Jordan Jones

Jordan's Blog had moved

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:14:00 +0000

Hi all.
In support of Team Riptide I'll be blogging on the Riptide blog here.
Also, if you're on Twitter then follow me at jordanj191

S-Works 2010 Prototype

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:10:00 +0000

Racing triathlons professionally can be a tough life. You have to train your ace off day in and out then go to races to square off against the best in the world who more oft than not send you home crying.
But once in awhile something happens that completely redeems the difficulty.
Today was one of those days. UPS came by and it was a big box so I was wondering what could be inside. I was all pumped up and opened it right up.
Inside was this beauty. I'm pretty sure it's a 2010 S-Works Tarmac prototype. Looks to be debadged Zipps for the wheels which will top things off.
It's a touch heavier than previous S-Works. This must be due to some kind of engineering improvement they dreamed up.
Also, look closely at the shifters. Interesting touch there with the downtube shifters. I'm not sure what caused that change but surely there's a good reason for it. Perhaps they want to offer a product that can directly compete with bikes equipped with Shimano's forthcoming electronic shifting.

Snow at last

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:29:00 +0000

We finally got a snowstorm this winter and got about a foot yesterday. It'll probably all melt by the end of the weekend with the roasting CO sun.
The Y was close yesterday from the storm which was probably a good thing. I've felt like junk in the pool for a couple weeks now and felt much better today. Got in a main set of 4x300y on the 4:40, 4x200y on the 2:50, and 4x100y on the 1:30. Got it going and swam the 3's in 3:45, 2's in 2:28, and 1's in 1:10. Not crazy fast but much better than my middle school girl swim level as of late.
Last week Sean laid on the biking. Thursday we had a ride/run at the crit loop. I felt awesome and was rollin. At the end we finished off with a 1 lap TT that I did on my road bike in 3:35 so I'm def in very good shape.
Saturday we hit up Chatfield Worlds. Ahh good ol' Chatfield Worlds. It's an unofficial race every weekend where all the local teams show up, ride the same loop every weekend, and crush it. I think we were the only guys there not in full out team get up. Every guy there had team jersey, team top warmers, team panties.
There were a bit too many folks there and it was a bit dicey so we won't be making it a training staple. About one hundred riders showed and I counted 5 crashes.
Riding felt good though and we were all up in the mix, especially Matt who caught the front break with 4 other guys.
After that as if I wasn't tired enough we rode Lookout Mtn (1500ft vert) 3x on Sunday. I rode decent with the Bang Salon cycling guys on the first one in just under 21. After that I chilled out and rode 23 average, keeping it all under control.
Next week is the TT up Lookout which I'm locked and loaded for. Tom Danielson (of team Postal fame) has the record in 16:01 which makes riding it in mortal times feel a bit less special. 16:01. Sick. But if the winds are right I think I can best my 19:30 PB.

Friggin Chain

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:18:00 +0000

My Miami race started well enough. Out of the water in about 15th with a good but not great swim. As is the norm, the first minutes of the bike didn't feel too great but then the legs opened up and I got moving. Kept it under control the first lap and moved well through the field, getting by 6 guys and into 9th place with Galindez up ahead of me.
Went through the first of two laps in 28:10 which was right where I wanted to be. At this point I was feeling great. I thought riding TT for the first race of the season would be uncomfortable and that the effort would feel odd on the legs but I was feeling better than ever. Really started pushing on the last trip up the bridge about 33 minutes into the bike when I heard the dreaded chain braking and falling off the gears noise. My day was done. Cheered Dan on as he went buy and watched for Amy but didn't see her go by on the bike.
Rolled down the other side of the bridge, dropped the bike off in transition and cheered Amy and Dan on in the run. Dan ran well and got 12th overall. Amy had a so so bike but got it going on the run and got 5th amateur woman.
Once they were done I hit up an hour run along Key Biscayne. It was hot but felt good, it's nice to sweat it out after not getting in the heat in a while. I was definitely bummed about my chain breaking. I was really getting things going on the bike and with a nasty run I would have finished well. But at least I got in a good swim and know that the bike is still there if not better. So I know I'll be ready to rip at St. A's in a month which is a race I'm keying on as a big one. Plus going to Florida with Amy was awesome so it's all good.
We swam twice at the Swimming Hall of Fame. Highly recommend that pool - open nearly all day, 1 block from the beach, and it's only 4 bucks to get in. They've got 2 pools, a 25y and a 50m. Check it:

and here's another of Amy's ride. Locked and loaded:

DEN to the Izzo

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 03:49:00 +0000

Swam a good one at state meet last week - 19:22 for the 1650y (1:10 pace). To celebrate the occasion the fellas all pitched in and bought me my dream car, the aforpictured Trans Am with custom blue rims. Bad a$$.
After that we had an intense week of training last week. Lookout Mtn 2x on Monday, felt solid and went up in 20:55 and 21:30.
Crit loop Friday with 6 loops bike, 1 lap run, 3 laps bike, 1 lap run. Caught the right day and I was rollin'. Felt much more explosive on the bike than I expected, good to know that the cycling legs are there.
Then Sunday to Highline for a 12 miler with 4 at tempo in 22:10.
So we're getting into some work now and prepping to race. Amy and I are going to Miami on Thursday for the Miami Intl Triathlon this weekend and I am pumped. I was debating whether to do this race. I wasn't sure if it would be too early and I'd be in no kind of race shape but I'm definitely ready to roll. The swim is tops right now, bike is somehow there, and the runs always there so I'm good to go.
I best be ready since it's a stacked field: Potts, Reid, Lieto, Galindez, Legh, and more. Dan Mackenzie is racing too, it's always good to have teammates at the race.
Today was auction day for me. A CNC machine is moving its operations to Kentucky so they auctioned off everything from the shop. I love live auctions. eBay's cool but there's nothing like the real deal mano y mano battles at a live auction. It's always a manfest, somehow women just don't get into these things. Today there were 50 guys milling about bidding away. There were 3 women and they were all with guys and had ticked off looks om em. Good thing Amy was snowshoeing so I couldn't try to talk her into going. To add to the manliness of the occasion the shop wreaked of some kind of sweet smelling musty grease and all the tools had a gray coating of it.
First up that interested me was a box of allan wrenches(I always thought it was allen wrenches but apparently not). When you fiddle with your bike you can always use more allan wrenches. I won out at $45 and raked in 20lbs of allan wrenches. It's seriously the motherload, about 8 sets of metric and 8 imperial as well and a bucketfull of random ones. Let me know if you need a set.
Next up was a sweet digital scale that would be perfect to improve our ski shipping operation. Our current scale is tiny and a pain to read. This one was sweet and sells new on eBay for $200. I figured it would be a deal at $100 but it sold for $250! Come on bidders, you gotta show up prepared. Dismal showing on that one.
Next what I really came for. A sweet 21 drawer tool cabinet. I scoped it beforehand and it retails for over $1k. The battle started and it was me versus some old fella. $100, $125, $150... I was staring him down and upping as soon as he outbid me. Don't hesitate, show him I'm craze. At $300 he would have no more and the cabinet is now full of my tools and sitting at work! Check it....

And one more thing. Just to prove how hot it's been here lately. Check out how roasting Gulliver was sitting in the sunbeam the other day:

Ski Vail

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:14:00 +0000

Hit up a ski day at Vail today. Jammed to the standard on the way up - Girl Talk's Feed the Animals album. It snowed a few inches to keep it fun and Blue Sky Basin was the stash, less crustiness unerneath than the other bowls. Above is a shot from the lift, a pic of Matt and Ofer, me jumping a little rock on Scree trail, and one of Amy and I. Unfortunately Amy fell, hit her head, and had to DNF on the day so I couldn't get any glamour shots of her hitting her normal 20 footers.
I'm restless to get in one more ski day this year with a 2 foot dump to hit some good kickers and what not.
Afterwards to the pool. We're swimming CO Senior State meet at DU this weekend and yours truly qualified in the mile. With that in store the training is down for the week and I felt great swimming team goals today even though we only swam two, hit 1:00 for 100y on the first and ditto on the second.
Time to bust out a good one this weekend. 19:48 PB is going into the trash.

Golden is golden

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:58:00 +0000

mmm mix1

Riptide is now sponsored by mix1 which I'm very pumped about. I've liked them since they hit the scene and started appearing in King Soopers and City Market (where I always end up going while skiing). It's a protein juice drink but best of all it doesn't have to be refrigerated. So you can pop it in the bag when you go to work in the morning and have it on the way home from the evening workout. Very convenient. No need to worry about the entire bottle exploding when it goes bad. Most flavors have 15 grams of protein to keep you going strong and best of all they have a lime flavor. Props to them for the great drink.
Yesterday was incrdibly warm, high 60's so I got out on the bike at 8am as soon as it was temperate out. I thought I'd mix it up and try out Golden Gate Canyon which I've never been up. It only took 10 minutes to get to the start and then I was climbing up into the canyon and it felt like Golden was hundreds of miles away. I hadn't heard people talk about this climb so figured it wasn't very good but it's a gem.

Golden Gate is an easy grade so it's a nice change from Lookout which always turns out to be an intense ride. You can ride it hard or just spin it in an easy gear. Now I've got it in my head that I want to ride way up Golden Gate, meet up with Coal Creek Canyon and ride that back down to Rt. 93. Next time, next time.
And the random quote of the day, this one from today's Wall Street Journal. "Today, the college is facing a $5.5 million loss in the alleged Madoff fraud...a Stony Brook University spokeswoman says the collapse of Mr. Madoff's firm in an alledged Ponzi scheme will have only a 'slight' impact on scholarships, research, and academic support."
So does this mean that the university tells potential $5.5 million donors that their donation will have a "slight" impact on scholarships, research, and academic support?

Weekend o' Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:18:00 +0000

A normal weekend of training in Golden. Yesterday I ran at Highline with the usual Saturday morning crew. We were going to do a hard run but it snowed a bit the night before so we decided to just do a long run so ran 13 miles instead. I don't know how it snowed. It was over 50 both days but still managed to snow a couple inches at night, at least it all melted by the time we finished the run. Topped it off with a long stay at Einsteins with Matt, Alexis, and Ofer afterwards. We thought we set a record for longest Einsteins visit ever but then noticed the guy next to us was still there when we left.
Today hit up a 2.5 hour ride. Got way lucky since it was over 60 degrees today. Rode hard from the get go, then finished it off with a 22:59 effort up Lookout Mtn. Not very smokin' but I wanted to test the bike fitness so rode hard beforehand.
Amy and I decided to sign up for the Miami Intl Triathlon on March 15th. Now that I got that going I feel like I can put in some good efforts and start thinking about racing again. Everything feels good. The only question mark is the bike since I've been riding inside for nearly all my rides. It takes some road efforts I think to get ready to ride hard so hence my harder riding today.

Best Swim Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:52:00 +0000

With the season now coming up I'm trying to shave some last seconds off the swim so I'm ready to go. Monday I had a good one, swam 7x300y on the 3:45. The first one I came in at 3:44 so only had a 1 second break. For some reason on these sets the first ones are usually the hardest for me. Once I got in a rythme I was coming in on the 3:35 so had plenty of rest.
The only downer was that the effort seemed to crush me in the pool the rest of the week. Tuesday was hurtin' for certain and Wednesday we had a hard 20x100y set. I was able to swim 1:09's but was still a couple ticks off where I could have been if I was feeling better.
We've been rolling out some good tempo runs on Highline. 35:05 for 6 miles last week. I'm just about to head down there in a few minutes to meet the usual crew.
We've decided to create a Riptide store to sell some logo and casual clothing so I just started work on that this week. I was going to use the MileHighAthletic.com code but then figured I'd try something new so downloaded the OSCommerce package. OSCommerce stands for open source commerce so is free code that you can use to create a commercial website. The code looks great. Installing it was a bit tricky, it definitely takes some know how to get it started. Now it's running but I haven't made any adjustments to it which will be the big job. There's plenty of functionality but it looks a bit plain:

so the work will be in getting it to look sharp.
The inspiration for this is come from the Rock & Republic cycling team. The team was started by Rock & Republic jeans founder Michael Ball. Many out there don't appreciate the team because many of it's riders have served banned for performance enhanhers. I'm all for the team though because of their business model. Ball is trying to make the team a profitable enterprise through Rock Racing branded clothing sales and not rely entirely on sponsors to support the team. Check the site: Rock Racing.
The gear looks awesome, loads of style. I like that he's got casual wear as well so you can flaunt he cyclist in you when you're hanging at the coffee shop. Cyrus made me realize a bit ago how there could be a market out there for this kind of clothing. Everyone likes to show off what they do and there aren't many good ways to do that with tris without wearing your race shirt and looking like a dork (unless it's an Xterra shirt, those things are sweet).
So we'll see if we can get the site up and rolling, hopefully it won't be too hard.

Riptide Multisports Website

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:42:00 +0000

Yesterday the team met at Highline Canal for a long run with a tempo mixed in. Dan and I are on the same page in what we want to do for run training now and last week we agreed that a 12 miler with 6 at easy tempo pace would be good for us. We started the tempo and Josh and Pete took off but I stuck to the 5:55 pace I had planned with Dan. We hit it spot on- 5:54, 5:54 then ran a bit farther than 3 miles before turning around. Held it on the way back, 11:50 for the last 2 miles. Felt good and controlled. I can tell that I should do some more of these to work on my endurance. Right now I prefer to do these longer tempos and then as race season comes I'll move them down to 4 miles at about 20 seconds per mile faster.
I used to do a long run and then a separate tempo run every week but since I'm not running as much now it makes sense to merge them. I like keeping the tempo pace relatively comfortable since I won't actually be running that fast (5:30 pace at altitude) in races. Instead of doing training at faster than race pace I prefer to get my body as comfortable and efficient as possible at 5:30 pace so that it will come as second nature when I hit the run leg in a race.
I relate this to police training. As a cop I'd practice drawing my weapon and firing over and over and over. After hundreds of repetions the movements become second nature, just what is needed so that you can react in a real life or death situation.
If you haven't checked the RiptideMultisports website lately then check it out. Amy and I revamped it and I'm happy with the outcome. Amy did all the design and I wrote a program similar to Facebook that allows team athletes to maintain profiles and race schedules.
We were going to have a static site but with around 15 athletes and ever changing schedules I decided that a dynamic PHP based program was needed. Amy maintains the site and it would have been a full time job to always have athletes emailing what races they were doing.
The first phase was to make a login page where athletes could sign in with a username and password. From there they can fill in a form to enter their profile. Next a form to upload a picture. The results of this can be seen here. As you can see in the web address it's a PHP page with the athlete name sent with the GET method. Type in a different athletes name in the web address (try "AmyDannwolf") and the page will display based on searching the database for that athlete. This way I only had to make 1 page for all the athletes and it would dynamically display a profile based who's name is in the web address.
From there, allowing athletes to enter race results and schedules.

I initially had a simple form when athletes would enter the race name, location, etc. This proved problematic because athletes came up with 5 names for the same race (USAT Elite Champs, USAT PRO Championships, USAT... you get the picture). This looked OK on an individual athletes results but when you looked at the team results it looked like a mess.
To solve this I changed the program so that when an athlete wants to enter a race on their schedule, a drop down menu appeared with all the races that had ever been entered by team members. If the race is on that list then just click on it, it's added to the athletes schedule, and all the info from the initial entry is there such as venue, date, etc.

If the race is not on the drop down (because no athlete has previously added it to their schedule) then the athlete enteres the details of the race.
Once an athlete selects a race, then it is added to the database of races and can be displayed in a vaiety of ways. It is shown on the athletes profile page under their races and results. It can also be displayed in the entire team's race schedule. You can see this here in Riptide's 2009 race schedule. The schedule can be shown in a number of arrangements, whether by date, athlete, or finishing place. About the finishing places. When no place is entered then it is displayed as TBD. Once an athlete finishes a race they can sign in, click on the race in their profile and enter what place they finished.
All of this is an incredibly efficient way for teams to maintain up to date schedules and results with minimal webmaster maintenance. Athletes can constantly delete races, add races, and enter finishing places as the season progresses.
It could also be an incredible website feature for triathlon coaching companies. It's a great advertisement for coaches to show the variety of races their athletes are competing in and how they finished. Athletes also feel more linked to the group if they are featured on the website and can control some of the content. To top it off, athletes can figure out who else is going to their races so they can make travel plans together.
Check out the comfort I enjoy while blogging. Got my mutt Gulliver and my mom's Border Terrier Primo:

mmm shipping

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:21:00 +0000

It was a hot one today so got our for a 2 hour ride in the afternoon. Rode some roads around Golden for a bit then up Lookout Mtn. Took it fairly easy and didn't time it this time around. I've had a bit of a cold lately and now I can feel it in my chest.
Last weekend the Riptide team swam at a meet in Englewood. The pool was friggin' 4 ft deep so I wasn't about to down off the blocks since I've only practiced that about 10 times and I always seem to dive 10ft down. It was a hard effort and I swam a 19:50. Still felt a bit off from my cold but it probably didn't make much of a difference. Everyone on the team swam well so we celebrated with some beers in Cherry Creek after as proper athletes should.
I've been working away lately on writing PHP code to solve our shipping situation at MileHighAthletic.com. We've been using Paypal to get the order information to copy and paste into UPS Worldship. It's not a terrible way to do the shipping but there's wasted time involved in clicking around the Paypal site (Paypal has some slow a$$ servers) and copying and pasting the info for each order. When there's 25 skis to ship all this makes it a huge hassle.
As usual the PHP code is turning out to be more involved that initially expected and I'm up to about 600 lines of code at this point. Most of the difficulty is that Paypal's API doesn't give you basic info such as what type of order a transaction is (eBay, Website Order, Telephone Order) so I had to come up with some creative ways of determining this. This is important because what a customer actually ordered is sent in a variety of fields depending upon the type of order. Once I get all the info I can populate a database with the info. From there the shipper can pull up what needs to be shipped and everything needed is displayed - essentially what items were ordered. Fill in the height, weight, etc on that page and do this for every order. At the end just hit submit and that info goes into the database and an XML file is saved on the computer which UPS Worldship will read to process all the orders.
It's turning out to be pretty sweet and it's going to speed up our shipping big time. There's a bunch of other problems that can be solved with this. If a customer wants an item shipped on a certain date then that can be entered and the item won't appear in the "To Ship" list until that date. Right now I just have to finish things off and write the code that will create the UPS file.

Work it

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:11:00 +0000

It was back to Highline Canal over the weekend for a tempo run. I haven't done a real run workout in awhile. Ofer, Dan Mackenzie and I ran it together. I made some tactical moves that proved fruitful for this workout. Dan was coming off his wedding and honeymoon and while he's in solid swim shape I was guessing I could get him at the end of the tempo. With Ofer I had to resort to trickery since he's in far better shape than I. He was under the impression it was a 20 minute tempo but we were really going 4 miles. So like the miler he is, he started pushing at 19 minutes. Once he stopped at 20 I went by and told him we were doing 4 miles. Gotcha! Or as Amy would say Hra Hraaaa!
Yesterday Sean laid it on with a killer workout. 8x300y. Lane 1 on the 3:50. Lane 2 and 3 on the 4:05. I went into lane 1 since for some reason I thought it was 1:20 pace. As soon as I ducked under the rope I realized it was more like 1:16 pace. But once my head popped up in Lane 1 I was commited, the guys would laugh me outta there if I tried to weasel back to Lane 2. I would endure snivels and insults the rest of the week. So I stuck it out in Lane 1 and luckily had a very good day, I managed to come in on the 3:40's at 1:13 pace and get 10 seconds rest before doing it again and again and again. It was tough, especially with a Jersey Mike's 14" Cheesteak sittin around from lunch.
On those short rest sets I always fine the first couple to be the worst. It's friggin hard and I wonder how the hell I'm going to maintain this for a long ass time. Once I get that picture outta my head and take them 1 at a time then I can hold it and get through.
Now my arms are feeling crushed and Sean says we have a "doozy" of a set today.

Back on Track

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:15:00 +0000

Amy and I just got back from a 2 week tour of our ol' stomping grounds in the Northeast.
We skied a day. Terrible. It's like my lil bro Alex' friend said once "Yeah, I don't really understand Eastern skiing." Amy and I felt like snobs but it really was terrible. Granted it looked like they hadn't gotten much snow all year so maybe that's what it was.
We spent a couple of days in Boston and lo and behold there was an all comers track meet at Boston U while we were there. I've barely been running - 20 miles a week over 3 runs and no intervals since before Portland Pro Nats in September. I couldn't pass on a chance to get on the old indoor track though.
I got in the 2nd fastest heat with the 9:12 seed time I drew of of my hat. Got through the quarter in 72 and it was smooth so I knew I could hold that and make some moves. It was like old times, I sat back early on and stuck to the rail to run the shortest distance. Hit the mile in 4:44 and a couple guys broke off the front. Moved up and caught them but they seemed to be slowing so I went around and into 2nd. 1st place fella had about 25m on me. I was slowly catching him and then all the sudden it was 400m to go and I HAD to go if I was gonna make a go of it. Managed a 66 last quarter to finish it up in 8:50 (about a 9:28 2 mile) and win the heat. Not spectacularly fast, I ran 8:20 in college, but I was pumped to me in that shape off my current run training. Good to know that the swimming is keeping me fit.
My college teammates mixed it up in the fast heat, Paul Ryan got 3rd in 8:29 and Liam Revell ran 8:35.
Awesome to be back in Colorado now. Ready to swim hard and start building in some good bike efforts to get ready for the season.

Winter Break

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 20:30:00 +0000

The team swam alot last week and capped things off with 10,250y of swimming on Monday. I went in expecting an easy morning swim and we got in 3750. Then that evening hit it hard with another 6500. The last 500y I was dreaming of Chipotle. Silver burritos were flying around in my head and I was ready for dinner.
I flew out to Jersey on Wednesday for an East Coast trip. I'm taking a block of time off to regroup before the last of the winter swim base training. I usually woudn't take a break now but since my season ended in September and I started training again in October this will be a long period of training. I find it's best to plan in some breaks in a time like this so that a) I don't get worn down and take forced breaks and b) I don't get to the final races of the season and want the season to be done with.
We just finished off an awesome Christmas season at Mile High Athletic which I'm happy about. We were able to nearly triple our sales compared to last year. Since prices drop big time after Christmas I tried to get nearly all our skis out in December so now it's slim pickins and we have under 200 pairs left. Although it seems odd not to have many skis during the season this is right where we want to be. Now we can take a bit of a breather before stocking up again as the season winds down.

Awesome Ofemus Party

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:27:00 +0000

So my girlfriend Jeanice and I went to my buddy Ofer's Ofemus party. It was supposed to snow that night so we took my 85 Trans Am since it drives sweet in the snow. You point that thing and it just goes.
The party was at my buddy Matt's house. What a house! The thing had to of cost a least a million.
Apparently it was a costume party which we didn't know about so we felt a bit outta place but it was all good. At first they had some kind of crappy weet beer but goin but once that was out it was Bud Light and the night was good.
Jeanice had a bit too much and called some other chick a tramp and they got in a lil scuffle but I broke em up.
Towards the end Jeanice and I won some kind of award, I'm not sure for what. Must have been for sweetest car or classiest or something.
Below is a picture of Jeanice and I:

McGaffigan Files $1,000,000 Suit

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:59:00 +0000

From the Wire Haired Wire:
Gulliver H.G. McGaffigan filed a $1,000,000 lawsuit in Denver District Court today alleging that Puppy Pics Corp. used his unauthorized likeness on their birthday cards. The German based firm responded that they would "vigorously" contest all charges and would not stop production of such cards. McGaffigan was visibly upset while speaking to reporters inside his Golden, CO estate.
McGaffigan, son of Jordan Jones and Amy Dannwolf, is well known among Denver's elite. The socialite youngster frequents the city's exclusive nightclubs and has been romantically linked to Lady as well as Tipsy. McGaffigan is currently preparing for sled dog camp in which he hopes to become the first sub-20 pound dog to lead a sled team.

Swim Meet Race #1

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 02:21:00 +0000

Swam the 1650y tonight at the big Fort Collins Holiday Meet. I was in Heat 2 with Dan on our team and 2 kids about half my age. I swam a 19:48 PB (exactly 1:12 pace). Much faster than the 21:30 I swam last winter. I went our a bit easy for the first couple hundred then got rolling. Just under 6:00 the first 500y then just over for following two 500's. I'm happy with it, great to take off so much time from last year. It'll be nice to get about two more 1650's over the winter to bring the time down a bit more.
Tomorrow is the 500y.

comScore Claims Online Spending up 15%

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:34:00 +0000

I woke up to read in the morning paper and read everywhere online that data from tracking firm comScore Inc showed a 15% in crease in online sales on the Monday following Thanksgiving from 2007 to 2008. That seems reasonable. Then I read on...
"And on Cyber Monday...online spending reached $846 million, up 15 percent from a year earlier, comScore found." (link here)
This $846 million figure seemed drastically low to me plus I'm always dubious of "analysts" claims so I thought I'd check a couple things out to see if this figure is reasonable.
Amazon.com reported $5.67 billion in 4th quarter sales in 2007. (Link here) Let's give comScore a huge gimme and assume that the Monday after Thanksgiving is an average sales day within the quarter. That puts Amazon sales at $63 million on the day (I'll also give them another gimme and not extrapolate their 15% figure and add it to the $63 million).
Next let's look at heavy hitter eBay. eBay had gross merchandise volume of $16.21 billion in the 4th quarter of 2007. Let's do the same math on that one and we get $180 million for Cyber Monday sales.
So now with just 2 website we've already reached $243 million in sales of the supposed $846 million total. Don't forget that we're assuming that this is an average day within the 4th quarter.
I don't have the time to go hunting around for loads of internet companies sales records but at this point for my own thirst for knowledge I'm going to assume that the claimed $846 million figure is very low.
Think of all the big online sites where people spend money that I haven't included:
Dell, Office Depot, Staples, Nike, United Airways, every other airline, Zappos, WalMart, Target, Buy.com, and my favorite MileHighAthletic.com. I think it's safe to assume that big sellers along with the tens of thousands of smaller ones will put us way over the total.
What I find annoying is how readily the media eats up "analysts" data. The "analysts" and "experts" are wrong so often that you think there'd be more analysis of their findings or at least the media wouldn't trumpet their findings with such zeal. Companies collapse all the time yet the expert analysts who track these companies for a living often don't predict their demise.
Search Google for "online spending 15%" and you get an idea of all the respected publications that publish comScore's data with a hint of research.

Look Out Middle Schoolers

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:12:00 +0000

Big swim meet this weekend up in Fort Collins. Our coach, Sean Wendt, always has our team race in some swim meets over the winter. The best part is that the swim meet is composed of middle school kids and then...us. We get up on the blocks and a look of terror comes across their eyes. Then more times than not they proceed to whoop us and get out of the pool sauntering around like they're Michael Phelps the rest of the day.
I've got the 1650y Friday, 500y Saturday, and 200y Sunday (yeah this weekends going to suck). The 1650 is the one I'm excited about. I swam 21:30 last year and I'm hoping I can get under 20:00 this time around. 1:12/13 will get me right around there. Sounds hard but once I get in the pool in a race I think I can swim way faster than I do in practice.
I've been sneaking in an outside ride a week, going on days when the weather is good. This week I went out the door and straight up Lookout and rode around a little bit. It was 65 that day. The next day it snowed. The weather's been all over the place here.
Other than that just been doing an additional hour ride on the trainer, two 30 minute runs, and one long run just under 1:30.
I ran this morning in the snow and I'm usually a mountain goat in the snow but all the sudden my left foot slipped out and whamo my knee nailed the icy pavement. It was hurtin' and I thought I did some damage but I kept running and it was fine.
Amy got herself into St Anthony's this week so now we're all set to go out there come springtime.

mmm Jersey Mikes

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:03:00 +0000

Just had a Jersey Mikes cheese-steak, those things are awesome.
Been sticking with the training. Lots of swimming and a few easy runs and rides mixed it. Except Sunday. Ofer started up a running group so we've been getting 20+ guys to come out for the 1:25 run on Vista Trail. I've never seen such a good group of guys. No big names but all very solid guys. If we were a team we'd have one of the nastiest 25 man XC teams around! I ran with the group 2 weeks ago and it was friggin painful. Last week, with the previous week under my belt, things were much easier and I was able to actually push it and feel good. Gotta hold back though, my legs were tired after that one and I gotta keep em fresh so I can concentrate my good efforts on swimming.
A note about long runs. They're important. I ran 15 miles nearly every single Sunday for about 6 years. Now I don't have to be as meticulous so it frees me up to bike/swim more particularly during the season when those long runs would tire me out a bit too much. But during the off season I like to get back into them and get my body used to the 1:20-1:40 efforts. I think the key for triathletes is to not go longer than that if you're racing half iron or under. There's a temptation to think longer is better but you need some intensity or else the workout is pointless. I find that once I go over 1:40 there is little to no extra return AND my body takes much longer to recover. Nearly all my long runs are under 7:00 pace. If I want to race at 5:15 pace then there isn't much point in running over 7:00 except on recovery days (when I'll run quite slow).
I got slower in the pool the last couple of weeks. I had a great team goals a few weeks ago and did one of my team goal 100's in 1:01. Yesterday 1:04's felt HARD. It's a bit frustrating but I know that you just have to keep at it. It's simplistic to think that the body will follow a steady progression and get 1 second faster a week but that's not how things work. Sometimes you take a few steps back then make a huge jump forward.

Fast Food Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:36:00 +0000

Good long run today with a group that Ofer started. About 20 guys showed up and we ran on Vista Trail to Eldorado Springs and back. I've getting back into some running shape so it wasn't an easy 1:27 but not crazy hard. If anyone wants to come next weekend it starts from the trailhead on Hwy 93 on Sunday at 8:30am.
After going to Park City last weekend for some good training with Taylor I got sick this week so took Tuesday and Wednesday off.
Last night was the Fast Food Challenge. The competition was born out of the famous Cornell dining hall eating competitions of the 1980's and 90's. Last night was a 2.8 mile run with 5 food stops.
1) A sloppy joe and soda at a sloppy joe specialty restaurant.
2) 7 Eleven for a hot dog and Slurpee.
3) Slice of pizza and soda
4) 3 tacos at Chipotle
5) 1 chili cheeseburger at Carl Jr's.

I was a judge at Carl Jr's. There were 9 competitors and I was anxious to see who would arrive at the 5th and final food stop first. Ofer and Matt came in neck and neck but it was immediately apparent that Ofer was feeling much better. He was steadily breezing through his burger while Matt was carefully watching Ofer, sweating profusely, and spending 1 minute chewing each small bite. Ofer was out the door and to the finish: 24 minutes. Impressive - 24 minutes to run just under 3 miles and eat 5 meals. Plus he had a beer at the post race party and made it through today's entire long run!

Aquadeath Pics

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:46:00 +0000

Amy and I took Gulliver and Primo on an Aquadeath hike last weekend. Trail reminds me of the danger ridden Peruvian trails. The wood aqueduct goes for miles. Eventually we found a plaque that marked it's 1932 opening by the Golden Canal and Reservoir Company. That's about the excitement lately.
Last night I came through with a solid team goals. Last week we swam easy and I thought I'd blast team goals and come close to 1:00 but instead I felt terrible, along with most everyone else. 1:05's, 6's and 7's were tough.
Felt much better yesterday and swam 1:03, :03, :02, :02, :01, :03. Much better. Tried to go with Matt on the 2nd to last and blasted out but then hit the hurt big time the last 50y. Did them on the 4min this week which is actually easier than 6min.
Amy and I are driving out to Park City, Utah today to see Taylor and Martha. Taylor's got IM Arizona this fall so he should be eager to punish me on the bike with a long ride. I've done about 4 rides in the last month so it should be interesting.

Aquadeath

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 01:53:00 +0000

This post is titled aquadeath for two reasons:
1) Yesterday was the grandaddy of swim days. 2000y in the morning then another 5300y in the evening. Man was my back itchy from the chlorine afterwards!
2) This morning I got out early for a run. Since Amy and I moved to Golden I've been hunting for trails so yesterday I searched around on Google maps and zeroed in on a trail that ran along the south side of Clear Creek. Went up there this morning, found the trail, ignored the no trespassing sign, and was on the trail. 1:00 into it I was walking along a landslide retaining wall with a 50" cliff on my right side. Got through that and was able to run aside from the other retaining walls I encountered. It seemed like the trail was a really old aquaduct. Maybe it's what used to pump the water into Coors. Man that aquaduct has provided some enjoyment to people round the world.
Anywho, it was a bad ass trail that hugged the north side of Lookout Mtn along Clear Creek. Then came the crazy secntion. The dirt ended and the trail continued on a wooden structure straight outta The Goonies.
There bere pieces of wood every 5 feet with boards laid down to connect them that you could walk on. I walked on the ice covered boards for a few hundred feet then did the prudent thing and turned back.
I told Matt Balzer about the trail a swim practice and he goes "You mean the Aquadeath Trail." Apparently the trail is well know to the School of Mines guys.
VeloSwap is this Saturday. We've got a booth to sell some wares so come on by.
Sweet bikeBounce listing of the day is this Giant TCR Advanced. Too bad it's a size Small.

eBay Bike Selling Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:46:00 +0000

I spent a few hours yesterday writing a guide to selling a bike on eBay which you can see here:
http://www.bikebounce.com/bikesellingguide.php
I think I covered the basics but add a comment if you think anything substantial is missing.
The team swam hard the past two days. Thursday was team goals, 6x100y all in. I averaged 1:04 which I'm happy with for right now.
Yesterday was a bit better for me though. We swam 3 broken 500's. They were broken into 200y on 3:15, 150y on 2:30, 100y on 2:00, a 50y then a 5min minute break with 100y of easy swimming. The last broken 500 I managed a 2:17, 1:45, 1:08 and :29. That was my best and about 1 second per 50 fast than my others. It was friggin hard though and definitely all I could muster up. The arms were a bit tingly when I finished those last intervals. The workout was great all in all, especially after taking a couple weeks of and doing absolutely nothing after pro nationals.
The weather is beautiful today so Pete, Matt, Josh, and I met in Golden and rode easy up Lookout and then putzed around Genesee for a bit. Genesee has some sick hills and we rose one killer 15min loop with a brutal climb. We joked about doing a crit workout there next year. An epic crit that would be. Easy swim later today then off tomorrow, I'll be taking a day off a week for awhile as I want to build up a big swim base now but don't want to overdo it and wear myself down.

Back to pool, back to pool, to show to dad that I'm not a fool

noreply@blogger.com (Jordan Jones) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 19:05:00 +0000

Got back into the training last week with a solid 22k of swimming. It's only getting worse this week. We had a hard set yesterday and when we informed Sean that it was hard he let us know that "Friday will be our worst swim workout ever." I best be ready for that one as Seans dished up some mean swims in the past.
Yesterday was 5200y of swimming with a main set of 12x100 with the evens on 500y goal pace the the evens just 1-3 seconds slower. My arms have been tired from getting back in the pool but I swam this set well - 1:05 to 1:08 on the hard ones and 1:10 to 1:12 on the "easy" ones. We should have team goals today (usually 6x100y all out) and then Fridays predicted hellish swim so it should be a doozy of a couple days.
I was getting incredibly hungry during the swims which often happens when I'm putting in successive days of hard swimming. I feel like I get depleted and then after 3500y of swimming all I can think of is food. Normal sport drinks helped but weren't cutting it so I went with the grand daddy sports drink of em all, Hammer Nutrition's Perpetuum which packs 260 calories a serving. That definitely does the trick. I usually reserve Perpetuum for long rides of half ironmans but it's also serving me well on these long swims.
Matt Balzer has been crushing the swims as of late and we were getting out of the water together at most races we did so that has me hopeful that I can make a swim breakthrough like he has. If I can get my team goals all under 1:00 I'll be happy.
I'm running so little now that even the 50min run I did yesterday has my legs a bit sore. Starting to feel like a normal everyday runner, running actually hurts now. The first 30min feel great since my legs are fresh but then all the sudden I start to hurt where I shouldn't hurt, the back gets sore, shoulders get tight.