the future to “retrieve” them? If you’re keeping them at all, then retrieval is almost without cost, so this feels like forced urgency. And I’m not interested or impressed.

I’ve set up my FriendFeed, but not using it yet. Definitely finding Twitter more and more interesting, and I’m now including my tweets on clock, on the home page.

Watched only one of Barry Pilling’s videos so far, but worth a link and a look.

2005 article someone (Ken?) recently reminded me about: “Wheels and Deals in Silicon Valley” I did my first racing in January, at the Early Bird, and I’m putting in some miles now in preparation for a mid-May century. Been mostly solo, though…guess I’m missing out on the deals! Any San Francisco-based riders reading?

I’m more familiar with UTC (aka GMT) thanks to OpenDNS; that threshold was crossed hours ago.

Besides, I won’t make it to midnight tonight, especially with a hill to climb in the morning. As long as my back doesn’t flare up, I’m looking forward to my first bicycle race.

I biked to work and home again today for the first time in 6 months. Just in time, too, as I’m signed up for the San Bruno Hill Climb on New Year’s Day.