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!