This is a sentence.

Darcy talks, she's got a few good words and some sounds that are close enough for us to know what she's trying to say. Her word of the week this week has been "hot". She knows that if her food is hot then she needs to blow on it. Yes, because her parents are to lazy to do everything for her. While she does know the meaning most of the time there are the occasions when I realize that she hasn't quite mastered it yet. Like when she's pushing around the computer chair saying, "Hot. Hot. Hot." No, not exactly sweety.

But just ask her about her day and she'll go on for a while without letting you get a word in edge wise. For the most part, however, she is fairly incomprehensible. Here's a typical sample of a conversation.

"Darcy what did you do today?"

"Ehhflaph ooob llalallaharramm mamama shhheeeplal bbbb tta."

Tonight was a different story. She found a couple of divided plates that we haven't used yet and started carrying them around like they were the greatest toys ever made. Not too surprising, she loves new things (typical woman). Another good word she has is "hat". She'll go and get her hat when told to and put it on or bring it to you and say, "Hat." Well, she decided that her divided plates were to be worn on her head. So I asked her about it.

"Darcy what is that?"

"This is a hat."

It was as clear as day. Sue was sitting beside me on the couch and we both looked at each other at the same time and said, "This is a hat."

Marathon Day

Today was the day, my friend Jake ran his marathon. It was cool, but dry. All week the forecast for the weekend was for rain both Saturday and Sunday. So I was grateful he had great conditions to race in. It is the only marathon in the world (so I hear) that feature two international border crossings. They start in downtown Detroit and run across the Ambassador Bridge, then along the river in Windsor and back to Detroit through the Tunnel. Running through the tunnel is the only 'underwater mile' in the world. You even get a split time for your underwater mile.

I went downtown early this morning to watch and try to find Jake to take a few pictures. Just as I got there the first runner went by, then a few wheel chair people and some more runners. They were moving. Jake was running in the '3:45' pace group and he had told me that he'd be wearing a red shirt and an orange cap. Thing is, there was a lot of people wearing red shirts or orange caps. Finally, I saw him and yelled out. He came over and I ran with him for 30 seconds or so.

He looked good and I talked to him early in the afternoon. At mile 20, typically known as "the wall", his knees started to hurt and he fell off the pace. He finished in 4 hours. Very cool, that's a long way to go and I know he's happy with his first effort.

No Favorites

Normann Stadler:
2004 - Ironman World Champion.
2005 - 3 flat tires, 1 bee sting, 1 thrown bike, lots of tears & DNF.



This is not how a champion is supposed to look while defending his title. But the lava fields don't discriminate.

Heather Fuhr:
Second on the all-time Ironman win list.

She started the run, her strongest portion, within reach of the podium. Then the wheels feel off. She gutted it out and got her finishers medal because beating your own inner demons is a big victory in itself.

This is why I don't gamble

Neither if my picks to win the Ironman came through. Peter Reid finished third in a time of 8:20, a full twenty minutes faster than last year, but still six minutes off the pace. Heather Fuhr finished a disappointing 25th in the women's field, I wonder if she had trouble or got sick. Her run time was really slow, for her... Still her time of 10:03 is not really shameful. Windsor's two Iron(wo)man competitors really showed their stuff on Saturday.

Shelley McKee has great lead up and time in Kona stories on her blog. As well as some pictures, but those seem to be giving her template trouble. She finished in 14:36. I'm sure she'll remember that forever.

Blaire Kniaziew lived up to her qualifying time and finished in 10:27. That was good enough for eighth, in her age group, IN THE WORLD. Insane.

Getting back to gambling... Darcy wasn't eating her chunk of burger tonight. Instead she was rolling them like dice. She's 16 months and playing craps already. Casino Windsor, here we come! Although we've really got to put a stop to playing craps at the dinner table.

The BIG One

This weekend is the Ironman Triathlon World Championships, Windsor has two people going for broke. Not so secretly, I'm envying anyone who's racing. I mean Hawaii in October (I'm not picky, any time of year would be fine), with the best of the best racing along side you? That would be so amazing. It's compared to playing in the Masters with all the greats of the PGA.

In truth there is very little chance that you'd race "along side" the pros. They get a head start of 15 minutes and are freakishly fast. The chance that I would ever compete is Hawaii is pretty much just a fantasy. You have to qualify to get in. But there is a back door for getting into the race. Every year there are 150 lottery spots; 100 of those are designated to US citizens and the remaining 50 are picked randomly from entrants around the world. The odds are rather staggering that you'll get picked.

Back to the part about people from Windsor racing. One of them, Blaire Kniaziew, actually qualified for her age group by coming second at Ironman Germany this summer (an insane time of 10:24). She teaches at the high school two blocks from our house. When she's not teaching, she doing triathlon. This past weekend she competed at the World Championships for the Olympic distance, in Honolulu, and finished 13th in her age group. The other, Shelley McKee, rolled the dice and got picked in the lottery. Good luck to both of them.

If you're interested, there's lots of interactive stuff about the race here. I'm picking an all Canadian championship. Peter Reid will bring home his forth title and Heather Fuhr will improve on her second place finish from last year to claim her second title.

Going Digital

That's right, the Titcombes of Windsor have moved up the social ladder to join the ranks of those who have abandoned conventional photography for digital. I believe the proper expression for such a leap in dans is "Yee Haw!" Sue's mom combined our birthday and Christmas presents and bought us a digital camera. It's a Kodak Z700.

After Darcy went to bed last night, I took this picture. Look her foot falling out of the crib.


Tonight for dinner she had eaten practically a whole put of macaroni, so she was rewarded with a chocolate covered graham cracker. Please notice the chocolate coating on Darcy's teeth.

Fast Times

I wrote previously that Jake had put up an awesome time of 21:05. Saturday I did a hard run and came out with a new PB of 21:11. Now Jake always sprints the last 100 metres or more of his runs, I did not sprint at all. My time put me one second per kilometre slower than Jake. I know I can go one second per kilometre faster for the first four and then two seconds faster for the last kilometre.

Two Great Debates

It is said that the first step to recovery is admitting the problem. What do you do, however, if your spouse thinks you have a problem, but you really don't think it's a problem?

It's no secret, I wear bike shorts. Those extra tight spandex shorts with the built in pad, I wear them every time I ride my bike. At first I was ashamed, I even said to the guys at work, "I did something I'm not proud of, but it had to happen ... I bought bike shorts." It took a little while to get used to them and I still generally keep my shirt untucked. I mean my butt looks good, but I don't want to be a distraction to motorists. Yeah, that must be it.



But you know what; I really like them! They're comfortable, the pad really eases saddle sore and they've got these little rubber legs grippers that keep them from riding up on me.

The first debate is this: To wear bike shorts or to not wear bike shorts? A warning, there is very little that will convince me to not wear them.

I have been told that I'm not allowed to shave my legs. There's not a big debate there, I don't want to shave my legs. But combining bike shorts with unshaved legs leads to the second debate.

Should the hair come through the spandex?

Now I have two pairs of bike shorts, my daily shorts and my race shorts. My daily shorts are not the top of the line, so the hair shows through more readily than the race shorts, which are a very high quality.

Recent posts on some other blogs have lead me to believe that such discussion about undergarments is kosher.

Race for the Nano Update

So we are eight weeks out from the innugural DigiPrint Road Race. It looks like there will only be three competitors, Chris, Jake and myself going for the Nano.

Jake really set the bar last week. Instead of going for one of his marathon training runs, he went for a hard 5 km and turned in a time of 21:05. That's 90 seconds better than his previous best and a minute better than I've done, so far. His marathon is right around the corner; he did his last long run this weekend, 20 miles. The program he's used has really worked for him, he knows he'll be fine for the race. His long runs have been after pretty heavy weeks of running, so he's felt tired (Yeah, 'cause you're not supposed to feel tired after running 20miles!). Now he's into his taper and will be fresh come race day. His goal is 3:45, but says that it should probably be 4 hours. My money is on 3:45.

Chris has come back to earth a little from his first few runs. He's felt really sore (due to his age) add to that the grind of working full time, parenting two kids, working on the second year of his MBA and trying squeeze building up to a 5km race. I know he'll show up to play on game day.

I've been keeping steady. Most of my runs were only 5km, but I've started to increase my mileage. I've discovered a nice little 6 or 7 km out and back route that I've used most recently. It's nice to do long, slow distances, in running circles it's called LSD. I still get out two times a week, at most three times. My goal is that one run will be around race tempo and the other one or two will be to increase my base. At this point my goal over the winter months is to increase my distance so that I can do 10 km in the spring with relative ease.

It's 30C here today! Plus 76% humidity. And it's October! Needless to say I'm still biking to work.

Shoe Lover

Shoe Lover,
originally uploaded by Titcombes.

Clearly this girl has a thing for shoes. The picture was taken during the summer over at Auntie Jerilee's house. Darcy could have been playing with Auntie Jerilee, her most favorite person ever (because she doesn't make Darcy eat vegetables). Or Darcy could have been playing with her best friend Alisa, but she choose to spend about ten minutes trying to get Auntie Jerilee's garden shoe on. Once she'd get her foot in it, then she'd try to take a step. Her foot would of course come out and the whole process would start again.

Tonight while Sue and I were eating, Darcy started bringing Sue's shoes from the foyer into the living room. She would bring in one at a time and she made six trips. To my astonishment, when she was done there were three exact pairs of shoes in the living room. I didn't know she knew how to match shoes.

I see trouble ahead.

Out of gas.

Darcy woke up early this morning. Like an hour and a half early. 5:30 am. Screaming. She calmed down after a minute or two, but then at 6:00 am she was screaming again and you could tell there was no hope for her going back to sleep on her own. I went in to turn on her music box, that usually settles her right down, but she was moaning in pain from her teeth. So I picked her up and we went to the couch in the basement so that at least Sue could get some sleep.

I have never been clung to as hard as Darcy clung to me this morning. It was really sweet, but broke my heart to hear her in so much stinking pain. She was asleep on my chest as soon as we hit the couch, but she moaned in her sleep for at least twenty minutes.

So now I am out of gas. Too bad I'm going to be out until after 9 pm tonight.

Oh, when I picked her to say good bye this morning, she didn't want anything to do with me. As hard as she was holding on to me earlier, now she was trying just as hard to get away from me. Nice.

Mark your calendars - Dec. 3rd, 2005.

This will be Sue's big day. Across Canada, the Running Room holds an annual Santa Shuffle . It's a 5km run as well as a 1 km elf walk. People do fundraising and then the proceeds go to the Salvation Army. Last year the youth band that I'm involved in was the entertainment during the race. We sat outside, in early December, on metal chairs, holding brass instruments, for about an hour, playing Christmas carols. It was a nice day, but it's worth repeating that we were outside, sitting on metal chairs, in December! There's no way to keep warm doing that. Soooo...

Sue has picked this race as her 5km race. Hopefully the temperature doesn't fall too far below zero and there's not too much snow on the ground. If that's the case, then I know she'll make it through and I guarantee she'll be a lot warmer than I was last year.

While the Santa Shuffle will be Sue's big day, there will be a competitive event taking place at the same time. The first, possibly annual, DigiPrint road race. My good friend and co-worker Chris (who incidentally introduced Sue and I) has challenged myself, co-worker (soon to be marathoner) Jake and all the other staff members, there are only nine of us, to a 5km race. Now it's more then just a mere race for bragging rights. Since we are deeply involved in a tech field, we all suffer from 'tech envy'. For example, when one of us buy a new Mac iTem, the others drool enviously over it for a few weeks until someone buys something new, and so on... For our inaugural event an iPod nano is up for grabs. The cost will be offset according to how many of us DigiPrinters participate. Everyone puts in their share, I win the race and go home with a nano. Pretty sweet deal.

So far, three of us (Chris, Jake and myself) have committed to the race. Lorne, the owner, is still contemplating the idea (but he's had his nano for like three weeks already) and Jerry, the smoker, is on vacation, so we haven't heard from him. Yes, the trash talk has been fierce. Each of us with our own good reasons why we'll win. Chris has just over ten weeks to train. He's not out of shape, he plays tennis regularly and was a stellar runner in high school. His best 5km was easily under twenty minutes. Unfortunately for Chris, tennis ain't running and, for him, high school was 18 years ago. Jake is running a marathon and plans to, "keep up with Nick and then go ahead at the end." Unfortunately for Jake, training for a marathon requires a lot of SLOW running. While he can do the distance on one foot, I have my doubts about him being able to keep up a fast pace. I, on the other hand, have been running this distance with ease since the mid-June. I have also been running it at a reasonably quick tempo and I'm ready to up that tempo.

Place your bets & watch for updates.

PIXI Dust

When people ask me what I do I just answer, "I'm a printer." Actually, I run the digital print department.

But what is digital printing? It's the next wave of print technology. Each year Xerox holds an awards competition for "Printing Innovation with Xerox Imaging" (PIXI). It is done throughout the world, this year we, DigiPrint, won the bronze for Monochrome & Highlight Colour.

This competition was for North and South America, printers from both continents entered and we were one of three Canadian companies to be recognized. Our owner, Lorne, and sales guy, Chris, went to Chicago this past weekend to accept the award. It is a really big deal in the print world. Xerox pulls out all the stops and throws quite a party. It's like the printing Oscars.

This is the second time in three years that DigiPrint has been recognized at these awards. In 2003 we received an Honorable Mention in the short-run digital category.

Brother down under

Two Oceans

My brother Eric has gone down under for a couple of weeks. The closest I've been is Cape Town, South Africa. First in January of 1997, then again for July and August 1997.

This picture was taken from the top of Table Mountain. From this shot you can see the Indian (left) and Atlantic (right) Oceans. The Cape of Good Hope is in the middle.

Check it out!

Hey, I'm published!

If you've read my race report then you're not going to see anything new here. This site allows anyone to submit an article for review. If it's deemed worthy, it gets put on the site. I actually learned a lot of do's and dont's from reading other peoples accounts of preparing for triathlons.

The world now gets to gaze upon me in 'performance attire'. Hooray!

Shameful

We caught the end of "Return of the Jedi" on TV the other night. You know the part when Luke is back with the Ewoks and he sees the vision of Ben, Yoda and Anakin? Well, in the version that I'm used to seeing, Anakin is of course an old man, just like the one we saw five minutes earlier when Luke takes off Darth Vader's helmet. Then Anakin dies.

George Lucas has committed a crime with a new edit at the end of "Return". Instead of having the old man Anakin appear with Ben and Yoda, the young Anakin appears. Hayden Christensen has now been inserted into a movie that was made when he was two years old. I said to Sue, "What's he doing there?" If I hadn't been laying in bed, I would have fallen on the floor.

George, you totally struck out with Episode I-III, why would you do and ruin VI as well?

Big Brown Jug

This will have special significance for some more than others.

Back in the day, when all six Titcombes lived in Lachine, we went through a lot of food and drink. So, to make things last a little longer, M&D mixed powdered milk into a big brown jug with regular milk. If you were lucky enough to get to finish the jug, you got the special honour of trying to avoid chunky, un-dissolved milk powder. Uhh, I still get shivers. That in itself is a whole other post.

I think this must have been at least a four litre, one gallon, jug. It was big, it had to be. After dinner, we'd all have a glass of milk with dessert. Let's say that Stef had the jug. Someone would ask her to pass it. She's lift it with one arm and get half-way to the person and then it began. A controlled epileptic fit, isolated only to the arm with the jug. She was shaking madly. "Hurry! Hurry! You guys, I can't hold it!"

Good brothers that we are, we'd make her wait a little while longer. The shaking would get a lot worse. Sometimes, if the jug was full enough, she'd start splashing milk out the top. Oh yeah, she shook like CRAZY! Finally, WHAM her arm would give out and the jug would slam back down the two inches she had it off the table.

We cried over the spilled milk, but only because we were laughing so hard.

Triathlon Photos

If you're interested, the official race photos are available on-line. Once September roles around, there will be more on Flickr as well.

Swim

Bike

Run 1, 2, 3. There are some good action shots here.

-----

UPDATE:

By request, here is the pick speedo guy coming out of the water. He was RIGHT in front of me. Ugh.

Lucky Number Seven

Today is mine and Sue's seventh wedding anniversary!

Homer: I'm going to the back seat of my car, with the woman I love, and I won't be back for ten minutes!

Happy Anniversary to the one I love. How about seven more? I'm up for it.

Love you,
Nick

Marge: Homer, is this how you pictured married life?
Homer: Yeah, pretty much, except we drove around in a van solving mysteries.

Ironman Canada

In case you didn't know, Ironman Canada take place this weekend. It's been held annually, for the last 22 years, in Penticton, B.C.

Five brave men from Windsor are participating this year. Two (Matt & Mark) of them were in the Windsor Triathlon and one (Mark) of those taught Sue's running class last year.

You can follow the progress of the race pretty much all day Saturday.