On Sunday, September 14, Team NORSA tore down another wall by finishing the Nation's Triathlon. NORSA veterans Adam, Steve, Matt White, Leo Weitzenhoff, and Jon Spurlock were joined by NORSA newbie Russ Morton for this olympic-distance triathlon running through downtown Washington, D.C. The race started with a 1.5 kilometer swim through the AIDS-infested waters of the Potomac river, followed by a 40 kilometer bike up and down the Clara Barton parkway and a 10 kilometer run (or walk, for some) around Hains point and the Mall, finishing up on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Newcomer Russ Morton stunned the rest of Team NORSA by coming in with the best time on the team. He was followed by Leo Weitzenhoff, Steve, Jon Spurlock, Adam, and Matt White. This was a special day for Matt, who almost beat the guy in the wheelchair. Almost.
11 comments:
what wall was torn down exactly? adam and i already did this race. it took you 2 weeks to come up with that? you're expelled from norsa, matt.
here is a breakdown of what you wrote, matt:
1. NORSA did a race.
2. X Y and Z participated in the race.
3. The race was an olympic distance race.
4. X Y and Z finished the race.
This race included a record 6 NORSA members! A typical recap post should look more like Adam's IronMan post, including: a description of the weather, a description of the race course, a description of the general scene (eg packet pickup was odd, dropping bikes off early was odd, we had to leave our bikes overnight subject to vandals, etc) inter-athlete battles, hyper links to other web pages, links to the results page, links to other blogs, discussion of next years race, a comparison to last years race, and more than one picture.
...a breakdown of individual athlete's performance, whether everybody's goals were met, the general scene after the race, the post race food, the medals we received for finishing the race (color, weight), the capitol in the background, the revised course compared to last year's, the spectator's who came to cheer us on (monica, mike, julie), norsa members who were 5 minutes away and gave no support or cheering, the distance they travelled to see the race, the recovery process, the pre-race procedures, the pre-race meeting which was mandatory, the parking situation, the traffic issues created by the race, the temperature of the air, the water temperature, the road surface temperature, and relative humidity.
the river level. the clearness of the water, the direction of the current (if any), the struggles against said current (if any), being able to swim under memorial bridge, having helicopters circle around during the swim, seeing fire boat spray all of its hoses at once. where is the glory? where is the excitement?
a NORSA post is not the mere reporting of an event. its the story of an adventure.
I would like to concur with Steve's comments, but not without commending Matt on writing a post. Seeing that he is a new contributor, I want to give him a learning curve allowance. No one expects a 52 page thesis on their first day of kindergarten. Well done Matt.
That being said, I would like to contribute to Steve's list of gripes:
You didn't post an online photo album, you didn't make a NORSA-films Production movie, you didn't issue a press release to local and national media outlets, you didn't rank yourself in comparison to all the people that signed up to compete but didn't show up, you had no discussion of crowd density, water turbidity, or relative humidity, you didn't mention the concerns with the river exceeding federal allowable standards for primary contact fecal coliform, you didn't mention the Hawaiian macadamia nut leis, you failed to discuss parking and transportation issues the day of the race, you didn't talk about the post race relax at the Washington Sailing Marina, and you failed to embody the glory, hole in the wall spirit, and pizazz that racing with NORSA entails.
My biggest complaint is that you didn't capitalize the non-prepostion words in the title of the post. Don't worry, though, I fixed it for you.
Not to mention the following grammatical errors I corrected for you:
- AIDS-infested not hyphenated
- DC had periods between the letters
Were you guys really on the cover of Runner's World? If not, that's a pretty damn good Photoshop job.
Also, Hains doesn't have an apostrophe.
I'm fairly confident Matt was going for a Berlin Wall reference there at the beginning of the article, but I guess it doesn't work so hot, huh?
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