.: bistan.net :.

Our lives have been incredibly busy lately: work, school, t-ball, races, and lots more.  With all of those obligations competing for our time, it is so easy to just zip through the drive-thru instead of preparing a meal at home.  In the last week or so, we have been eating out several times a day.  On Saturday: chicken biscuits after the 5K. On Sunday: McDonalds after church, O’Charleys for dinner. We have been eating out literally every day. That puts a strain on our wallet — and our health.  So for the month of March, we have decided to abstain from eating out.

I have also tried to limit my soda consumption in the past.  Unfortunately, in our combo-centric world, it hasn’t been possible to do so while continuing to dine out.  Who is really going to buy the chicken sandwich combo and fill the cup up with water?  So to take the health thing one step further, I have personally chosen to not drink coke during March.

Here are the terms of the restrictions:

• When there are events at work that have food, it doesn’t count as “eating out” — even if the food is pizza, etc.
• There is one exception: we can eat at Chic-fil-A once (because we have the calendars with the monthly free item).
• I am not allowed to drink any coke, even at the events above. This does not apply to other family members.

Today is day four and it has been tough.  Really tough.  I can’t remember the last time I went four days without a french fry and I never noticed just how many fast food commercials there are on the radio.  Also, social activities in the south are centered around food, so pledging not to eat at restaurants are starting to affect social aspects of my life as well.  The lack of coke has affected my motivation and energy.  It makes running a lot tougher when you take away a primary energy source. I am glad, however, that the symptoms of caffiene withdrawal have passed.

Can I successfully make it through the next 27 days? Tune in and see.

This past weekend was Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend.  This is the second year that I’ve participated.  On Thursday, we checked the kids out of school early and headed down to the Wide World of Sports for the expo and packet-pick up.

The Expo

Friday morning I ran the Up and Away Family Fun Run 5K.  I didn’t really have any time goals for this race.  My current 5K PR is around 24 minutes and I knew I wouldn’t come close to that.  With 5000 runners in a race, it’s nearly impossible to run for a time goal.  Besides, I wanted to save my energy for the Half-Marathon on Saturday.  It was around 40 degrees at the beginning of the 5K, which I thought was pretty cold at the time.  Little did I know. 

The 5K was a nice run around and through a pre-dawn Epcot. I finished in a little over 26 minutes.

UP house at the 5K start

5K Start at Epcot

On Saturday came the race I’ve been waiting for.  The Half-Marathon.  This was the race I had trained for.  I thought the 5K was cold, but on Saturday it was in the very low 30s with a wind chill in the 20s.  And sleet . . . in Central Florida.  Lots of sleet and rain for the entire 13.1 miles.  Nevertheless, the family came out and cheered for me.  We had previously made signs and shirts and Kimberlie committed to getting up at 3:30 in the morning and chasing me around Walt Disney World.

My family at 3:30 in the morning

Me and an army man before the start

Tristan with his sign

The race started and I felt really good at first, but then the heel pain started creeping on. My time goal was 2 hours, but it ended up taking me 2 hours and 14 minutes. Of course, part of that was stopping to take pictures with characters, part of it was the sleet (and ice in my eyes) and the rest can be attributed to heal pain.  By 8:00 am, it was over and we were back in the hotel.  It took my body until well after noon to heat up and stop shivvering.

Princess Tiana along the course

Daisy with the family after the half-marathon

On Sunday morning, my feet were killing me.  Unfortunately, I had to get out of bed at 3:30 and run 26.2 miles before sitting in the car for a six hour ride home.  How was I going to do it?  On marathon morning, it was 26 degrees with a wind chill in the teens.  Brrrrr.

Starting Line	Characters at the Start	Pluto at Epcot
Hot air balloon	Reindeer in the cold	Dopey

It was so cold, that the course was icy. The powerade was slushy. The bananas were frozen solid. People dressed in layers and shed them as they ran. Disney collected the clothing, laundered them, and donated them to charity — over 30,000 pieces.

Somehow, I was able to finish. Over 8,000 of the 24,000+ marathoners did not finish.  Although it took over 6 hours.  At the time, I didn’t think I had ever been in that much pain before, but now I can’t remember — sort of like when a female goes through childbirth.  In fact, I plan on registering for all of the races again next year.

This photo made it worth all of the time, energy, effort and expense.

My bling bling: UP medal, Donald medal, Mickey medal and Goofy medal

Once again this year, I’m not making “resolutions”.  I do have several goals for the new year.

Fitness Related:

Run a half-marathon in less than 2 hours. (Let’s hope this happens on January 9!)

Reduce my 5K PR to 22 minutes.

Run 1000 miles in 2010.

Restart and actually complete hundredpushups.com.

Commit to and begin training to run (not run/walk) an entire marathon.

Drop my weight down to 160.

Eat out no more than once per week.

Finance Related:

Eat out no more than once per week (this falls under both).

Be completely debt free by 2011.

Work/School Related:

Take two masters degree classes each semester and stay on top of them.

Stop passing up greener pastures.

Home Related:

Spend more time teaching my kids things.

Get rid of more junk.

Computer Related:

Tweet more.

Blog more.

Facebook less.

I think that’s enough for now. I’ll try to revisit this post every few months to see how I’m doing.

I’ve really pushed the envelope with running this month: 87.26 miles for September — more than double my average and double the previous month.  That’s like from here to Atlanta.  I was scheduled to run over 100 this past month, but it is incredibly easy to renegotiate the terms of my training plan at 5:30 in the morning.

Even with the renegotiations, I’m consistently running five days a week totaling over 20 miles a week.  I’ll drop a few runs this month due to travel, but I have four races scheduled.

I think in the next month or so, I’ll start incorporating other routines into my overall fitness plan.  Perhaps I’ll go back and finish hundredpushups.com or a similar program.  I really hate running and I really hate exercise, but I want to live past retirement age so I’ll keep going for now.

I ran the Labor Day Road Race this morning for the second year.  The course goes from the Forsyth Road Dairy Queen to Central City Park, up and down the hills of Vineville Avenue (and the other 5 names the street is called along the route).

I completed the course TEN minutes FASTER than last year.  It is the toughest 10K course that I’ve ever run.  I was still 31st in my age group.

I’m several weeks into a half-marathon training plan.  Last week, I ran 21 miles.  My mileage is supposed to steadily increase until November.  I’m not sure if I’m going to tackle a November half-marathon or just wait until January when I’m scheduled to run the Disney races again.

Click on that last picture and check out how sexy my legs are getting!

So I looked at the calendar yesterday . . . and it’s August? 2009?  Where does the time go?

Instead of apologizing for not posting in the last week or so, I’ll just tell you what I’m up to now:

Tuesday we are headed to Six Flags.  We only go when we have free tickets because it sort of sucks.  We scored two free tickets off of mycokerewards.com and bought a $15 ticket for Tristan off of a twitter special.  Mackenzie has been taught that being two at Six Flags and WDW saves Daddy lots of money and I think she’s OK with that.

Thursday my boy starts kindergarten.  25 years ago, that was ME starting kindergarten, but the blur between then and now called life happened so here we are.  He’s going to the same elementary school that I went to and believe it or not, there are a lot of teachers still there . . . including my 1st and 3rd grade teacher and the principal!

Work is hell. School starting back is enough, but over then summer there has been over $1,000,000 worth of construction in our building and the technology that comes with that isn’t just going to happen by itself.  On top of that we are suppose to have a new website (first time in 5 years) by September and our web developer conveniently quit in June.  That leaves me working literally 7 days a week, sometimes around the clock.  This weekend was spent getting familiar with Drupal, our chosen (but not my me) CMS.

My half-marathon training plan is on.  That’s all I’m going to say about that.

I’ve been sick pretty much all week, but I don’t have a choice except to keep going.  I went 120 hours without drinking coke, which was a major feat for me!

Also, classes start back for me in a few weeks for that stupid graduate program I put myself into.  This semester I dropped everything but one class so that I can deal with all of the above.  I’ll be taking a class that deals with artificial intelligence in game programming (fuzzy logic, probability, and a few other things I could spell out here to make myself sound smarter).

So obviously, I’m still working on “getting all of my ducks in a row”.  (That’s Rachel’s phrase.)  And when I do . . . this blog will be BACK!

This is only my 8th blog post this month.  Sad.

This month, my blog made $65.23.  That’s $141.68 since this blog began on July 15, 2008.  I’m a loooong way from being a professional blogger.  Thanks to whoever is clicking on my amazon links and purchasing stuff.  Also, thanks to those who are clicking on my adsense links.

I uploaded my final C# project tonight.  I am 1/10 of the way towards another masters degree.

I ran 37.2 miles this month, totaling 458.19 miles since I began running in February 2009.  That’s a pathetic average of 35 miles per month.

Hopefully, that chart will start to look more like an upward curve.  Then again, the summer heat is not a runner’s friend.

This fall, I plan to run 4 10Ks, a 13K, and a half marathon — all in preparation for the 2010 Goofy Race at Disney.

That’s enough math for tonight!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been up before 6:00 am every Saturday morning, running the local 5Ks.  I’ve managed to PR every race so far, coming in with a 28:24 and chopping it down gradually.  My current 5K PR is 25:50, set yesterday in Reynolds.  

Strawberry Festival - current Personal Record

I have one more race before it gets too hot – the Run 4 Missions 5K next week.  Run 4 Missions is my favorite local 5K.  It’s put on by good people for a good cause with lots of competition and good amenities.  Sure, Jay’s Hope had free Chic-Fil-A biscuits at the finish line, but Run 4 Missions had ice cream!

Dogwood Festival

Strawberry Festival

It’s getting way too warm outside to run.  I run best between 45 – 70 degrees.  When it hits 80+, I would rather be inside.  I guess I can hit the dreadmills at work to stay in shape during the summer.  Ironically, we had a used treadmill here at the house for several years, but gave it away because nobody used it.  Then, I started running.  Figures.

Since I’ve been slightly neglecting this blog lately, I figured its a great time for a life update.  In no particular order:

RUNNING: I ran 4 miles tonight. It’s the longest distance I’ve done since the Disney Marathon, which was almost 3 months ago.  I’m just over a 9 minute/mile pace at that distance.  I have five races scheduled in April/May so I’m really going to be hitting the pavement.  It feels good getting a trophy at the end of a race!

SCHOOL: I turned in my second C# project last weekend.  One more to go and then class number one of masters degree number two will be complete.  Summer semester is going to be rough because it’s less than a month and I have a work trip to Colorado scheduled right in the middle of it.

WORK: Work sucks lately.  I just hate being there.  Our worthless marketing guy is trying to take over technology and my boss doesn’t like to fight the political battles.  On top of all of that, four years of doing the same things is getting boring.  There is no chance of advancement in my current job and my boss doesn’t support formalized training (even when it’s free).  I would really like to get my expired CCNA back (which wouldn’t cost the University anything but time), but the boss believes that if you train someone, they will leave.  I’m not knocking my boss.  He’s a great guy both in and out of work, but I need challenges!!!  I would go for the CCNA outside of work, but I don’t have time.  I do have a 5 day weekend beginning tomorrow, so maybe I’ll be re-energized by Wednesday.  If things don’t improve over the next few months, I may jump into the job market.

TRAVEL:  Yes, we are hitting the road again Sunday.  Back to Disney World.  As annual passholders, we can book the value rooms for next to nothing.  Apparently though, too many of them have been booked, so someone from Disney called me today and gave us a free upgrade to one of the Deluxe Villa Resorts (Old Key West).  It should be a great weekend.

TELEVISION: LOST is really slow-moving this season.  Some questions are being answered, but there’s not much new.  I’m ready for more action.  24 is pretty much the same old thing.  Some [insert hostile county]ian terrorists plan to detonate a [insert WMD type here] weapon in the U.S. and Jack is going to save the day.  Been there, done that.  The best part of the entire show is Chloe!

Tomorrow makes one year of running for me.  On this date last year, I registered for the Disney races.  The next morning (February 5th), I hit the pavement.  I completed 1.1 miles (of which the first .10 was actually running) and I thought I was going to die.

Over the last year, my feet have clocked 392.25 miles, where 81.5 (20.1%) miles were part of a race.  I’ve also burned about 53,431 calories.  I thought about rounding it out to 400 tonight, but its too freaking cold outside and dreadmills aren’t for me.

Nonetheless, tomorrow, all of those stats reset and I start over.  My goal for the next year is one marathon plus the Disney races and a total of 1000 miles.  Who would have thought?