tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-126423348237293612024-03-14T05:29:20.968-04:00Roman Kharkovski personal blogTriathlon, Photography, Life, Books, Podcasts and other things from my life.Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-41356681541120192122018-12-30T12:50:00.000-05:002018-12-30T13:27:26.858-05:00LED Google Cloud<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
While I was at school and later at university, many of my friends were building all kinds of home made electronics: radios, light systems, etc. For some reason I was not interested in soldering and electronics and gravitated to software at one extreme and to woodworking and other things made out of metal, bricks, etc. However my most recent fun project required LED lighting and forced me to learn soldering and basic circuit design, which I have enjoyed very much! Here is how it came about.<br />
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For my 20% project of 2018 at Google I have created a self driving car (details at <a href="http://cloudderby.io/">cloudderby.io</a>). We now use these cars across the world to run customer facing hackathons to teach Google Cloud skills to clients. To built enough cars for those hackathons I had to purchase 20 car kits at the Five Dollar Store. One of the things that was not used for the final car, were the cheap plastic wheels from those kits - we replaced them with rubber wheels for better traction. Hence I had 80 plastic wheels sitting in a box. There is no way I am putting 80 perfectly good wheels into recycling! Hence I decided to build a Google Cloud sign from plywood and used wheels as decoration:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOSU8tz-k1EPLwjhYmn_KXwe8O4ag-5Vu4TXmpsBCpa7fuwijF3kW4AqDkFBIwU8_nFA8ONxsUQAVqgNQlUwy9C7TEQ7hvfeIn2ThCO8MvMa3m2xRWiAodK1DhnFknxIf_qsRnVCj-zok/s1600/IMG_20180905_114655.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="822" data-original-width="1600" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOSU8tz-k1EPLwjhYmn_KXwe8O4ag-5Vu4TXmpsBCpa7fuwijF3kW4AqDkFBIwU8_nFA8ONxsUQAVqgNQlUwy9C7TEQ7hvfeIn2ThCO8MvMa3m2xRWiAodK1DhnFknxIf_qsRnVCj-zok/s640/IMG_20180905_114655.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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This came out nice, but was a little dark, so I decided to add LED lights to match the colors of the official Google logo:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBYRm5OfvLAe0fYCr-98w9-UV3TZqqazVYCFzuWThY4HpeqYLqkP04QXSsKPeDCCF19piiP4rzJh00toZTwQ2RO3f3raOVlLa04tmDgfTewM4bC9ayY04jGAmUyIPwTxrBIWh6pBDMab0/s1600/google.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="433" data-original-width="1280" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBYRm5OfvLAe0fYCr-98w9-UV3TZqqazVYCFzuWThY4HpeqYLqkP04QXSsKPeDCCF19piiP4rzJh00toZTwQ2RO3f3raOVlLa04tmDgfTewM4bC9ayY04jGAmUyIPwTxrBIWh6pBDMab0/s320/google.png" width="320" /></a></div>
Initially I thought to buy a pre-lit LED light and insert it into these letters, but that seemed like a flawed approach for several reasons:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Pre-lit lights are bulky;</li>
<li>They do not have exact number of LEDs that I need and there will be extra lights to be hidden behind the sign;</li>
<li>They do not have right mix of colors (I need 4 colors for letters);</li>
<li>If pre-lit light breaks, it may be hard to repair;</li>
<li>It is not much fun to use ready-made light as I wont learn much.</li>
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Hence I decided to build my own LED light. It turns out LEDs are super cheap in bulk. I bought <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073QMYKDM/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1">450 LEDs for $13 on Amazon</a> (aka single LED cost is about 3 cents). When it came to designing a circuit, it turns out you can't simply string together those lights and expect it to work. One has to consider the following factors:</div>
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<li>Total number of wheels (aka LEDs) in my design is 44;</li>
<li>Power adapter - I selected 12V DC, 1A adapter that plugs into a standard wall outlet;</li>
<li>Voltage drop on each LED varies from 2V to 3.3V (depending on the color - in my case 2V for yellow and red, 3V for green and blue). This means that serial circuit for 44 LEDs will require a lot more than 12V, hence I needed to split it into many parallel and serial circuits;</li>
<li>LEDs require resistors in a serial circuit to prevent them from melting because of sudden voltage jumps of the real world power supply (<a href="https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/calculating_current">good reading here</a>, <a href="https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/resistors#current-limiting">here</a> and <a href="https://www.electricaltechnology.org/2013/08/how-to-calculate-value-of-resistor-for-LED-circuits.html">here</a>).</li>
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This is a super basic circuit, but considering that I have not done any of the electricity related calculations since college, nor have I ever done soldering, it took some reading and few YouTube videos :-). <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aaNG_Bp9qhFHlgun4sHbTAPmiYpVwBjZIS_FW7Y_Bvw/edit?usp=sharing">Here is the spreadsheet</a> to calculate the number of serial and parallel circuits and resistor values:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxtjua7KUbA81bwP_cBWfegkF9os3qGANGS54pESe4cFl4cWxB-mHD8V5SQQY49ufEKhG09FHVt31oYP5aU5chgMcMoW4oaLAYnSGcSm90k25icG-EYW7UCpaN1SCzcUtb7NxWRfK6JZk/s1600/Screenshot+2018-12-30+at+12.44.10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="371" data-original-width="1600" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxtjua7KUbA81bwP_cBWfegkF9os3qGANGS54pESe4cFl4cWxB-mHD8V5SQQY49ufEKhG09FHVt31oYP5aU5chgMcMoW4oaLAYnSGcSm90k25icG-EYW7UCpaN1SCzcUtb7NxWRfK6JZk/s640/Screenshot+2018-12-30+at+12.44.10.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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This design has 15 parallel circuits consisting of total of 44 LED connections and a couple of dozens of resistors. Google office in Pittsburgh has amazing space with all kinds of equipment, including several 3D printers, computer controlled woodworking machines, laser cutters, soldering irons, fwe hundred drawers with all kind of electronic supplies, including resistors, sensors of all kinds, servos, molding machines, etc. It is a paradise designed to help Googlers with their hobbies. I believe there is a rule that one is not allowed to use it for work related stuff - only for fun and 20% projects. I think more companies should have these kinds of facilities for their employees. Here is a small corner of this space:<br />
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One thing to note looking at the picture above - I drilled two little holes for each of the LED legs and to avoid confusion, oriented all of the holes in exactly the same way - positive on the right, negative on the left, however this posed minor issue during wiring - you can see that I should have oriented holes linearly to avoid wiggly wires going from plus leg of one light to the minus terminal of another and that wire having to be bent twice. The reason the wire cant be run directly is that for LED to stay in place, I bent the tip of the leg outward and there is only 2 mm of that to be used for connection, hence I had to orient the wire in parallel to that little 2mm piece of the LED leg.<br />
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Another improvement that I would recommend is to avoid several long connecting wires that can be seen on the photo below and simply break up some of the circuits into two and not have to connect LEDs in blue "G" and "g" letters and red "o" and "e" letters.<br />
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The wiring was quite time consuming, especially the installation of LEDs into plywood and measuring, cutting and arranging connector wires. Soldering turned out to be the absolute easiest and fastest part of it all! Thanks goodness for Holidays, just finished the project at home last night:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_iPSfGHT_AhMDhwsErSPBmzTlM-ajjq6IxDjzFYqLUNG1kXM1iVh7Hz8TDfeMl3JWJ_GbghgBCx3rTzBABK79RcgdfiY_dma0ol9IpNRvRkt8Jyg5-f6qi3r9D3aLXhCyAKhuRXEcUv8/s1600/IMG_20181230_000537.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1058" data-original-width="1600" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_iPSfGHT_AhMDhwsErSPBmzTlM-ajjq6IxDjzFYqLUNG1kXM1iVh7Hz8TDfeMl3JWJ_GbghgBCx3rTzBABK79RcgdfiY_dma0ol9IpNRvRkt8Jyg5-f6qi3r9D3aLXhCyAKhuRXEcUv8/s640/IMG_20181230_000537.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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I expect that some LEDs will burn out over time, hence I did not cover any of the LED connection points for easy access. Replacing a single LED in this model will take only a couple of minutes and I have 400 of them sitting in my drawer.<br />
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Here is what the final result looks like:</div>
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<b style="text-align: left;">Happy New Year 2019 my friends!!! </b></div>
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<b style="text-align: left;">I wish you all <span style="color: blue;">peace</span>, good <span style="color: red;">health</span>, and many <span style="color: #e69138;">fresh</span> <span style="color: #6aa84f;">creative</span> <span style="color: blue;">ideas</span>! :-)</b></div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-56743951847162686112018-06-16T11:35:00.001-04:002018-12-30T12:13:40.958-05:00New job with Google<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Ok, I have changed job more than a year ago, so it is not exactly a new job anymore. I have not posted anything on this blog since I left IBM and joined Google in Pittsburgh as Customer Engineer in March 2017. Starting a new job takes a lot of time and the last time I did that was 19 years ago when I joined IBM. This past year and a half with Google have been amazing. I have met many new people and learned a lot of cool things. If I could go back in time and change anything - I would tell myself to join Google much sooner :-).<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">View of New York City from the Google office (Noogler training class)</td></tr>
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Here are few updates for the period that I missed on this blog.<br />
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Most important and saddest event is that my very good friend Yevgeniy Mikhaylyuta had died of cancer. RIP Zhenya... We all love you and will remember forever. You were very special to so many people. There are many ways you contributed to my life, including starting my triathlon passion, overall view on life and science among many other things. Every one of my long runs on weekends are dedicated to you from now on.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yevgeniy and his wonderful family (I am Santa)</td></tr>
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My oldest son Misha graduated high school with honors diploma and went to college to study for graphics designer.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilSdz4X8_QSf_gdjt0-fFsodeiLKFjsnVNa2XNgibXp2fE7RBzuHph93maplWlPqPQMQe1UoUtuF0ByBe9s2DYE23eI3EdR0xhyphenhyphenYIRQw7QCIcIHg2tCmi8tUWamxwBEEm1cqK_zsSpUc8/s1600/1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1232" data-original-width="1600" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilSdz4X8_QSf_gdjt0-fFsodeiLKFjsnVNa2XNgibXp2fE7RBzuHph93maplWlPqPQMQe1UoUtuF0ByBe9s2DYE23eI3EdR0xhyphenhyphenYIRQw7QCIcIHg2tCmi8tUWamxwBEEm1cqK_zsSpUc8/s640/1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">North Allegheny High School class of 2017</td></tr>
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Misha became certified Cross Fit Coach and wants to open his own gym. He is 19 now and a couple of months ago took 3rd place in Pittsburgh Cross Fit competition in the open category. To say I was impressed is to say nothing.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQBw9uzOREATYr8uEsXMT2i2EHde_qoIRgG_zbzJGqGeY6HsLw55pjcy2a5b1Z7_rqwjCHPeCm5Y3we9q220qs8oDBz8DWNXvpFXMksAs8K9Pjl9zOi2ioLB5SeJwmNm6hJktNr6e95PA/s1600/2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="1500" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQBw9uzOREATYr8uEsXMT2i2EHde_qoIRgG_zbzJGqGeY6HsLw55pjcy2a5b1Z7_rqwjCHPeCm5Y3we9q220qs8oDBz8DWNXvpFXMksAs8K9Pjl9zOi2ioLB5SeJwmNm6hJktNr6e95PA/s640/2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Misha is coaching a CrossFit class</td></tr>
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We did many fun trips as a family, including Las Vegas, Dominican, DC, NYC, found new cool places around Pittsburgh, such as this farm.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLWII2hAA6M18LzZUq-AyqYY7G3ymswgV39ot9UrhRc1zFoGXWvYcPoT5fTRXbJGuzDFcpXn1PdnpiR_8TsTYW3FAxa4UAlglhyphenhyphenYVtN6o0ONr0m6yGe5TBiaiO0xAp56YGYoilzDm8w5k/s1600/horses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1422" data-original-width="1330" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLWII2hAA6M18LzZUq-AyqYY7G3ymswgV39ot9UrhRc1zFoGXWvYcPoT5fTRXbJGuzDFcpXn1PdnpiR_8TsTYW3FAxa4UAlglhyphenhyphenYVtN6o0ONr0m6yGe5TBiaiO0xAp56YGYoilzDm8w5k/s640/horses.jpg" width="598" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Horse riding in Pittsburgh</td></tr>
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Among other things - I still train every day of the week, but not race as often. In late 2017 did Tough Mudder 10 miles race - that was a ton of fun. Also did Cook forest 65 miler bike ride with Google team.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9uUaPjnuyRo5DpTRDwoM2xiDopSCCUz9PN32jYvG4E3LBrYZITZ6r9ddveaiH1NC2x7BglKtIrdVniOK72EZ_LIDJJETRwvQ5CAIGi3_1sjxkBnkOKtFL9aAx-RFF_mXXji8nzaHoS6g/s1600/3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1280" height="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9uUaPjnuyRo5DpTRDwoM2xiDopSCCUz9PN32jYvG4E3LBrYZITZ6r9ddveaiH1NC2x7BglKtIrdVniOK72EZ_LIDJJETRwvQ5CAIGi3_1sjxkBnkOKtFL9aAx-RFF_mXXji8nzaHoS6g/s640/3.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After finishing Tough Mudder 10 miler</td></tr>
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Completed Memorial Day <a href="https://themurphchallenge.com/">Murph Challenge in 2016, 2017 and 2018</a>. Big THANK YOU to our heroes.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiX7DPXkeuPcaw12q2PvxRX-2ovGG1prAYIgrl0SCo2THEWATVBwJYnWoxGF904fMNozNvxrsIZV6Zhut8WiKE-qNbo1iqFN3xzh7wA_xDa5lB_yajYwXdVMJ44qpUx9Y6VpvibdVLRfA/s1600/Screenshot+2018-06-16+at+11.27.06+AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="888" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiX7DPXkeuPcaw12q2PvxRX-2ovGG1prAYIgrl0SCo2THEWATVBwJYnWoxGF904fMNozNvxrsIZV6Zhut8WiKE-qNbo1iqFN3xzh7wA_xDa5lB_yajYwXdVMJ44qpUx9Y6VpvibdVLRfA/s640/Screenshot+2018-06-16+at+11.27.06+AM.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">LT. Michael P. Murph</td></tr>
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Going forward will try to keep this blog a bit more up to date.<br />
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-21135818021896928892017-01-23T16:15:00.001-05:002017-01-23T16:21:22.952-05:00CO2 powered pinewood derby car that works<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My son and I enjoy Cub Scout pinewood derby car building and racing every year. We've <a href="http://blog.romankharkovski.com/2015/01/pinewood-derby-car-project.html">built Formula 1 car</a> for 2015 race. In 2016 we built a simpler <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/pEzwHaNHvSFsy3EcA">rocket inspired car</a>. This year <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/eciiQmcyW9Ydj1gc9">we built Star Wars Ship</a>.<br />
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These are all gravity driven cars. Starting 2016, we being adventurous parents decided to do a "no-rules" race the night before the official kids event. Last year I created my first CO2 powered pinewood derby car, <a href="http://blog.romankharkovski.com/2016/03/co2-powered-pinewood-derby-car.html">but it did not work well</a>. This year I wanted to make a working CO2 car, but unfortunately had serious time constraints and was not able to start my project until 12pm on the day of the race. This means I had between 12pm and 5pm to work on this project. I had high level design in mind, but have not yet worked out all of the specifics and implementation details, which frankly consumed about half of these 5 hours with the other half being actual work with metal and wood and testing the prototype.<br />
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The <a href="http://blog.romankharkovski.com/2016/03/co2-powered-pinewood-derby-car.html">problems with last year's design</a> were as follows:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>The car weight without CO2 cartridge was 1.5 oz - way too light for the power of the CO2;</li>
<li>The location of the CO2 cartridge was incorrect - it was at the rear of the car and it caused front wheels to lift when gas was discharged (the car flew to the ceiling more than once);</li>
<li>The angle of the CO2 cartridge was too small - probably about 15 degrees to the horizon - this meant that vast majority of the propulsion was used for forward motion and too little for keeping the car on-track;</li>
<li>The starting mechanism was complicated and unreliable - it is almost impossible to consistently punch a hole in the CO2 cartridge with a sharp object. Many times it did not fire at all, at other times it missed the head of the cartridge, at other times the hole was too small or off center and it caused lateral forces and thrown the car off the track.</li>
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This year design fixed all of these issues:</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>The weight of the car without the cartridge is 7 oz;</li>
<li>CO2 cartridge is angled at 35 degrees, so a good amount of force is used to push the car into the track and keep it from jumping sideways;</li>
<li>Location of CO2 cartridge is almost in the middle of the car, so the pressure is applied in between front and rear wheels to keep car on-track;</li>
<li>Most important - the starting mechanism uses bike inflator, which punches the cartridge in advance and allows for fine control of discharge of gas - see picture below.</li>
</ul>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CyCZ4JUyaeA/WIQgu_6AMaI/AAAAAAABUb8/ZIuyH4Usas01CbUIdfVkxjYgdNa9MuWnACPcB/s1600/20170119_221440215_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CyCZ4JUyaeA/WIQgu_6AMaI/AAAAAAABUb8/ZIuyH4Usas01CbUIdfVkxjYgdNa9MuWnACPcB/s320/20170119_221440215_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T2jXiPxC22Q/WIQgvIkMNjI/AAAAAAABUb8/ofjqkpd_gJEru70KQZ7PbWFCvHEEprc1ACPcB/s1600/20170119_223618650_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T2jXiPxC22Q/WIQgvIkMNjI/AAAAAAABUb8/ofjqkpd_gJEru70KQZ7PbWFCvHEEprc1ACPcB/s320/20170119_223618650_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Now the question is - how to start the gas flow? I decided to make two metal "hooks" on both sides and connect them with bike tire rubber to press it to start the flow of gas. This can be seen in the video:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HNpefOTz4Y8/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="532" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNpefOTz4Y8?feature=player_embedded" width="640"></iframe><br />
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Here is how the parts were made:</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A_6hBSIEfNE/WIQgvMg9UQI/AAAAAAABUb8/XyFkIlVXRl46audxYKlg3b0DtsKqUxeKgCPcB/s1600/20170119_225301661_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A_6hBSIEfNE/WIQgvMg9UQI/AAAAAAABUb8/XyFkIlVXRl46audxYKlg3b0DtsKqUxeKgCPcB/s320/20170119_225301661_iOS.jpg" width="261" /></a>
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JVX3t8HdOtI/WIQgvdHOKfI/AAAAAAABUb8/afIF_IkNvlwn612A3l4N5JntFlyT1Dv1QCPcB/s1600/20170119_232623230_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JVX3t8HdOtI/WIQgvdHOKfI/AAAAAAABUb8/afIF_IkNvlwn612A3l4N5JntFlyT1Dv1QCPcB/s320/20170119_232623230_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xUCnu2Jl3EE/WIQgvmfcvDI/AAAAAAABUb8/Wm0dUogk2EI7om4pinEG6-RxiVT_EzQpwCPcB/s1600/20170120_004233979_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xUCnu2Jl3EE/WIQgvmfcvDI/AAAAAAABUb8/Wm0dUogk2EI7om4pinEG6-RxiVT_EzQpwCPcB/s320/20170120_004233979_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
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As for the car itself - I planned on making a very elegant design, but being severely time constrained, had to resort to a basic rough bodywork made out of a block of wood:</div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c0k_-jKqB1w/WIQgv5lsVVI/AAAAAAABUb8/eGiIZfnHsUISJehIEVQDuDntr8fnKIIegCPcB/s1600/20170120_183319222_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c0k_-jKqB1w/WIQgv5lsVVI/AAAAAAABUb8/eGiIZfnHsUISJehIEVQDuDntr8fnKIIegCPcB/s320/20170120_183319222_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qARl8thi_Rg/WIQgwJiYYBI/AAAAAAABUb8/bWNju06wQB0Jj_QuSLCLXgEYzzl82nfuwCPcB/s1600/20170120_190349590_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qARl8thi_Rg/WIQgwJiYYBI/AAAAAAABUb8/bWNju06wQB0Jj_QuSLCLXgEYzzl82nfuwCPcB/s320/20170120_190349590_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vlxH5IXl-X4/WIQgwI2NbfI/AAAAAAABUb8/3MznQ48deu0BLXzgwQiZd-X4wh-euZYWACPcB/s1600/20170120_204019769_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vlxH5IXl-X4/WIQgwI2NbfI/AAAAAAABUb8/3MznQ48deu0BLXzgwQiZd-X4wh-euZYWACPcB/s320/20170120_204019769_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A7XX2ScwlMA/WIQgwQXba5I/AAAAAAABUb8/BlF8F6-n9ZEwbWCfxSiJHvIqT3qtZ1spwCPcB/s1600/20170120_210149760_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A7XX2ScwlMA/WIQgwQXba5I/AAAAAAABUb8/BlF8F6-n9ZEwbWCfxSiJHvIqT3qtZ1spwCPcB/s320/20170120_210149760_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j5Xeg3a1rVs/WIQgwqtb4SI/AAAAAAABUb8/fzg1Wx3xFQ88SDJAjBiz1F5uT80UmY93ACPcB/s1600/20170120_211809855_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-j5Xeg3a1rVs/WIQgwqtb4SI/AAAAAAABUb8/fzg1Wx3xFQ88SDJAjBiz1F5uT80UmY93ACPcB/s320/20170120_211809855_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LA_d3GcwuyY/WIQgwtKKnMI/AAAAAAABUb8/ExqM_rh0f6E2VMAz36lsI40r4sdweJL0QCPcB/s1600/20170120_213629415_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LA_d3GcwuyY/WIQgwtKKnMI/AAAAAAABUb8/ExqM_rh0f6E2VMAz36lsI40r4sdweJL0QCPcB/s320/20170120_213629415_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a>
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In the end this design worked extremely well - it was very easy to operate and the car was about twice as fast as the next fastest car on the track :-). It could be made even faster with lighter car body and more aggressive angle of the CO2 cartridge, but this will require experimentation and time, which is in limited supply :-). The other thing to add would be an automatic start, instead of using manual start with vice grips. Perhaps next year...</div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-81791423100285871612016-12-27T16:07:00.001-05:002017-01-23T15:43:34.044-05:00Dirty Dozen bike ride<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On November 26, 2016 I participated in and finished one of the most epic bike races known to men - <a href="http://www.dannychew.com/dd.html">Pittsburgh Dirty Dozen</a>. This race had first started back in 1983 when few cyclists wanted to showcase Pittsburgh's steepest and toughest 13 hills in one ride. The total distance is 55 miles, but the fact that it is done so late in November with the temperature being around 35 F and riding these crazy hills makes this race unique. The Canton Avenue with its 36 degrees climb is considered to be the steepest street in North America. Many <a href="http://www.dannychew.com/dd-photo-1.html">pictures are available on the official website</a>.<br />
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This was my first time and hopefully not the last time doing this race. The race started in four heats. I was in the 3rd heat and only made it into top 10 on one of the hills. The rest of the hills I was consistently in top 20 with the total number of people in our heat around 60. The race was very hard, but it was a ton of fun. Not having done this before, there was an added benefit of not knowing what is ahead and how long and steep each hill is. So I just rode balls out mode every time and luckily, made it on every hill without touching the ground. It helped that it was dry. Doing this in wet or snow conditions would make it sooooo much harder, considering that if you touch the ground, you need to start from the foot of the hill. Ouch...<br />
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See <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/TqFPtehzehQZXL5W6">Google Album here</a>.<br />
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<img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bWWF2xysn0A/WGLSLooWLAI/AAAAAAABUNM/-mMuR5S0hv4UuKg-dUcDYxTl1h-nkcNjgCPcB/s320/20161126_133508455_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9ko-lV8KIf4/WGLSMGclRiI/AAAAAAABUNM/PrIAbRKwSFUumF1dGUoI2nnfPY8awqoOACPcB/s320/20161126_133512124_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_5FGQ49RZO4/WGLSLadKatI/AAAAAAABUNM/s7aPk2o36OQw58g9ascxIRaCRMqVrDOJwCPcB/s320/20161126_133502517_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KwXs8hatIC0/WGLSMiYsU-I/AAAAAAABUNM/0bIra9OBbhc1nU5mGVbWo8uFweVSxymAQCPcB/s320/20161126_140707990_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hu4S5HbvlHg/WGLSMz9qaXI/AAAAAAABUNM/s-I_TJqYJEMnCEeT5x4TiOm41Hs-yd1_ACPcB/s320/20161126_162624437_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><<img border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YPavkRewGFo/WGLSM6LITKI/AAAAAAABUNM/R3l4jFzEWNEWakI21XCxsPD0lLsV9SQ9wCPcB/s320/20161126_162638348_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h85k8m8uunk/WGLSNw2NK7I/AAAAAAABUNM/7yiYKBgobnckZPanhyWAdfZrPNaPz43XACPcB/s320/20161126_173110331_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nZod7GfttP8/WGLSMR7FQNI/AAAAAAABUNM/ibQVvG0KAnIWw1FbucFMiIM73AhiLdDcQCPcB/s320/20161126_135154163_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><img border="0" height="480" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-unfDsK_jjpE/WGLSOA0VZZI/AAAAAAABUNM/6n7qp9h_G_YThKED33vjhbyvscIf-2vKQCPcB/s640/20161126_180206343_iOS.jpg" width="640" /><img border="0" height="480" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hCjuMKEiwBo/WGLSOgm8OdI/AAAAAAABUNM/RZ_Qy3oX1hoBJmD64g8-xgAr53ycX2kRQCPcB/s640/20161126_180452624_iOS.jpg" width="640" /><img border="0" height="150" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mWmtk94cow8/WGLSO8UyNAI/AAAAAAABUNM/w6vP5dmbM_Ylcrb-4KhMrBMsZ_yhD3-PQCPcB/s640/20161126_180528666_iOS.jpg" width="640" /><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lKNcjPYZ37g/WGLSPgpx9tI/AAAAAAABUNM/amfW0gkZKVIpI7BBeKKRa7QEAXMTY1WcgCPcB/s320/20161126_200047300_iOS.jpg" width="320" /><a href="https://ridewithgps.com/routes/17790715"><img alt="https://ridewithgps.com/routes/17790715" border="0" height="240" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k2eAquhpp64/WGLSP0ZtK9I/AAAAAAABUNM/fPLPep9Eou8509MX8iVFX6HuP_CHNrJaACPcB/s320/20161126_202957332_iOS.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://ridewithgps.com/routes/17790715">Link to the map</a>.</div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-79835832475442656102016-11-12T19:37:00.000-05:002016-11-12T19:39:09.851-05:00Conquer the Castle Trail 25K race <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Fantastic <a href="https://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=37292">race</a> today, but I am glad I did not run 50K or 100K <span class="_47e3" title="smile emoticon"><span class="_7oe">:-)</span></span>. This is a very tough run on a trail full of roots, leaves, etc. could
hardly see where to go and got lost handful of times when I missed
markers, so I had to backtrack a little bit.<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NPZhZjhL3dw/WCeyyUd6FsI/AAAAAAABTy8/uecwhIFw6SIXi_pYiVLT2Zi--X6MaYAIwCPcB/s1600/garmin%2Bmap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NPZhZjhL3dw/WCeyyUd6FsI/AAAAAAABTy8/uecwhIFw6SIXi_pYiVLT2Zi--X6MaYAIwCPcB/s320/garmin%2Bmap.jpg" width="298" /></a>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QdngMJUOP5A/WCeyzB91xPI/AAAAAAABTy8/RJtf3_anQjMZe-vZO-CD7inNN85gnG_AQCPcB/s1600/20161112_193742910_iOS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QdngMJUOP5A/WCeyzB91xPI/AAAAAAABTy8/RJtf3_anQjMZe-vZO-CD7inNN85gnG_AQCPcB/s320/20161112_193742910_iOS.jpg" width="186" /></a><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PQktYk0S0ts/WCeyy180_yI/AAAAAAABTy8/aYSaWhg5U2w4AqrJ9bkxeMGatFWU0-ceACPcB/s1600/c95885e5-80e6-4058-9ca4-a1d2877b5b62.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PQktYk0S0ts/WCeyy180_yI/AAAAAAABTy8/aYSaWhg5U2w4AqrJ9bkxeMGatFWU0-ceACPcB/s1600/c95885e5-80e6-4058-9ca4-a1d2877b5b62.jpg" /></a>
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2JUcSSDtH9w/WCeyx26RgPI/AAAAAAABTy8/PalUF2tHvaQI3Xb-c15jep_028mxakm4ACPcB/s1600/race%2Bad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="104" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2JUcSSDtH9w/WCeyx26RgPI/AAAAAAABTy8/PalUF2tHvaQI3Xb-c15jep_028mxakm4ACPcB/s320/race%2Bad.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></div>Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-60698389940092371722016-09-19T09:36:00.000-04:002016-09-19T09:36:12.451-04:00Long trip to China, Spain and Russia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In April and May this year I've made a long business trip and worked 1 week in China, 1 week in Spain, 1 week in Russia and at the end took a ten day vacation in Russia and was able to visit St. Petersburg for the first time.<br />
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This was my 5th time in China and I am always amazed to learn new things about the country. For example, Chinese folks shop in USA because electronics, clothing and all other stuff that is produced in China costs much cheaper in USA than it is in China. Who would have thought? During this visit the pollution in Beijing was pretty strong and there could be no way for me to run outside. So I worked out in the hotel gym. The rate of heart attacks, cancer, lung diseases and other sicknesses is very high in Beijing and many people are happy to live in much smaller cities to avoid pollution. Here is a <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/AbJx3gCpF3YAAwYo6">complete album</a> of photos from China.<br />
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/AbJx3gCpF3YAAwYo6"><img alt="https://goo.gl/photos/AbJx3gCpF3YAAwYo6" border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNHq4ND7VDIcFcj76uG0kqw9vs6cBtqedGasf1oYvohJMh8YMJTOXk56kacFLfNCmcnyQifZiEe9gN4soxo4-2UxxNWeLr2G239f4Hw_YiUX-7YP2Xn_Ox279JnvKOrvocvylhALSOHxw/s640/2016+04+16+-+Beijing%252C+China.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Next I flew to Madrid, Spain. Since I have been in the city three times I spent most of my time on work or in hotel, but one night was able to take a good tour of the city with Saglara - an old friend of mine from school days who now lives in Madrid. She and her friend know the city very well and used to work as guides, so I had a personalized tour :-). Here are <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/QZhHP3LDKmKY5YFc6">some photos</a> I took in Madrid.<br />
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/QZhHP3LDKmKY5YFc6"><img alt="https://goo.gl/photos/QZhHP3LDKmKY5YFc6" border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAd_UrGOFJydkESrWVO11AUkHdE0Cy4BTqNmhLAAaOMiqICCaiaaxGuWh5DcWaZB_9gRlRFevsujJRbYk2R1yu7ualmn71mtIfPqQhFjJonfdCcQ9Zqz0UzSz8hO4K_cVGPQnbuAhMBXY/s640/2016+04+20+-+Madrid%252C+Spain.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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At the end of the week we went to a beautiful Spanish city Toledo. That was fantastic! The city is beautiful and with perfect weather and the festival going on there it was an awesome day. Having two folks who know and love the city was great and we all enjoyed it very much. <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/GTXuMm5VriZYrqwS6">Few photos</a> I took in Toledo.<br />
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/GTXuMm5VriZYrqwS6"><img alt="https://goo.gl/photos/GTXuMm5VriZYrqwS6" border="0" height="456" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKBKZexFlg4t5hUiDt07ZoueLpaeFCw1QEABce2aSzkUAkGOo8vuvWgwpQdT-jGLhY6_9zVLd5kEKxtkuu8JeR75Yk4kP7Oj7rQ3kE97cu0TIHTaiaWKinWuw3o8qJvh-m9UuzVPUV1ek/s640/2016+04+17+-+Toledo%252C+Spain.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Next I flew to Russia and worked in Moscow for a week and then went to my parents and visited St. Petersburg with my younger brother. This was my first time in St. Petersburg and I was very impressed with the city. Here are <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/yj2s2ncap2KwonYx6">190 photos</a> from the 4 days in the most beautiful city in the world:<br />
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/31Z9udCCMEbbLiKq6">Also see 54 photos</a> from the Faberge Museum.<br />
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-38231020129319110912016-09-17T21:12:00.000-04:002016-09-22T08:09:25.579-04:00Sprint and Olympic race reports<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2nd place in 40-44 AG</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Here goes the summer. Athletically speaking this was a time of relaxation. I had no specific training goals, other than maintaining general fitness by biking on my indoor recumbent trainer 4 to 5 times a week (average of 150 miles a week), running 3 times a week (average of 20 miles a week), swimming a couple of times a month (yeah, almost no swimming this summer), and doing cross training about 4 to 5 times a week (for about 3 hours total). Overall I averaged about 12 hours of fitness per week this summer, which is a little bit less than last year.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
YMCA Sprint Triathlon in North Park </h4>
It was no surprise that my race result at <a href="http://www.active.com/allison-park-pa/triathlon/races/janney-and-the-y-north-park-triathlon-2016">YMCA Sprint Triathlon in North Park</a> was slower than in the past. I took second place in my age group, but cramped very very bad in the last few hundred yards on the run and had to limp on one leg to finish (and was limping for the next few days as well). Lesson learned - if one wants to race fast races, one needs to train fast. The other thing to keep in mind is that I did not warm up properly for this race, nor did I take a gel or electrolyte before the start. I think these things could have prevented the cramp. <br />
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Overall this was a well run event. I got beat by the guy who I found out to be a 2:45 marathoner. He also had a faster swim split, but slower bike split. Not surprisingly he caught and passed me on the run part of the course. On a positive side - I am pretty happy with my bike result - it turned out to be <a href="http://runhigh.com/2016RESULTS/R080716AC.html">#9 among all 154 athletes</a>. And this is considering that I never did a single intensity zone 4 or 5 workout on the bike this year - only steady effort in zone 2 and 3 while working on my computer in the office.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Mighty Morain Man Olympic Triathlon</h4>
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This was my first time racing at <a href="http://www.mightymoraineman.com/">MMM</a> and my second Olympic distance race ever. Now I have done one IM, two HIMs, two Olympics, and a whole bunch of Sprint races.<br />
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What a beautiful venue for the race! The swim was in the Lake Arhtur and it was wet suite legal. No current, easy one loop and the water was quite nice. Not crystal clear, but decent lake water. The bike is very hilly - goes up and down constantly, very few flat sections. It got to be a little hot on the run, but half of the run is in the shade, so it was quite ok. The run is relatively flat on paved pedestrian lane with gentle rolling hills along the lake.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3rd place in 40-44 AG</td></tr>
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I took one gel 20 minutes before the swim, then one more at the start of the bike and third at the very end of the bike. Sipped water before swim, on the bike, but not on the run. I consumed less than a bottle of water during entire race.<br />
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The swim was a mass start, but since there were not that many people, it was not too bad. I started at a moderate pace and just kept behind somebody in front of me drafting almost entire 1500 meters behind one guy who seemed to be going at my slow pace. I came out of water and took my wet suite on the soft grass before entering the transition area, which was all paved and this resulted in me having the fastest T1 among the entire field - always nice to be #1 in something :-).<br />
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On the bike I went steady effort - after doing my zone 3 in my office, I feel like I have single speed on my bike - no matter the race distance - it is just so ingrained. Good for long distances, bad for short ones... On the bike I passed a lot of people and when I entered T2, I was the first bike in! I proceeded to the run, but few minutes later I realized that this was impossible because elite men started Olympic distance few minutes ahead of me and there is no way I can be first overall in T2. I stopped running, looked at my watch, stopped it and found out that I only did 20.2 miles on the bike, instead of 26 miles, which meant I turned into T2 too early and cut a course short. In my defense, there was no map of the bike course on the website and the markings were not that great. I figured that I am disqualified at this point and decided to finish the 10K run just to get the workout. My pace dropped and I was just jogging now, at which point the race director passed by me on her bike as she was checking the aid stations and congratulated me with the lead. I told her what happened and then asked if I can finish the run, get back on bike and do this extra 6.5 miles to do a complete bike leg. She said it was ok with her. However it was now very hard to pickup the pace. I finished the run and without crossing the finish got on the bike, did my miles, got off and ran to the finish.<br />
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It turned out that I was 4th in my age group, but since the #1 guy in my age group was also #1 overall, we all got bumped one step up and I officially finished #3 in my age group. Looking at the <a href="http://www.smileymiles.com/2016/RES16%20MIGHTY%20MORAINE%20HALF%20IM%20RACES%20OA%20ALL%20DIV.htm">results</a>, my timing looks very weird because of this bike mishap:<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IY9cw5pZh_A/V9vz9zq_8aI/AAAAAAABSl8/tEz-XYqOMNQggI9_UJWDvG9qUEPczCKvwCPcB/s1600/14241482_10210115526307500_8337297590760931028_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IY9cw5pZh_A/V9vz9zq_8aI/AAAAAAABSl8/tEz-XYqOMNQggI9_UJWDvG9qUEPczCKvwCPcB/s640/14241482_10210115526307500_8337297590760931028_o.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-58137507523582900102016-05-31T09:59:00.001-04:002016-05-31T11:15:50.052-04:00The Murph Challenge on Memorial Day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yesterday was Memorial Day - a day to remember and celebrate those who have fallen protecting our peace and freedom. This is widely celebrated in US, but in my mind this includes US and Russian and all of the warriors who sacrificed their lives for a good cause, protecting their countries and people, no matter the nationality.<br />
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One of those warriors was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_P._Murphy">Michael Murphy, US Navy SEAL</a> who died in the operation Red Wing in Afganistan in 2005 - only three years after enlisting with SEALs. I can only imagine how much he would have accomplished if he was still alive now. Rest in peace Murph.<br />
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He left a big legacy, with movies and books written about him, buildings, ships and swimming pools named in his honor. One of those things is the Cross Fit workout named after him (it was one of his favorite workouts). Participants compete on time: <br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li> 1 mile Run</li>
<li>100 Pull-ups</li>
<li>200 Push-ups</li>
<li>300 Squats</li>
<li>1 mile Run</li>
<li>all of the above wearing a body vest weighing 20 lbs.</li>
</ul>
This workout was one of Mike's favorites and he'd named it "Body Armor". Every year on Memorial Day Murph foundation is running an event, called <a href="http://themurphchallenge.com/about-the-event/">The Murph Challenge</a>:<br />
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<a href="http://themurphchallenge.com/"><img alt="http://themurphchallenge.com/" border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHozcfXPw5T_6JhisxYThpofBm_QpNDqGP27dgeeumdTtBmUd4yOIdVXhskAHkA1l58hcZx850OR608HBgAOQB4XzrBDXJ7WBlmzNDwXmiWwHacNdt9TF6SUHip0asUa4sHRPAPO8h0BY/s640/murph.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The pull-ups, push-ups and squats can be intermixed and most people do 20 sets of 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 squats. This is exactly what we did yesterday morning with Matt and Ted. It took me exactly 1 hour to finish the workout and I am sore while typing it today. Matt and Ted were faster then me, but we all enjoyed it tremendously and I am sure I will do it again next year and try to cut down my time to 55 minutes.<br />
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-22771508105832683962016-04-03T12:23:00.001-04:002016-04-07T16:15:10.781-04:00Mad Dash 5K family race<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Back in March Edward and I did a fun family race in North Park - it was a 5K Mad Dash. The weather was cold, but sunny and we had several hundred people - some doing 10 miles, 5 miles, and 5K.<br />
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This was fun and the best part was the sense of community and energy flowing in the crowd. This was Edward and I first race this year - we plan to do a lot more of these.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Before the start of the race - trying to get warm.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stretching before the race</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Queuing up for the start</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Only 500 meters to go - the finish is in the background</td></tr>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-35551088346717115402016-04-03T12:18:00.000-04:002016-04-05T09:27:37.061-04:00Adventure Warrior 5K family race<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yesterday Edward, his friend and I did a <a href="http://www.campsoles.org/events/adventurewarriorrace/">5K Adventure Warrior Race</a> at Camp Soles YMCA. This was a second year we did this race and all of us loved it just as much as the last year. This is not a timed race, so everyone can do it at his own pace, but the weather, the course, the obstacles and volunteers were wonderful and atmosphere very energetic.<br />
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The course took us thru sand, bridges, woods, hills, ropes, tires (both climbing and carrying), lake water (very cold, but we only had to walk thru it for about 20 yards - kids loved this part more than anything else). At the end we went on a slippery slide, which was about 30 yards long and covered with soapy water. This was a lot of fun. I was afraid my camera will get all wet and did not take it with me - need to bring my GoPro in a water proof case next time. Kids and I can't wait to do it next year.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Orientation before the start of the race.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After the finish - you can see slipping slide, lake and part of the trail in the background.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Driving 90 minutes back to Pittsburgh.</td></tr>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-46616629399402896722016-03-16T13:58:00.003-04:002016-03-16T13:58:23.470-04:00CO2 powered pinewood derby car<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In January my son participated in a <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/pEzwHaNHvSFsy3EcA">Cub Scout Pinewood Derby Race</a>. The official race has strict rules, such as the wight of the car must not be above 5 oz, the wheels may not be modified, the car itself must be made from the official block of wood provided by Boy Scouts of America car kit, the wheel axles must be from that kit, the car may not have any power, other than gravity, etc.<br />
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Parents in our Pack decided to have a no-rules race, except that the car must be safe for others and may not leave trace (smoke, fire, etc. are prohibited), but it must weight under 5 oz. This allows many forms of propulsion. I chose CO2 as the method (drawing inspiration from SpaceX and recent successful Falcon 9 landing). While my car was not quite as successful as Falcon 9, but hey, even SpaceX took 5 years before they had first valid launch!<br />
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It was a ton of fun designing and building the car (given my limited tools and materials choices). I must note that for this project I have not purchased a single piece of material - everything was already in garage in one form or another.<br />
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The overall project was half-success half-failure in terms of measured results, but it was a success that I enjoyed the process. Here is the video of the test runs of my no-rules car:<br />
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The build process was very involved and did not leave enough time for corrections, hence the project was not fully complete. Here is a gallery of images from the build process:<br />
(click to see the album)<br />
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-34838743141084564972016-03-16T13:50:00.003-04:002016-03-16T13:51:41.268-04:00Pittsburgh Color Run<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A week after the <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2015/09/race-report-challenge-cedar-point-1406.html">Ironman race at Cedar Point</a> we had a fun family event - this was a <a href="https://thecolorrun.com/locations/pittsburgh-pa/">Color Run 5K</a> fun run in Pittsburgh downtown. This is annual event and is not really a race, but for 99% of participants is simply a way to have a good time together. We did a run/walk all together and enjoyed it very much. Will try to do it again next year.<br />
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-4476636997821910692015-09-25T13:52:00.001-04:002019-03-25T17:18:30.234-04:00Race report - Challenge Cedar Point 140.6 triathlon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have long dreamed to do the Full Ironman and now this dream has come true. On September 13, 2015 I raced Challenge Cedar Point 140.6 triathlon. For those who are not familiar with Ironman - here is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironman_Triathlon">an excellent wikipedia article</a>. I started my triathlon training in 2011 and at first did not even think of doing full distance race. Originally I just wanted to try Sprint distance. After I have done my first Sprint I thought it may be fun to do Olympic distance. After that wanted to try Half Ironman, you get the idea...<br />
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To see <a href="https://goo.gl/photos/YTaWsxfFgygEkRat7">all photos in one album - go here</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://goo.gl/photos/YTaWsxfFgygEkRat7"><img alt="https://goo.gl/photos/YTaWsxfFgygEkRat7" border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfpEp6kQeL9UJN6ibuls19ias1KkLbYORZ6hD_J732MXRhelO0GwrSjBaOcP36C9ECkbuJwl6e0YJmIpgIgSRN84f_ULEz52t1zDJHauEkAPXiL2_rrQmBbcTu_fmhsHKx1Ur1_629wuI/s640/cedarpoint+ironman+all_photos.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
Warning - some pictures in this post are not mine and used without
permission, which I hope is ok by whoever posted these on flickr (I am using it for non-commercial purpose anyway).<br />
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I finished this race 4th in my age group out of 26 age groupers and 25th overall out of total 169 Full Distance athletes with the time 11h 52m 07s. Here is the <a href="http://timing.rev3tri.com/mobile/athlete-search/D56A8A92-E004-4ACD-9F9D-F65E7812F3FE/2">official results site</a> (my bib # is 670). I was hoping to go under 12 hours and the result made me very happy :-).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBiPiIEMZt6akKXPLKXa6ScUUaMElGASlPa8PxZyyEsAeL1-daSAaqCCZrdRbt-E8pUBjQFpAeUknHgqEHxTQk7zPQ6QPLSA6SI9GTrp1W4AIRoyhSkjQu0PLn03YugQvK_MFpE1IMSI/s1600/20150914_151927.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXBiPiIEMZt6akKXPLKXa6ScUUaMElGASlPa8PxZyyEsAeL1-daSAaqCCZrdRbt-E8pUBjQFpAeUknHgqEHxTQk7zPQ6QPLSA6SI9GTrp1W4AIRoyhSkjQu0PLn03YugQvK_MFpE1IMSI/s320/20150914_151927.jpg" width="180" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz6G9kV1UZRZPy1XuUHswlsCPPRDQygyuSp6dgMgQpF68WgLZJ1fRYOcsFDSk9v02VFq8wD_os1JEFSY_48plLYIP0rf-Y9ecJWut9ARuY-BruEa-2hyphenhyphenTs7-xki7Oqck-qXfpZOaE9IXU/s1600/20150914_142432.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz6G9kV1UZRZPy1XuUHswlsCPPRDQygyuSp6dgMgQpF68WgLZJ1fRYOcsFDSk9v02VFq8wD_os1JEFSY_48plLYIP0rf-Y9ecJWut9ARuY-BruEa-2hyphenhyphenTs7-xki7Oqck-qXfpZOaE9IXU/s320/20150914_142432.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Due to some minor injuries and travel this was the only race I was able to do in 2015. I had few other things planned, but unfortunately it did not work out. In any case, this was my A race for the year and has been the focus of the past 11 months.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJmqXc0BQrEhzFBe6iHbJp8Np1XvcvhRYZ9aphSxUP1rQ8Zyz8eVTmTsvOCXdxZ5170i5LU-AbnzV9p7CTBh-0cCCyE9rD5akak2YQePJPHMWnVCzDaNTOxoj8zFox-iZA1iZXKamjFA/s1600/20792534304_090df51864_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghJmqXc0BQrEhzFBe6iHbJp8Np1XvcvhRYZ9aphSxUP1rQ8Zyz8eVTmTsvOCXdxZ5170i5LU-AbnzV9p7CTBh-0cCCyE9rD5akak2YQePJPHMWnVCzDaNTOxoj8zFox-iZA1iZXKamjFA/s320/20792534304_090df51864_o.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT8qYy3SKoHBN8S-DLpAy-CXV0kUO5HNf-tsYacxpfyVf-pkARb4y3vBgJo4fTV6uMZ-wJvP4aMdYSY_USoZ8KPgtAI6Hbq6SX0f4rpvGMqZbDtncKLL_vlOOBgWblfVByt19TnNbGmzc/s1600/20150912_155906.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT8qYy3SKoHBN8S-DLpAy-CXV0kUO5HNf-tsYacxpfyVf-pkARb4y3vBgJo4fTV6uMZ-wJvP4aMdYSY_USoZ8KPgtAI6Hbq6SX0f4rpvGMqZbDtncKLL_vlOOBgWblfVByt19TnNbGmzc/s320/20150912_155906.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij69qL9A9nKVRLThKPm9Z_usPDfHtIDynxfCSnl1wsVGt8_mOm4W8Zoh-PZsTXjenvvFLeUvrLod_0OE52bydAPJJqyioxhLoxKkd29133uBN5iHqnpC3JWNwYf5kNI33ab6rjoSBlOZs/s1600/rt20x30-CDPH1498.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>The race was very well organized and was pretty small in size and easily accessible. Cedar Point is an amusement park in Sandusky Ohio and is only 3 hours drive from Pittsburgh. On the same day with the Full Distance there is also a Half Ironman race with about 600+ people, making for a total of about 800 folks. This means the area is not crowded, toilets are freely available, getting in and out is easy, check in for the race is fast and simple. The goody bag and medal were lovely and overall race support was solid. Volunteers on about every 15 miles of the bike (officials claimed every 10 miles, but I did not feel like that) and every 2 miles on the run - they provided Gatorade Endurance, gels, bars, bananas and other stuff. Again, I think the race was organized very well, except for two things: (1) Very poor food for finishers - I did not even touch that food and (2) Not enough toilets on the bike - they only had them about every 20 miles or so, which I feel they need to have a lot more than that. Overall, kudos to the organizers for a race well run!<br />
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One minor issue for some people could be that the finish line was not exciting enough - only about 50 people there and some folks feel this is underwhelming. I did not care, but some people prefer huge Ironman brand races because of the gigantic crowd on the finish and crazy festivities going on. Whatever... At the same time there was some crowd support on the bike and run course - some folks were motivating athletes, dressed in costumes, etc.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Training</h3>
Here is the training plan I used to prepare for this race. You can download <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uNrttN9cvRX3xYQzXUuYnYrcFJ-K_-W77HXcXm5LUjw/edit?usp=sharing">Google Sheets XLS file from here</a>.<br />
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What you see above is based on Hal Higdon Novice 2 marathon training plan for running with added swim, bike and cross training sessions. This was the plan. Here is what it turned out to be in reality (from TrainingPeaks.com):<br />
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Overall what happened was pretty consistent with the plan and here is the summary of the training as shown on charts above (average 12h 13min of training per week across all disciplines):<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Swimming </li>
<ul>
<li>average of 2 times a week in 25 yard YMCA pool (some weeks once, other weeks 3 times)</li>
<li>average of 4,128 yards per week (I never swam more than 3,000 yards at a time)</li>
<li>average of 1h 32min of swimming per week</li>
<li>handful of open water swims this year, none in wet suite</li>
<li>30% of the swim distance was drills, 50% swim with the IM race pace (1m50s/100 yards), 20% tempo and intervals</li>
</ul>
<li>Biking </li>
<ul>
<li>started with low volume and increased it up until 3 weeks before the race taper started, so the average numbers below are average over 9 months of training </li>
<li>between 4 to 5 times a week</li>
<li>95% of the biking was done on the indoor recumbent trainer (see picture below) with only a dozen of bike rides on open road on real bike in entire year (same as past year) </li>
<li>average of 5h 44 min of biking per week </li>
<li>average 111 miles per week</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>95% of biking was done at steady pace - warm up for 20 minutes and then maintain stable power up to 200 watts for the rest of the bike with 90 rpm cadence</li>
<li>since biking was done indoors, the hours and distance can be multiplied by 25%</li>
<li>static stretch after each bike </li>
</ul>
<li>Running</li>
<ul>
<li>started with low volume and increased it up until 3 weeks before the
race taper started, so the average numbers below are average over 9 months of training</li>
<li>4 times per week (one of these is a long run on very hilly trails, three other times usually steady pace at about half open marathon intensity on hilly asphalt roads, about a dozen of interval sessions in a year and a dozen tempo runs on flat road or treadmill) </li>
<li>average of 22.1 miles per week</li>
<li>average 3h 30 min of running per week</li>
<li>running drills for a few minutes twice a week before the run </li>
<li>static stretch for a few minutes after each run</li>
<li>in April I had an IT Band issue and had to drop volume and intensity for some time, went to ART specialist, did extensive foam rolling, stretching, etc. and it seems to have been completely gone by July</li>
</ul>
<li>Cross training</li>
<ul>
<li>between 3 to 4 sessions per week up until 2 weeks before the race</li>
<li>average 1h 25 min per week</li>
<li>push ups, pull ups, light dumbbells, planks, abdominal crunches on the floor and stability ball, bridges, few yoga sessions, etc.</li>
</ul>
</ul>
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Here is a picture of my bike with the "desk" for laptop - this is where I spent majority of my training while working on a computer (the laptop is not shown in the picture) - I bought this device over 10 years ago on eBay and had no idea how much I will end up using it :-) :<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_DByMggLd9TnnE4ZsDU-mYmog-g6Bk57lJA8sl0hqkMK_MmzEqYaZmDkvPJ3k9U1kpfkEY9_jfrBn0wxXRb0orLmrNuEZffozmGnjDuzhg_IdWuqLMjy1dMu348ppVCiBnBgr3juzwlM/s1600/bike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_DByMggLd9TnnE4ZsDU-mYmog-g6Bk57lJA8sl0hqkMK_MmzEqYaZmDkvPJ3k9U1kpfkEY9_jfrBn0wxXRb0orLmrNuEZffozmGnjDuzhg_IdWuqLMjy1dMu348ppVCiBnBgr3juzwlM/s320/bike.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Pre-race and logistics</h3>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7iWR6p4HhPpwbf8Z8DUylYxKv6vK0bIXzfKLhA7Wp0RrhtWyhuLiKfffYzqyu653dwLJxH811kmvzpnm4cpcVI_Q7020kAon_PrmvQqrwnUmbdMaVFhwUh6SmupagbZPqHU9U3i1xx2E/s1600/waves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7iWR6p4HhPpwbf8Z8DUylYxKv6vK0bIXzfKLhA7Wp0RrhtWyhuLiKfffYzqyu653dwLJxH811kmvzpnm4cpcVI_Q7020kAon_PrmvQqrwnUmbdMaVFhwUh6SmupagbZPqHU9U3i1xx2E/s320/waves.jpg" width="295" /></a>My taper started 3 weeks before the race. You can see weekly time in the charts above. Last two days before the race I did not do any sports activity.<br />
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I kept eating as usual in the last week before the race, just added little extra carbs than normal. 24 hours before the race I took a double dose of my usual calcium and magnesium (two tables of each, instead of one), but consumed my usual two fish oil pills, one multi-vitamin and one glucosamine-chondroitin pill.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI7jpf-IPoav1ER_OIsxa2a1V7r_MgUtxbzsD3HcmdAYK_bK5vpMWJ2gCZG2PshrbuVrzMfX-DpkWqR4dsJKHObgBWNexbSy0-iTLm2_ssPpXCx-ClszAkVpMDJC8rmyJwvzvhL_TXUEc/s1600/20150913_054932.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI7jpf-IPoav1ER_OIsxa2a1V7r_MgUtxbzsD3HcmdAYK_bK5vpMWJ2gCZG2PshrbuVrzMfX-DpkWqR4dsJKHObgBWNexbSy0-iTLm2_ssPpXCx-ClszAkVpMDJC8rmyJwvzvhL_TXUEc/s320/20150913_054932.jpg" width="320" /></a>I left Pittsburgh at noon on Saturday and arrived in Sandusky at 3pm. Picked up my bag in 10 minutes, then waited until 4pm mandatory athlete meeting, which lasted about half an hour. On Saturday there was a lot of wind and Sprint distance athletes had their swim and bike (!) canceled. Bike check in for half and full distance was cancelled and we checked in our bikes on Sunday morning. The Lake Erie was more like Pacific Ocean on the day before the race:<br />
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On Saturday at 5pm I had Seafood Alfredo Pasta and fresh salad at Olive Garden. Finished my dinner at 6pm and went to hotel for the night. I stayed at Holiday Inn Express & Suites Port Clinton-Catawba Island. This is about 30 minutes away from the race start, which seems like a lot, but it was not too bad. Worked out ok for me. I stayed there two nights, including the night after the race.<br />
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On the morning of the race I got up at 4:30 am, ate a banana, two tbsp of peanut butter, good slice of whole wheat bread, about 10 oz of apple cider without sugar, drank about 10 oz of water. Left hotel at 5am and got to the transition area at 5:30am. At 6am ate one PowerGel with 6 oz of water. Setup my bike and all special needs bags, got into a wet suite and was all ready to go by 6:30am by which time they closed the transition area. Race start for full distance was at 7am. The air temperature was about 52 F (about 11C) - pretty darn cold being naked, but in a wet suite it was perfect. Could not have asked for better temperature!<br />
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<h3>
Swim</h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF3PWlRezI3l6o1LFjPoCfRt8w6PBFGMF33sQpsnn30wRoM9zjDJYI5fTDxAIAxAS5JNAE_E8PtECyavM5SYKHHQw7Rexa3fmmu9UdJ9eZtpbHHNB46V3PJDhaJQqTii0q9fwIB_IxO8s/s1600/rt20x30-CDPA0329.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF3PWlRezI3l6o1LFjPoCfRt8w6PBFGMF33sQpsnn30wRoM9zjDJYI5fTDxAIAxAS5JNAE_E8PtECyavM5SYKHHQw7Rexa3fmmu9UdJ9eZtpbHHNB46V3PJDhaJQqTii0q9fwIB_IxO8s/s320/rt20x30-CDPA0329.jpeg" width="213" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAHj4rtMoAMIkX2AjZBwluAyUtwlA27VhtDSG2mzNcYQa_Vq44316yFP074AmAfHhrCptkNVk-5NnJHagcacPpejEnDTHSCyQGpnS1RlM01yyrLTLt9PFQTTDFs5NNj3Fgpe3qjuVK1U0/s1600/20793831423_b10cdef840_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAHj4rtMoAMIkX2AjZBwluAyUtwlA27VhtDSG2mzNcYQa_Vq44316yFP074AmAfHhrCptkNVk-5NnJHagcacPpejEnDTHSCyQGpnS1RlM01yyrLTLt9PFQTTDFs5NNj3Fgpe3qjuVK1U0/s320/20793831423_b10cdef840_o.jpg" width="213" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpoB_eSzJuRB-otKM799Jf7gfcHoNRO44pc9fdWTQAxYhypvWRIZuPUS6UtwnISVr0XM5hFZsQtf-oYaqWdqzi34m3BXRql8sttD44QiZwxsh28GbL2tCqaRwbgHEIiMIHE1tOgELRr9w/s1600/21226538830_bfc027a3e5_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpoB_eSzJuRB-otKM799Jf7gfcHoNRO44pc9fdWTQAxYhypvWRIZuPUS6UtwnISVr0XM5hFZsQtf-oYaqWdqzi34m3BXRql8sttD44QiZwxsh28GbL2tCqaRwbgHEIiMIHE1tOgELRr9w/s320/21226538830_bfc027a3e5_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://tpks.ws/d77Ob" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="http://tpks.ws/d77Ob" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif426tSl7ZvbGMf108rAGC1IUIxkf62rUAxG67qOznxg3HIBU9Hg_ksokkUyw52i7Vb01C5kUonoItokBKIxoTC07fm5exBEJhkc5oc9OW7pyl0PEsQwarTX1Dpzc40_Tfqo9tme4Iin0/s320/swim+route.png" width="312" /></a>The the organizers moved the swim about 600 yards away from the transition area because of waves in the main lake. I did not do any warm up or pre-swim. Swim start was time trial - meaning you line up in a queue and they let 2 people at a time into the water with few seconds apart. The timing mat is right on the edge of the water, so your timer starts when you cross it. This makes it for a very calm start and I loved that. Once I entered the water, I washed my face and googles, put them on, did about a dozen of breast strokes and then started easy freestyle swim. After the first 5 minutes I warmed up and slightly increased my pace, but all the way I kept it comfortable in HR zone 2. I was hoping to average 1m50s per 100 yards pace, but because of zigzagging it was a bit slower, so the speed gain of wet suite was not enough to compensate for the imperfections in the swim path. Here is my <a href="http://tpks.ws/d77Ob">Garmin track of the swim</a>:<br />
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The water temperature was perfect for wet suite and the water inside of the bay was very calm, however outside of the protective wall it was wavy - sometimes I felt like on a little roller coaster going up and down. But overall it was not bad at all and added to the fun. I had no nutrition on the swim and do not feel like it is needed. At the exit from the swim there were wet suite peelers and they helped me to get it off quickly, so I picked it up and ran to the T1.</div>
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</div>
<div>
My swim split was 14th out of 26 in my age group and 78 out of 169 overall. Pretty darn slow, but I was not tired one bit. Like I have not done any swim at all.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Bike</h3>
<a href="http://tpks.ws/Kx2y" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="http://tpks.ws/Kx2y" border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAjboNt0ySU72M6sj0jaPR4tvT9w5zZU9cRE1TpdEIvuKB0B5AqNdOPMZ8z8_BqR-Qkg6ZV1p62HLOJdTINC_kyObav-JJTn8wuduv-Cy8YvLQPHsGEayvjHIKxEW9U5dxi3BeWlCrrpk/s320/cedar+point+full+ironman+bike+course+2015.png" width="320" /></a>In T1 they made you go into a T1 covered tent, so people can hide from outside view and change. I had my PTC kit under my wet suite and simply took my eye glasses out of the swim-bike transition bag with my race number on it and pushed my wet suite into the bag, then left the tent, took my bike, put on the helmet and ran to the exit. My pedals were already clipped, so it made it easy to run fast in T1 with the bike.<br />
My plan for the bike was to maintain steady 90 rpm all the way and most important keep heart rate in zone 2 at 130 bpm (turned out to be 129 avg). It felt like a very easy pace for the bike and I thought of it as a warm up for the run. Even with that easy pace I passed a lot of people and few people passed me. The wind was sometimes strong (they said it was up to 30 mph at times), but it was all over the place - from sides, front, rear, etc. I would prefer it without the wind, but it was not too bad. My <a href="http://tpks.ws/Kx2y">Garmin recorded 2616 ft</a> of elevation gain/loss.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7BCPiv3DjFhjyPEidaDCbM5zouA-TuPGkXOn-O-if2c2NUI_aNs9ySUfGOvQ4i7vlXc6d2YyYZRStZpy8DWRT1onn82tRmXQ6RMrEiK8UXpic7ZnEynKgs-T3Z1X92HXrSjPPjlcw3WA/s1600/21225886160_daa1572ba3_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7BCPiv3DjFhjyPEidaDCbM5zouA-TuPGkXOn-O-if2c2NUI_aNs9ySUfGOvQ4i7vlXc6d2YyYZRStZpy8DWRT1onn82tRmXQ6RMrEiK8UXpic7ZnEynKgs-T3Z1X92HXrSjPPjlcw3WA/s640/21225886160_daa1572ba3_o.jpg" width="640" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOU6IhEtkyWPtRwlGhA5xnVY2OFL8FjrZ9yhYvkTwk81sfrYqKQg4fDJvz4Crl9bigMtY4_z124Wpt0U9vNU00mEapQlQLGsIhksXPbphuNz7dN39L1MvRqIyy7NRcwwIMTzApWADPAg8/s1600/12038744_1236572026359660_5320651343780113503_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOU6IhEtkyWPtRwlGhA5xnVY2OFL8FjrZ9yhYvkTwk81sfrYqKQg4fDJvz4Crl9bigMtY4_z124Wpt0U9vNU00mEapQlQLGsIhksXPbphuNz7dN39L1MvRqIyy7NRcwwIMTzApWADPAg8/s320/12038744_1236572026359660_5320651343780113503_o.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9N6Koc2w5mCvGoBUn5ogigDfgpO_LkZnl6UnAZOxaqbe6o6uzAJFdlutqpXwVGvu_YeWbFSvf9fojuHSzFMcWFZUUkrLt3n98J8_MzEG_bkQF213wnY6fW0QT5SMfFsGxSjQhjxTtMPo/s1600/orig-CDPD0295.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9N6Koc2w5mCvGoBUn5ogigDfgpO_LkZnl6UnAZOxaqbe6o6uzAJFdlutqpXwVGvu_YeWbFSvf9fojuHSzFMcWFZUUkrLt3n98J8_MzEG_bkQF213wnY6fW0QT5SMfFsGxSjQhjxTtMPo/s320/orig-CDPD0295.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
For nutrition on the bike I was taking PowerGel every 30 minutes with 4 to 6 oz of water right after the gel and drank Gatorade Endurance provided at aid stations. During my sweat test I would have needed 24 oz of water per hour at 73F going 180 watts, but here it was only 56F and I was wearing long sleeve warm bike jacket and did not sweat one bit, until second half of the bike. In the second half of the bike the temperature rised to about 62F and I took off long sleeve jacket and stuffed it under my PTC kit on the back for the last two hours of the bike (see photo below). At the end of the bike I took one salt stick just in case. I averaged about 20 oz of water and 6 oz of Gatorade on the bike per hour. With lack of sweat this made me use restroom 4 times and I estimate I spent about 8 minutes total on those stops to restrooms. If I went for the podium, I would have to learn to pee on the bike, which is not something I am looking forward to :-). I carried two bottles on the bike - one with water and one with Gatorade. The gels were stuffed into the pouch on the top tube and another pouch under it (see photos). I kept my cell phone in that big pouch for emergency purposes. No solid food on the bike was taken and I did not feel the need. Gels worked perfect.<br />
<br />
<br />
My bike split was 10th out of 26 in my age group and 48th out of 169 total. After the bike finish I did not feel tired at all, except for the neck - since I do all of my training in the recumbent bike indoors, the neck is totally unprepared to be in the aero position for over 6 hours. I could hardly move my head, but legs felt fantastic - almost like I have not even biked. It was really like a warm up for the run - exactly the way I wanted it. And I did enjoy the bike as it was quite scenic half the time.<br />
<br />
In bike-run transition I just put on my socks, hat, race bib and my lovely Saucony Kinvaras 5 and left the station. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Run</h3>
On the run I decided to keep the same 130 bpm heart rate (zone 2) for the first 20 miles and then make a decision on how to change it. Out of transition area I started out too fast. When I looked at my Garmin, I had 144 bpm and was going 7:25 min/mile pace. I tried to slow down, but it was not working. So I started walking while watching my HR. As soon as it went down to 130 bpm, I resumed the run and kept looking at it. At that point I switched the screen to time of day and HR so I wont see the pace. 130 bpm felt very easy and up until mile 20 I felt extremely relaxed and enjoyed the scenery. It felt like a walk in the park and indeed it was. When I looked at the pace at mile 20 - turned out I was doing 8:55 min / mile. This was slower than any of my training runs, except for long runs on the crazy hills on the trail in North Park. <a href="http://tpks.ws/bfw5">According to my Garmin, the elevation gain in the run was 315 ft</a> - pretty much perfectly flat run along the lake shore.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3uR-53A44K4qC2itXYOFLRZu0JN3qX_BOU66XC8JpysyESLAkHJatfbsoD2rq23gE8KR5tskkRo0OkCG92npvuaWWtJS1z0BqYmlo0F7ieTgGYzB-D0KQ8mcr17a3Q68tjiNgrGqz_bc/s1600/21226938699_16e6f44a3c_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3uR-53A44K4qC2itXYOFLRZu0JN3qX_BOU66XC8JpysyESLAkHJatfbsoD2rq23gE8KR5tskkRo0OkCG92npvuaWWtJS1z0BqYmlo0F7ieTgGYzB-D0KQ8mcr17a3Q68tjiNgrGqz_bc/s200/21226938699_16e6f44a3c_o.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="http://tpks.ws/bfw5" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="http://tpks.ws/bfw5" border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvQnZpsPnP_EmXEfWQAQr8adOlTnWmNVXO9DVmoWo6WpSX75PWyI_8-9XCMmA_XVhbbdNys6RDAYN-oyZ7E0J9NsZDkM_JgK-LFKZ3_1h2T7gUL2QrUt9tqMwsr6HYbXeq8n-LK-2N_bI/s320/cedarpoint+full+ironman+run+course+2015.png" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1GSuDy3EJ6lSxE7lnVAhpXvLGVDqcpS5edBue9XvOXrfO-BeZH8dxGN-Jtc6gutLdH4FDkveyCUDj2LVaFPw1U0-2cpUvp6Uq87OxXXQDO1NkVT0bPLn9Tv6zgLvNPRbaKKK6t42j_Bc/s1600/rt20x30-CDPF1352.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1GSuDy3EJ6lSxE7lnVAhpXvLGVDqcpS5edBue9XvOXrfO-BeZH8dxGN-Jtc6gutLdH4FDkveyCUDj2LVaFPw1U0-2cpUvp6Uq87OxXXQDO1NkVT0bPLn9Tv6zgLvNPRbaKKK6t42j_Bc/s320/rt20x30-CDPF1352.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
So it went similar to the bike - PowerGel every 30 minutes + 4 to 6 oz of water with it. Salt stick once per hour (just in case), few sips of Gatorade every couple of miles. I walked for up to a minute every second aid station (every two miles), except for the last 5 miles. I used toilet once to pee in the middle of the run.<br />
<br />
At first some runners were passing me on the run, but I kept to my 130 bpm rule. However in the second half I started to pass lots and lots of other runners who were very slow or even walking, including half distance athletes. I felt like I can run with this slow pace forever, however once I reached mile 20 decided to raise my HR to 140 bpm. At mile 23 still felt great and easy, so I decided not to hold it anymore and let it all unwind. The HR went up to about 155 and I was having great time. Like I was not even racing. There is something about keeping a heart rate vs. pace. With heart rate I KNOW I keep keep certain HR for certain time. Like 130 bpm I can keep "forever". 140 bpm can keep for a very long time. And not knowing the pace makes me not feel tired. So in the last 3 miles I just started accelerating and feeling great. Once I saw a finish line about 500 yards away I went into a full all out sprint and last few dozen yards went with 5 min / mile pace :-).<br />
<br />
My run split was 3rd out of 26 in my age group (one person did not finish) and 24 out of 169 overall. Exactly the same as the overall race. Interesting, isn't it? It is very cool to look at the relative place as time goes by:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzaj4WHUwPlNTRMyAMjDmnQ3fg6kMwOLtHeqGPtFlN_4ChqchE96prk0yWY-QwYyJ7HUpQjxiV3U0thugPCY0ubyG7eIufs8aQx3rRGktYJSPVm7SOiTVuwrr3Pw8RpgIY2Oa2035vvT8/s1600/cedarpoint+ironman+splits+Roman+Kharkovski.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzaj4WHUwPlNTRMyAMjDmnQ3fg6kMwOLtHeqGPtFlN_4ChqchE96prk0yWY-QwYyJ7HUpQjxiV3U0thugPCY0ubyG7eIufs8aQx3rRGktYJSPVm7SOiTVuwrr3Pw8RpgIY2Oa2035vvT8/s640/cedarpoint+ironman+splits+Roman+Kharkovski.jpg" width="562" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
At the finish I was only slightly tired. Nothing at all comparing to previous races - marathons or Half Ironman distances where I felt half dead after the finish. This felt like I could do the whole thing again and I actually enjoyed the 100% of the race. I guess this is because I was extremely conservative and careful and did not push it at all. Before the race I was not even sure if I could finish the thing - considering my odd bike training and lack of real long distance brick workouts. This made me turn this race into a training exercise, but I learned a lot and most important loved it. I know next time it will be harder since I will push the pace some more - perhaps 135 bpm instead of 130? And it may not feel as good. Or do I even need to push it? Not sure yet.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicrRl0paVtFdJiAZORPC6k5U4Pa9p077xX12DjEnPxDt9PGKrFHpQJk-XOvmIRUxdGydalmKFeMHY4WSRB0YhX1EoKt8YTSh5CTlZGpBwRPxEqTxwTF4h99EP_7rLd3B9vbShhcmenWZI/s1600/20150913_190414.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicrRl0paVtFdJiAZORPC6k5U4Pa9p077xX12DjEnPxDt9PGKrFHpQJk-XOvmIRUxdGydalmKFeMHY4WSRB0YhX1EoKt8YTSh5CTlZGpBwRPxEqTxwTF4h99EP_7rLd3B9vbShhcmenWZI/s640/20150913_190414.jpg" width="424" /></a></div>
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
What's next?</h3>
Now that this is behind, what do I do next? The hardest part of this was to stay away from injuries (I felt several times on the brink of overuse injuries and once had IT Band problem in spring time. The second hardest part was to find the time for training. Since I have three boys I really wanted them to see their dad accomplish this, but now I decided to switch into light fitness mode and become training partner for my youngest son, who seems to really like it so far :-). On the last few weeks after the race Edward and I went mountain biking on real trails and started to spend more quality time together. Now my plan is to get my middle son Sasha involved into this. Misha is training every day in the Crossfit studio and is in great physical shape and his first Crossfit Competition is tomorrow in Cleveland. I will be cheering there for him.<br />
When is the next Ironman for me? Do not know. Perhaps when kids go to university and leave home? </div>
</div>
Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0Sandusky, OH, USA41.4489396 -82.70796050000001341.353734100000004 -82.869322000000011 41.5441451 -82.546599000000015tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-91781323653381742192015-04-05T10:43:00.002-04:002015-04-05T12:30:26.188-04:00Training and racing summary for 2014<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
For this 2014 summary I am repeating some stuff from <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2014/01/training-and-racing-summary-for-2013.html">my 2013 annual report</a>, but training specific content is all about 2014. It was another awesome year for many reasons, fitness included. Overall training and racing went well. On Christmas party I got a 5 year PTC veteran patch :-)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi0WDYr6mIPAQ7UMkaonivbbGxYUj5DOKNCKJJV3e8V5D0yLYi3BX8nu1kAsZdReJJKfWt_ZRiI7aS4yRAq2nRl8zVwcyQEb6Sn04dkYiCwZmADB8_yFPNdtLCY09C1Zkzi-QJkJqExY0/s1600/PTC_patch_5_years.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi0WDYr6mIPAQ7UMkaonivbbGxYUj5DOKNCKJJV3e8V5D0yLYi3BX8nu1kAsZdReJJKfWt_ZRiI7aS4yRAq2nRl8zVwcyQEb6Sn04dkYiCwZmADB8_yFPNdtLCY09C1Zkzi-QJkJqExY0/s1600/PTC_patch_5_years.jpg" height="316" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
In 2014 I only did two races and one MS150 ride:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Pittsburgh Marathon (finished with the time 3:20:25) - <a href="http://www.pittsburghmarathon.com/">race report here</a></li>
<li>MS150 ride - this is nor a race (175 miles in two days) - <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/+RomanKharkovski/albums/6022934394914856225">photos here</a></li>
<li>North Park Sprint Triathlon by YMCA (took 1st place in my age group) - <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2014/11/sprint-triathlon-in-north-park.html">race report here</a></li>
</ul>
Here are year summary stats from TrainingPeaks.com:<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9e0YoSWwlWIEVsuwcP6trIMYu7zhGofrWRtBAfST-HxxgN-izMXwPg5-ZFB249U7ar8mKzuMd1KJYqqHFFAlSpDafrBz5Ddx4ksQusb3vmHQnJrj8mPBqdVjvsVJpUcQt7Dmr2Q_4z8g/s1600/2014_fitness.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9e0YoSWwlWIEVsuwcP6trIMYu7zhGofrWRtBAfST-HxxgN-izMXwPg5-ZFB249U7ar8mKzuMd1KJYqqHFFAlSpDafrBz5Ddx4ksQusb3vmHQnJrj8mPBqdVjvsVJpUcQt7Dmr2Q_4z8g/s1600/2014_fitness.png" height="316" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
As you can see I took 2 weeks off at the end of the season in early October with no training of any kind.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFpA2IUC3fw8e8Ufy60YYLelYvEM6UwyagLSYIdV7i3N5Oas3eW-k2Du2DHu992J0xT7jwe3fDr6w0JCu8D_Mde5hsyFHzb9zmiUUC4vq9luwGZxXRcjQQhyphenhyphenEqLzrucWyQKpVjWDg3yoc/s1600/performance+2014.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFpA2IUC3fw8e8Ufy60YYLelYvEM6UwyagLSYIdV7i3N5Oas3eW-k2Du2DHu992J0xT7jwe3fDr6w0JCu8D_Mde5hsyFHzb9zmiUUC4vq9luwGZxXRcjQQhyphenhyphenEqLzrucWyQKpVjWDg3yoc/s1600/performance+2014.png" height="286" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
From Jan 1 to Dec 31, 2014 I averaged 11 h 20 min per week training time:<br />
<br />
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Year</td>
<td><b>Total swim (miles)</b></td>
<td><b>Total bike (miles)</b></td>
<td><b>Total run (miles)</b></td>
<td>Longest swim (yards)</td>
<td>Longest bike (miles)</td>
<td>Longest run (miles)</td>
<td>100 yard swim (sec)</td>
<td>Half IronMan</td>
<td valign="top">Olympic triathlon</td><td valign="top">Sprint Triathlon</td><td>26.2 miles run</td>
<td>100 mile bike</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2014</td>
<td>102</td>
<td>5,102*</td>
<td>1113</td>
<td>3,100</td>
<td>107</td>
<td>26.2</td>
<td>1:24</td>
<td>-</td>
<td valign="top">-</td><td valign="top">1:09:16</td><td>3:20</td>
<td>5:50</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2013</td>
<td>130</td>
<td>5,937</td>
<td>985</td>
<td>3,200</td>
<td>65</td>
<td>16</td>
<td>1:24</td>
<td>5:11:04</td>
<td valign="top">-</td><td valign="top">1:06:56</td><td>-</td>
<td>-</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2012</td>
<td>117</td>
<td>6,259</td>
<td>822</td>
<td>3,100</td>
<td>102</td>
<td>13.6</td>
<td>1:30</td>
<td>-</td>
<td valign="top">2:22:28</td><td valign="top">1:04:01</td><td>-</td>
<td>5:45</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2011</td>
<td>72</td>
<td>6,800</td>
<td>948</td>
<td>1,500</td>
<td>102</td>
<td>26.2</td>
<td>-</td>
<td>-</td>
<td valign="top">-</td><td valign="top">1:14:42</td><td>3:23</td>
<td>5:20</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2010</td>
<td>15</td>
<td>1,000</td>
<td>300</td>
<td>600</td>
<td>25</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>-</td>
<td>-</td>
<td valign="top">-</td><td valign="top">-</td><td>-</td>
<td>-</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2009</td>
<td>5</td>
<td>300</td>
<td>200</td>
<td>400</td>
<td>20</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>-</td>
<td>-</td>
<td valign="top">-</td><td valign="top">-</td><td>-</td>
<td><br /></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
* Note: In 2014 I changed the way I record bike trainer miles - instead of using what the trainer shows me, I enter distance based on power by manually translating it into speed, then distance. This method shows about 15% to 20% fewer miles than just recording what the trainer shows on display.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In 2014 I generally followed the following schedule of training and kept my log in the <a href="http://trainingpeaks.com/">TrainingPeaks.com</a>:</div>
<ul>
<li>Monday<br />Crosstraining + bike + swim</li>
<li>Tuesday<br />Crosstraining + bike + run</li>
<li>Wednesday<br />Bike + run (up until May 2015 marathon, then I switched to 3 times a week running)</li>
<li>Thursday<br />Crosstraining + bike + run</li>
<li>Friday<br />Crosstraining + bike</li>
<li>Saturday<br />Swim </li>
<li>Sunday<br />Long run (usually on the <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/5721326805181720193?banner=pwa">trail in North Park</a>) </li>
</ul>
<ul>
</ul>
<h3>
Swim </h3>
This past year I did not improve my swimming much - mostly kept it at the same level - mostly because I reduced the swimming volume (average 2.5 swim sessions per week - down from 3 swim sessions in 2013 and went from 3,000 yards per session in 2013 down to 2,500 yards in 2014 - mostly due to lack of time). At the end of the year 2014 I started taking swim lessons with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pub/shannon-metzler/57/260/175">Shannon Metzler</a> and hope it will give me boost in much needed swim speed.<br />
<br />
Just like in the previous year, I took underwater video camera (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EROCLC/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1">Swann Freestyle goes for $140 on Amazon</a>) with me to the pool every couple of months and <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2014/01/video-recording-of-swim-session.html">set it on the side of the pool</a>, at the end of the lane, under and over water, etc. and then watched that footage when I got back home. This was perhaps the single best thing that helped my swim. Other than that I have read few books on swimming and am subscribed to the <a href="http://www.swimsmooth.com/">http://www.swimsmooth.com</a> newsletter (and bought their book). Those guys are fantastic! Their app is just pure awesomeness :-) - it is free to download and use.<br />
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<a href="http://www.swimsmooth.com/#console_signup"><img alt="http://www.swimsmooth.com/#console_signup" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6FwvsNEr5YTLlSkbs05ogMo60VMAam0dhtTVSXwr_weFCo8AUuQcPt46aXjRc64BwJAZqszoueYwBaFQmVIqXqe7lwn_pS_LFey3-uSCe0F6KXsqv-bWo4hYYmAlVm9izoOT2FupNrlI/s1600/swim_smooth.PNG" height="402" title="" width="640" /></a></div>
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Bike</h3>
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In 2014 (same as in 2012 and 2013) 98% of all of my biking I did on the indoor
trainer - on my
recumbent Schwinn 230i bike (purchase in 2001 on eBay for $650). I have
built a computer desk over this bike and while pedaling do some email,
read, write and do all kinds of stuff while biking. This is what allows
me to do 4 to 5 bike workouts per week. I would never have been able to
bike this much if I had to ride outside. Plus doing something on the
computer removes any sense of boredom. I know people dread indoor bike
workouts and would too if not for my computer setup. Since most
of my cycling is done on the trainer indoors while doing something on
my laptop, almost all of
it is long steady ride with no intervals - after initial warmup of about
25 min, building up power to the steady level of 150 to 230 Watts and
maintain it for the period of the ride (usually 1 hour to 2 hours), then
cool down for 5 min at the end. I rode my mountain bike in
2014 on real trail only twice and
took my tri bike to the road for a total of about 5 times this past
year, with 2 of those being races.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibA8eS9zVOZ-Nx-PjEcN9VlIo96JEoiTeUCujEdjaPj2B14JMyvQMKaD96DhyZHp12JlcV5tn8YrpeiR-1YBnh83KsMUUZXrcgNbNU8hCHecqHn-MVEXQ0RWZDutr4J1dvvlz6MS3C3gc/s1600/bike.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibA8eS9zVOZ-Nx-PjEcN9VlIo96JEoiTeUCujEdjaPj2B14JMyvQMKaD96DhyZHp12JlcV5tn8YrpeiR-1YBnh83KsMUUZXrcgNbNU8hCHecqHn-MVEXQ0RWZDutr4J1dvvlz6MS3C3gc/s1600/bike.jpg" height="552" width="640" /></a></div>
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Run</h3>
At the beginning of 2014 up until the Pittsburgh Marathon in May I ran four times a week with a long run being on Sunday morning on the trail of North Park. Other days either on the McKnight Elementary school track or in my neighborhood. From May until the end of the year I ran three times a week. Most of my running was in heart rate zones 3 and 4. For most of this year I ran steady pace with only a few dozen runs where I did did tempo runs, 400 and 800 repeats, hill repeats. Overall run training was not very technical - I just <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/p/favorites.html">enjoyed audiobooks and podcasts while running</a> and did not think much about numbers. I load my Android phone with podcasts and books, put on headphones and never want to stop running :-), especially if it is on <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/5721326805181720193?banner=pwa">North Park trail</a>. It is as good as it gets.<br />
<br />
See details about my run training in the Pittsburgh Marathon <a href="http://www.pittsburghmarathon.com/">race report here</a>.<br />
<br />
At the end of 2014 I <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2015/02/super-flexible-tv-wall-mount-for.html">purchased and installed a treadmill in the basement</a> and started using it about once a week to replace late night runs in the neighborhood (I do not like running in the dark on the road and it is too much to spend 15 minutes to drive to the park trail). <br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Crosstraining</h3>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I usually do cross training in the morning before work and it
takes ~30 min. I do about 90 reps on stability ball or on the floor for abs and 90 for the back (laying on stability ball face down), then do about 30 dynamic side planks on each side and then hold for 30 sec, do two sets of pull-ups (total of about 30), pushups with feet on stability ball and hands on floor handles (about 30 to 40 of these in one set and then once more). This is pretty much unchanged from 2013.</div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Health</h3>
My height is 172 cm
(5'7'') and weight stayed between 68 to 73 kg (same as last year). I had no foot injuries, but at the end of the year had sore left shoulder and stopped swimming for two weeks.<br />
<br />
Average daily sleep time was about 7 hrs 30 min (up 10 min from year before). I am working to get it up to 8 hours per day in 20145 :-).<br />
<br />
Nutritionally I did well and
made fruit and berry smoothies on my <a href="https://www.vitamix.com/">Vitamix blender</a>
several times a week. I must admit that this Vitamix is the most
important "fitness" equipment I own :-). This is really outstanding
stuff. I buy frozen fruit and berries at Costco or Sams Club, add fresh
carrots and bananas, some flax seed or chia seed, honey, water and those
smoothies are heavenly... The only thing is that I really like
chocolate and natural honey and consume more of it than I should. I also
love bunch of other sweet things (not soda though) and need to reduce
overall sugar intake. This is a hard one... Here is what my fruit shakes look like. I stole this picture from the internet, but you get the idea :-). <b>If you only had $350 to spend on your triathlon gear and you asked me where to spend it, I would say you buy yourself Vitamix blender!</b> <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkgmquhbhgGxNizGKFm5Y1VStZWmk6O4MMUAQ6l3046D_bN794eB6mI3jM35eTq6eKIEdc9r3vcEZpCYEFvzJYe0NcjAE1NMawmAgzUaWyH277VGqK6W4kWexaS9gFcQTppiahWH2oOo/s1600/FruitSmoothiesWithFruit1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkgmquhbhgGxNizGKFm5Y1VStZWmk6O4MMUAQ6l3046D_bN794eB6mI3jM35eTq6eKIEdc9r3vcEZpCYEFvzJYe0NcjAE1NMawmAgzUaWyH277VGqK6W4kWexaS9gFcQTppiahWH2oOo/s1600/FruitSmoothiesWithFruit1.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
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<h3>
Plans for 2015</h3>
The main event for me in 2015 is the <a href="http://challenge-familyusa.com/challenge-cedar-point/">Challenge Cedar Point Full Ironman</a> race on September 13 at Sundusky, Ohio. I also plan few small races - perhaps few Sprints and Olympic distance races time permitting. I will do <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2015/01/help-me-to-raise-money-for-good-cause.html">MS150 ride</a> with the first day being a Century ride and second day 65 miles ride.<br />
<br />
I plan on running 4 times a week in 2015, one or two of those on the treadmill in the basement (if it is dark outside). <br />
<br />
<br />
With my youngest son Edward we already signed up for the April 11 YMCA Adventure Warrior race, and signed up as the family (oh yeah) for the 5K Pittsburgh Color run in September. I am hoping to sign up for few more races with Edward or may be even can get Misha or Sasha to do something. Since I am writing this in April 2015, by this time Edward already did his first triathlon at YMCA indoors and took 3rd place in his age group! It was amazing to watch him race. If not for swimming, he would have taken 1st place, so we have some work cut out for us :-).</div>
Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-1290341778268091752015-02-01T16:57:00.002-05:002015-02-01T16:58:52.803-05:00"Super flexible" TV wall mount for fitness room for $0<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Last month I purchased a treadmill for my basement to be used by the whole family (guess who is really using it). We also have elliptical and stationary bike there. So we decided to put a smart TV on the wall. Since this is a new TV, it is the best one in the house and kids are often using it to play xbox. All of this requires me to be able to reposition TV on the wall depending on who is using it. The viewpoints are very different. Kids play xbox sitting on the floor, so the TV must be at their eye level on the left side of the room. When I run on treadmill the TV is pretty much against the ceiling on the right side of the room. When someone uses elliptical the TV needs to be in the middle of the room - centered between ceiling and the floor. Overall ===> this TV needs to be able to stay put on this wall anywhere from left to right wall, from the floor up to the ceiling. They do not sell mounts like this, so I decided to make one.<br />
<br />
After some deliberation, I decided to use materials I already had from prior projects:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>10 foot long 1" diameter gas pipes (two of them) with a 2" threaded connector in between (I had used this to <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2014/07/rain-water-collection-system.html">clean the rain drain under my driveway</a> this summer and it has been sitting in garage ever since).</li>
<li>16 feet metal cable - this was the cable I replaced when <a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2014/11/garage-door-spring-replacement-project.html">re-built garage door</a> this past fall. </li>
<li>metal guide for the kitchen drawer (leftover from kitchen remodeling I did 10 years ago).</li>
<li>four mounting screws (whenever I throw away something big, I remove few good screws for future use and keep them in several jars of different sizes). </li>
<li>metal top from the old laundry washer machine (I replaced the mashine 2 years ago with a new one, but this metal sheet was too good to throw away, so I kept it - see picture below).</li>
</ul>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y_3KwkdrSJ4/VJY79TtFEwI/AAAAAAAA0Ac/K-eY-F3vIwg/s1600/20141216_222049.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y_3KwkdrSJ4/VJY79TtFEwI/AAAAAAAA0Ac/K-eY-F3vIwg/s1600/20141216_222049.jpg" height="470" width="640" /></a></div>
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First - cut out the sheet of metal from the top of the old laundry washing machine (or use any other think metal and bent it properly:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3hGqIDsKg8g/VJY79xVsxfI/AAAAAAAA0Ak/Hi9q-wZ0xGo/s1600/20141216_224028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3hGqIDsKg8g/VJY79xVsxfI/AAAAAAAA0Ak/Hi9q-wZ0xGo/s1600/20141216_224028.jpg" height="640" width="588" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5NfIwMAnAVQ/VJY7-sn3NAI/AAAAAAAA0As/DwCAPG2BgtI/s1600/20141216_225302.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5NfIwMAnAVQ/VJY7-sn3NAI/AAAAAAAA0As/DwCAPG2BgtI/s1600/20141216_225302.jpg" height="574" width="640" /></a></div>
Once you complete the cut, make sure to file sharp sides of the entire piece to remove the edge. I filed it very nice so it is very smooth. Then mark holes to mount on TV by using a newspaper and then transferring the holes from newspaper into the metal and drilling those holes. The bent you see on the picture below is the one that was already on the piece and because it is a very think metal, it will hold the TV very well - there is absolutely no chance it will come undone - even if I put my own weight on it. You put your screws into the slots that are already on the back of your TV - these are the same slots you would use for any normal TV mount:<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9NMCTT5hFeA/VJY7_EJSTII/AAAAAAAA0A0/0luM2kikHrQ/s1600/20141216_232749.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9NMCTT5hFeA/VJY7_EJSTII/AAAAAAAA0A0/0luM2kikHrQ/s1600/20141216_232749.jpg" height="640" width="498" /></a></div>
Since my basement room is wider than 10 feet and I did not want to purchase new pipes, I decided to connect two old gas pipes I already had suing threaded connector (see on the left pipe on the pic below). Make sure you screw it on very tight - as far as it gets. I use two pipe wrenches to make it super tight:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TeSG0XJ0aJI/VJY7_uqLD7I/AAAAAAAA0A8/_XEs1d_Mn9c/s1600/20141216_222053.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TeSG0XJ0aJI/VJY7_uqLD7I/AAAAAAAA0A8/_XEs1d_Mn9c/s1600/20141216_222053.jpg" height="640" width="546" /></a></div>
Once you connect the pipes, measure the distance wall to wall and cut one of the pipes so that it fits wall to wall with about 1/8" gap between the pipe and the wall to allow for error and seasonal movement of wall: <br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h6keZ6I7uLI/VJY8BYuibbI/AAAAAAAA0BY/Z57qe5XyNBM/s1600/20141218_200626.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-h6keZ6I7uLI/VJY8BYuibbI/AAAAAAAA0BY/Z57qe5XyNBM/s1600/20141218_200626.jpg" height="640" width="598" /></a></div>
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Now is time to make brackets - these will be used to mount the pipe into the wall. I made mine from the kitchen drawer that was never used - cut the needed length and bent at 90 degree angle:</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hZyM-LGEcjU/VJY8APkFHGI/AAAAAAAA0BE/AYK85KWsafs/s1600/20141218_193935.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hZyM-LGEcjU/VJY8APkFHGI/AAAAAAAA0BE/AYK85KWsafs/s1600/20141218_193935.jpg" height="640" width="480" /></a><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HOW6fq-bfzo/VJY8An2LhGI/AAAAAAAA0BM/jbydHjIEwnc/s1600/20141218_193958.jpg" height="602" width="640" /></div>
File all sharp edges from these brackets and drill two mounting holes in each. Now use stud finder to locate studs on your wall and attach brackets with 2.5" drywall screws to your studs on both sides of the wall.<br />
<br />
Drill a hole thru the gas pipe and use a 2" bolt to attach the pipe to the bracket. Once you attach one side, you can mark the opposite side and drill a hole thru the bracket and thru the pipe so they align perfectly against each other - otherwise you can't run a bolt thru it - see below:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VTc5U3-uP2g/VJY8B1ueMkI/AAAAAAAA0Bc/Pp458oREfPc/s1600/20141218_205752.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VTc5U3-uP2g/VJY8B1ueMkI/AAAAAAAA0Bc/Pp458oREfPc/s1600/20141218_205752.jpg" height="640" width="398" /></a></div>
The first part of the TV mount is done - now you can hang your TV near the ceiling height and move it left to right by sliding on the pipe. See picture below - despite the looks, this is unbelievably strong:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OB2S8Gyawa4/VJY8CSZsoUI/AAAAAAAA0Bk/T1btZ9xexsE/s1600/20141218_205831.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OB2S8Gyawa4/VJY8CSZsoUI/AAAAAAAA0Bk/T1btZ9xexsE/s1600/20141218_205831.jpg" height="640" width="382" /></a></div>
This is what it looks like from the treadmill:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FbgwTDjdjzE/VJY8CzUYPkI/AAAAAAAA0Bs/gjXiYyBWyY4/s1600/20141218_205904.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FbgwTDjdjzE/VJY8CzUYPkI/AAAAAAAA0Bs/gjXiYyBWyY4/s1600/20141218_205904.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
I used black duct tape to wrap around the gas pipe (you can use any color you like to match your wall):<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PfSIJ921ISk/VJY8DqYmW4I/AAAAAAAA0B4/YVT-psP2Rqg/s1600/20141220_101305.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PfSIJ921ISk/VJY8DqYmW4I/AAAAAAAA0B4/YVT-psP2Rqg/s1600/20141220_101305.jpg" height="524" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5qENUWLzk1k/VJY8EHPYDPI/AAAAAAAA0B8/tbqAW5hSCyI/s1600/20141220_101241.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5qENUWLzk1k/VJY8EHPYDPI/AAAAAAAA0B8/tbqAW5hSCyI/s1600/20141220_101241.jpg" height="308" width="640" /></a></div>
Here is how it looks when in use - but it is too high when kids play xbox while sitting on the floor (they move elliptical and bike to the back of the room):<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_B14yi2p44A/VJY8EjcNnDI/AAAAAAAA0CQ/lqTJSpnnMBo/s1600/20141220_101654.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_B14yi2p44A/VJY8EjcNnDI/AAAAAAAA0CQ/lqTJSpnnMBo/s1600/20141220_101654.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
Next step is not only to allow for sliding of TV between left and right walls, but to be able to lower it to the floor. This is trivial - simply attach the metal cable (you can buy 16 feet of cable at HomeDepot - I used leftover cable from garage door project - 20 year old cable is more than strong enough for TV). Attach this cable to the gas pipe - one long cable attached twice (only one end of the cable is shown below):<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cJzsZLmulLw/VM6fqVz-DpI/AAAAAAAA2vI/P6v2xJ4EZKs/s1600/20150201_164530.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cJzsZLmulLw/VM6fqVz-DpI/AAAAAAAA2vI/P6v2xJ4EZKs/s1600/20150201_164530.jpg" height="640" width="162" /></a></div>
Now - depending on how low or high you need your TV, wrap the cable one or more times around the "hook" as shown below and it will move the TV lower or higher on the wall - operation that takes only a minute - no screws, no mess. My kids do this easily and so far have not (yet) dropped the TV :-):<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4LT70q8s_Js/VM6fq2EAh2I/AAAAAAAA2vQ/1AaCeOxuJvE/s1600/20150201_164559.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4LT70q8s_Js/VM6fq2EAh2I/AAAAAAAA2vQ/1AaCeOxuJvE/s1600/20150201_164559.jpg" height="640" width="558" /></a></div>
Here is how TV looks when lowered almost down to the floor. The cable can easily move side to side and provides for a very solid connection.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y9w--IKYof4/VM6friA3iCI/AAAAAAAA2vY/pEorqrzE-f8/s1600/20150201_164621.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y9w--IKYof4/VM6friA3iCI/AAAAAAAA2vY/pEorqrzE-f8/s1600/20150201_164621.jpg" height="640" width="394" /></a></div>
The project took only about 2 hours to complete and cost me $0 as I already had all the parts in my garage. I would be interested to see other ideas on how to do this same thing - mount your TV on the wall so you can move it to any location you desire in less than 60 seconds.<br />
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-72570467739718631202015-01-30T23:29:00.000-05:002015-02-01T11:16:32.684-05:00Help me to raise money for a good cause - MS150 ride<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This year, for the forth time I will be riding 170 miles in two days on my bicycle to raise money for charity. Here is the link to <a href="http://bit.ly/1yWxstw">my MS150 donations page</a>. The goal is to find cure for <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+multiple+scleroris&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8">Multiple Sclerosis</a>, which is a terrible disease.<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: red;">This is a good cause. Even a donation of $5 will help!</span></h2>
Here is the video I recorded during the ride in 2014:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/nPI-i2YUA50/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/nPI-i2YUA50?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
And here are some photos I took during 2014 ride (<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6022934394914856225">click here to see complete album</a>):<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EV8F1My6Kx8/U5XDTrdMMwI/AAAAAAAAr4s/jaT4XKs94EY/s1600/2014-06-08%2B07.01.42.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EV8F1My6Kx8/U5XDTrdMMwI/AAAAAAAAr4s/jaT4XKs94EY/s1600/2014-06-08%2B07.01.42.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vu-yshoeF6U/U7ioGjhupLI/AAAAAAAAr4s/PistfZwNERU/s1600/P6080365.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vu-yshoeF6U/U7ioGjhupLI/AAAAAAAAr4s/PistfZwNERU/s1600/P6080365.JPG" height="286" width="400" /></a></div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-55504999618460750752015-01-17T14:56:00.001-05:002015-02-01T11:30:16.330-05:00Pinewood Derby Car project<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today was Edward's first the first Pinewood Derby Car Race as a Cub Scout. We did this project together and had a ton of fun doing it. Before starting the design of the car, we watched a ton of youtube videos (<a href="http://youtu.be/-RjJtO51ykY">such as this</a> and many more) and rad bunch of articles on how to build a fast car and it all seemed very simple (and fun). I can't wait next year race - our CubScout Pack decided to have dad's car race the night before kids :-). Before I go into details - here is the final car we've had - it took 1st place in design as voted by scouts. as far as speed - well, it could have done better - and I will tell you why as I know what we will do next year :-).<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EyGFzEFgPvA/VLlBTCevK5I/AAAAAAAA2GQ/5BVi739OP9Q/s1600/2014%2B12%2B26%2B-%2BPinewood%2Bderby%2Bcar1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EyGFzEFgPvA/VLlBTCevK5I/AAAAAAAA2GQ/5BVi739OP9Q/s1600/2014%2B12%2B26%2B-%2BPinewood%2Bderby%2Bcar1.jpg" height="640" width="640" /></a><br />
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According to "<a href="http://pinewoodphysics.com/index.html">sources</a>" the proper way to build a fast Pinewood Derby Car is to do these few things:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtzSNTCq7Y4GJW0kCtKfWzxfjwSWHW0BU8OF2qbsNyiPnoGHV4siu2kodURTz-sCQodXhnzVG2171Iaypf8jmxb21GgPg_v9AOLcP8getyq_su0nuvegNeGOfgt6et63ZzeqNkOuFOSak/s1600/test_results.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtzSNTCq7Y4GJW0kCtKfWzxfjwSWHW0BU8OF2qbsNyiPnoGHV4siu2kodURTz-sCQodXhnzVG2171Iaypf8jmxb21GgPg_v9AOLcP8getyq_su0nuvegNeGOfgt6et63ZzeqNkOuFOSak/s1600/test_results.png" height="138" width="320" /></a></div>
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In our car we have implemented #1, #3 (kinda), #4, #5, #6. We did not do #2 as it was against the rules to modify the wheels and we did not do #7 because the rules prevented changes to the wheel base, etc. We also decided to sacrifice some of the #3 (aerodynamics) for the esthetics - mainly because we felt our car will be so fast, we can afford some drag :-).<br />
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First we decided what overall design we are going to have and together drew the shape of the future car on the paper:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EDtIlNVExCk/VLlA8VvT6wI/AAAAAAAA2DI/NqOHv2s7f9c/s1600/20141229_115535.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EDtIlNVExCk/VLlA8VvT6wI/AAAAAAAA2DI/NqOHv2s7f9c/s1600/20141229_115535.jpg" height="390" width="640" /></a></div>
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Then we transferred the outline to the wooden block and made rough cuts with the large saw and then some finer cuts with the manual coping saw.<br />
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Then we used belt sander to smooth out the rough cut and shape the top of the car. This all was done in a matter of a few minutes - very easy.</div>
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Once we had the outline done, we used the Dremel tool with the sand paper attachment to make finer shape adjustments. This is a bit more delicate work and requires more precision.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J8Us4NTJSqs/VLlBCOVr_4I/AAAAAAAA2Gk/apRoyuZfZhk/s1600/20141230_170342.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-J8Us4NTJSqs/VLlBCOVr_4I/AAAAAAAA2Gk/apRoyuZfZhk/s1600/20141230_170342.jpg" height="640" width="360" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KC8y_B3lmzs/VLlBEaYYhhI/AAAAAAAA2Gg/jd4hbVux-tY/s1600/20141230_170732.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KC8y_B3lmzs/VLlBEaYYhhI/AAAAAAAA2Gg/jd4hbVux-tY/s1600/20141230_170732.jpg" height="640" width="360" /></a></div>
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Nevertheless, Edward did some of this as well (mostly the bottom part of the car). This Dremel tool can easily ruin your design if you overdo it, but we passed this phase with only few minor mistakes.<br />
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The last part of the body work was to make a hole for the driver and cut our the rear spoiler and glue it onto the body of the car. These things are not very aerodynamic and were done on purpose - we traded of some speed for the "looks". However this is not what kept us from winning the speed race. More about it later (some drama, eh?). we made a windshield out of plastic box from grapes.</div>
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The biggest thing in the Pinewood Derby car is the weight placement. We decided to make an opening in the rear to conceal all the weight - drilled the opening and made it all the way to the driver seat to that the bolt that will go in can also adjust the center of gravity if needed. Plus we can add or remove bolts to add or remove weight - and all of it will be concealed inside.<br />
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To melt lead I closed one end of the copper pipe, filled it with led (from bb gun pellets - $2.5 per 5 oz box) and heated it with a torch. Then poured it into the opening in the car. The car almost caught on flames - the lead was so hot! We also kept the garage door open and wore face mask to avoid exposure to the lead fumes. Also use protective glasses to avoid potential splashes from hot lead into eyes. This is a risky part of the project, but it worked out very well.</div>
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Once lead cooled down, we covered it with about 1/8" of the epoxy glue so nobody will touch the lead and we can sand and pain it. Then I drilled a hole all the way to the driver seat - this is where the bolt for weight and gravity center adjustment will go.<br />
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Our center of gravity was 3/4 of an inch in front of rear axle. This is good for smooth track, but may not be great for the track with small bumps as at high speed you can pop front wheels and go off the track. This is why having long hole as shown below is so useful - by using a screw driver I can move the bolt deeper into the car in a matter of seconds without changing the weight of the car, but this can shift my center of gravity in either direction.<br />
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BTW - the thread marks you see in the picture below are made by simply drilling the right hole first and then screwing the bolt into it - lead is very soft and bolt makes its own thread.<br />
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Once all structural work was done we primed the car twice - with sanding of the first layer.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--1hqQFMz3Mg/VLlBMYYCfQI/AAAAAAAA2G0/sM5zL9STeyQ/s1600/20150113_214445.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--1hqQFMz3Mg/VLlBMYYCfQI/AAAAAAAA2G0/sM5zL9STeyQ/s1600/20150113_214445.jpg" height="640" width="352" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Az8JA50GzVI/VLlBNQm4zDI/AAAAAAAA2FU/LyMTrA3b5Lk/s1600/20150114_184043.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Az8JA50GzVI/VLlBNQm4zDI/AAAAAAAA2FU/LyMTrA3b5Lk/s1600/20150114_184043.jpg" height="366" width="640" /></a></div>
And finally painted it once with gold paint and then drew numbers and letters on the car. Next day we painted it once with polyurethane. Once it was all dry we used car wax for extra polish.<br />
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Now it is time to work on wheels. First we worked on polishing the nails. First - put it in the drill and apply file while spinning the nail. After that use sand paper to smooth it out and finally use polishing compound. Once you get the hang of it, it takes less then 10 minutes to polish a nail to mirror finish.</div>
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Since we wanted to ride on canted wheels - we had to bend nails to about 2 degree angle. Instead of buying a $100 device to do it, I made my own device from a 2x4" stud. Just make two wide cuts with a regular saw - each cut perpendicular to another, then insert polished nail with its head into one of the slots - with the sharp side of the nail protruding outside of the block of wood by the lenght of the section that needs to be bent. Then tap with a hammer on that protruding part of the nail. Not very precise, but cheap and easy.<br />
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The benefit of this approach of bending the nail - vs. holding it with pliers is that soft wood does not scratch polished surface of the nail. And you must bend it after you polish it - you can only polish straight nail. And once you bend it - if you scratch it - you better start with a new nail as polishing bent nail is nearly impossible.<br />
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Finally - we polished the sides with graphite, added bunch of graphite into wheels and on nails.<br />
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We raised one front wheel so it was about 1/16" above the ground. Before we glued the wheels, we inserted nails and ran tests on the floor to make sure our car does understeering for about 2" over 4 feet - this is for <a href="http://www.maximum-velocity.com/railridingqa.htm">rail riding</a>. And this is where we made a big mistake! Later on when I did test runs on the track, I saw how this rail riding slows down the car. I do not think next year we are doing rail riding and will make straight rider. After all wheel alignments were done, we use epoxy glue to attach nails.<br />
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I did not mention, but along every step above, we were constantly weighting the car - so that we would know how much lead to use, what is the impact of paint, nails, wheels and other things on the weight. The point was to build a car that would be 2 or 3 oz lighter than the regulation 5 oz weight and then cut small bolts into short segments (and cut the slot for screw driver). We had about 7 cuts of this bolt of different length (and weight) so we have a choice when getting as close to 5 oz as possible.<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3tIeZI1fHNk/VLlBJ8yBUyI/AAAAAAAA2Gw/vThGadzKDbU/s1600/20150111_103837.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3tIeZI1fHNk/VLlBJ8yBUyI/AAAAAAAA2Gw/vThGadzKDbU/s1600/20150111_103837.jpg" height="640" width="480" /></a><br />
These bolt' segments serve 2 purposes. One is to add or remove weight (the race scale can be different from the one we used at home) and Two is to shift center of gravity towards the front or rear as needed - depending how front wheel behave (you do not want those front wheels to pop on a bump). This resulted in our center of gravity being 3/4" in front of the rear wheels. Very fast design.<br />
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The entire project took about 10 hours and was ton of fun. We did win the #1 place in design, but were in the middle overall on speed. After the race was over, I did several test runs on the track and it became VERY obvious that our rail riding was slowing the car down by A LOT. It was very easy to spot - I wish we had access to the track when we were doing the tests (before gluing nails to the body). This was a trivial error to avoid, but we did not know simply by not test riding on the track.<br />
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The biggest lesson of this is that if we want to win on speed, we need to do test rides on a track. Otherwise it is a gamble and only experimentation can complete the project. The funny thing is that all of the design and construction is 99% of the effort in the project while test riding and adjusting it on the track is 1% of the effort, but it is very critical to achieve high speed.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGRUlPGqLScmA63vTuF0FqYxmRM4j-eFH3Sc4I5q2VaLyC0oTdbRwK8vsYbtRR6nCopCic4MBqlu55-Qkljw5Bcst-8eCsax7OK7JNqvT_RYYt3i4nnllXrJupkqntM8M5CiMgxpiPyTQ/s1600/_NIK1400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGRUlPGqLScmA63vTuF0FqYxmRM4j-eFH3Sc4I5q2VaLyC0oTdbRwK8vsYbtRR6nCopCic4MBqlu55-Qkljw5Bcst-8eCsax7OK7JNqvT_RYYt3i4nnllXrJupkqntM8M5CiMgxpiPyTQ/s1600/_NIK1400.jpg" height="342" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpRhAfNsZ84tTN9oMo2pObqqQ-T44P9X892kIuvrBcrd057oeHLrA75vre7a5jw4wq709x7aNjW6jejThjqurfFOESlPduUo2sK4CoYdmkWp81Wsz2r08wSgVvnzWGomcydl2zYbK9EXs/s1600/_NIK1430.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpRhAfNsZ84tTN9oMo2pObqqQ-T44P9X892kIuvrBcrd057oeHLrA75vre7a5jw4wq709x7aNjW6jejThjqurfFOESlPduUo2sK4CoYdmkWp81Wsz2r08wSgVvnzWGomcydl2zYbK9EXs/s1600/_NIK1430.jpg" height="640" width="426" /></a></div>
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
What will I do differently next year?</h3>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Next year I will avoid rail riding and adjust the wheels so that car rides straight line.</li>
<li>I will bend nails half the amount of what I did this year (probably about 1 degree)</li>
<li>While polishing nails, I will use sandpaper up to 1500 grit (see <a href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Build_a_Pinewood_Derby_Car/Axles">this article for details</a>)</li>
<li>Pack the wheels densely with graphite and do not run the car after that.</li>
<li>Make shape <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skpQVJfTm9E">totally aerodynamic</a> for maximum speed (and make fancy shape on a separate car - for dad's race)</li>
<li>Possibly make three different cars with slightly different designs and have them compete in my garage to deserve the race? </li>
<li>Make my own short track out of wood and cut grooves with rotary tool - and test test test the car!</li>
</ol>
Here is the concept car design for the 2016 race - we plan on making a wind tunnel to test aerodynamics and short test track to make sure it rides fast.<br />
<span id="goog_388265519"></span><span id="goog_388265520"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZWcu4wXFHhv8-xHo08idfI18AiPvrvCEmHQ3paGEDilMe4A17kLTfHd6LyOt2e5KuCDKJCQuEFwIjZTXBcGCHOVcDx_fxJqlVR0fYRr8ItPn-72OT0Xat2ADK4Da94_LjKlH1YEDWlUw/s1600/20150120_153219.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZWcu4wXFHhv8-xHo08idfI18AiPvrvCEmHQ3paGEDilMe4A17kLTfHd6LyOt2e5KuCDKJCQuEFwIjZTXBcGCHOVcDx_fxJqlVR0fYRr8ItPn-72OT0Xat2ADK4Da94_LjKlH1YEDWlUw/s1600/20150120_153219.jpg" height="282" width="640" /></a><br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
</ol>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-86264617017866471282014-11-08T20:55:00.003-05:002014-11-08T21:00:24.069-05:00Garage door spring replacement project<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In September torsion springs on my garage door broke and I had a dilemma of hiring a contractor or fixing it myself. After having three different contractors bid between $400 to $900 for the project ($400 for basic replacement and $900 for complete overhaul of the door), I decided to do it myself.<br />
<br />
In addition to replacing torsion springs, I decided to do a complete overhaul of my garage door system and replaced cables, bearing, springs and all 10 rollers with these high quality ones <a href="http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B003AKF4EE/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1">from Amazon</a>:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPAtLWapwsTGilzzOcVbY0LICvdI3yAzXlzMarMYBO9n9JBclsMcSoRCV-l6GtbOqZOmztzKdR-xV_4I6_n5r0OhHfshRLVZMPJ0_zLSypjfBEWDL6vqwFUtLKsKyTZ7bvX5bnfMC9eAQ/s1600/roller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPAtLWapwsTGilzzOcVbY0LICvdI3yAzXlzMarMYBO9n9JBclsMcSoRCV-l6GtbOqZOmztzKdR-xV_4I6_n5r0OhHfshRLVZMPJ0_zLSypjfBEWDL6vqwFUtLKsKyTZ7bvX5bnfMC9eAQ/s1600/roller.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
Having spent a couple of hours researching the process of replacing the torsion springs, I was very aware how <u><b>DANGEROUS</b></u> this process could be <u><b>if not done properly</b></u>. I was also having a really hard time finding appropriate torsion springs. This is when I found this AWESOME web site where I ordered two of my new springs, two new cables and new bearing for the torsion rod. This website has lots of instructional videos and very good customer service - I called them three times with questions and they quickly answered all of them! If you ever are going to replace your garage hardware - use this site: <a href="http://ddmgaragedoors.com/index.php.">http://ddmgaragedoors.com/index.php</a>. Here are instructional videos that they share freely with everyone - these are by far the best videos on the internet about replacing torsion springs: <a href="http://ddmgaragedoors.com/diy-instructions">http://ddmgaragedoors.com/diy-instructions</a>.<br />
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<br />
When you order your new springs, you need to make <u><b>very</b></u> careful measurements - the site above explains all of it. Here is what I measured on my setup - I sent a link to the DDM Garage Door folks and they made sure I ordered correct hardware:<br />
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<a href="https://picasaweb.google.com/115098171996656963581/20140914GarageDoor?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPykt9PBr7q-UQ&feat=directlink"><img alt="https://picasaweb.google.com/115098171996656963581/20140914GarageDoor?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPykt9PBr7q-UQ&feat=directlink" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1jIRD0jCaZR1TjCNdlzoblTRXvigfxYncPx7gla832ZYQEUJnOmvB-5PF7a4L5493wR7PtkbjcK2U8OtXb_ACWLIVPm4fkRdDDufRO_qxphS0w9kKQsxpWVMEf_Au0dcA9QPht9HQdOc/s1600/2014+09+14+-+Garage+door.jpg" height="400" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
This project took me about 10 hours total:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>2 hours of researching the technical details and watching videos</li>
<li>1 hour to measure everything (twice) </li>
<li>2 hours shopping for the right parts (I wish I knew about DDM Garage Doors right away)</li>
<li>2 hours installing and adjusting springs</li>
<li>2 hours to install and adjust cables</li>
<li>1 hour to replace rollers</li>
<li>15 minutes to lubricate everything</li>
<li>10 min to write this blog.</li>
</ul>
I spent about $150 on parts - all highest quality you can possibly buy on the market. This means I saved about $750 compared to the $900 price for the door overhaul proposed by one of the contractors. This comes to about $75 per hour spent. The joy I had from doing it myself - priceless :-). The parts and work quality - I bet it is the same or likely higher than what I would get from a contractor. <br />
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The reason I wanted to write this blog is to share my outstanding experience with the DDM Garage Doors as the provider of parts and their excellent customer service.<br />
<br />
The other big reason is to warn about the high danger of replacing torsion springs. This project is not for the faint of heart. It can kill you if not done right. However once you know the process and follow it, it is very safe to do and is not complicated at all. <span style="color: red;"><b>But you MUST DO IT CORRECTLY!!! Watch instruction videos and hire contractor if you are not sure you can do it right.</b></span></div>
Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-57904135938058620592014-11-08T20:29:00.000-05:002014-11-08T20:29:13.632-05:00Sprint Triathlon in North Park, Pittsburgh (Janney and YMCA - 2014)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On August 10, 2014 I raced Sprint Triathlon in North Park. This is only
few minutes from my home and back in 2011 this was my first ever
triathlon race (<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/5720092416443688881?authkey=CMO36tCx3MXfPw">photos here</a>).
In 2013 I took first place in my age group (<a href="http://kharkovski.blogspot.com/2013/08/race-report-sprint-triathlon-in-north.html">race report</a>), so in this race I was defending my title sort of speak.<br />
<br />
This year I won again in my 40-44 age group (19 participants)
and went faster than the all competitors from age group 0 to 44, except for the overall competitors. I was 9th overall out of 233
competitors. The official results can be found here: <a href="http://www.runhigh.com/2014RESULTS/R081014AC.html">http://www.runhigh.com/2014RESULTS/R081014AC.html</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKBWDiJY6jSeUu9RoNZHewoEqmAgOUf8z816CH5f3_JpHLSa412tKH_HNSbPxASpyPLm9kxJ4wwnkuKl5j3oDUQgTP2oLAawKTdgyQnYYKS9sRQAkX6dffM6YvwbcdCr7lABWJAM4uHw/s1600/north+park+triathlon+1st+place.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKBWDiJY6jSeUu9RoNZHewoEqmAgOUf8z816CH5f3_JpHLSa412tKH_HNSbPxASpyPLm9kxJ4wwnkuKl5j3oDUQgTP2oLAawKTdgyQnYYKS9sRQAkX6dffM6YvwbcdCr7lABWJAM4uHw/s1600/north+park+triathlon+1st+place.jpg" height="320" width="242" /></a></div>
Here is the comparison of 2014 results to 2013 and 2011 races:<br />
<br />
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><br /></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><b>2011
</b></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><b>2013
</b></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><b>2014
</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Swim (700 yards)
</b></td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:18:21
</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:13:48
</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:14:29
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Bike (12.5 miles)</b></td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:33:17
</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:32:59
</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:32:46
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Run (3.1 miles)</b></td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:23:04
</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:21:42
</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">00:22:01
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><b>Total
</b></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><b>01:14:42<br />
</b></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><b>01:08:29
</b></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><b>01:09:16
</b></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I am happy with the result, however swim and run are slower compared to 2013 - not really sure why is that so. I sure hope this is because conditions were different and not because I got slower :-).<br />
<br />
As always - major thing that needs
improvement is the control of pre-race anxiety. I could not get any sleep the night before the race. I may have slept
for about 30 minutes total - same as last year...<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-88963046822005459722014-10-10T23:14:00.000-04:002014-10-10T23:14:00.077-04:00Two weeks in Russia and a week in Japan<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just came back from the 3 weeks trip to Russia and Japan. This was a business trip, but I got to see my relatives on weekends. Fall is a great time to visit Moscow! Beautiful colors in the forest with plenty of mushroom hunting, fresh apples from the garden, crisp air, and great food - any time of the year :-).<br />
<br />
On the way from the airport we drove by the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI) - my Alma Mater. With relatives we went into the forest for mushroom hunting - took few photos while doing that and mom cooked delicious mushroom soup that night. The work week in Moscow was packed with customer meetings and I did not have much time to take pictures. <br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/+RomanKharkovski/albums/6068603299067186593"><img alt="https://plus.google.com/photos/+RomanKharkovski/albums/6068603299067186593" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNpb6Ji_OI_uXH1-i60uGJU16l2acxV-U9ZUx5331q2-1myuqj5ziP0ciMNEm_hfo9EK5BWBeYJUT8q07_aEKY73W1PL2xOyMu3hYCnqIUEFIdsQ7mc-MjmZqDJtd8h8u9XycJFT3Piqg/s1600/russia.jpg" height="640" width="636" /></a></div>
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After Moscow, I flew to Tokyo on a direct flight, which was delayed 7 hours because of the Typhoon in Japan. When I landed any trace of bad weather was gone. In Tokyo I stayed at a nice Royal Park Hotel and went to fitness club for a run, swim and sauna every day :-). In sauna I was reprimanded by the maintenance man for going into it in my swim trunks. My Pittsburgh YMCA folks would disagree, but this was not Pittsburgh, so I took all clothes off next time and fit in well :-). There was not much free time in Tokyo, so <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/5707572823922209473?banner=pwa">unlike my earlier visits</a> this time I have very few pics to offer:<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6067516786883586177?banner=pwa"><img alt="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6067516786883586177?banner=pwa" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgl22tSQ5VYRhLUXk5jeN5QPfaxsvL6X93hUYGvPY0bMIWZNpe_G4u1kmV3bT3DgdiBNq5MvF8ImrodFRrAx1I0dQe4tCLR6f5GIi9lb7SvsyisnlrZuGbL_v9uJFn7wX6enGQl9vL_INA/s1600/japan.jpg" height="298" width="640" /></a></div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0Moscow, Russia55.755826 37.617355.1838695 36.3264065 56.3277825 38.9081935tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-24325736035856606342014-08-31T12:01:00.003-04:002014-08-31T12:01:38.488-04:00Paragliding lesson<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Yesterday I took a lesson in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paragliding">paragliding</a>. Having never done sky diving or anything at all related to flying (except for too many commercial airplanes), this was such a fun experience! I have to say that watching youtube videos of paragliding pros I thought this was a relatively easy thing to do. However as it frequently turns out it is easier said than done properly :-) Here are few moments from the 2.5 hour lesson yesterday (I had better launches than these, but they were not filmed). In the end I had a towed launch, but I put it at the start of the video as it "looks" the coolest :-)<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ut9yQv3ORFk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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If you want to take a lesson, I highly recommend Jon at <a href="http://www.pittsburghparagliding.com/">http://www.pittsburghparagliding.com</a>. I got this lesson for half the cost thanks to the Amazon Local coupon I got by email.</div>
Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-70111297975089152492014-07-25T10:08:00.002-04:002014-07-25T10:08:38.006-04:00Camping with Cub Scouts in Boy Scouts' Heritage Reservation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This weekend my youngest son Edward and I were at <a href="http://www.heritagereservation.org/independence/">Camp Independence</a> with his <a href="http://www.franklinpark36.mypack.us/">Cub Scout Pack 36</a> for 4 days. This is annual event and is open for all Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts.What an awesome time we had!!! Wow.<br />
<br />
The weather was perfect - no rain, not too hot, not too cold. Forest and lake are beautiful. Facilities are great. Staff is outstanding - very energetic and super friendly. Program was packed with all kinds of cool things. The only thing that was a bit lacking is the food, but for 4 days it was ok. Kids had every hour scheduled, starting at 7:50 flag ceremony, followed by breakfast at 8, then activities until 6 pm dinner, which included geology (tour of the mine and rock search), nature trail, sports, BB shooting, bow shooting, crafts, swimming, kayaking, boating, fishing, service project, castle wet sponge fighting, rock throwing, knife skills, tennis, basketball, camp fire, etc. In our pack everyone enjoyed all of the activities. This was so much fun and kids were very happy. After dinner there was a show at camp fire and some free time. Bed time started at 10 pm. Some adults with pedometers found out that we walked about 6 to 7 miles every day. I managed to run 7.5 miles only once (on second day).<br />
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I took bunch of pictures and videos while at the camp (click to see the full album):<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6039410131360435873/6039410168829261762?banner=pwa&pid=6039410168829261762&oid=115098171996656963581"><img alt="Full album" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuxcU_qgQUxqsqegulei8QZI-MP4x3t39XRi_8OY13L7Ro1xCMezaZCEIkKKziEDlQ0dr5C3rfsBG7w691WgaTByevPVRy6rGCVMQ1EZL40fB4GcgGzHvcHtSo3PPqTRBhLsFhhv9FPck/s1600/camping.JPG" height="494" width="640" /></a></div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-61539750695223759292014-07-14T23:35:00.003-04:002014-12-28T12:35:37.456-05:00Rain water collection system - rainbarrels, etc. (part 1)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the past week I have setup a system to collect rain water from the roof of my house (located in Pittsburgh, PA). The water to be used for irrigation of the lawn and garden. I have wanted to do it for quite some time now, but now that my pipe under the driveway collapsed, I decided to build it, instead of digging the driveway, which was freshly covered with new asphalt just this past October.<br />
<br />
The cost of the system is around $300. the biggest investment was my own time. I spent estimated 20 hours to build this thing, but now I feel quite happy as the system works very well. <br />
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I have taken pictures and provided captions for every picture should you decide to build a system like this. The project is only half finished at this time as I have water being collected in plastic totes, but I need to finish the decoration so that these same totes are not exposed to sun and do not look as ugly as they do. I will probably build something out of wood to make it look pretty. Here is a quick snapshot of the entire project - click on the image to see detailed comments for each picture:<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6033664462669764801"><img alt="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6033664462669764801" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRGRaTSw2DwzyvTzozQiPn8-gUwC1vbBwBBju7XPkfry272AWeP6q5Smdae7B4Sw-HB3_2cMEXU0_F6hEd26Agkg-ZbwGBl1Doe9gdwW8R1QtK3-d4sLqC9ql9SDLHWo5VprKWoEtZNNk/s1600/rainbarrels.JPG" height="640" width="376" /></a></div>
The only thing I still need to figure out is the fine filtration. Since I use small electric motor to pump the water to a higher ground of my front lawn, the fine filter on a sprinkler gets clogged every hour or so, so I have to take out the house from that sprinkler and clean it. I need to build a filtering system so that pumped water is clean. Have not decided on how to to id yet.<br />
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It appears my calculations for capacity are not correct as some rains provide more water than the total capacity of my system and water overflows via this little blue house I have for the overflow. It is not bad, just sorry to lose that water. Perhaps in the future will add one or two additional 275 gallon water tanks to expand the capacity.</div>
Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-60616891985902769202014-06-19T10:01:00.000-04:002014-06-19T10:03:10.042-04:00Hiking in Shenandoah National Park<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This past weekend my son and I went hiking with boyscouts to the Shenandoah National Park. Everything was just perfect - company, weather, camp, mountains, river. Here is a photo story of the trip (if you want to see all 131 photos, then <a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6025994989869485617">go here</a>):<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/115098171996656963581/stories/7557c786-f1c8-3900-bb52-d01301a74780146afc0e5a0/1"><img alt="https://plus.google.com/115098171996656963581/posts/C4sQqFkw4An" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdzzPtScQ3NhR_XukwBQaQMhQAMBqqGnMyEydu4-IqId9PjCThlYrZ_5WD98yhYvayE8oEgvs3K0eDnbPq9EYO-iM5sTaCWj4f_eZrmmMCv3zQyhosSyIdCzShrxBLUn_yiF6ni5WiS0Y/s1600/shenandoah_park_story.JPG" height="452" width="640" /></a></div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12642334823729361.post-74225105027585753752014-06-06T11:11:00.000-04:002014-06-06T11:12:26.649-04:00Trip to Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The next day after the Pittsburgh Marathon I had to fly to Asia for two weeks for work. I was still very sore after the race and had to get up "almost" every hour on the plane and stretch, walk, etc. Good thing I was sitting in the isle seat. I can imagine what would it be if I had to seat in the middle :-0. <br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5m8wM5klO1E/U281x7Qy7-I/AAAAAAAAlG8/iwT_SavhrzM/s1600/2014-05-08+08.13.04.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5m8wM5klO1E/U281x7Qy7-I/AAAAAAAAlG8/iwT_SavhrzM/s1600/2014-05-08+08.13.04.jpg" height="640" width="470" /></a></div>
My first stop was Malaysia and it took me over 26 hours to get there, including 3 flights (Pittsburgh -> NY -> Hong Kong -> Kuala Lumpur). Just about 22 hours flying time. Not a good thing after the marathon if you ask me. And this was not business class either. The hotel in Malaysia was excellent - with nice 20 meter swimming pool and fitness center, so I got to swim every day and did some biking and towards the end of the week even running (up to 3 miles at a time). since this was my second time in Malaysia and I was so sore I did not do any touristic things (although I had <a href="http://goo.gl/maps/exu96">great tour my first time around</a>). The breakfast at hotel was simply awesome! Just take a look at these pictures :-). Fresh papaya, fresh squeezed juices, and more. Yum... Although I have spent there entire week, I simply worked in hotel room or in office or met with clients. Not much outside of work or food :-).<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6010556461904596849"><img alt="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6010556461904596849" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitcKGxoOOphFqOO0-tQepr9OLNgsTA1w67U0sHpjpUkUa3ZSV0jcfERjufgBX_LyxjwpNYMPHnUNdSIFQU8EaPjPCOcFW7Pz8RUgEuw7X9CkSoCXUxU6ifA8Aw3kRfgOU2lG5QvsP3-wc/s1600/kualalumpur.JPG" height="204" width="640" /></a></div>
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My second stop was Singapore. What a lovely city! Very clean and nice looking. It has amazing history - breaking up from Malaysia with no natural resources and prospering to the highest degree. The city is very expensive to live in, especially considering that to drive a car there you would pay almost two or three times of the cost of the car itself for the right to drive it. Such is the cost of a small space. The other thing I learned is that Singapore is buying soil, brings it on barges and dumps it into the sea to reclaim some space. They have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reclamation">expanded its size by 20% and plan to expand</a> it by another 90 sq km. Wow... This was my fourth time here, but I have not been able to explore the city much and I had one free day (Tuesday was their public holiday) and I went to see the Botanical garden. Boy - was it something! I was told that estimated cost to build it was over $1B - and I think it is worth every penny. Beautiful place. Check out these photos I took - all with my Android Samsung Galaxy S3 phone (there are 103 pictures - click to see the full album):<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6012918762663417809"><img alt="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6012918762663417809" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdhFFc4LToGGB9GLPogaphyphenhyphenPXuj2ru3dC3BD83atTiYBB6J0ApUjTydSaSNSEcKh5tPl1Ea8kgS0xcqiboje3AOo2yiUToKr6gY7vmSL6L4tBOUuerya3YoWUvuIv2Z-so6Fq0J3nT5XA/s1600/singapore.JPG" height="640" width="356" /></a></div>
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My third stop was Thailand. This was my second time in Thailand and because of the government protests going on I decided not to do any tourism. However my first trip was very lovely from a touristic perspective when I took lots of pictures. This time I only had my Samsung phone with me a took a handful of photos. Compare the tw: <br />
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Photos from the first trip:<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/5386738375202378769"><img alt="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/5386738375202378769" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHDAjn85G-lLkeeCRM2cgT9qsCHzBTL3puanbsfSyXN8LM0BeQTWEAxS1c_YwAiYtBIzHmUHP9Tk_WL4v7vDpdl9RGA1t3DKkm6vA2t2F8yioi63wn39qLijkfA4JidOkwMlWH-RsuRec/s1600/bangkok.JPG" height="640" width="542" /></a></div>
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And photos from this trip :-)<br />
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<a href="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6021826587884601297"><img alt="https://plus.google.com/photos/115098171996656963581/albums/6021826587884601297" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivSeJJX_ZTJSAGbDeFiEHDAuaP83hxdgkTeLnzp3POzf75PE6vekgqB9iZ_Ha_5F2ZmiUHYzBiA1FufAPMdYPvtooS8zYKxmxog4nB0joFJxWp_iKf_HY9F2CCRWPx2y950x4e8-PXlog/s1600/bangkok2.JPG" height="190" width="640" /></a></div>
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Roman Kharkovskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03596264713285146271noreply@blogger.com0