3.15.2010

xterra 10k and dirty spokes

The Xterra 10k trail run was held Sunday, put on by Dirty Spokes Productions, and it turned out to be a great race weekend.

This was the first time that I've been to a race where you pickup your packet and racer info the morning of the race. Usually it's a week long process, but for this race, it was the morning of. The pickup started 1.5hrs prior to race start, so that's when we arrived. Little did I know, we'd be the first ones there and then have to wait that much longer for race start.
After some stretching, some striding, and getting dressed, it was time to go.
After the first quarter mile or so on the asphalt, it was in the woods we went. On dirt paths littered with down limbs, puddles of water, small rocks, giant boulders, and even some dirt fire road in there a couple times. Basically a good 2-3 ft wide trail that we blazed through on.
After about an hour, and several stream crossing, monster hill climbs, mud gulley runs, and lightning fast descents, I could see the parking lot that we started from. At that point, it was time to go. I got on the solid ground and turned it up to the finish line.
I finished with a time of 1:06:02. That time was good for 10th out 15 in my age group and 87th out of 155 overall. Not too bad for a first time 10k trail run.
Amazing at how comfortable shorts and short sleeve shirt are when it's 40* out and you just ran 6.2mi!

3.14.2010

Preliminary results: Xterra 10k & dirty spokes

Back from the Xterrra 10k trail run, put on by dirty spokes. Preliminary results:

6.2mi - 1:06:21

More to come...

3.11.2010

they walk among us

Sometimes, people really really amaze me. Here's just a couple examples:

Six women hospitalized after butt enhancements
Six New Jersey women have been hospitalized after receiving buttocks-enhancement injections that contained material used to caulk bathtubs, The Star-Ledger reports.

The newspaper says the women underwent surgery and got antibiotics after receiving a diluted version of nonmedical-grade silicone, apparently administered by unlicensed providers.
 
What made this sounds like a good idea?
 
Woman wrecks while shaving & driving
A woman who shaved her bikini area while driving caused a car crash in Florida Keys, prompting police to issue fresh warnings about safe driving, MyFox National reported Monday.

The woman crashed into another vehicle on Cudjoe Key after giving her ex-husband the wheel as she shaved her private parts. She was driving to meet her boyfriend in Key West and told authorities she wanted to be “ready for the visit,” WJZ.com reported.

Again, how is this a good idea?

Lohan suing over the E-trade baby
Lindsay Lohan is suing the financial company E-Trade, insisting that a boyfriend-stealing, "milkaholic" baby in its latest commercial -- who happens to be named Lindsay -- was modeled after her. And she wants $100 million for her pain and suffering, The Post has learned.

Synonomous w/ Oprah & Madonna - yea, I think NOT.
 
Ok, that's enough. Enjoy the chuckle.

how about that VW beetle

I do belive this video may make you want that old 1974 VW beetle back:

VW Beetle and 5th wheel camper

And it still gets 18-20mpg.

3.08.2010

look who came to visit

That's right. We were visited by Hooper the Horse on Friday. Our good friend, who plays the role of Hooper for the Detroit Pistons was in town and paid us a visit. It was a great treat to have him down to spend an evening with us.

We went out to dinner, stayed up late playing wii, and then saw him off to visit some more of his friends. He was in town for a quick wedding this weekend before returning back to Detroit.

Thanks for the visit, Hooper!

3.05.2010

things i learned

...on yesterdays run.

1. 28* is great running weather. Light running tights, single long sleeve shirt. Cold enough to be crisp at the start, yet warm enough to not completely freeze. Plus, the cold kept all the "scaredy cats" off the road, which meant I had the outside to myself.

2. 5:30am is a great time for running. I ran through some of the neighborhoods and noticed the occasional flicker of light coming from some of the rooms. Everything is quiet until you start seeing life coming through as it gets closer to 6:30am

3. Early morning runs mean there's very little traffic.

4. I've gotten faster. I ran this same run for the first time Sept. 22. Between the two runs, I've dropped almost 7minutes off of my 5mi time, and have gotten a bit more consistent. Here's my entry from my training calendar for that day:
Run University 102 - 5mi - 53:53 - 10:22avg - 1/10:51, 2/10:09, 3/10:23, 4/10:02, 5/11:09, 6/1:18(.2)
versus yesterday's entry of:
Sunrise-5mi, 28*F - 46:23  - 9:01avg - 1/8:57, 2/8:58, 3/9:09, 4/9:06, 5/9:16, .15/8:06

5. Now that the sun is rising a wee bit earlier, it's completely obvious why it's called the "Sunrise Run". Coming over the hill at the top of Birmingham, seeing the sunrise, is a great way to start the day. Just doesn't get a whole lot better than that.

Just a few random observations. Nothing spectacular.

3.04.2010

productivity

Production around the house has been ramping up quite steadily lately. I'm no expert, but I do believe it's in part of "baby girl" getting ready to join us, so we have to finish up some projects.

#1. Garage
We took two trucks off to the Goodwill donation center Saturday. The beds were full, and we had stuff inside too. Lots of just stuff. This included fish tanks, shelving units, old computer parts, clothes, shelving racks, shoes, college room decorations, and just "stuff". But, by doing so, we cleaned a large chunk of stuff off the garage floor.
Then we hung shelving up along the walls of the garage.
We untangled, and hung our fishing rods, up off the floor and out of the way.
Shortly after that, it was time to pull out the saw and start a small construction project. I have a "gear" box that stores 90% of my camping equipment. It's all in one place and stored pretty neatly. The only thing, is that this box is heavy. So, to solve that, we built a small wooden frame, with casters, to hold my gear box and make moving it a wee bit easier.
The box beside it, is Bethany's "tack trunk" which is heavy too. Luckily, it doesn't move.

#2 The Kitchen
We have started slowly replacing the mini blinds in favor of the wood slat blinds. One room at a time. There are two windows in the kitchen that we replaced. The best part, we bought the "cut to size" blinds at the store, so we wouldn't have to special order anything. Unfortunately, she had to cut them 3 times before she finally got it right.
What should have turned into a 15min job (according to the box) turned into over 2hrs each due to the miscutting by the hardware store and the crappy job of the previous owners. They used whatever hardware they had on hand, meaning we had to constantly fight with removing various pieces, just to get a clean window frame.

#3 The Nursery
Bethany and her mother went fabric shopping and bought a majority of what they needed to do their thing with. I removed the shelving units from the closet, and it got a fresh coat of paint. Again, the previous owners used hardware they shouldn't have, so spackling had to come first. And, now that it's painted, a new shelving unit (adjustable) will be installed.
Oh, and that blue, yea, it's coming down too. We won't be painting the nursery that color.

We still need to paint, assemble the crib & changing table, build a window box, rearrange, and decorate. But, at least it's a start.

#4 The Porch
The back porch received a quick cleaning too. The grill's been stashed and the firewood stacked. This weekend, we pulled out the grill, gave it a quick cleaning, removed the firewood, and then cleaned up all of the mess from the winter wood splitting. Rearranged the furniture, put a majority of the stuff in the shed, and started getting it ready for spring.

After all of that, we enjoyed quite a nice dinner.
Steaks, baked potatoes, and salad. It was good. That was definitely the way to end the uber productive weekend.

2.17.2010

21 Weeks and the Verdict is....

Our routine wasn't quite the same this past weekend since we were up and out of the house pretty early for Robert's half marathon, so we didn't get a belly picture in this week. But I definitely have better pictures to post this week anyway :).

Meet Baby Girl Harris:


Throughout the ultrasound, she kept putting her hands up by her face and trying to suck her thumb. She was moving a little bit, but mainly just hanging out the whole time which was good because the tech was able to get all of the measurements that she needed. She seems to be breech at the moment, but we still have plenty of time for her to flip around....I guess that's why I can feel lots of kicks pretty low.

How far along? 21 weeks
Total weight gain? 7 pounds total
Maternity clothes? Yep..hoping to have a couple new pairs of pants come in the mail this week.
Sleep? Getting a little less sleep now...
Best moment this week? Finding out that we are having a girl!!
Movement: Some...not very consistent though
Gender: Girl!
Labor signs? Nope.
Belly button in or out? Still in.
What I am looking forward to: Robert being able to feel her move and getting started on the nursery.

19/20 Weeks

So...again I was a slacker on getting these last couple of weeks up, but I blame it on the lack of a computer cable for the camera. I finally remembered to take pictures and then we couldn't get them on the computer. Anyway, enough of my excuses :). The baby has gone from the size of a mango to the size of a cantaloupe in these two weeks.

Here are the belly pictures for weeks 19 and 20:


How far along? 21 weeks
Total weight gain? 7 pounds total
Maternity clothes? Yep... and I love finding great deals on the winter stuff still especially since it has been so cold lately. 
Sleep? I am definitely not sleeping as well as I normally do.
Best moment this week? Feeling the baby fairly regularly.
Movement: Some...not all the time though.
Gender: I'll add that to my next post for 21 weeks :).
Labor signs? Nope.
Belly button in or out? Still in..
What I am looking forward to: Robert being able to feel the baby.

2.16.2010

oh look...

...more snow.

We got another good dusting of snow last night, but here in the south, snow is snow. Just a few quick photos from outside this morning.

It's nothing more than a light dusting, but it's still pretty neat to get it. The best part is that most of it will be gone by noon!

2.14.2010

photos from the race

Just a quick few photos from the race weekend at the Mercedes Half Marathon:

The Team Danny Photo pre-race:
   
The back end of the race group as Bethany and Laura headed to breakfast:
Final 100yrd push to the finish:
The smile (and salt) on my face after receiving my medal and shirt post run:
Final time: 2:10:41 for 13.1miles. Not bad for a first half marathon!

I'll have a full report of thoughts published soon...

post race festivities

So, what do you do after running 13.1 miles and completing your first half marathon?

You come home, put on something comfortable and start a fire in the fireplace.
Then, you take a nap for several hours.
Now, if you actually raced the half marathon, you eat and watch the olympics. Basically, you don't do a whole lot.

snow update

Overall, we got between 3-4" of snow throughout our area. Not bad at all. I do believe it snowed through most of Fri mid morning and continued through the day and into the early night. It was quite nice to get the snow around here, just because we didn't have to worry about it sticking around too much.

The best part, it was gone by mid morning on Saturday. So we went out and ran our errands without any issue. What did we do, well we did quite a bit.

We we started out by going to the race expo. Here at the expo, I picked up my race packet, saw many many vendors, sampled beer, and just enjoyed the atmosphere of all the runners coming together. After wandering through the expo, we realized we couldn't walk out empty handed.

Picking up the race packet for racer #2612.
Our purchases at the expo (Christmas ornament, 2 stickers, and 2 hats).
After the expo, we went to the Galleria for some maternity clothes shopping. Bethany scored a deal on some nice sweaters and shirts at one of the many many stores she walked me through. It wasn't too bad, but it's amazing at how long it takes to find a couple of sweaters.

We finally started our drive home, just so we could beat dark and start the "pre-race dinner" of shrimp pasta penne. Then we noticed a small problem. EVERYONE AND THEIR COUSIN WAS OUT SHOPPING OR AT LEAST DRIVING THROUGH THE CITY. You would've thought it was the day before Christmas, but instead it was the day before Valentine's Day.

Looking east...
Looking west...
Absolutely amazed at the traffic. Remind me to not leave my house on 2/13/2011.

Otherwise, it turned out to be a spectacular day, and like I said, you couldn't even tell it snowed the day before!

2.12.2010

the snow

We were expected to get between 1-4" of snow today and into tomorrow. These were taken just moments ago from my office window. We're starting to get flurries and it's coming down harder every few minutes. Based on that, we may get the few inches.
Look closely, there's a few flurries out there :) Stay tuned. I'll update more as it comes down.

It's starting to stick (11:15)

2.09.2010

race week

It's race week. It's what they call "taper madness". It's that time where you feel like you need to get out and go for a run, just to make sure you're ready, but by doing so, you'll destroy the last 12weeks of training.

This is the taper week. We have 2 runs this week. Both are 3mi or less. And with that, we'll go run 13.1 this coming Sunday. The Mercedes Marathon.

So far, I've had long runs that have built up to it, and I think I'm ready. Two weeks ago, the easy time trial run was 2:09. I felt great. It was easy. I wasn't pushing the pace or worried about the clock. I think I'm ready. But it's this taper week that makes you wonder if you really are ready. I mean, really? 13.1mi?

The good news is that I can let some injuries heal. I'm beat up and bruised. I need a little bit of a break. I'm just hoping the break heals the problems and then I can run hard on Sunday. The bumps and bruises are just part of it...

-I've managed to get what is similar to "turf toe". A minor pain under the ball of my big toe. It shows up everytime I lead off with that foot. So yea, running 13.1mi while trying not to lead with my toe, may be a small issue.
-I've somehow managed to get a bruise on the top of my left foot, right under the tongue of my shoe. Possibly from lacing the shoes wrong and then running large distances on it. Oh well.
-I have 2 black toenails. They don't hurt, but there there and annoying.

So, minor injuries, but injuries none the less. Here's to hoping a good week off will have the batteries recharged while we wait on the race.

I'm ready.... I think...