added more pictures to the photo album – lots of other updates for actual content soon.
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Its been a long time since we last updated our blog ( I started this before the hair post of Hill’s), so its time to wake it from the summer slumber we seemed to have put it in.    Then we headed out to OR and visit family there. While in OR, Tana got to spend some good time with her Auntie Gina around the pool.  Gina got Tana over her aversion to water and now has her loving the water; not quite swimming on her own yet, but at least enjoying the water and not freaking out if her head gets wet any longer. We got to spend some time at the beach and enjoy watching Tana run all over the place and make multiple sand castles   , Tana also got to go for her first canoe ride    – and Brenna  injest a good bit of sand; she looked quite cute with her sand gotee.  ; then we came back up to CO for a short bit and had another birthday party for her at Boulder creek  . A fw days later we went out to Oregon and had yet another birthday party out there for her   – and in a rare treat, got to see her Aunt Sara and Grammy at both the NM and OR b-day parties. Beyond the travels, we have been figuring out as many free or very inexpensive things to do that are fun during the day with kids as possible. Luckily, both Tana and Brenna love going for a ride in the Bob or Chariot, however we can’t spend every waking hour exercising, so we had to find a few other things to do as well. Boulder Creek quickly has become one of our favorite hangouts when the weather is warm as it is right near the farmer’s market, has nice grassy sides to hang out on and let the kids play, and for a few months the water is flowing well enough that it is quite fun to tube down as well.  Close to home we also have “the bay” water park, which is a nice small water park setup for families with kids. Once fall started to roll around, Tana got to start pre-school as well. The very first day she was already leaving us without a worry to go play with other kids and then was quite sad that she had to leave when her session was done for the day.  We are really looking forward to doing some backpacking next year. Ben is working on an update of his races as well for another installment. Check out the Photo Albums tab above as well as we have loaded quite a few new pictures as well. It is Friday afternoon and in just a short while we will be heading to the McDowell’s house for Amy’s Head Shaving Party. In support of Amy, I will be shaving my head. Many of you may be wondering what motivated to me to do this and it actually all started with Paula, my mother-in-law. Paula was diagnosed with lobular carcinoma shortly before Tana was born. Treatment commenced rapidly with a lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy. Shortly after we found out I was pregnant again, Paula found at that her breast cancer had metastasized to her spine. This spring, I was running some errands and Paula came into my thoughts. She always comments on how she would love to have hair like mine. I thought to myself that if she were undergoing treatments that would cause her hair to fall out, I would cut my hair short and give it to Paula for a wig. At this point, she does not need any such treatment. That is when I decided to look into donating my hair to Locks of Love. Locks of Love is an non- profit organization that provides hairpieces to children who are suffering from long-term medical hair loss. After checking the requirements, I found that my hair still had some growing to do to reach the minimum donate-able length and still leave enough for my stylist to work with. Fast forward a few months to when I received the email from Amy stating that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer at 38 weeks pregnant. In her email she mentioned that they would have a ceremonial head shaving party and that one person from each group to attend would have to shave their head. I looked at Ben and asked “Can I shave my head?” Finally, after all my years of asking, he said “Yes!” So, my hair is still going to Locks of Love, it is just happening a little sooner than I expected and my haircut is going to be a little shorter than I was planning. That is just fine with me though. Sometimes women need friends that will do crazy things with them in times of struggle. This way, I get to support Amy and child who is probably going through a similar situation. Love you Amy! This hair’s for you! 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. 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…. 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.
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 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. 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. 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. 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) 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. |
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