Percoset and Vodka

You may have seen this article floating around. It really highlights some great parenting. This lady was too drunk to drive so she let her 5 year old son handle the steering while she ran the gas and break pedals. The other 3 year old brother was just in the backseat crawling around. When questioned by the police the mom said she had taken a percoset with some Vodka, her usual combination "when the children acted up." She need to win the parent of the year award for that one! Needless to say the kids are in protective custody while she is in jail. The best part of the story was when the 5 year old was asked if he would ever drive again and he said "oh yeah, I want to be a race car driver when I grow up!"

Using your brain....OPTIONAL

I'm sure this isn't news to many people, it is all over the news and is providing some much needed comic relief in an otherwise depressing news day. I first saw the story on CNN and have watched it several times. This is a Miss Teen USA contestant from South Carolina giving an answer to the question about a fifth of Americans who can't find the U.S. on the map.

The first part of her answer is about how many Americans don't have access to maps, thus they can't be expected to find the U.S. on a map. While it is a stretch I suppose it is the best part of her answer. The second part of her answer about the education system helping South Africa, the Iraq, and the Asian countries doesn't even make sense! Her use of the phrase "such as" is quite comical since it comes before the countries she is about to list...and after just for dramatic effect I suppose! At one point if you watch her eyes you can actually see a short circuit and smoke comes out of her ears. It's hard to see but it is in there!

And to think as a young beautiful woman she will probably have her choice of men while she is dating, she'll probably marry some hunk and then......they will breed! There will be little miss teen South Carolinas running around, maybe when those children are school aged we can send them to places such as South Africa, the Iraq, or one of the Asian countries so they can get a map reading education...such as......

Marathon Summary

The marathon went well, I experienced a whole new level of pain and I think that is probably the last marathon I'll be doing. At least until I forget how much I hurt the next day! I feel pretty good today though, at least I am up and walking around. The first 6 miles of the race were really good, I felt like it was just another run. I was hitting my pace perfectly and nothing hurt. Miles 7-10 were pretty good, but I had to make an emergency pit stop at a porta potty....My stomach bug attacked again. Miles 10 through 14 were just OK, I had some cramping in my left calf and by that point lots of muscles were just starting to hurt. Miles 14-about 20 were the only part of the course that I had not seen, that was a BIG mistake cause they were all straight up (nearly 1000 feet of elevation gain!) and then straight down (especially mile 14-17, I called it "hell on earth"). Bridget's sister Melissa joined me at mile 16 and ran the rest of the way with me, that was a big surprise cause she was only planning to run 2 or 3 miles with me. Bridget met me at mile 10 on her bike and rode with me, but she crashed at the finish line and missed me crossing it! That's why you shouldn't ride and talk on your cell phone! She was doing 2 miles an hour though so she didn't get hurt. Miles 20 - 26 were very interesting, I'd go from hurting so much that I didn't want to take another step to getting a big adrenaline rush and feeling like I was on cloud 9 with no pain at all. I've never had that happen before, but it was kinda cool.

So here are the stats, although keep in mind that the goal was to finish this one...not set any records. I did throw away my time goals because I had such a hard time calculating everything. So I finished in 5 hours 15 minutes 54 seconds, 319th place out of 384 that finished the race. There were 6 people who started the race but did not finish, and one person who had an error in their timing since their time is at 33 hours +. There were also 47 people who signed up for the race and then didn't do it (I was close to being one of those people about 2 months ago)! My minutes per mile average was 12:02, fastest mile was about 9:56 and slowest was 14:31.

And Oh yeah, my nipple got rubbed off and I had a big bloody spot on my shirt! At least I didn't notice till someone pointed it out at the finish line.

Best moment for me was at mile 20 Bridget's parents were there cheering and Sydney ran along side of me for 20 or 30 feet, I picked her up and gave her a big hug!

Reading

I always feel guilty about not reading very much, then I saw this article. I don't quite know how it made me feel since I fit the average....and I don't think that is a good thing. Sadly I bet I only read 2 books a year, maybe a smidge over the average....but still not good. I always have good intentions, but I suppose I prefer tv's and movies. Again that is sad to say, but probably closer to the truth than "I don't have the time" or "reading puts me to sleep." I feel like I should read more books, but I just don't have that drive yet. Maybe it will grow as I get older or something, I guess we will see.

So what about you, how many books do you read in a year?

Busy preparing

D-day is quickly approaching. My marathon is on Saturday, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I am getting very excited and nervous at the same time! I have ran over 330 miles in preparation this summer, and am on my 2nd pair of running shoes! But there is this part of me that just wonders what it is going to be like and how it is really going to feel at mile 22,23,24...... Aside from those aspects I am trying to eat lots of carbs and drink plenty of water. Hopefully I can load my muscles with water and glycogen and by on my way.

Besides preparing myself mentally, and physically I also need to prepare the house for Tom, Karen, and Melissa. They are coming to watch the race! Thankfully I started cleaning before we left on our trip to Colorado last weekend, so I really don't have a ton to do. I also need to mow the lawn, and Bridget advised me this morning that we need a roto-rooter. Our front yard, where our sewer pipe runs to the street gets clogged with tree roots from our 3 cottonwoods in the front yard. And to top it off, Bridget is on call tomorrow so I'll have to make all of those preparations on my own!

Sports heros to look up to.....

Is there anything good going on in the world of sports right now? In the NFL you have the Michael Vick dog fighting case. In the NBA you have a referee pleading guilty to 2 felony charges that he bet on games on which he could change the outcome on in his favor by calling fouls. Steroid induced Barry Bonds broke the home run record in Major League Baseball.

It is hard to pick out which of those is the worst of the worst. Two guy's cheated, and another ran a despicable illegal enterprise out of his home. I suppose Vick's case would be the least offensive to his sport because it actually has nothing to do with football, but supposedly it was entirely financed by his $130 million dollar contract he signed a couple of years ago. The NBA referee had a good racket going on, I don't know how he got caught, but my guess is that it had been going on for quite some time. I guess he had bookies telling him to influence the game in favor of one team, and then they would all place bets on that favorable team. And then there is Bonds, who's personal trainer is currently sitting in prison for refusing to testify that he gave Barry steroids. Then he goes and breaks on of baseballs most prestigious records.

I don't know....What do you think?

Last dose of the triathlon

The results were posted today for the West Valley City triathlon. I finished 3rd in my age group, but there were only 3 of us. I was 15th overall (out of 42 people), with a time of 1 hour 22 minutes 4 seconds. Although I am confused by those results as I was only passed by 1 person on the run, and nobody passed me on the bike. And like I said in the other post, one of the spectators said I was in 4th place after the bike. So I don't know where those other 10 people came from that supposedly passed me....but I guess I will just have to let it go. I was pretty skeptical of their timing system, no timing chips were used, just a lady at the finish line pushing a button to record your time. Kind of sketchy if you ask me!

It is hard to compare these results with my other 2 triathlons of the summer because all of the data I have for this one is the run time (which came from my wristwatch) and the final overall time. And there were 3 more miles on the bike ride.

Anyway, that race will haunt me all off-season and make me better. I'll be thinking about those walks while I train and maybe next season I'll emerge as a better triathlete. But if you think about it I didn't really train at all for these races. I never did any back to back workouts, I never trained on the bike and was only in the pool a few times. This winter will be good for triathlon training as I'm not going to do any marathons next season, so I can focus on triathlons exclusively. It will be great, you'll see!

WVC Triathlon

Whew! It is nice to sit down for a minute and catch my breath, it was non stop action all weekend! So Saturday kicked off with my alarm going off at 5:15 AM. That gave me enough time to eat a little breakfast and get to the rec center for the triathlon. I had a little road rage incident while driving, that didn't seem to help things. If anything the road rage got me all fired up, maybe a little too much. So the swim was 400 yards in an indoor pool, my lane had 3 people in it and I was the first one to start. Being so fired up from the road rage I swam the first 100 yards in world record pace....I was literally a torpedo in the pool. Problem was after that first 100, I had 300 more to go.....oops! I slowed down considerably, and managed to finish. I quickly got on the bike and I really kicked some butt. I passed a few people in the first 2 miles and then there was nobody. I thought for half a second that maybe I was in first place cause I was flying and not catching up to anybody....not even a rider on the distance. I finished the bike and one of the spectators told me I was in 4th place, Bridget told me after the race that the first 2 guys were in and out 5 minutes before I got there. One of those guys had a $5000 Cervelo time trial bike, I had a hunch he was going to be fast....but sometimes you never know these guys have $8000 invested in the top of the line equipment but then they don't know how to use it.

All was fine, I had recovered from my less than ideal swim and was now out running. Yep, all was fine in my world....for about 1/2 a mile. Then I walked, then I ran, then I walked again, little more running and then one more walk. I was disappointed with that amount of walking, I was VERY confident that my marathon training would pull me through this dinky little 5K. Guess not, cause I was beat. I only counted 1 person passing me on the run though, but it was hard to tell at the end because they had 2 different distances for the triathlon going on at the same time.

So we didn't stick around for the final results so I still have not seen my time yet. I had to boogie cause I was going fishing with some friends as part of my Guys' Night Out club. We went to the Provo River around Park City, Heber City, and the Sundance area. We had fun, I was the only one to catch anything....but I would hardly call what I caught a catch. One trout was just barely bigger than my fist, the other was only about 6 or 7 inches. I set them free and told them I was looking for their bigger brothers! It was fun though, I hadn't fished since I left Ft. Collins in 2002!

The 100th post

A small milestone, but a milestone none the less! I've been trying to think of something cool to post for the 100th, but nothing cool came to mind. Here are my thoughts, First was to thank all of my loyal readers for reading on a regular basis and even commenting every so often. I hope that my blog provides a small bit of interest and entertainment in your busy daily lives. My second thought was to post on my running stuff, maybe even delay the 100th posting until my marathon and use the 100th to announce my results. But at 2 and a half weeks, it was too long to wait! A quick mention that I ran 4 miles in 32:35 (about 8:09/mile) today! Third thought on the 100th post was to make some ecological post, but since I forgot my canvas bags for the grocery store for the third week in a row....I wasn't sure I was a good role model for that.

Anyway, like most of my posts this one has turned into a rambling hodge podge of ideas. You know what, I wouldn't want it any other way!

Weekend Update

We had a busy weekend! Bridget was on call all day Saturday and didn't get home until about 10 AM on Sunday. So while she was working we were playing! Sydney completed her first set of swimming lessons. I don't want to say she was the star of the class...but she was! We signed her up for the next level, the Starfish, which starts tomorrow. We spent a little time gardening on Saturday and we played lots of toys and read the books that we got at the library earlier that afternoon.

After Bridget got home from work we all drove up to Park City for my weekly long run. Bridget takes her bike and the bike trailer for the kids. I run, she pedals and supplies me with water and power gel packets. I ran 18.42 miles yesterday, and overall it went very well. I averaged 11 minutes 12 seconds per mile, which was really good for me. The kids did really well up until mile 17.5. They both actually took naps for a couple of hours, but at the end Sydney managed to break Mommies heart by crying the sentence "Mommy why are you doing this to us?" So Bridget raced away to the car and got the kids all packed up and buckled in. Then on the way home we got the kids Happy Meals from McDonalds, Bridget and I got sushi from the grocery store (sounds scary, but it is actually VERY good)!

It was a good weekend.

To Tri, or not to try

So I'm torn. Most of you know that I am training for my first marathon, which is a mere 23 days away. I have realized that I really enjoy running, but maybe not 26.2 miles....that just might kill me! But I'm going to do it, and I'm just going to go out there and do the best I can. But on August 11th there is a local triathlon that is being put on by the rec center that I use 5 days a week. This is an important triathlon for me because I really wanted to do it last year, both Bridget and I really considered it. But we ultimately decided that we were not in good enough shape to finish the triathlon with a respectable time. Well, now I am in shape and would like to compare the results to the other 2 triathlons I have done this summer to see if there is improvement. So the trouble is....I am supposed to run 12 miles that day as part of my marathon training and after buying our camper we are super tight on money, there is a $30 entry fee.

Next summer I plan to focus on shorter running races, but mostly triathlons. I would like to step it up and try some longer distance triathlons, most of which are outside in nearby lakes and require wetsuits. I am not sure I'll do another marathon, we'll have to see what happens with this one first.