Saunders Family Blog

The past several weeks (actually closer to 6-8weeks)  I’ve been feeling pretty drained and been having a hard time waking up on time and getting the motivation for my workouts.  I figured it was a bit of burnout, or maybe the stress of a new kid/bad economy/life at a start-up/financial scare due to deferred salary/slight sibling angst along with head strong 3 year old toddler/ etc,  or just plain in my head/being a wuss.
I was handling it the way I do most things of the sort - use mind over body and push on.  Granted, over the years I have learned to pay attention to my body more and more, so I did back off from 13 hours of training per week to around 7-9 hours of training over the past 3-4weeks and slept in to 7am many mornings.   Last week was really low for training at just barely 5hrs and while my key workout felt good, I was getting worried that that was all the training I was getting in, but I’ve been getting more and more exhausted (and more and more easily irritated) despite the pull back on training hours, so I was confused.  Sometimes I get tired from lack of exercise, so I was starting to think maybe that was what was going on; except that I had a constant feeling like my legs were about to cramp and I kept on getting a sour stomach.

Today, Hillary and I went to see our acupuncturist - great lady who really knows her skill; she got rid of Hillary’s allergies that were becoming quite severe, helped Hillary with fertility to get pregnant with Tana, greatly helped Hillary through both of her pregnancies, and got rid of my chronic sinusitis that had stumped several specialists who all thought surgery was the only remaining option.  We are strong believers in her abilities.   The first thing she said when we started our consultation was, “you look exhausted!”.  We went over how I was feeling, what was going on in my life, how my digestion was doing, etc and then she felt my pulses and checked a few pressure points.  After the checkout she told me that she wasn’t at all surprised that I was feeling drained.  I had apparently over-ruled my body’s warning to me that it was tired and had been running on adrenaline for quite some time; so much so that I was/am deep into adrenal fatigue and near adrenal exhaustion.   Not the disease, just literal overuse.   oops….
So now I need to back off and listen to my body a bit more, take some supplements to help reverse things, relax and make sure to de-stress more, and most importantly get more sleep!  My current training level is ok, and since its a major source of stress relief for me along with other benefits, she encouraged me to continue (especially lunch time exercise at work).  Racing this weekend is fine too;  she just pre-warned me that my performance may be a bit lack luster as my adrenal glands won’t be working too well yet.  Tour de Los Alamos may be another year of citizen’s class rather than cat4 as I haven’t put the miles in yet to race 52miles with longer climbs (flat would be fine as I could hide in the pack from the wind), so I may have to go for the 26mile route as I know I’m trained for at least 30miles of racing hills currently.  I’ll be bummed if so, but probably won’t make my decision until I get down to NM and register there.  The rest of my race season should be good to go; if I allow myself to recover.  Sounds like a great excuse to spend even more time with Tana and Brenna!

yup - I’m still head strong and need a wake up call, from trying to be superman, back into reality every now and then…

We’ve been a bit busy lately as can be seen by my not posting my results yet from the Bolder Boulder, which happened two weeks ago.   On to correct that -

This year’s Bolder Boulder was much more enjoyable than last year, partially because I knew the course so the uphill wasn’t a  horrible surprise and partially because I have a much better base due to a lot more running on my legs over the past year.  Last year, I would say I survived it, this year I enjoyed it.  I didn’t quite get negative splitting done correctly for the race, but at least I wasn’t a full positive split either.

overall place: 12163

division place: 244 out of 484  (made top 50% of my wave)

gender place: 8336 out of 21938

mile 1:       8:36.29

mile 2:       9:06.14

mile 3:       9:28.94

mile 4:       9:16.44

mile 5:       9:08.81

mile 6:       9:45.94

net time:   57:13.87

pace:             9:12 (based on net time)

I hit a wall about mile 5.5 as the time for my 6th mile shows, but that was the only “issue” I had in this years race.  I may not have hit the wall at all, if I had remembered to concentrate on my form the whole time.  I have found out that I have a very efficient running form when I am not fatigued, but if I don’t conscientiously remember and work on running with good form when I am fatigued; I start over striding and heel striking - as you can see in this picture:

I’m wearing a blue shirt and grey cap, just left of center.  My HS track coach would have a conniption from the picture as well since I was apparently swinging my arms across my body.

Well, it is another rainy day here in the Pacific Northwest.  Oh wait.  I’m in Colorado.  It sure does feel like a rainy winter day in Oregon.  I felt it was time to give my garden a little virtual love.

After spending several days wanting to strangle the dogs because they kept digging up the tomato and strawberry plants, we made a major change.  For my birthday/Mother’s day gift, Ben and I fenced off the yard on the south side of our house.  Every time I have daydreamed about having our backyard nicely landscaped, this was one of the major pieces.  I have always imagined the side yard fenced off with a nice veggie garden growing.  Now, I am a step closer and the dogs have not even tried to get over the fence.

Since the dogs killed the tomato plant and two strawberry plants, I had to do some replacing.  I purchased another Juliet plum tomato but I could not find strawberry plants for the same price we had paid the week before.  We opted for a zucchini plant instead.  About two weeks ago, Tana and I spent a morning getting everything put in the ground.  We planted the tomato and zucchini as well as many nasturtiums and sunflowers.

My Big Boy tomato is doing wonderfully.  It has started blooming and I cannot wait to have fresh, sun ripened tomatoes.  My jalapeno plants are also beginning to bloom.  This is my first attempt at growing peppers but so far so good.   The Juliet tomato is forming a myriad of flower buds and the zucchini plant has a baby zucchini about an inch long.  The nasturtiums and sunflowers are thriving and my cilantro crop was doing great, key word being was.  Tana decided to go dig in the dirt a couple days ago and determined that the pot of cilantro seedling was easier to dig in than the actual soil.  I managed to save some of the sprouts and the seed packet recommends sowing every two weeks so I just sowed a few more seeds to compensate.  It will be fine, but I was a little disheartened when it happened.

This summer, the next steps in our dream veggie garden are to add a second terraced bed and ammend the soi.  We have pulled up some railroad ties from another part of our yard that we have been wanting to get rid of and they are just long enough to span the length of the side yard.  That means we do not need to buy any lumber.  I think the most important part is going to be soil prep.  The area is pretty weedy and the bind weed is insane.  I want to till the soil and then lay down a sheet of clear plastic to kill off the weeds.  After that, we should just need to ammend the soil to make it nice and rich for veggies to go in.  I need to look into getting some soil tests done to determine what kind of soil ammendments we might need.  I am all about compost, compost, compost but I want to ensure we don’t have a nutrient deficiency.

Hopefully by next spring, we will have about 240 square feet of garden ready and waiting to produce a wealth of veggies.  In the meantime, I think I need to start researching what I want to plant, how it needs to be planted, and begin making diagrams to ensure proper crop rotation in the future.  I’m starting to feel like an actual gardener.  I think I will go scour craigslist for free compost and manure.  Anyone have a rototiller we can borrow?

Yesterday was the Barking Dog Duathlon again - this is becoming one of my favorite races of the season and the competition was kicked up a notch as well this year.  I felt much better going into this race and during the race than I did a couple weeks ago at the Atomic Man.  Compared to last year, I bettered my time by 3.5 minutes, and this included a side wind that decreased speed for most all of the bike course.  What I’m really happy about is my runs - I was only ~30sec slower on my second run than my first and both were <9min/mile!  Not quite the <6min that the winners of my category were doing, but much much better for me.  Another plus is my bike leg was in the top 10% of the entire field, so while I may not have improved my bike much due to focusing a bit more on running, I don’t think that I’ve hurt it much if at all.

Times: 1:42:14 overall,  26:37 run 1, 1:01 T1, 46:52 bike, 0:45 T2, 27:00 run 2
Average Pace: 8:35min/mile run 1, 23.0 mph bike, 8:43min/mile run 2
Place: 7th in <39 Clydes (17 total), 149th overall (433 total people) , 121 of males (243 males)
Place per section: 326th run1, 42nd bike, 291st run 2

At the very beginning of the race, I was able to spot several guys lining up at the front that were in my category.  After the start, it was hard to let them go, but I knew I had to run my own race.  I figured they were running <7min/mile pace (which they were) and I didn’t want to blow up.  According to my Garmin, I actually negative split the first 5k with my last mile at a 7:40min/mile pace.
The first transition was a bit slower than I wanted as I changed my mind for what I wanted to have for the bike from what I had set up my transition with as it was a bit warmer than I was initially thinking; however in and out in just over a minute was quite good in comparison to the rest of the field.  I was hoping the ~8-11mph wind was going to provide a nice tail wind at some point, which it did, however it was only a ~1/4 mile section on the way out.  The wind ended up being the annoying side wind that feels like a head wind on the way out and back.  Regardless of the wind - I was still able to hold off all other riders from sticking a pass, I had two guys at separate points pass me right after I finished taking a drink of water (need to practice not slowing down while drinking), but was able to chase them down and pass them within the next mile.  All in all the bike felt really good - my cadence was really low at ~76-82rpm, but any time I tried shifting to bring my cadence up, I ended up slowing down, so apparently brute strength is what was working for me that day.
I had my first downer as I was nearing the final mile of the bike when I spotted the first 3 guys in my division already ~1/2 mile into the second run; no chance of me finishing even close.
The second run started off interestingly as I had forgotten to put my wind covers on my cycling shoes and ended up having frozen feet at the end of the bike and didn’t even know it until I jumped off my bike and thought I had shattered my feet (major pins and needles).  For the second run, I decided that I would ignore the way my legs and lungs felt and only pay attention to my running form - it seemed to work well as I negatively split the run, and was <9min/mile!  About 2.5 miles into the second run, another clyde passed me - I took stock and realized that my lungs felt good, my energy felt great, but my legs didn’t get back to me on my query… No matter how I tried to get my legs to go faster, I only got minute responses, but not enough to keep up with the guy that passed me.  This was new to me - my energy was good, so I nailed my hydration and fuel, my lungs were good so my cardio base is good; but my muscles were at their limit - time to do some more muscular endurance training.
Rounding the corner to the finish line, I got my second let down - I knew that I had finished in the 1:45 range last year and the clock was showing 1:50.  I couldn’t believe that I was that much slower than last year and felt a bit defeated which made me back off of my kick a bit.  After I got across the finish line and was congratulating the guy that had passed me, he mentioned that that was the overall time clock, not per division (well duh!) - that made me feel much better as I knew that that was at least 9min more than my actual time and that meant that I had actually improved!  I was actually happy up to that point anyways as I felt that I did actually do a great race to my ability, but knowing that I had improved my time, even though my placing was a good bit worse was very welcome news to me.
As I was finally getting over the time shock - I spotted one of my friends, Ron, coming down the finishing chute and had to cheer for him.  I had tried to talk him into trying a duathlon several times last year, and almost got him to go, but never did so it was great seeing him out this year.  He beat my time by ~20 places overall and did great for his first time out.  Soon after, Brenda, another friend was finishing as well with a really great time for her too.   Once she was cooled down, we were chatting by the finishing line and low and behold, I spot Tana with Hillary and Brenna in tow!  I didn’t even think they were going to come down, but it was great to see them even though they all seemed to still be asleep ( it was only ~9:30am by this point).  A great way to finish up a race!

After the race we went up to Boulder to the farmer’s market and then got a bite to eat before letting Tana have an extended play time in outdoor play area at the 29th street mall in Boulder.

This morning was a bit of a slow moving morning - really wasn’t sure about playing a soccer game as I was a bit sore and the day was dreary.  We finally got going a bit later than usual when our bladder’s forced us out of bed (an extremely late 7:30ish..) and Tana and I headed down to make Hill a mother’s day card; Tana is getting to be quite the drawing diva!  Once we were all fed, dressed, showered etc - it was time for us to load up and head to Boulder - me on my bike for a warmup, and ~30min later Hillary and the girls in the car.
The game turned out to be against the best team in the league, which isn’t too bad as it is also the team I enjoy playing against the most as they are quite good, but also very good sports and out to have a fun time.   As usual, we lost, but only by 2 points rather than the usuall drumming by that team.  I was really surprised at how good I felt for the game after having the race yesterday; I think that I was actually faster than the last couple games.  There are four guys on their team that I usually have problems keeping up with, but today I could not only keep up with them, but I could out pace them at will!  Still I had very low chances of stopping the goals when all four got a break and it was 4 of them vs me all crashing towards the goal.  I did manage to thwart most of the attacks either in entirety or at least enough to let our keeper get in position and stop the attack though.   It was great having the family there - for the first ~15 min of the game Tana was cheering away “go daddy go!”.  It definitely brought a smile to my face and got most of the team chuckling as well.  Was a great way to have the last weekend game of the season go.

Well, it’s official, spring is here! The past couple days have been “busy” in respect to gardening. Unfortunately, I haven’t even attempted to clean out my flower beds and cut back the perennials but that is neither here nor there.

This year, I decided that Tana needed a flower garden to tend and learn from. We have been working on clearing weeds from a small section of an unused flower bed. Friday evening was our first step towards making it a reality. I gathered all our egg cartons that I have been saving, six total. We filled the egg cartons with soil and planted seeds in each one. I bought a packet of nasturtium seeds but mainly used seeds that I have had for a while; no idea how viable they are so we will see if anything sprouts. In addition to the nasturtiums, we planted sunflowers and “Denver Daisy” black-eyed susans. My makeshift seed sprouting system consists of the egg cartons sitting on cookie sheets with everything covered with plastic wrap. Not ideal but it should do the job and it was really cheap. After Mother’s Day, and after the seeds sprout, I will split apart the egg cartons and Tana and I will plant them in her garden. I have some wildflower seed mixes that we will direct sow when we plant the seedlings. I need to get some potting soil and/or compost to get her garden ready to grow. Anybody have some they want to donate?

The next addition to the garden will be a tomato plant. I still don’t have our soil fertile enough to grow veggies so it will go in a big pot on the patio. This year I got a Bush Big Boy. I picked it up at the farmers market and my one criteria was that I wanted something with great flavor and that is what the gentleman recommended. I can hardly wait to make my first batch of salsa and the plant isn’t even in the pot yet.

The final addition to the garden will be two strawberry plants. I tried to grow strawberries last year and failed miserably. I am hoping this year’s attempt will be more successful. I think I may end up planting those next to Tana’s flower garden because it has the best draining soil and a southern exposure. Once again, I’ll need potting soil and/or compost.

Other exciting news is that my white lilac is big and healthy. We planted five lilac bushes about five years ago. The dogs DESTROYED them. The white one was the lone survivor, or so I thought. I have discovered that I have one ‘Sensation’ lilac trying to make a come back and I am so excited. The ‘Sensation’ lilac has purple flowers that are trimmed with white. Gorgeous! We planted two of them and I am so happy at least on survived. It is even making an attempt to bloom so we shall see. I will probably trim the ‘Sensation’ back after it blooms so that it puts its energy into getting strong and healthy rather than seed production.

That is all the reality of gardening around here but I have delusions of grandeur that I hope to fulfill someday.

Today was the second time I raced in the Atomic Man Duathlon. As I did last year, I raced in the Little Boy division (4k run, 15k bike, 4k run). I did well over all, including improving my times from last year.

Place: 2nd in division (clydes), 6th in age group, 22nd overall males, and 26th overall.
Place per section: 42nd run 1, 10th bike, 44th run 2
Times: 1:16:31 overall, 22:50 run 1, 1:00 T1, 27:39 bike, 00:30 T2, 24:33 run 2
Pace: 9:08min/mile on run 1, 20.2mph bike, 9:49min/mile on run 2

I think the reported distances were off last year as my times were lower, but my paces weren’t much faster or were slower and it was the exact same course, so something was off. Compared to last year I cut off ~1:30 on my time. Considering that it was a windy cool day rather than the warm still day last year, that is pretty good. My runs were faster but my bike was 10sec slower; last year on the way out on the bike, I was hitting my max cadence in my 53×11 gearing, where this year I was barely able to put out the power to effectively turn over 53×15 due to the headwind. This year’s transitions were much better; I actually got compliments by quite a few people as to how fast and smooth my dismount was!  Comparing to the rest of the field as most were repeat racers from last year  - I made huge improvements (41st to 26th overall, 31st to 22nd males, 61st and 62nd to 42nd and 44th on runs).  My bike stayed about the same, however that is somewhat the way I have had my training structured as I knew my run was my weak point, and I’ve made some good improvements there.

I know I should be happy as I met all the goals I set for the race and its obvious to me that my training is showing improvement, but I’m actually a bit bummed. I know I could do better and should have done better. I did have a lot of stress and lack of sleep for the past 2-3weeks that impacted my training along with some really bad allergies that were (and are) attacking my respiratory system with a vengeance. Despite a good warm up, I still cooled down too much before the race and had to fight through exercise induced asthma for the first mile of the run; and in a new twist, I had to fight through it again on my second run which really baffles me (maybe allergies rearing their head again). All that just feels like excuses to me though - I should have been able to run the first segment at an ~8:30 min/mile pace and the second at a ~9:00 min/mile pace or both ~8:40min/mile pace and it just didn’t happen. The first run I was considering quitting the race, so I wasn’t mentally on my game today either. I realize we all have off days - this is just weird for me as I really do feel like I had an off day; and yet I still hit my goals as far as improving from last year. I guess it all comes down to doing your best and while this may have been my best today, it didn’t feel like the best I could have done…

Its gotten to the point around our house that the TV isn’t watched too much and “prime time” is hardly watched at all except for a select few that we Tivo. It appears that Britan has a show called Brittan’s got talent as a spin off of American Idol, I thought Idol was a spin off, but I digress…

If you need a reminder to not judge a book by its cover, check these out, they are great! (they are YouTube video’s)
Paul sings Nessun Dorma
and
Susan Boyle singing I dreamed a dream

I think Paul’s id from last year as google seems to bring up a soon to be released CD, Susan’s was this week I believe.

No matter how stressful or annoying a day can be, nothing can outweigh having loved ones at home. The morning smile and “goo” from Brenna can erase any negative thoughts I may have about the day with ease, and that soft head of her’s is better than any worry stone ever could be. The yelling of “daddy!” and resulting flying full body hug from Tana when I get home makes for a great end of any work day, the super-dooper-Tana hugs are pretty good too. The loving smile of Hillary with a twinkle in her eyes as she watches me interact with and enjoy our daughters makes me fall in love with her all over again.

yup - its a corny gooey post; but its so nice to be blessed with corny and gooey things as they make days that I may otherwise breakdown from frustration or otherwise not only manageable, but generally enjoyable days.

Tana has had much to say lately, and by much I mean that she is constantly talking.  The quiet of nap and bed time is more welcome than ever

Most of the time she calls Ben, “Daddy the Snowman”, but sometimes “Just Mommy’s a snowman!”

A few days ago, I asked Tana what I was going to do with two beautiful girls.  Tana said “Poke ‘em in the nose!”  Being a good mom, I poked Tana in the nose of course.

Tana also likes to talk about heart beeps.  For quite a while she would tell me her “heart beep is at Karin’s.”  Karin is our midwife and we would listen to Brenna’s heart beat every time we went to see her.  According to Tana, her heart beep says “Thumpitty thump, I love Mommy!  Thumpitty-thump, I love Daddy!  Thumpitty-thump, I love Brenna!”  So sweet!

A couple of my other favorites from her:

“tortadilla”- tortilla

“I need you to talk to it”- this is her way of asking to have the words read to her when she hands you a book

And finally, my favorite thing that she does.  There is a Winnie-the-Pooh pacifier clip floating around the house.  She holds the Pooh up to her eye, and takes pictures of Ben and I.  It’s her camera.  I hope to get a picture of her taking a picture sometime soon.

Just a quick post saying that yes I did complete the half marathon last weekend! Thank you to Hill, Brenna, Tana and a few other friends that cheered along the way! I do need to put some more mileage in before doing something like that again though as my legs and body have been pretty beat up this week after doing that - probably didn’t help that I helped a good friend move to a new house right after the half marathon either though…

The stats from my first half marathon:
Time - 2:13:14
Pace - 10:10
Place - 826/1138 overall, 460/532 males, 75/85 in division.

As the distance increases, my positioning definitely slips - but it was still very much fun; still need to drop more of the gut, but the body build of a sprinter is just different than those fast marathoners. I actually managed to negative split most of the race, until I hit a mini wall around 10.5 miles and then it became a bit of a mental game. I think I was a bit light on the hydration as well which didn’t help. I learned a good bit about running that far and hard. As I knew a bit before, running with someone makes it much much easier - the best miles I had was when I was running with someone, the hardest were when I was between groups and having to self pace - gives you time to realize the fatigue etc that you don’t really notice when talking with others.
I had set a goal to go under 2:30 with a stretch goal of under 2:15 and a wish to average 10min pace, though I didn’t think I could quite pull it off; being only 10sec/mile slower than my wish was way better than I expected. I can definitely say I have a lot of training ahead of me to just complete, much less finish in a good time for the Harvest Moon long course (half iron- ish) duathlon in September.