And the results are in!

Well I didn't think today was going to go so well, I woke up and just felt blah. Then on the swim I seemed content to swim off of the swimmer in front of me....even though I was swimming at her feet for 3/4 of the swim. On the bike, I thought "oh my gosh I'm never going to make it, I better slow down to store some energy." But a funny thing happened about 1/2 way through the bike, I relaxed. I got off of the bike and knew I killed it and set out more determined than ever on the run. Well 5K later I ran one of the fastest races of my life! So here are the results, and just for grins I put up the 2007 results for the same race. You can check out all of this years results here if you want to.

2008 race - Swim - 6:09; Bike - 33:03 (21.8 MPH average); Run - 23:42 (7:38 min per mile); Total - 1:05:39 - 14th place overall, 3rd place in my age group (30-34 yr. old)!

2007 race - Swim - 6:53; Bike - 35:51; Run - 29:19; Total - 1:16:22 - 29th place overall, 5th in my age group (24-29 yr. old)

The reason I put up the age divisions up there is because this year I am in the most competitive age bracket. The 30 - 34 year old male usually holds a good chunk of the top 10 finishers, in todays race I believe it had 3 of the top 10, more than any other age group in the top 10. I think that is when guys hit their endurance peaks, kinda scary that the overall male winner was only 20 years old! He could be an animal when he is my age!

Above, me taking off on the bike. Below, me finishing the run...sexy legs in both pictures!

Above, me getting my bronze medal. Below, me on the "podium"

Above, me on the podium again. Below, close up of my bronze.

Crazy phone scam

No I'm not operating one, but apparently my name and address have been wrapped up into someones scam. For the last 3 weeks we have been getting calls from all over the country, people asking about the car that I supposedly have for sale. Most of the people have seen an ad on Craigslist or Ebay and sent their money. They are sending the money to NYC. Anyway, they call us asking about the terms of shipping the car and we have to break the news that they have been scammed, most people are out $2400. I've contacted the local police who didn't get the point that I'm not the one losing money, but someone is using my name and address. He said there was nothing I could do but not to open spam e-mails in the future (comforting right?). I think he was totally missing the point. Anyway, we contacted the phone company today and are getting our phone number changed. We found that we could get the new number "unpublished" which is a step beyond "unlisted". Unlisted just takes you out of the phone book, unpublished takes you out of the phone book and off of the internet...basically the only way your number gets out is if you give it out. So that should at least stop the frequent phone calls, and people should get alarmed when they call my number and hear the disconnected message. I'll share our new number with those who need it later, probably early next week since the phone doesn't switch over till next Wednesday.

Anyway, if anybody has any other suggestions let me know. I feel bad that people are getting ripped off, but I think the bad guy has just picked one of the most common names of all time..mine..and managed to get my address and phone off of the internet. We have been constantly monitoring our financial info and have not had any weird charges on that stuff, so we really think it was just somebody pulling my lucky name out of thin air.

Triathlon Tomorrow

Tomorrow I'm racing in the Desert Sharks Shark Attack Triathlon. It is a pretty standard sprint tri, 400 yard swim, 13 mile bike, and 5K run. I did this race last year and hope to improve on my times! This one is one of my favorites because we co and camp out tonight and then we are at the venue in the morning, no rushing and freaking out! I'll let you know how it goes and how my foot feels. My foot has felt glorious...yes glorious....over the past 2 days. Absolutely no pain, but then again I have not been running, so we'll see what a run does to it!

There Will Be Blood

No, I'm not talking about a triathlon injury...I'm actually talking about the movie. So I watched it last night while Bridget was at work. I figured it was a safe movie to watch with out her because I sent her into the grocery store the day before to get it and she came back out with Bella, a pretty depressing movie that she cried through. Anyway, There Will Be Blood... So rottentomatoes.com gave it a 91%, which is one of the highest ratings I have ever seen on the site. I thought the movie was OK, at nearly 2 hours and 40 minutes long it tended to drag a bit. But all in all I thought it was good. Then along came the final scene, I don't know what it was. Was I so desperate for some action or dramatic plot that just about anything would have worked, or was the ending really really good? Anyway, it seems to have made the movie for me. Now all morning I have been uttering the famous Milkshake line, here is the clip from the movie...spoiler alert though if you haven't seen it. I think that has to go down as one of the top movie lines of all time, mostly because Daniel Day Lewis (who is fantastic throughout the entire movie) delivers the line to absolute perfection.

Have you seen the movie? I'd like to hear some others reactions to see if I am just crazy or if it was really that good???

If you have seen the movie and have about 4 minutes to kill here is a funny SNL skit, it took FOREVER to download though so be forewarned. It combines There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men....the title of the skit is No Milkshakes for Old Men!

Not running

Kinda funny...when I can run I really don't like it so much so that I feel like I could never live without it. Now that I can't run, I feel like I am going to die! Ok, so it's not that bad...well sort of. Today I rode my bike to the rec center so that I could ride the stationary bike! Kind of ironical! Last night I went out to meet a group of riders, except nobody showed up. So I rode up Emigration Canyon all by myself. 35 minutes to the top, 15 minutes down. I guess it is the canyon that Brigham Young came through and decided to start a new city and then ruin it with all of that Mormon jazz. Hmmmm, is that why the basketball team is called the Utah Jazz? Probably not.

New foot plan

On Friday I was coaching soccer, and after the practice I decided to do the social faux pas dreaded by most doctors. I went up to one of my friends who I knew was a sports medicine doctor and asked him about my Plantar Fasciitis. I know doctors hate working on their off hours, and he was probably trying to enjoy some time with his kids....but my foot was really killing me! But what happened next I wasn't expecting. I figured I would ask him a few questions, he would give me some pointers. No. He had me sit down and take off my socks and shoes, and remember I just finished playing soccer with 15 little kids and was sort of sweaty and gross and stinky. He stretched my foot this way and that way and talked to me about the usual ice and ibuprofen regimen. But then he uttered the unimaginable.....he said I should stop running. Like a dagger in my heart, the news I know needed to hear, but I really didn't want to hear. Although he said if I could commit to a run free lifestyle for 4 weeks I might be able to heal enough to finish the summer pain free. That thought was enough to get me on board. So for the next 4 weeks the only time I'll be running is in my 2 triathlons, which I believe are only 3 miles a piece. I hope to heal enough that I can run the Utah Half Ironman pain free, since 13 miles of running with constant foot pain sounds more like torture than fun.

So here is what I am trying now. I do the stretches 3 times a day, ibuprofen 3 times a day, heat in the morning to loosen it up, and ice before bed to take down the inflammation and hopefully promote healing while I sleep. After 2 days of this my foot feels better, so much so that I want to go for a run today to test it out....Oh my gosh I am sick! Hello my name is Chris and I'm a runaholic! I might need a 14 step group to get through this (I know groups are usually 12 steps, but I figure I need the extra 2!).

Musical tendencies

Do you ever go on music kicks? I've been on a White Stripes kick since about December. It seems like every time I turn on my Mp3 player that is the band that I gravitate toward. I have to keep telling myself that there is other music out there, and it usually turns out that I listen to them about 1/2 the time. I know sometimes I'll go on an 80's rock binge and get stuck in an air guitar induced daydream of teased hair and lengthy guitar solos!

Anyway, I am currently convinced that Jack White (lead singer and guitarist) is one of the best guitars ever to walk the planet. Some of the stuff he does merely sounds like some crazy noise with no real flow....but when you watch him play on YouTube you can really see his mastery. It's pretty crazy to me, I've been playing the guitar for 3 solid years and I can't even come close to anything that he does. It really amazes me. Anyway, enough of that. Have a good weekend everybody!

One small step for me, one large pain ing the foot

Ok, so I tried to re-work the famous quote - "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" or how ever it goes. I don't know if it works or not, but oh well. I reached a small milestone today, I crossed over the 200 miles ran mark for this year! I did 6 miles today in 50 minutes to break the mark, I was pretty happy with that since I didn't run last week so that I could rest my foot. So my foot with bad Plantar Fasciitis (PF) isn't getting any better. Of course I have not been doing much to help it, so I guess that was to be expected. Anyway, it felt pretty good while I was running today...a fraction of pain that I usually feel. So I decided to try icing my foot when I got home, I even elevated it during that process. It still feels OK, not 100% but not as bad as it has been so I guess I have a new routine. For some reason swimming made it feel better, so I may be spending more time in the pool. Anyway, I guess that is about it on that front.

I was looking at my exercise totals and I was thinking I might try to reach 500-600 miles ran in the year, 1000 miles biked, and maybe 75,000 yards swam. The elliptical minutes really don't mean much, and I really don't want to use the elliptical unless I am really burned out on the other stuff. I guess 10,000 minutes or even 11,000 minutes really isn't out of the question either! Those sound like good goals to me, what do you think?

When good bikes go bad

The Giro de Italia is currently going on right now, it is a bike race like the Tour de France...just in Italy. Anyway, this racer David Millar was about to launch an attack with 1 KM left to go in the stage and his chain snapped. I wanted to do this so badly when I blew out a tire in Colorado. It is funny to see a pro do this though! Keep an eye on the rider in the white jersey on the left hand side of the screen, that is Millar.

Good trajectory Dave!!

New meaning to the term "Rocket Man"

I saw this the other day on CNN while I was running on the treadmill at the rec center. I thought it looked cool, but of course I couldn't hear anything about it since there is sound on the tv's unless you tune into a radio station. Anyway, I didn't think much of it till today when I wanted to see if I could see more about it. Check out this youtube clip and let me know what you think. Pretty cool if you ask me!

A pleasent surprise

So I weighed in this morning, it was the first time since probably about 1/2 way through the Colorado trip. The last week or so in Colorado wasn't very good for me - eating wise, lots of eating out and over doing it. Then we came to SLC for a few days which I thought went OK, but then we went to California. While there was a lot of walking around at Disneyland and I ran 3.3 miles twice, there was a LOT of eating out and over doing it on a daily basis. By the time we were on the road trip home my body was craving junk food and being over stuffed. So I was really scared to step on a scale because I didn't want to know the truth. So I worked out very hard this week and ate great all week. And today I very nervously stepped on the scale, I was about 3 pounds over what I was on my last weigh in when we were in Colorado. I thought that was pretty good considering all of the abuse I had just but my gastronomical systems through!

I have 2 weeks until my next triathlon, which means I have 1 week of weight loss and one week where I'll try to maintain and build up some good energy stores. I also have a triathlon the week after that on June 7th. The next couple of weeks are going to be fun and challenging, I would like to be about 8 pounds lighter, that would be my "race weight"....I don't know if I'll get there, but it's a good goal!

Chris the soccer coach?

Yep, you read that correctly. Today I start my first ever adventure into coaching. The Partners in Medicine club that I belong to is starting up a soccer club for kids aged 3 to 6. I think Aiden is going to play too, so there may be some ringers on the fringe of that age bracket. We have 10 kids that are committed to show up every Friday at 4 PM. The other day the other coach, Claire, and I went out and bought a bunch of soccer stuff. We bought 2 goals, some cones, 8 soccer balls, and a bag to put it all in.

So our agenda is simple, get the kids out and burning off energy. We are going to do about 10 - 15 minutes of warm up and drills, then let them play a game for the rest of the time (hopefully about 30-45 minutes total). It should be interesting for sure!

Heck of a deal

I went to get Buddha some dog food this morning and I think I almost received the deal of a century. I found a bag that was marked 20% off because it had a hole in it that had been taped up. The bag was supposed to contain 40 pounds of dog food, it sure felt heavy so I guessed that it hadn't lost much, and what the heck 20% off is pretty good. So I get to the register and the lady has no idea how to take 20% off, so she calls a manager. The manager comes over and types in some stuff and walks away. The lady turns to me and says "Ok, that will be .21 cents." That was a $35.00 dollar bag of dog food, and while I'm not the best math student out there even I know that .21 cents was a little low! I told her I didn't think that was right and she was REALLY confused, she acted like she didn't want me to say anything and just walk away. So she called the manager back up and we got it straightened out, I got a true 20% off. Ahhhh, don't you just love people's grasp on math?

Disneyland Recap

So here is it, the best recollection of our trip to DL.

Monday - drove from Salt Lake City to Anaheim, CA. The trip was uneventful and took about 10 hours. We pulled in at 7:30 PM, walked around the hotel and checked out the pool, and then went to the grocery store to get some groceries.

Tuesday - arrived at the park at 9 AM, when the gates opened. It was roughly a 15 minute walk from our hotel to the main gate, our hotel was right across the street. We hit the rides early, mostly in the Fantasyland area. We did the Dumbo ride, the teacups, storybook land canal boats, and the Alice in Wonderland ride I think. Then we went towards the Princess area, little did we know that we were about to be roped into standing in a line for 2 hours to see the princesses. They don't let the princesses walk around the park like the other characters, in order to get a picture with one you need to wait in their line. So we did, it was painful but we survived. After that we went to Toon Town for a little while and found Chip 'n' Dales tree house and Goofy's house where the kids could run around and play while we sort of hung out on a bench. The lines started to become too much toward the late afternoon so we walked off the property and went to dinner. When we came back it was about 6 PM and the lines were much better. We went on the Amazon Jungle Boat cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean ride, twice I think! And then we went for the Finding Nemo submarine ride. That pretty much took us to 8 PM when the park closed, we took a good picture of the castle all lit up in the background before we left.

Wednesday - Again we arrived at 9 AM and hit the rides. We finished Fantasyland with included Mr. Toads Wild Ride, Snow Whites Adventures, Peter Pan's flight, Casey's Jr. Circus train, and Pinocchio's ride. We spent more time in Toon Town and rode the Roger Rabbit ride which was the only ride we could really do in there. We went to Critter Corner and rode on the Winnie the Pooh ride. We did the Amazon Boat cruise again, as well as Pirates a couple of more times (we really liked the pirates!). We made our way over to the Nemo ride again and also found the Buzz Lightyear ride. I think we squeezed the Autotopia ride in there as well. We decided we didn't want to waste the time walking out of DL for food when we would spend the same in the park, so we found a Mexican food place and ate in the park. We left when the park closed at 8 PM.

Thursday - We used our hour early entry today. We had planned to go straight to the Nemo ride since it was the one that was usually more than an hour wait. Everybody else had the same idea so we went to Fantasy land and re-rode all of those short rides that last 2 minutes, but usually take 45 minutes of line waiting. When things started to fill up we went to California Adventures. We found the Monsters Inc. ride pretty quickly and we may have rode that twice. We wandered around and went into the Bugs Life area. They had some little kids rides which we rode, but they were pretty lame. The kids really didn't seem to be into them. After that we went to a Outdoor recreation area where the kids could climb and slide for a while, but that stuff seemed to be too big for them. For dinner we went to The Rainforest Cafe, which was just OK. It was noisy and crowded and out server wasn't the greatest for an expensive place. Aiden slept through dinner, but Sydney liked it. We went back into Disneyland and went to our favorites Pirates and Nemo. We again closed out the park and walked back to the hotel. We were all worn out, the crowds were horrendous today...we're thinking Friday is only going to be worse!

Friday - We decided to have a relaxing day away from the park, at least in the morning. So we slept in until 7:30 (thanks Aiden), Mommy and Sydney slept in until close to 9. We all got ready and went to Huntington Beach. We did some research and found that the ocean temperature was only 58 degrees, so we figured we didn't need swimsuits. The kids loved wading into the ocean and then running away from the waves. By the end thy had both fallen down several times and were soaked from head to toe. They didn't mind the cold water I guess. We Walked down the big pier and then went back to the hotel, threw on our suits and went swimming in the hotel pool. After that we got dressed and went to The Outback for dinner since we had a gift card. After that we went to Disneyland at 6 PM, managed to walk right in and catch the full nightly parade, then we rode more rides and then tried to scout out the perfect place for the fireworks that started at 9:25. We asked this usher guy who told us we had some prime location, that the tree in front of us wouldn't be an issue since the fireworks were up higher than that. He lied. We watched 90% of the fireworks through that stupid tree. It was so crowded though, moving would have been futile. After the fireworks we ran to Nemo, waited a crazy long time. then we did some Buzz Lightyear and some other rides (probably Pirates if I remember correctly!). We left at midnight when the park closed, both kids still wide awake!


On Saturday we were supposed to leave for home. We decided we wanted to go back to the beach for a few hours and then get home later in the night on Saturday night. Well we went back to Huntington Beach for an hour and a half and then drove back to the hotel area for some lunch at Red Robin. We decided since it was already 1 PM and we were still in Anaheim that it was going to be a not so fun drive late into the night. So we hatched a crazy scheme to stay in Vegas on the way through. We called Tom, who was working, and he booked us a room at the Circus Circus. We made it to Vegas around 7 or so. We walked from the Circus Circus to the Bellagio fountains and back. We wanted to see the Treasure Island Pirates show, but we missed it and didn't feel like sticking around until 11:30 PM for the next show. We called it a night and went to bed.

Sunday - we had enough of the Vegas crowds and of walking all over the place. So we packed up and drove to Treasure Island were we went to the Mothers Day buffet brunch. It was a good way to fill us up for the road, but it only made Bridget and I sleepy and got the kids all hyped up on sugar. It was an extremely long drive home, but we made it by 8 or so. We decided that was enough road trips for a while. Maybe for our next vacation we'll fly....then again it might not be so bad if we don't have 2 road trips so close together.

In the end we managed to ride every ride in Disneyland and California Adventures that didn't have a height requirement for the kids. It was a great time, I do think I have had my fill of lines and crowds for a while...at least to those extremes. And don't even get me started on California driving!

Name that sign contest

What are the 3 things this sign is telling you not to do? One or 2 might be rather easy, but let's see who can get all 3!

Eli Manning, who cares?

While at Disneyland yesterday they kept announcing over the loud speakers that Superbowl MVP Eli Manning would be the Grand Marshall of a parade starting at 4:30 PM. I swear I heard that 30 times throughout the day! We didn't care, but while we were waiting in line to get a picture with the Buzz Lightyear character who was signigg autographs and posing for pictures Eli walked by. I got a couple of pictures, but really....Who cares? It's not like he is Peyton or anything! Even if it was Peyton Manning, it's not like ELWAY!!!

I knew cats were nothin but trouble!

We were at the zoo today and I found this interesting sign. I laughed. I thought I'd share!


That means they pee on you! Sorry, but I'll take a little bit of flying dog slobber any day of the week!

Check out today's workout

So I had running club this morning, but as usual there was no turnout. I'm all ears if anybody has any suggestions on how to get people to come out and exercise! Anyway, I left the park and went to the rec center (I know that sounds weird, but it was a hilly park and you have NO idea how hard it is to push both kids in the jogging stroller up and down those hills). So at the rec center I started on the treadmill, but after 20 minutes I decided I wasn't feeling the treadmill vibe today so I abandoned ship and went to the bike. I was just going to ride for 30 minutes, but after 5 I had really had enough of that so I started working on plan C. So I rode the bike for 20 minutes and then went back to the treadmill and ran the fastest mile I could stand. Turns out after running for 20 minutes, biking for 20 minutes and then trying to force out a fast mile is harder than it seemed in my mind. But I managed 7 minutes 20 seconds. The whole time I was running I kept thinking that I need to do more of this type of training to better prepare for my 4 remaining triathlons. So I think I'll do just that, mix and match workouts...at least a few times a week. They are good for my body, my muscles need to know how to work when fatigued. And the better I can prepare for that fatigue the better I think I'll do in the races! Hope that is sound logic!

Back into the Groove

So I knew I was a creature of routine, but it really hit home on our recent trip. I missed my routine, from getting up with the kids and going to the rec center. It was nice to do those things again today, and now I have to be in top form for the next few days so I can shed a few pounds before our California trip! We are headed to Disneyland with the kiddos in a few days. I have already devised a plan to pack the bathroom scale so I can remind myself not to go overboard!