.: bistan.net :.

This morning, after running a quick 7:30AM 5K, we met some of my colleagues for a trip down the Ocmulgee.  We went with Ocmulgee Expeditions, which is one of the best kept secrets here in town.

They put us in the river at Water Works Park and we paddled/drifted for about 4 miles to the Riverwalk.  The kids loved it.  It was amazing how we were right in the middle of town, but it seemed like we were out in the middle of nowhere.  Even when we passed by the trails, you couldn’t see anyone because we were so low in the river.

I highly recommend taking a trip sometime soon!

This weekend, I went to the Coliseum Rock & RolL Triathlon at Lake Tobosofkee.  No, I did not do the triathlon.  I did participate in a 10K, which was an “afterthought” addition to the events.  The race was extremely unorganized and turned out to be the worst race I have ever run. 

I did, however, very much enjoy watching the triathlon events.  I had several fellow runners from our local track club participate and they have inspired me to attempt one someday.  Unfortunately, that someday will not come anytime soon for three reasons. 1- I am registered for too many long races to focus on anything other than running. 2 – I don’t want to shell out that much $$$ for a road bike right now. 3 – I’m not looking forward to actually swimming in Lake Tobosofkee.

Here are a few photos from the events:

This has been quite the busy weekend.

Saturday, we awoke at 5:00 AM and drove to Milledgeville for another 5K. I set a new personal record and was 2nd in my age group. Former UGA quarterback David Greene (second photo in black) presented the awards.

Later that evening (after a nap interrupted by a census worker), we met up with some friends at Buckner’s Family Restaurant.  It’s located at exit 201 off of I-75 behind the Pilot truck stop.  They seat your group around a lazy susan and serve the amazing food family style.  I highly recommend it!

This morning, we got up and headed up to Athens.  My sister had her first child, Elinor Grace (don’t ask about the name), on Wednesday and we went to meet her. Afterwards, we ate at Raisin’ Canes — the best chicken finger shack ever.  We discovered this place on our trip to New Orleans last year and were happy to find one in Athens.

Aside from all of that travel and fun, we have also played in the pool, went grocery shopping, and watched Avatar (which is totally not my kind of movie).  The rain has now ruined our afternoon plans, so it’s a good time to catch up on a blog post.

I hope your weekend was enjoyable as well!

Somehow, our Saturdays have been consumed with running and t-ball lately.  I fondly remember sleeping in on Saturdays.  This Saturday, we woke up at 5:30 to get ready for the Run4Missions 5K.

The kids participated in the one mile fun-run.  No, I’m not forcing my kids into my sport.  They WANT to do this.  I am happy that they are picking up on positive habits.  We know several kids who sit and play video games all day.

Tristan placed 3rd among boys 10 and under.  He ran the mile in just over 10 minutes.  That’s a lot faster than I was two years ago!

Mackenzie finished 4th among girls 10 and under.  She beat out girls three times her age!  She finished in about 14 minutes.

Here’s a picture with them sporting their finisher’s medals.  I regret that I didn’t get the pictures of them receiving their trophies at the awards ceremonies.  I wish I had brought my video camera so that you can hear the “AWWWWW”s when Mackenzie ran up to the stage to get her trophy.

After the fun run, it was time for my 5K.  I ran the race in 23:48 — a new personal record!  I was pleased.  Since I’m in a tough age group (30-34), I ended up 5th and didn’t get any bling bling.

Next, it was off to t-ball, which no longer has a “tee” as you can see above.  I’m still not sure what’s up with that.  I think maybe the ballpark lost all of the tees.

Here is Tristan getting tagged out on the way to first base.  It turned out to be a pretty good shot.

After lunch and a nice nap, we headed off to Downtown Macon for the Moonlight Miles 5K.  I’ve never raced twice in one day, but it worked out pretty well.  It was my first local night race and the only one I’ve done other than the Tower of Terror 13K at Disney.

Kimberlie isn’t great at getting good night shots, so you won’t see any pictures of me running at night.  My time was about 2 minutes slower because of hills and trying to avoid the Macon potholes at night.

We finally got home about 11:30 after a nice meal at the Waffle House (the only thing open).  Needless to say, we slept in this morning!

This morning, I drove to Reynolds for the Run for Literacy 5K, part of the Georgia Strawberry Festival.  Lightning was crashing all around and it was raining so I thought for sure it would be cancelled.  I even left the family at home.  The race director, who already had to postpone the last race she directed due to snow, pondered postponing the event.

Somehow, right at 8:00, the clouds parted and the rain stopped.  We started the race.  I had considered trying for a personal record (PR) earlier this week, but my training mileage was literally cut in half this week due to issues that I might discuss later on this blog.  I’ve also skipped speed-work training for three weeks for various reasons. I decided not to worry about the PR and just get the race over with and go home and get back into bed. (I love sleeping during storms and I was convinced that t-ball would be cancelled.)

Somehow, I miraculously pulled off the PR, shaving 36 seconds off of my previous 5K record, set last Halloween.  I also got second place in my age group and brought home a trophy — the nicest trophy I’ve won so far racing.  When I got home and connected the Garmin, the computer showed that I had negative splits — which are awesome. (For the non-runners, that’s where your first mile is the slowest and each additional mile is faster with the final mile being the quickest.  It’s extremely hard to do.)  Needless to say, I was pleased!

I have two races next Saturday: Run 4 Missions at 8:00 AM and Moonlight Miles at 8:00 PM.  Remember, you can always track my Running Saga by clicking the link on the right.

And no, they didn’t cancel T-Ball.

While I’m posting numerical updates, here is my updated running chart.  I’m beginning to rebound from my February marathon recovery, but I’m not up to where I was in the fall.  I wish this heel pain would go away!

I have been going to the local running club’s speedwork session every Tuesday evening. I’ve also ran a few races lately.  As always, you can follow My Running Saga by clicking on the link under my picture on the right. You can see all of my races, PRs, etc.

Here we go again. I blog about how I resolve to blog more. Then I make about 3 blog posts. Then you don’t hear from me for a few weeks. Then I make an excuse about why I haven’t been blogging and then I resolve to blog more.

I guess that means this is the excuse post. Let’s see . . . I’m swamped at work, swamped with class, and swamped in my personal life.

Work: I won’t bore you with the work stuff.  I doubt you care about Windows 7 imaging and Drupal modules anyway.

School: It was stupid to commit to doing this masters degree in the first place. My first masters degree didn’t get me anywhere, yet I sign up for another one. My classes this semester are Object Oriented Programming II and Advanced Graphic Design. “Advanced Graphic Design” is what Mercer calls a video game programming class when they want employers to pay for it.  Since my language of choice for the program is C#, I’m developing a game in XNA Game Studio 3.1.  I have a project in OOP2 due next week on secure code and wikis and a project in the game class due the following week on 2D game programming.  My game is pretty sweet and when I compile it, I’ll publish it here and you can download and play it too!

Running: My heel is still freaking killing me.  I can barely walk when I get out of bed in the mornings. I only ran 7 miles this week, but I need to knock out at least 5 tomorrow to exceed 70 miles for the month.

Personal life: We signed Tristan up for T-ball.  That should be interesting. I’m not particularly looking to spend 3 nights a week at a ballpark, but we want to get him involved in something.  Kimberlie is now up to 60 – 70 hour weeks so I have the kids by myself in the evenings for a while.  She works with two other Occupational Therapists.  One is in Africa for a month and the other just went out of maternity leave.  And then on Monday, as if we didn’t have enough going on, her mother died.  After this week, we are both certainly looking forward to a new week.

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

5 - AM wake up
9.1 – miles of running
15.5 – times around the block to make 9.1 miles
80 – minutes it took
4 – minute shower because running made me late
3 – times Tristan was told to not get a warning at school today
13 – mile drive to work
350 – suite number
5 – servers rebooted after 8AM because running made me late
1 – poptart
2 – bottles of water
2 – missed calls
1 – voicemail
4 – napkins to clean up Fred’s spilled coffee
5 – day weekend coming up
79 – messages stuck in the exchange queue because Microsoft sucks
25 – dollars to Amazon for completing a vendor survey
51 – videos encoded and uploaded
7 – sent emails trying to clear up email issues
1000 – things I would rather be 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.