Swiftcurrent Reflections

Why did Team USA win Group C? I’m not talking about the “player’s true grit”, but how do you decipher the point system.

I did some research into FIFA’s scoring rules and thought others might want to know. First, the teams get 3 points for a win, 1 point for a tie and 0 points for a loss. After the three games you add up the points and the team with most points wins the group! OK, so the USA got 5 points and so did England.

Then what?

The next thing to look at is “Goal Differential”. You take the number of goals your team scored and subtract the number of goals they had scored on them. The US scored 4 (really 6 if the referees were good, but that’s another discussion…) and was scored on 3 times for a +1 goal differential. So the team with the highest GD wins! Well, England, scoring 2 and being scored on once, has a +1 goal differential as well.

Try #3?

So, step 3 is to look at the total number of goals scored. The US scored 4 goals and England scored 2, so finally, we have a winner! Soccer is easy!

Now we play Ghana who was #2 from Group D. They actually tied for points with the Socceroos from Australia, but Ghana’s +0 Goal Differential beat Australia’s -3.

So, this happened on the commute home yesterday:

4999.9 miles...

...and 5000.0 miles!

5,000 miles on my LeMond Buenos Aires. The bike computer went on before I took the bike home from the shop and it has worked flawlessly every ride. Never even replaced the battery. The bike has performed very well. It is a comfortable long-distance machine. With the steel frame and Ultegra components, it should be easy to get another 5,000 miles. I figure that 5,000 miles translates into about 300 hours of time in the saddle. Not too bad!

Some of the events that we’ve done:

• Reach the Beach. My first century.
• Tour de Blast. Twice (once fun, once cold and wet…)
• Seattle to Portland. The first time was my first double-century. The second time my first over-night bike event.
• Mid-Summer Duathlon. My first du.
• Monday Night PIR Race. My first road race.
• Lyle Pearson 200. 200-mile relay bike race in Idaho.
• Blue Lake Triathlon. My first tri.

Add to that lots of weekend rides with Meg and other friends, and many miles commuting to work. Fun times! I hope I can get the next 5000 in much faster…

Living large post-race with my killer participant medal

Swimming sucks. Cycling is great. Running is alright. That would me my eight word synopsis of the triathlon. I need to A) swim a lot more distance before the next tri, B) do things differently in the transition, and C) Do some more run/bike brick workouts. I now have a baseline and look forward to sucking less next time! But, no matter how much I train, sweat, bleed and try, I’ll never do a triathlon as cute as my nieces…

Big props go to my gold-medal-winning woman! Meggie had a great performance and came away with first place in her age group. A first for her! She talk about it here.

More pictures here.