So had a pretty good week of training last week. Speedwork was rough and I got pretty horrible stomach cramps just as I started the last mile. Until then I was able to run 7, 90 sec, 400s with 200m of jogging in between. Pretty exciting for a guy who hasn't run fast in a while. On Saturday we raced a local 5km and won it! Yep, the Pirate and I won our first race and got some nice little trophies for the effort. Monday we found out we won the lottery for the St. George Marathon in October. This course is a ripper, some say the fastest anywhere. As soon as we get back from Europe it looks like it'll be a long summer of running.

Last week the Pirate and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary. We couldn't be much happier and really enjoy spending as much time with each other as possible. It helps that she's wicked fast. Je t'aime mon petitie Pirate!

It's beginning

Hmm, seems like I lost a couple posts when Google updated their stuff??? Ah well, I don't imagine there was anything too mind-blowing. So what's been going on since January. The Pirate and I trained up for the US 'Other' Half in San Francisco which starts at Fisherman's wharf and runs out to, over, and back across the Golden Gate bridge. That was the most fun I've had in a half-marathon maybe ever. It was pretty euphoric to go that far with no pain and still have enough left in the tank to spend a great afternoon in S.F. I got my wake up call two weeks later when we did the Desert R.A.T.S. half-marathon here on the Kokopelli trail system. One big climb and my knee went to shit in a hurry. The downhill was shear agony. The last mile of fire road was relative bliss and I could focus on my form and get my knee back in line. I took it easy all week except for the Weds. speedwork where my goal was to focus on form and just get some miles in. Turns out I was able to do 8 400s at 6:00 pace, which is faster than I've gone in a long time. Super proud that I was on my way back to fast, when I got home I found out that the Iron Lady had just qualified for the Olympics running that same pace for an entire marathon! So amazing for her and definitely well earned (I really hope her dad can enjoy her Olympic day). Knowing my way back to fast isn't going to happen overnight, I'm just happy I've found speed again. It's that strength and endurance part that keeps the going slow. Last night I was able to do 3 1-mile intervals at under 6:30 pace, which is my goal pace for the end of the month. Given the degradation of my form through the workout I'm thinking that might be expecting a lot. I figure for the race I'll strap on the heart rate monitor, keep the throttle on at 180 bpm and see how much gas is in the tank.

I'm feeling good enough that I've even started keeping a training log. With all the knee, heel, and tendon problems I felt so inconsistent that it wasn't worth recording anything. Now I think I can write it down and not have to worry about those blank pages. The Pirate and I put in for a marathon in the fall. If selected it'll be my first marathon since Boston in 2004! I've done three marathons: the first I never ran more than 15 miles prior and it was my fastest time. The second one I trained a little more seriously, but didn't really have any plan, never ran more than 18 miles and did no speedwork. For Boston I tried to train to have a plan and train seriously, did way too much way too fast and that's when all the knee troubles started. This time I've been doing my reading, have a plan, and have a great group to do speedwork with. Now I just need to get that diet under control.

Lastly, I hate election years. The hate just pervades everywhere. I don't have cable so at least I can avoid all the snarky, low brow, mud that get's slung, but now I can't even avoid it on the internet. A part of my ethos is that any child can identify a problem, but only mature people work directly toward finding a solution. The problem goes way beyond politics though. Its far too often, in my opinion, that the conversations I have or the TV I watch when I get the chance, devolve to horrific, judgemental bitching (Fox News, which I prefer to call the Nazi News or the Hate and Fear Channel, has got to be the worst). Bitching does not make me a better person or help me figure out how to move more efficiently through this life. Everybody's got issues and if you want help figuring out how to solve your problem, ask.  Admittedly, I can't say I don't stray into that negative world because everyone needs to vent, but anymore I'm pretty good about trying to look for a solution mid-bitch. If I can do it mid-bitch, and anyone who knows me knows I'm not conversationally gifted, it seems to me that a politician, whose job anymore seems to be more about talking than anything else, should be able to at least give even time to identifying a problem and finding a solution. Unfortunately, their strategy seems to be: bitch, bitch, bitch, this ad payed for by .... It's nice to know we have such eductated and mature people vying to run the free world.

My super soup recipe

Apologies for the post: this one is more for me so that I remember how to make when sooner or later I forget. This soup is pretty much our staple to make sure we get tons of good stuff in our bodies. It may seem like the kitchen sink, but it's pretty tasty. I'll put some guestimates at quantities, but I measure using my hands and caps from my spice jars. Oh, and pretty much everything here is fresh and organic; excepting of course that Keilbasa: just too damn tasty and I'm not overly concerned about hormones in my turkey.
1/2 pound turkey keilbasa sausage (chopped into bite size tasty morsels)
1/2 pound chicken (ditto on the size and tastiness)
1 cup of fresh green beans (sugar snap peas work just as well)
1 cup of carrots (we've also thown in parsnips of late)
1 cup of celery
1/2 an onion (usually red, but I'm not racist)
1 can of small artichoke hearts (diced until I'm satisfied. I've also used cabbage and brussel sprouts)
1 can of white kidney beans
1 can of lentils
3 bay leaves (cuz when you make a vegetable soup it's a must)
1 tbsp Mrs.Dash Garlic & Herb (Lady changed my world)
1 tbsp yellow currie powder
1 tbsp ground corriander
1 tbsp fennel
2 tsp of salt
Sometimes I'll add a bit of parsley or rosemary depending on what I'm jonez'n for.
4 cups of chicken bouillon
4 cups of beef bouillon

Put all into a big-ass pot, bring it to a boil and then let it simmer for an hour (Makes about 4.5 qts.
We experimented with different types of carbs and mostly they just turn goopy in the soup after a while so we usually put our carbs in just before we eat (This amount of soup will last the two of us 3 or 4 days). My personal preference is Quinoa (pronounced Keen-wha according to the Sailor) which you can actually leave in the soup from minute one. A close second is Couscous, preferably made with a blend of grains. Potatoes or wild rice seem to do well, but I'm usually too lazy to bother cooking them. That's it. That's our soup. If anyone tries it I'd love to here suggestions or different variations.

Yay for the new year!

Now that the festivities of International Present Day are over it's time to start thinking about next year. Usually I don't make a big deal about the new year, but maybe that's because it's been a while since I've been as hopeful as I am right now. For most folks who know me being fit was pretty integral to who I am and the last few years it seems I've gone from injury to injury to the point where I couldn't ride a bike or run without pain. Being distraught over my inability to the things that'd always given me such joy rolled into my enthusiasm for other things. The Pirate got me motivated last spring to train more consistently (we started with P90X) and I switched to running in minmalist shoes. Now that the year is over I can honestly say I can run without any nagging knee pains. Next year will be about getting some speed back. Running pain free has also refocused me on improving myself in other areas. To that end I've really committed to learning Java and have even written a couple programs ( I should really post my run converter here when I find the time) and hope to take my Java Programmer Certification exam before the end of next year. This next year will be about making a stand alone GIS with GeoTools and getting good with R (statistics programming language). The Pirate and I will also focus on racing with plans for half-marathons in California, Utah and Europe and plan to do a Warrior Dash and then a Tough Mudder later in the year with Currie. At least all be in shape when the world ends in December right? I can't wait for The Onion articles as we get closer to December! Hope everyone has a great New Year!

I swear I got more fat just watching TV

Good news first: I hobbled through the half-marathon and almost finished in under 2 hrs. We also got up to 5 free beers after the race! Any beer after a race is blissful (if you haven't tried it I think you're missing out), but I think the microbrew we had would've been good anytime. The calf recovery is going well, but not I'm back into a base phase and will really lift hard through the winter.

Onto obesity. So we don't have cable TV, we do enjoy what Netflix has to offer, but there's no way I'm paying what they're asking and really like that I'm not as much a vegetable as I am when I have TV. When I have TV though, as I do when I stay at hotels, I get a chance to see TV and remind myself how much I hate it. Two things about what I noticed at our most recent stay: the time devoted to commercials has easily doubled since I was last watching and more than half the commercials are devoted to food (we counted). Admittedly, the stations we were watching may've been biased to food commercials, but I was still amazed. Used to be commercials were about 30 seconds long and the break lasted 4-5 commercials. I do remember that near the end of shows, the last commercial break was longer (never counted), but now each break has 10-11 commercials! In the few hours we watched TV no less than 6 food commercials were observed in any one break. With that in mind is there any wonder why the country has an obesity problem. The lack of social responsibility by the media blows me away. I'll hope that someday everyone has the mental fortitude of Currie who uses the commercial break to do pushups and situps. No wonder dude can Plank for over 6 minutes! I'm not talking Planking like somebody supine on a planter in the middle of some green space, I'm talking Ed Viesturs, in your face, with some super core strength planking!

Speaking of outstanding mountaineers, I was checking out Reinhold Messner's facebook the other day and that is just one amazing person. Google Messner Mountain Museum and see all the cool stuff he's doing to try to get folks to appreciate how important, delicate, and amazing alpine environments are.

Lastly, I checked in on The Onion recently after not having done so in a long time. That's some great pseudo news.

Looks like I'm down to just blurbs of interest so it's time to check out. Good luck and stay injury free!

Athletic feats!

So this last weekend was a big weekend for some good, old friends. Tricky Trap did his best time at the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii and the Currie cruised to a 1st place victory in his age group and 3rd overall at a Muddy Buddy race in NorCal. Obviously the level of competition in Hawaii was best in the world and Tricky hung with the best. Having raced a couple times in NorCal, I know the competition is stiff so I am impressed to say the least with both feats.

Earlier in the week, as I continued my quest to reinvent myself as a runner, I blew a calf muscle. I've been working on it pretty hard and it should be ready for the half-marthon this weekend. That'll make two halfs this year that I'll do with very little prep. Yay for muscle memory! I'm excited for the race season next year because at least all my joints are behaving as they should and as of the 5k I did a couple weeks ago, I'm getting faster and faster.

The big positive of pulling the muscle was I had a little time to read and picked up 'Born to Run' by Christopher McDougall. Great read, especially for anybody who's a runner, or has been a runner and needs some inspiration as to why running is so great! It also provided some reinforcement as to why barefoot running is such a good thing. Great book.

Love and cheers!

still kicking

Well, holy crap, it's been almost 2 years since my last post. Luckily I've been busy and just haven't found a lot of time to put anything up here. Being married is great like that, we're always doing stuff. Mostly we've been focusing on getting back into shape. Since doing the Boston Marathon in 2004 (Yeah, that long ago!) I've really struggled from injury to injury and haven't really done much. It got to the point wherer I couldn't run for more than 5 minutes without agonizing pain. As I anybody remembers me without exercising is not a fun person to be around. Early last spring I went to go see a biomechanical specialist who supports the Olympic team to figure out what was wrong and it turns out my right leg was way more dominant than my left and because I used my right one so much it got injured. The solution: hit the weights. A little over a year ago I started after it and by the end of the winter I could lift as much as I ever could. In that time I'd been doing a lot of reading about biomechanics, injuries, and running and thought that the new barefoot running trend might help me even more. Seems that ol'Currie had it right all along; please forgive me for the arrogance and relentless teasing. Long story short: I ran my first half-marathon in 8 years, give or take, a couple weeks ago and just ran a 20 minute 5k for the first time in maybe 3 or 4 years. I should also give some props to P90X and more recently Insanity for helping me get fit again. I think we're on course to do about 20 races this calendar year. It's fun to do the long ones together, but short ones and trail ones we let it rip.

Trips: As is our thing we like to see what there is to see. In the last couple years we've made it to almost half the country, area wise: Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Arizona, Nevada, California, and Utah as often as we can go. Utah is just amazing; each time we go I think I've seen all the coolness it can dish out, but am blown away every time we go somewhere new. We've also been to Europe a couple times and am going again in a couple weeks. My French is pretty bad, but slowly improving. I can follow a conversation if I really pay attention, but usually my brain is fried after about 10 minutes and I zone out. Course, the beer may have something to do with that.

In any case, things are on the up and up and I'm hoping to find more time to put stuff up here.
Peace!