I agree with this post. Who ever made a rule saying 9-5 is a "full day". Americans view working less than 40hours a crime or that it means you're not productive. Not sure why this is.

I also 100% agree with the statements everyone is making saying DON'T TALK ABOUT IT. Ever. That was rule #1 for me. Even mentioning that I may run later makes eye brows go up- like that if I run after work somehow I'm skimping at work???

PS- I'm a pre-doctoral fellow so I work long hours many many days. But I also strive to make other days short. Point is, I don't care how many hours I work as long as the job gets done. I don't get hung up on how many hours a week I work. Sometimes it's 30. Sometimes it's 75.

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I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it--

You call it maniacally attacking, I call it mocking. Attacking would be making shit up with no basis and yet I'm putting out there all of my reasoning for anyone to check or for you to explain away. I mean, you're not even making up more stuff to defend yourself any more. At least it was interesting before but now it's just getting repetitive and boring for me. I love a battle of wits but it is becoming increasingly apparent that I'm fighting an unarmed man.

If you can make it more of a challenge that would be far more entertaining for everyone involved. Try attacking my arguments to make me look like a fool, it'll work better than silly name calling and keep me interested.

You might be right though, my sarcasm meter might be off, I guess if stone cares to look at your blog they can decide for themselves. I reckon my BS meter is pretty accurate.

I'd love to direct you to my blog, twitter or Facebook but sadly I realise that no-one could really give two hoots about what I do, except for friends and family of course but I just talk to them instead. All that I care to share is that I'm a middle aged (36) BOPer, with a loving, supportive family and a pretty well balanced life. I'd direct you to my race results but all they'd tell you that I don't train enough.

If you believe I have judged you unfairly I'd be happy for you to prove me wrong. If you can only resort to name calling though you will only strengthen my argument and make yourself look small.

'Face time' is a common office theme, but it sounds like this is particularly so in the US. How much annual holiday does the average employee get in the US? I had the impression it was less than in Europe.

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29 years and counting

I am! hire me! lol

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I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it--

depends. I bet the average is 3 weeks + big holidays, like christmas, July 4th, memorial day, labor day. others can voice their opinions on this.

i get ~3 weeks (15 days)

friend gets 6 weeks

dad gets 2 weeks + 1 day a month (you can save them)

mom gets 2 weeks + 2 weeks unpaid

wife gets 10+ weeks (educator)

sister gets 2 weeks + 1 week unpaid

friend gets 10 days (wow bad)

friend gets 3 weeks

friend gets 2 weeks + 10 days "sick" and "personal" (???)

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I don't suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it--

Since you are starting to sound a bit more rational now why don't you go back and read through your previous posts. You decided you had a stick up your ass about me for some reason and proceeded to attempt to fabricate situations where I was a liar and a cheater. I provided the explanations for the situations in your initial attack but that wasn't enough for you and obviously my subsequent mocking retorts still have you upset. Perhaps if I had completed my egotistical race report of my incredible 5:15 finish at Worlds you might have more details of what went wrong that day but in the interim please continue to make things up. Unfortunately work, the initial topic of this thread, took over after and I never got around to it. Really don't have anything to prove to you although do stay tuned for more updates to my awesomeness on my blog. Wouldn't want to leave you lacking material.

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4 weeks plus holidays and every other friday during the summer. Not that bad actually.

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The problem is not being content with your position. It is giving others the impression that you are slacking off because you are satisfied with your position. Regardless of what your actual priorities are, you want people at work to THINK work is your top priority, even if it is just a means to an end.


The reality is that most people you work with will remember one or two things about you. You want that to be something positive about how you do your job, not that you are Ironman guy. The last thing you want it to be introduced to other people you work with as Ironman guy. Not as the guy who the office won’t run without.


Ironman guy doesn’t close the deal or release the new product early; he is off training at lunch or too tired. Is what most people think, which may or may not be true.

I've seen enough very senior people fall to know there is noone without whom the office wouldn't run so I disagree.

Personally I love being introduced as the Ironman guy, I talk about it all the time. I work with and for people and part of work is about making connections with people and you do that better when people know you are a human being just like them.

However, there is no difference between work and Ironman if you are a bore you are a bore in just the same way you can inspire people talking about things you do outside work just as much as stuff you do inside work. How many big corporate events are there who have top athletes as guest speakers, its for a reason, success is success.

Doesn't matter what you have in common, kids, Ironman, smoking, working hard, hating your boss, those are the times you chat and that allow you to build rapport with the people who can help your career.

If I ever faced someone telling me to tone it down it wouldn't upset me, if they made an ongoing issue of it then the world a big place with room in it for whoever needed to move on :-)

Put that book on your desk, with your bike in a corner:

I am not upping my weekly hours to 4 fella that would seriously damage my work life balance!

Boring is listening to Ironman guy go on and on about his training to a non-triathlete who he thinks he is inspiring at work.

Did you get the memo?

How are those TPS reports coming along?

Maybe my work setting is a little different than most of the people who have responded but we talk about training, running, exercising, biking, etc. all the time. Half the office has done a marathon and/or some type of endurance sport during their life. We work very hard (9-5 with a workout during the day would be a wonderful thing) but the large majority of the office also recognizes the importance of, and benefit derived from, being in good shape. Maybe working out during the day (when no one else does) isn’t the greatest idea but you shouldn’t have to stop talking about your hobby, it’s not like your hobby is doing crack or drinking so much every night you can’t think straight until 11:00am. People who are in good shape perform better in the office when properly motivated, FACT.

Are you wearing Zoots Ultra Speeds while wearing a full K-Swiss Tri Kit on your blog?

Correct. If going barefoot I use the Zoots since the current K-Ruuz tear my feet up. I'm hoping the new K-Ruuz are a bit more friendly to my feet and I'll give them a shot.

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Work is the thing do when I'm not living my life. The "real career" is the stuff I do away from work. I'm at work to pay my bills. Nothing more.

I've actually had a conversation similar to yours at work once. I flatly told them that the perception is correct. Personal life is #1. Work is #2. If personal life involves "triathlon", so be it. I work 9 to 5. I do very good work. Then I go home, whether it's done or not. If that means I make $10,000 or $20,000 or $100,000 less than the guy who works nights and weekends, I can live with that

Well put! Maybe the guy working 12 hours a day is fat, stressed and may die younger because of heart disease. 8 hours everyday. Work the extra hour only when necessary. Wasting time at the office for perception purposes is just a waste of time.

In many corporate environments, in the US at least, you need to make a distinction between nominal benefits (including time off) and the reality of things. I work in such an environment and on paper I get five weeks a year, but in reality I'm lucky if I manage to be away for one week and it's more like working from home. It's the same for everyone, it's just part of the company culture. Unsurprisingly, I'll be looking to move when the time is right. Hopefully, I will end up working in an environment with the management philosophy that Paul Devanish described above.

Hah...funny you mention that....well it's not the management philosophy of the entire company that I work at, but its defintiely the management philosophy of the key guys running our office and product strategy (so basically there are 3 of us, who drive that philosophy). But no surprise, we're one of the top results generating teams in the company, because we don't care that much about input and perception, rather what output we're creating at the other side that is generating end customer value in a very competitive landscape. But I still think it is important to keep the tri stuff a bit low key. Right now I could probably have Mdot logos all over my office, race bibs, and finisher shirts and no one would really care, but at the same time, I think a healthy separation of personal and business life is good for everyone in the office.

We need to respect that each of us have personal lives, and although I ask one of the guys about his Mustang racing on the weekend, I care only to the degree that it makes him happy and fulfilled so that when he comes to work, he's excited to produce results so that he does not have to work overtime so that he can race Mustangs on the weekend and so that he gets a big bonus to keep keep spending money on racing Mustangs.

I think understanding the personal motivators of our peers, managers and employees in important to maximize results for the entire team. When everyone is excited, motivated and firing on all cylinders, we collectively win, and when that happens, everyone's life is better.

When I was a 21 year old Lieutenant in the Air Force a 45 year old warrant officer told me, "When the soldier believes that the mission is his personal mission, the battle is won....the key is to understand the solider's personal motivation and link it to the mission".....Now I'm the 46 year equivalent to that warrant officer...but sheesh, if I ran a team of trigeeks that would be easy!!!!

Regarding the cheating, I will restate my observations for the benefit of you and anyone who can't be bothered sorting through the rubbish above:

1) You have stated very clearly in your blog that you broke the USAT rules. That's cheating, it's not a matter up for debate unless you are now saying that you have lied on your blog.
2) When questioned about the infraction you concocted a story that you ran it past a USAT official post race. This implies that post race you knew that it was wrong and yet during the race somehow thought it was an ok thing to do. i.e. you knew it was cheating at the time you did it but still went ahead and did it anyway.
3) To try and exhonerate yourself from this cheating incident you told us that the official didn't know his own rules and said he had discretion so therefore it was ok because you weren't penalised. Not being caught or not being penalised does not mean the cheating didn't occur, it simply means you got lucky. It's no different to cutting the course and owning up later.
4) If you knew that this was cheating, anyone with half a brain would have either commented in their blog about the post race chat with the official or simply left the whole incident out of the story. Anything less would obviously leave you open to accusations of cheating. As this was only a pissant little race the chances of anyone caring were slim but when you bring attention to yourself these things are bound to happen.

It would have been much simpler to simply admit that you didn't know the rules and you will know better next time. That would have been the end of the discussion. It's amazing how quickly admitting you are in the wrong will end an argument. A great rule when dealing with people is "admit you're wrong (even if you're not) and shut up" but I guess dealing with people doesn't tend to be an accountant's strong point.

Your splits for "Worlds" (always laugh when events primarily for U.S. citizens are called world champions ala basketball, baseball, et al. at pro level they are but not at AG) are slowish by your Austin standards but the course appears more difficult than Austin so that wouldn't normally be a big surprise. Honestly I can say that I would be stoked with a 5:15 for a half, I am really pretty slow. Your explanation (excuse, whatever) was that you threw up for basically the entire bike leg and walked most of the run. Again in point form:

1) Your bike was 15 minutes slower and your run 13 minutes slower than your effort at Austin.
2) Your T1 was a minute slower at Worlds than Austin but T2 was faster.
3) Excluding the last 0.22 mile which you somehow managed to take 7:46 to finish, the last 3 miles you ran at 7:20/mile pace.
4) Your entire race was only 11% slower at Vegas compared to the seemingly easier Austin course.
5) You pulled out of an olympic distance triathlon because of a flat but continued to race a 70.3 while unable to take in any nutrition.
6) In a previous race you lost your gels at the start of the bike leg on an oly event and felt yourself fading then so at more than twice the distance it should have meant absolute carnage on the long course.
7) All three legs were slower than Austin by around the same 10% margin rather than getting worse over the course of the day. In fact, if you take the 7:46 for the last 0.22 mile out of it your run leg was your best (or least degraded) for the day.

None of this adds up to the sort of performance degredation you would expect to see from someone with intestinal troubles for most of the bike onwards. Trust me, I've been in that situation (not throwing up, just unable to take anything in) and I know what it does to you. An exercise physiologist or sports dietician would tell you that it couldn't be done with such a minor performance loss. Your Austin time is comparable to your other 70.3 times this year so it's not like that was a bad race to use as a guage of your ability.

So the point is that there are too many inconsistencies in your story which, without further clarification or reasonable explanation by yourself, would cause one to think that something is not quite right. We all have crap days that cause sub-par performances, there's nothing to be ashamed of in it. It's alright to say that things just didn't work out on the day. My last half I had a shit of a day. Hadn't trained enough, was well over my expected race weight, had problems with nutrition (had not spent time getting used to my new plan) and was generally underdone and not prepared for the conditions. I toughed it out and finished but there was a lot of walking and a fair bit of pain but I'm not going to claim that it was due to anything out of my control.

Honestly I don't really care about you or your results or performances. Other than as bait to stir up the U.S. folks I don't even care about the performances of my fellow countrymen on the big stage. Crowie's dual crown and Australia's dominance of Hawaii over the last five years is about as important to me as whether there was corn in my last turd. When this is over I am unlikely to visit your blog again nor even really think about you and your carry on, I just feel that allowing people to get away with this sort of crap just encourages others to try the same. Pretty soon you have a bunch of blow hards talking up their performances (or lack of) which really just spoils the integrity of the sport for me. Unfortunately they tend to congregate together in a place where they can all congratulate each other and ignore the obvious flaws in their stories, lest someone point out the flaws in theirs.

From my observations (long time reader, new poster) ST appears to be such a meeting point. It's a shame because there is also some quality in here too but you need to sort through an awful lot of crap to get to it. Doesn't help that many of the guys on here who do actually know there stuff and are happy to share along with proof (Andy Coggan, Alex Simmons, et al.) get railroaded out and end up giving up posting. If you know where to look you can still find them out there giving out quality information to those prepared to approach things with an open mind and accept that your pre-conceived notions might be incorrect. Something that the groupthink on here is not conducive to.

Let me recap real quick for you. You decided to start attacking me about 4 pages ago for some unknown reason out of the blue. Most likely because you took exception with something I said in my argument with duffy. You have proceeded to spend a significant amount of time and effort in calling me a liar and a cheat based on assumptions you've taken from all the available information about me. Just so we're clear I really could care less if you think I'm a cheat because I accepted a gel during a race from a competitor. I'll also admit to remaining in the draft zone of another rider for longer then the prescribed amount of time while climbing a 10% hill. And just a few weeks ago I tossed my flat kit to another competitor who flatted. Yup I'm totally a dirty cheater. This has gone on long enough. Usually here on ST we make a few smart ass remarks to each other and move on. You are obviously a mentally unstable internet wackjob though who has some obsession problems. Your last post made it obvious that you don't like it here on ST anyway so why don't you take your talents elsewhere. Perhaps spend a little less time attempting to analyze my race results for suspicious trends and a little more time training and you might actually be able to become more the a BOPer. In the interim might I recommend beginnertriathlete.com? Peace mate.

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Also, just for future reference. From here on out you may refer to me as Gelman.

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How many times do you need to be schooled before you will learn to check facts! They say it is better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are an idiot than open it and prove them right. Good advice for you I would think. Keep in mind that I'm not the only one to have a go at you in this thread, I'm just the one you chose to take on. They also say you shouldn't feed the troll......

I started on you at the end of page three so it's only been one page (and I think about seven posts by me) but I can see the stress has made it seem so much longer. Wouldn't have taken long to check as your first response to me is on this page but nothing like going off half-cocked hey. I just threw out a bait to see if I could get a bite and the next post being such a hasty, cobbled together (and obviously untrue) story made me realise I could play this fishy all the way into the boat and have some fun. Only a shit fish but sometimes they make the best sport.

To be clear on a couple of points though. I don't really have an issue with the gel thing, without your response I would have thought no more of it. It's a minor infraction of which you were obviously unaware in a minor race. You do seem to be hung up on the implication of being a cheat though so I'll restate my position. What you did was technically against the rules but it was done so inadvertently and with no malice or ill intent. I wouldn't call that cheating, just ignorance. There's no shame in ignorance though unless it's willful ignorance.

As for being a liar, well, I've never said it. All I've said is that your stories have substantial inconsistencies with the facts which are otherwise available. I have pointed out that people noticing these inconsistencies might draw the conclusion that you are a liar but I have no proof that you are lying. It would probably fly in a civil court on the balance of probabilities but certainly not beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that you have continued to respond but avoided taking on any of the seemingly valid points I have made doesn't work in your favour either. Ad hominem attacks are the refuge of last resort for the desperate.

I reckon all up I've maybe wasted about an hour with this thread, maybe a little less. It's probably enough now as I think my point is proven, barring a devastating response killing all of my discussion points above. Anyway, it's late for you over there now. Better get some beauty sleep princess.

PS - I'm quite happy being a BOPer, I do this for shits and giggles. It's far more important to me to be a good father and business man, they are what makes a difference to my life. I do enjoy ST though, it's good sport. Helps relieve some of the frustrations of the day without harming those around me.

PPS - I don't think I will call you Gelman, it just doesn't fit. I'll just keep referring to you as my bitch if that's ok?

Yep probably. Nothing. Seriously.