V-Day

Don't fight it.

We both left work early. Raced home, slipped into our running shorts, hopped on the bikes and made our way to Tempe Town Shit-Hole Lake for the Skirtchaser 5k. Basically the girls take off and then three minutes later the guys start and have to catch-up or “chase” them. It’s cute. It’s fun. It’s completely over-done…but it was enjoyable and we enjoyed ourselves. That’s what matters most.

Zee start. And zee finish.

Transportation.

The race itself was…well, let’s just say there was much more effort put into the form rather than the functionality of the actual run. Lots of bottle necks. The timing system was odd. Whatever. It was all good. I’m just glad I wasn’t a guy competing for the $500 first place booty. It would’ve been impossible to pass the herd of slow women clogging up the pathways. …and I don’t mean that the women collectively were slow, but there were indeed some cattle mooing out there that had no idea what it means to stay to the right.

At the finish you get four tickets: two for beer, two for wine. Because we know a couple people who work for Red Rocks we snagged extra tickets of the beer flavor. And I wore socks from the brewery providing the swill, which earned us some free SPECIAL beers (read: hidden in some cooler in the back). This ended up ending our day.

Pounding pale ale.

Awww!!!

Dancing cougars.

A look at the horde.

That shit is strONG. And GooOOoD.

Representin' the OC

I'll take 'em to go, thanks!

The man with the plan.

All in all it was a GREAT time. In hindsight, I wish we hadn’t quite drank so much. It’s 11:40pm, I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast at 5:30am, am fighting off a bit of a hangover, and all my planning for dinner has been for naught. Fuck it. I’m secretly glad that’s what our V-Day was. A day where we spent some quality time laughing, biking, drinking, running, and alcohol-induced sleeping (literally, sleeping) together.

I hope yours, whatever you decided to do, was enjoyable as well.

Fast Boat to China

Chinese Year of the Ox 5k

Horrible night of sleep. Didn’t actually pass out until after 11 and then was woken up by crazy cats and dogs (it was a fullmoon) at about 4:15am. Had a onion bagel and some coffee with Heidi before she left for work, then I hopped on the Cannondale and made my way up to the race start.

Asphalt and stem.

Curry and Scottsdale.

A mini-riparian refuge fed by canals.

Root Down.

After locking my backpack and bike to a tree root I took off for about a 20 minute warmup jog. This race was pretty small but the course was hilly so there was a bit of a challenge to it. Anyways we took off and started my watch as I crossed the start line (the race wasn’t chip-timed). The first few hundred yards were a little slow-going as I weaved throughout the joggers but I finally broke free and got into a steady pace. It was a fairly uneventful 5k. It went by quick and I crossed the line in pain. It was awesome.

My goal was set at a conservative 24:30 and I pretty much crushed that by clocking a 22:42. That’s a PR, friends. 7:19 per mile. I’m happy with that.  Not only did I PR but for the first time ever I placed in my age group! Yeah…kinda funny, I stuck around for the raffle and place medals because I was half interested to see if I did in fact squeeze by.

Maple sportin' my bling.

Alright. Well that’s it for me. Time for a shower and to really start the day.

Luke Warm Persistance

I woke up yesterday morning with some severe pain in my right foot/ankle. Pain so bad I had to manipulate my foot to ensure I hadn’t broken anything.  By the end of the day it had slowly eased and today I’m feeling just fine.  It was a little scary. Though I’m not certain what the culprit was I’m wondering if it’s the kicking action while I swim. Not having much swimming experience it’s a relatively new motion for me.  I suppose time will tell.

An evening poolside.

I just got back from a nice run; from my house to the start of Saturday’s race and back. It took me just about 20 minutes to get to the starting point, which I’m afraid may be a little too much for a pre-race warm-up. I’m really shooting for a PR here and I don’t want to over extend myself and flop before I hit the finish mat. Instead I think I’ll bike to the race and do a little jog around before it starts.

Right now I’m just sittin’ in the chair, looking at dogs, the dogs are looking at me. It’s time to fix a drink.

…and probably feed the dogs.

Droppin’ pounds like a B-52 drops bombs…

So weight isn’t a HUGE issue for me.  I think I put more focus into my split times than what the scale says…but as they say, the scale doesn’t lie.  I went for my first “run” back when I was about 22 years old (2002) and weighed close to 225 lbs. I loved buffalo wings, pizza, and beer. That initial run lasted all of about four minutes before I had to walk. You all know how the initial fight goes when it comes to beginning a running career. It straight up sucks. I also went vegetarian at about the same time, more for ethical reasons due to what I began learning through my biology coursework in college but it also helped curb some of the bad eating habits.

Sub Duece. A big day in my personal history.

That photo above was taken May 11, 2007. Now I’m nothing amazing when it comes to my weight loss story. It’s not as though I was obese even at 225…but I wasn’t thin nor was I in any way shape or form happy.  But when I got below 200 for the first time in years, well, that was a great feeling. So today in the midst of  my base training campaign of 100 runs in 100 days I pulled the ‘ol scale to see where I was hovering:

Lowest in recent memory.

I’m exhausted, a little beat-up, but I feel fast and happy.  At this point in my life, I suppose that’s what matters. And I still drink lots of beer.

Ischemic Pain Body Buster

For some reason my last two runs have been slow and tough. I haven’t actually looked at the numbers but I’m being affected by some pain in my abdomen…I know that’s ambiguous but I really don’t have a better way to describe it. It’s not a side-stitch; it’s gut pain. Weird. And it’s bothering me enough that I keep looking at my HRM to make sure I’m not about to die or have a general system failure.

In all seriousness this is prob just caused by gas or something. Being vegan I eat lots of veggies (…obviously…) and that can often have “adverse” affects shall we say. I’ve also had a monster headache for the past day. I almost feel as though I’m hung over. Anyways…

Two days off coming up! I need to double up on runs both these days in order to start catching up on the ‘ol 100/100 plan. Not sure where I’m currently at but my guess is that I’m about four runs behind. Not to mention we’re about four weeks away from the first race of the year.

I’m hesitating signing up for races later in the season as my whereabouts may be uncertain. Heidi has been “unofficially” accepted into a grad program at Wazzu and so we may be moving to Pullman, WA sometime over the summer. I’m looking attending U of Idaho at the same time which I’m actually quite excited about. When it comes to racing plans, though, I’m going to be hosed. The move will take a huge hunk of chinga which would otherwise be going towards the tri-bike project and that pretty much takes me out of doing any lengthy road races. Not to mention it doesn’t seem as though there’s a huge tri community in that area. It’s going to be a significant paradigm shift. One that I welcome but one that comes with uncertainties.

Well I’m going to try and sleep now. It’s 2:15 in the am and I was awoken by the neighbors dogs. Again.

Goodnight.

Frozen Assets

 

Shoveling like a man.

Heidi took me to Denver for my birthday this week; it was precisely what we were both hoping for which was to relax and enjoy some simple pleasures.  We arrived late Sunday night and awoke monday morning to a fresh snow.  Me being a native Basinonian I find myself in the white stuff very rarely.  So for my own pleasure, and because I’m still deep in the 100/100 scheme, I took off for my first snow run.

Skipping (past) class.

Rare bare ground.

Enjoying every minute of it!

Heidi's a poser.

Just following the path.

Shortcut through the monastery.

So the running was slow and steady.  I was maintaining a slightly quicker than 10 min/mi pace which I was happy with considering conditions, altitude, and the general fear of slipping on ice and breaking my ass.

Starting out on another run.

On frozen pond.

Through Wash Park

Forward motion.

Still flossin'

Slipping through DU campus.

Tempting. It's just too bad I'll be back in AZ.

It doesn't get much more beautiful than this.

Besides the running we drank a lot of beer and ate a lot of good food.  Yesterday we all decided to hit up some breweries, seeing as how CO is the microbrew capital of the US I didn’t see how we could pass up the opportunity.

Perhaps some of the best beer I've ever had.

Touring New Belgium...highly recommended.

Of course!

We also hit Left Hand and Twisted Pine. I wasn’t worth much by the end of the night when we decided to fire up the Wii.  Anyhow it was a fantastic little vacation and we can’t wait to go back.  We really can’t wait to get there on more of a permanent basis…but that may be a few years off yet.