Ok so like yeah I know i have fallen off the face of the earth is seems. SO whats up with me.
Work - continues to be the bright ray of sunshine that blinds you in the eyes and causes you to crash your car into a dump truck of manure, thus blinding you and making you stinky. ^_^ is that enough? Should I go on??? Lets not.
Home - K-bear is the bomb. She's just amazing and i love that she gives hugs now. Its just like the coolest. Lisa is as always right up there too. I think I have the best set of girls on the planet. I cant speak for the rest of the family but im getting really excited about X-mas! I got lisa the most amazing <----> and decided that if I was going to get <----> that I would have to add <----> and <----> to it so that it all flowed well. And after that it was just natural to add <---->. SO needless to say im really excited to give Lisa her presents. Kaiya is in love with all things monkeys right now, maybe climbing IS in her future, so im going to try to pick up some curious george stuff for her, maybe today. She still doesnt really know its Christmas or what that means but if you head over to her blog you can see a pic of her decorating a tree! Priceless!
Video Games - Over the past few months lisa and I polished off Lost Odyssey which was I have to say my favorite RPG since FFVII which is a big deal for me to say. It was really well done, Great story, great combat system. And tons of fun. After that we got through Lego Indiana jones. I was skeptical of it since I had already played two lego games. Just wondered if it would feel fresh or more of the same. They really localized it to the indy franchise and make it a lot of fun. GOOD JOB! Next up in the que is silent hill homecoming. I have heard a lot of mixed reviews of it but at this point how can Lisa and I NOT play a silent hill game? We have played all the other ones that I can get my hands on (stupid japanese only cell phone games) so its a must.
Fitness - Well I have been teaching on avg two classes a week now. Spin on Wed. and Boot Camp on Thursdays and Im having a lot of fun with it. In fact I need to wrap this up so that I can go teach spin! It also looks like I will be taking the plunge into being a race director as I have gotten the backing of the downtown YMCA (my home Y) to host an Indoor Triathlon. Should be TONS of fun and I think it will work out really well. Will be a little bit of work as right now im trying to drum up some sponsorship schwag. Today im going to hit some bike stores and see if they will donate water bottles and maybe some other stuff. Who knows but it should be a lot of fun. Im trying to eat better and workout at least 4x's a week and so far after 2 months i have seen zero difference. I'm quite frustrated but I'm going to stick with it. I want to do a couple half ironmans next year and I need to lose a little bit of weight if I want to be able to go faster than I currently am.
Well I hope this gives you guys your "fix"
cheers!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
LIKE OH MY GOSH I CANT BELIEVE IT
Ok so I am totally wanting to make the switch to apple at work but there have been 3 factors that have prevented that from happening.
1.) the person who signs off on purchases HATES anything that is apple. I dont even think he would use an ipod. Yeah I know its dumb.
2.) I run and love my dual 17" displays and would not want to go back to a single display setup
3.) until 5 min ago I thought the only mac that could do dual displays was the mac pro which at a starting price of 2799 is cost prohibitive at almost 3x's the cost of a new dell.
Well I had this idea of how cool it would be if the IMAC's let you do a video out to a second or even third monitor. With a price tag of around 1300 for a 20" it would be a tough sell but one I thought I could pull off. I then got this super gushy feeling as the image of 17" 20" 17" displays danced in my head. SO much desktop real estate!!!! SO I decided to see if the apple store had a chat function to talk to a sales person. IT did and here is what I found out.
T: Hi, my name is Tomeca F. Welcome to Apple!
Good morning.
Would you like help with your shopping?
me:Hi Tomeca my name is Chris
I had a bit of a configuration question
im currently primarily a windows user that runs a dual monitor setup
T:I'm happy to assist with that.
Me:I LOVE MY DUAL MONITORS
the only real option I have seen in replicating this is the mac pro
or can you take an imac and use the video out to connect to another monitor
if so what is the limit
T:One moment while I research that for you.
Neither one support 2 displays.
Me:really
so the only mac that supports multiple displays is the mac pro
T:No.
It doesn't either.
Me:are you sure
b/c it lets you buy two displays in the apple store
for the Mac Pro
and it shows dual DVI ports on the back of it
T:That is what took me so long, I was double checking.
Me: "All Mac Pro graphics cards support two Apple displays, each up to 30 inches."
T:That is the older one.
Me:really
so the new ones dont support that out of the box
WOW
T:That is what my supervisor checked and found out.
Mr:ouch
so what do people do who want to run a dual or more display setup?
T:I don't know.
Me:hmm
well thank you very much
T:You're welcome.
Me:have a nice day
T:You too!
Thank you for visiting the Apple Store. We appreciate your business.
Thank you for choosing the Apple Store. If you have any additional questions, please chat us again.
Like WOW. She has to be Wrong. I think I might have to pay a visit to the apple store in November when I am in C'bus and see what the Genius bar comes up with.
1.) the person who signs off on purchases HATES anything that is apple. I dont even think he would use an ipod. Yeah I know its dumb.
2.) I run and love my dual 17" displays and would not want to go back to a single display setup
3.) until 5 min ago I thought the only mac that could do dual displays was the mac pro which at a starting price of 2799 is cost prohibitive at almost 3x's the cost of a new dell.
Well I had this idea of how cool it would be if the IMAC's let you do a video out to a second or even third monitor. With a price tag of around 1300 for a 20" it would be a tough sell but one I thought I could pull off. I then got this super gushy feeling as the image of 17" 20" 17" displays danced in my head. SO much desktop real estate!!!! SO I decided to see if the apple store had a chat function to talk to a sales person. IT did and here is what I found out.
T: Hi, my name is Tomeca F. Welcome to Apple!
Good morning.
Would you like help with your shopping?
me:Hi Tomeca my name is Chris
I had a bit of a configuration question
im currently primarily a windows user that runs a dual monitor setup
T:I'm happy to assist with that.
Me:I LOVE MY DUAL MONITORS
the only real option I have seen in replicating this is the mac pro
or can you take an imac and use the video out to connect to another monitor
if so what is the limit
T:One moment while I research that for you.
Neither one support 2 displays.
Me:really
so the only mac that supports multiple displays is the mac pro
T:No.
It doesn't either.
Me:are you sure
b/c it lets you buy two displays in the apple store
for the Mac Pro
and it shows dual DVI ports on the back of it
T:That is what took me so long, I was double checking.
Me: "All Mac Pro graphics cards support two Apple displays, each up to 30 inches."
T:That is the older one.
Me:really
so the new ones dont support that out of the box
WOW
T:That is what my supervisor checked and found out.
Mr:ouch
so what do people do who want to run a dual or more display setup?
T:I don't know.
Me:hmm
well thank you very much
T:You're welcome.
Me:have a nice day
T:You too!
Thank you for visiting the Apple Store. We appreciate your business.
Thank you for choosing the Apple Store. If you have any additional questions, please chat us again.
Like WOW. She has to be Wrong. I think I might have to pay a visit to the apple store in November when I am in C'bus and see what the Genius bar comes up with.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
sup sup
Ok so I know that I am not a great blogger but oh well sue me. SO what have I been up to you might ask???? WEll since you asked here is the return of the long missed Chris "Sparky" Knodel bulleted list!!!!
Work:
oi nutter - thats all I can say. I am slammed, perhaps bammed, but there has been no thank you ma'am. I am in effect drowning in work. Most of which requires me to break things that can only be broken off hours which means in light of all that will follow (keep reading) I am having major schedule issues. Oh happy day!
Life:
oi nutter - again all I can say. Here is whats on our plate right now. Kaiya is still in therapy twice a week. Lisa is getting more night meetings as her schools construction projects take shape and well that just seems to be more the nature of her job. I know its not quite once a week yet but its starting to feel that way. Kaiya is in swim lessons on mon and wed night and thats fun but just adds more to the mix. And finally a sign went in our front yard yesterday proclaiming to the world that our house is officially for sale. It makes me sad. I like this house. Oh well lets here it for stupied attachments to innanimate objects.
Training:
Im starting to feel like I cant call myself a triathlete anymore. I feel like you have to race or ride your bike to be able to make that claim and so far I have done neither. I was exclusivly riding the mtn bike to get ready for my race this saturday which I was totally looking forward too. Oh did I mention it got cancelled? SO MAD. neway so no more races on the horizon. I think im going to sign up for the Air Force Marathon again. Almost just so that I have a longish race this year. Although I have to tell you a marathon doesnt even seem that long anymore. Im in a swimming stroke class and thats going well. Im debating on joining a masters swim team this fall/winter and trying to convince lisa that she should join with me. I think that would be a lot of fun.
gaming:
Lisa and I finished up Silent Hill Origins which was really freaky cool. It totally played like a port from a handheld (which it was) but it was still good none-the-less. Now we are playing Lost Odyssey. Giddy squeel of school girl delight its soo pretty and so far the story has some pretty good depth. Also lisa is digging on it which means we actually get to play it. Just picked up lego indiana jones so we will probably hit that when losy odyssey completes.
me:
Im inserting a seperate column. The last few months - like since january really have been pretty rough for me. My doctor was trying something new in my thyroid treatment which was the addition of another med. Over the past few months it served to only do 2 things for me. 1 - caused me to gain quite a bit of weight (15lbs) annnnnndddd 2 - caused me to be, in general, a jerk to be around. So after some consulting with my doctor:
me: this sucks what should I do
doc: lets add another med (which would make 3 total)
me: how bout I say screw this new one im on and go back to the way things were before.
doc:well.....or you could stop taking med 2 and start taking med 3
me: orrrrrrr I could go off #2 say whatever to #3 and just go back to the way I was.
doc: hmmm ok we can try that I guess.
me: :-)
SO after a nightmarish 2 weeks of hell on earth that was weening and withdrawel of med #2 I am feeling a lot better. I think I have mellowed quite a bit and dont quite feel like I want to rip someones throat out and shove it down their neck everytime they ask for something. ^_^
so thats me.
cheers!
Work:
oi nutter - thats all I can say. I am slammed, perhaps bammed, but there has been no thank you ma'am. I am in effect drowning in work. Most of which requires me to break things that can only be broken off hours which means in light of all that will follow (keep reading) I am having major schedule issues. Oh happy day!
Life:
oi nutter - again all I can say. Here is whats on our plate right now. Kaiya is still in therapy twice a week. Lisa is getting more night meetings as her schools construction projects take shape and well that just seems to be more the nature of her job. I know its not quite once a week yet but its starting to feel that way. Kaiya is in swim lessons on mon and wed night and thats fun but just adds more to the mix. And finally a sign went in our front yard yesterday proclaiming to the world that our house is officially for sale. It makes me sad. I like this house. Oh well lets here it for stupied attachments to innanimate objects.
Training:
Im starting to feel like I cant call myself a triathlete anymore. I feel like you have to race or ride your bike to be able to make that claim and so far I have done neither. I was exclusivly riding the mtn bike to get ready for my race this saturday which I was totally looking forward too. Oh did I mention it got cancelled? SO MAD. neway so no more races on the horizon. I think im going to sign up for the Air Force Marathon again. Almost just so that I have a longish race this year. Although I have to tell you a marathon doesnt even seem that long anymore. Im in a swimming stroke class and thats going well. Im debating on joining a masters swim team this fall/winter and trying to convince lisa that she should join with me. I think that would be a lot of fun.
gaming:
Lisa and I finished up Silent Hill Origins which was really freaky cool. It totally played like a port from a handheld (which it was) but it was still good none-the-less. Now we are playing Lost Odyssey.
me:
Im inserting a seperate column. The last few months - like since january really have been pretty rough for me. My doctor was trying something new in my thyroid treatment which was the addition of another med. Over the past few months it served to only do 2 things for me. 1 - caused me to gain quite a bit of weight (15lbs) annnnnndddd 2 - caused me to be, in general, a jerk to be around. So after some consulting with my doctor:
me: this sucks what should I do
doc: lets add another med (which would make 3 total)
me: how bout I say screw this new one im on and go back to the way things were before.
doc:well.....or you could stop taking med 2 and start taking med 3
me: orrrrrrr I could go off #2 say whatever to #3 and just go back to the way I was.
doc: hmmm ok we can try that I guess.
me: :-)
SO after a nightmarish 2 weeks of hell on earth that was weening and withdrawel of med #2 I am feeling a lot better. I think I have mellowed quite a bit and dont quite feel like I want to rip someones throat out and shove it down their neck everytime they ask for something. ^_^
so thats me.
cheers!
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
One ring, I mean remote, to rule them all!
Ok so like its been a long time pet peeve of mine to have like a thousand remote controls floating all over the place in the living room. I have tried some so-called "universal" remotes in the past and have always been dissapointed. It seems like they are really only capable of turning on "most" devices changing the channel and volume and thats about it. There is little to no ability to use or add the special functions on your original remote and that has always caused me to abandon whatever I had purchased to help me out. Well I finally decided to invest a little in a REAL UNIVERSAL remote. I got a Logitech Harmony 550 and although I have not used it yet the setup was a breeze. Its all run via software on your pc or mac and what I really like about it is that you set up activities on the remote. What that means is that with the press of one button on the remote it will launch the activity that I want to do. SO for example if I press the "watch TV" hotkey the remote will:
turn on the tv and set it to channel 3
turn on my DTV box
and then use the channel up and down buttons for the DTV box and the volume up and down for the TV.
or say I push the xbo x360 softkey. that will:
turn on the tv and set it to component 1
turn on the surround sound system and set it to av 1
turn on the xbox 360
Its soooo freaking cool and totally customizable.
Im soo geeked to be giving this a try and like I said if the set up is any indicator of how it will work this is going to rawk the sox off paris hilton
cheers
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
What did we think was going to happen???
Ok so im not typically very political or very much interested in what the media thinks I should care about but I have been getting more and more interested in the current state of the US economy as of late. Mostly b/c of the reactions and the finger pointing that is going on and the fact that I think most of it is absurd. SO lets take a stroll through my observations about the two big buzz topics that are going on right now.
First up - The housing market
Ok so like 6-8 years ago I think it was don rumsfeld (sp) went on what I can only call a power trip and abuse of authority and started cutting the federal interest rate in an attempt to boost the economy. Now in general I am all for a little relief when it comes to interest rates but it just seemed to me like he was out of control at the time. It seemed like every other week he was cutting the rate again and again. Why? Instant gratification (this will be a recurring theme) Yes by slashing the interest rate Rumsfeld was able to create the appearance almost instantly that he was doing a good job. However slashing interest rates doesnt change outwardly how much $$ people have only how much they think they can have in terms of credit available and the risk (interest) involved in repayment. SO its no surprise that with the interest rates falling like the current US dollar that people were going out in droves buying up all sorts of things. Cars, Houses, boats, tons of big ticket items. Well I remember when Lisa and I purchased our house. It was a wonderfull and opportunistic time and we got a smashing great interest rate for our mortgage and are still very happy with that. However at the time we were "told" by the realty chick that we could afford a house that was significantly more than we purchased. We crunched the #'s and disagreed yet she kept pushing for us to buy more or live beyone our means now and figure it out later (again instant gratification) We declined and bought what we felt we could afford -AT THE TIME!- WOW what a novel concept. We rejected the notion of an Adjustable rate mortgage to get more than we could afford and went a more humble route. Why is all this interesting? Lisa and I have Zero worries about forclosure right now. Not b/c we are wealthy beyond imagination but b/c we live within our means which seems to be a concept most americans can not or refuse to grasp. We are actually thinking about capitalizing on the current forclosure crisis and snatching up a swanky house just b/c of how cheap everything is right now. So again I ask what did everyone expect was going to happen. You let the american population make irresponsible decisions and aprove them for loans that are by any logical calculation unrealisitc and then cry about it when the rates hit the fan. I have even heard reports that people are suing their mortgage company in an attempt to not lose their homes. I have no idea why anyone would think they could win an argument like that, I mean it would be like suing McDonalds b/c you only ate their food and got fat.....oh wait......never mind......
Next up the Gas Crisis (insert spooky boogy man like sounds here)
Ok im going to try to keep this simple so that everyone understands. Oil is a commodity not a right. I just want to establish that right from the get go. SO lets have a lesson in supply and demand. Lets say we have two boys Chris and Tim. (yes I know original names) Well lets say Tim is in the basement of his house and discovers that the previous owners left a box of baseball cards in the basement. Tim takes the time to salvage the cards and clean them up package them in nice little wrappers to preserve them and keep the dirt out. SO now Timmmy is like any kid and he wants to buy toys and candy and what not. Well Timmy aint got no job but he does have these baseball cards so he goes to Chris and asks if he wants to buy any of them. Chris isnt into baseball cards but realizes they have an inherrant value and so he says ok I will give you a quarter a card. Timmy is like Yo these are like totally vintage and billy across the street will give me like a dollar a card and so Chris is like fine go sell to Billy. But billy doesnt have any money so Timmy sells the cards to Chris for a long time one at a time at a quarter a card. Well one day Billy comes into some money and realizes that the cards Timmy is selling are very valuable and offers Timmy his dollar a card option again. But this time hes got money. Now Chris starts to panic b/c hes been buying those cards at a quarter and stockpilling or reselling them for more. SO he counters the dollar with 1.50 and so on and so on.
let me spell it out.
Chris = The US
Timmy = The middle Easy
Billy = The rest of the world -specifically china
The baseball cards = oil
Its simple supply and demand and is one of the most basic economical concepts around. Supply stays constant (if we are lucky) and as demand increased so does price. Lisa and I have been telling people for years to stop complaining about gas that was $1.50 a gallon stating that over in europe and the rest of the world - even canada - the price of petrol was 2- 3x's+ more than the US. Why should we assume this was going to last? SO we did what we do best. We were the #1 consumer so we got the best price. Now however China wants as much as we get and they are willing to pay for it. SO we have to pay too. Again oil is a commodity not a right. (another concept americans seem to have issues grasping)
SO again like with the housing market we are blaming everyone we can think of but ourselves. We are blaming big oil companies and their astronomical profits, which if you take the time to look at are at roughly the same percentage of profit as when gas was a lot cheaper. It only sounds like more b/c gas costs more. but it costs them more too.
We blame the President. Please. The presidential seat currently is in my opinion almost powerless to make any real changes quickly and has to be approved by so many other peopl that if you really think that the prez is the reason gas is so high then you would have to blame every single politician in the country and it would have to be the largest conspiracy in the history of the world and is highly unlikely b/c it screws them over as much as it does us.
We blame the opec for not pumping more, inflating the price and generally doing what we would be doing if we were in their shoes but arent so its wrong. Seriously. Think about it. Say that the US could swap with the middle east in terms of being the world supplier of Oil. Do you really think we would be taking a sympathetic ear to developing nations? Do you think we would be setting a fixed price and then increasing production so that supply met or exceeded demand in an effort to stablelize the global economy. ORRR do you think we would be laughing all the way to the bank as we bragged about how awesome we were. I think if the shoe were on our foot we would be doing the same thing.
SO who else can we blame. I dont know and I dont care I want to drive a car that has the aerodynamic efficiency of a block of wood and gets 10 mpg city and 12 mpg highway. Why? B/c im american dangit and I desere it and I want whats coming to me right now!
SO those are my thoughts on the current economic crisis in america and why I feel that its our fault. All of it. We should have seen what was coming as it was the only logical end to this scenario but we chose to keep our heads burried in the sand and assume it would all work out. Well its not and things are going to be a bit tougher for those who assumed their poor choices would never catch up with them.
cheers!
First up - The housing market
Ok so like 6-8 years ago I think it was don rumsfeld (sp) went on what I can only call a power trip and abuse of authority and started cutting the federal interest rate in an attempt to boost the economy. Now in general I am all for a little relief when it comes to interest rates but it just seemed to me like he was out of control at the time. It seemed like every other week he was cutting the rate again and again. Why? Instant gratification (this will be a recurring theme) Yes by slashing the interest rate Rumsfeld was able to create the appearance almost instantly that he was doing a good job. However slashing interest rates doesnt change outwardly how much $$ people have only how much they think they can have in terms of credit available and the risk (interest) involved in repayment. SO its no surprise that with the interest rates falling like the current US dollar that people were going out in droves buying up all sorts of things. Cars, Houses, boats, tons of big ticket items. Well I remember when Lisa and I purchased our house. It was a wonderfull and opportunistic time and we got a smashing great interest rate for our mortgage and are still very happy with that. However at the time we were "told" by the realty chick that we could afford a house that was significantly more than we purchased. We crunched the #'s and disagreed yet she kept pushing for us to buy more or live beyone our means now and figure it out later (again instant gratification) We declined and bought what we felt we could afford -AT THE TIME!- WOW what a novel concept. We rejected the notion of an Adjustable rate mortgage to get more than we could afford and went a more humble route. Why is all this interesting? Lisa and I have Zero worries about forclosure right now. Not b/c we are wealthy beyond imagination but b/c we live within our means which seems to be a concept most americans can not or refuse to grasp. We are actually thinking about capitalizing on the current forclosure crisis and snatching up a swanky house just b/c of how cheap everything is right now. So again I ask what did everyone expect was going to happen. You let the american population make irresponsible decisions and aprove them for loans that are by any logical calculation unrealisitc and then cry about it when the rates hit the fan. I have even heard reports that people are suing their mortgage company in an attempt to not lose their homes. I have no idea why anyone would think they could win an argument like that, I mean it would be like suing McDonalds b/c you only ate their food and got fat.....oh wait......never mind......
Next up the Gas Crisis (insert spooky boogy man like sounds here)
Ok im going to try to keep this simple so that everyone understands. Oil is a commodity not a right. I just want to establish that right from the get go. SO lets have a lesson in supply and demand. Lets say we have two boys Chris and Tim. (yes I know original names) Well lets say Tim is in the basement of his house and discovers that the previous owners left a box of baseball cards in the basement. Tim takes the time to salvage the cards and clean them up package them in nice little wrappers to preserve them and keep the dirt out. SO now Timmmy is like any kid and he wants to buy toys and candy and what not. Well Timmy aint got no job but he does have these baseball cards so he goes to Chris and asks if he wants to buy any of them. Chris isnt into baseball cards but realizes they have an inherrant value and so he says ok I will give you a quarter a card. Timmy is like Yo these are like totally vintage and billy across the street will give me like a dollar a card and so Chris is like fine go sell to Billy. But billy doesnt have any money so Timmy sells the cards to Chris for a long time one at a time at a quarter a card. Well one day Billy comes into some money and realizes that the cards Timmy is selling are very valuable and offers Timmy his dollar a card option again. But this time hes got money. Now Chris starts to panic b/c hes been buying those cards at a quarter and stockpilling or reselling them for more. SO he counters the dollar with 1.50 and so on and so on.
let me spell it out.
Chris = The US
Timmy = The middle Easy
Billy = The rest of the world -specifically china
The baseball cards = oil
Its simple supply and demand and is one of the most basic economical concepts around. Supply stays constant (if we are lucky) and as demand increased so does price. Lisa and I have been telling people for years to stop complaining about gas that was $1.50 a gallon stating that over in europe and the rest of the world - even canada - the price of petrol was 2- 3x's+ more than the US. Why should we assume this was going to last? SO we did what we do best. We were the #1 consumer so we got the best price. Now however China wants as much as we get and they are willing to pay for it. SO we have to pay too. Again oil is a commodity not a right. (another concept americans seem to have issues grasping)
SO again like with the housing market we are blaming everyone we can think of but ourselves. We are blaming big oil companies and their astronomical profits, which if you take the time to look at are at roughly the same percentage of profit as when gas was a lot cheaper. It only sounds like more b/c gas costs more. but it costs them more too.
We blame the President. Please. The presidential seat currently is in my opinion almost powerless to make any real changes quickly and has to be approved by so many other peopl that if you really think that the prez is the reason gas is so high then you would have to blame every single politician in the country and it would have to be the largest conspiracy in the history of the world and is highly unlikely b/c it screws them over as much as it does us.
We blame the opec for not pumping more, inflating the price and generally doing what we would be doing if we were in their shoes but arent so its wrong. Seriously. Think about it. Say that the US could swap with the middle east in terms of being the world supplier of Oil. Do you really think we would be taking a sympathetic ear to developing nations? Do you think we would be setting a fixed price and then increasing production so that supply met or exceeded demand in an effort to stablelize the global economy. ORRR do you think we would be laughing all the way to the bank as we bragged about how awesome we were. I think if the shoe were on our foot we would be doing the same thing.
SO who else can we blame. I dont know and I dont care I want to drive a car that has the aerodynamic efficiency of a block of wood and gets 10 mpg city and 12 mpg highway. Why? B/c im american dangit and I desere it and I want whats coming to me right now!
SO those are my thoughts on the current economic crisis in america and why I feel that its our fault. All of it. We should have seen what was coming as it was the only logical end to this scenario but we chose to keep our heads burried in the sand and assume it would all work out. Well its not and things are going to be a bit tougher for those who assumed their poor choices would never catch up with them.
cheers!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Some movie reivews
Well lisa and I go through periods where we rent a bunch of movies and then basically we stop for a few months and then go back and watch the stuff we have missed. Its a nice little system that I think works well for us! SO anyway we have been watching quite a few movies lately and despite the fact that I have enjoyed most of them I typically see no reason to post my thoughts on any of them. Well I have two that I would like to discuss this morning. One because it was so good I just have to give props to it and another that was so bad it must be punished!!!
First up Alien Vs. Predator - Requiem
Im almost speechless at how bad this movie was. To date I have seen all the predator movies (more than once) and all the alien movies (more than once) so I feel I have a pretty good grip on both franchises. However This movie decided that even though it was "supposedly" building on all that came before it was going to throw the baby out with the bath water and do whatever the heck they wanted to with the characters. In fact in what was supposed to be one of the more dramatic moments that tugged on your heartstrings (the whole down being blown off the map) I broke out in laughter at the absurdety of the whole thing. The characters were flat and had allusions to back stories that were never developed. The predator that was supposed to act as a galactic clean up man was in effect easily distracted by shiny metal objects and did a crappy job of what he was sent to do. The ultimate weapon /warrior of the movie - the alien predator hybrid of whom im still trying to figure out came into existance (this makes no sense people!!!) was no more effective than a regular standalone predator or alien and therefore was really quite pointless except that some writter some where was like "hey wouldnt it be cool if we crossed and alien WITH a predator!!! that would be flippin sweet!!!!" Finally the ending was about as random as you can get. First we get the few survivors not being quarantined but being helped out as if they were just some hikers lost in the woods and then in one of the greatest whiplash moments ever recorded in movie history we are taken to a scene in some obscure office that is quite possibly the biggest rip on the x-files ever with one exception. The x-files was confusing but made sense, This scene was just random and confusing and left both lisa and me with are jaws dropping going "the heck was that about????" The only redeeming thing I can say about the movie is that in the end it did stop and that is a good thing.
I give it -4 out of 5 sparks
Next up Appleseed - Ex Machina
Ok I hope you are still reading b/c this movie is a must see. Yes its anime and I realize that a lot of people think that anything that is not live action is for kids. Ok yes disney movies are for kids. But that does not mean anime is. Anime is totally different and this particular anime is FREAKING AWESOME. I am going to be quite a bit more brief about this movie vs the one above as I dont want to spoil anything. However I will say this. Its gorgeous absolutly gorgeous. The characters are so well done and the action sequences are some of the most intense and well done that I have seen in a long time. There were several scenes that reminded me a bit of the first matrix - you know the one that didnt suck - but they were even more intense and more well done. Ah the beauty of anime. The only other thing I can say is this. I had a friend over to watch it last week and I told laura that we were going to watch it. I said you should watch it but you wont b/c its animated. But if you gave it a chance you will like it. She looked at the box smiled and bailed. SO I watched it with my friend Robb and we were both just blown away. SO much that I decided to watch it again on saturday during a prolonged car trip. no I was not driving. Well laura was in the van as well and out of boredom and nothing else to entertain her picked up the headphones and watched it. final verdict. She loved it too. What else can I say. Oh yeah I think im going to buy it as well as the 2004 appleseed movie.
I give it 4 out of 5 sparks ****
quick bullet - time - updates
Job - sucks
Lisa - rocks
Kaiya - rocks but is teething and that is really really pitifull
gaming - still working on Eternal Sonata but closing in on the end.
training - adequate. Im teaching spinning and a boot camp aerobics class now! no races on the hoizon
thats about it
cheers!
First up Alien Vs. Predator - Requiem
Im almost speechless at how bad this movie was. To date I have seen all the predator movies (more than once) and all the alien movies (more than once) so I feel I have a pretty good grip on both franchises. However This movie decided that even though it was "supposedly" building on all that came before it was going to throw the baby out with the bath water and do whatever the heck they wanted to with the characters. In fact in what was supposed to be one of the more dramatic moments that tugged on your heartstrings (the whole down being blown off the map) I broke out in laughter at the absurdety of the whole thing. The characters were flat and had allusions to back stories that were never developed. The predator that was supposed to act as a galactic clean up man was in effect easily distracted by shiny metal objects and did a crappy job of what he was sent to do. The ultimate weapon /warrior of the movie - the alien predator hybrid of whom im still trying to figure out came into existance (this makes no sense people!!!) was no more effective than a regular standalone predator or alien and therefore was really quite pointless except that some writter some where was like "hey wouldnt it be cool if we crossed and alien WITH a predator!!! that would be flippin sweet!!!!" Finally the ending was about as random as you can get. First we get the few survivors not being quarantined but being helped out as if they were just some hikers lost in the woods and then in one of the greatest whiplash moments ever recorded in movie history we are taken to a scene in some obscure office that is quite possibly the biggest rip on the x-files ever with one exception. The x-files was confusing but made sense, This scene was just random and confusing and left both lisa and me with are jaws dropping going "the heck was that about????" The only redeeming thing I can say about the movie is that in the end it did stop and that is a good thing.
I give it -4 out of 5 sparks
Next up Appleseed - Ex Machina
Ok I hope you are still reading b/c this movie is a must see. Yes its anime and I realize that a lot of people think that anything that is not live action is for kids. Ok yes disney movies are for kids. But that does not mean anime is. Anime is totally different and this particular anime is FREAKING AWESOME. I am going to be quite a bit more brief about this movie vs the one above as I dont want to spoil anything. However I will say this. Its gorgeous absolutly gorgeous. The characters are so well done and the action sequences are some of the most intense and well done that I have seen in a long time. There were several scenes that reminded me a bit of the first matrix - you know the one that didnt suck - but they were even more intense and more well done. Ah the beauty of anime. The only other thing I can say is this. I had a friend over to watch it last week and I told laura that we were going to watch it. I said you should watch it but you wont b/c its animated. But if you gave it a chance you will like it. She looked at the box smiled and bailed. SO I watched it with my friend Robb and we were both just blown away. SO much that I decided to watch it again on saturday during a prolonged car trip. no I was not driving. Well laura was in the van as well and out of boredom and nothing else to entertain her picked up the headphones and watched it. final verdict. She loved it too. What else can I say. Oh yeah I think im going to buy it as well as the 2004 appleseed movie.
I give it 4 out of 5 sparks ****
quick bullet - time - updates
Job - sucks
Lisa - rocks
Kaiya - rocks but is teething and that is really really pitifull
gaming - still working on Eternal Sonata but closing in on the end.
training - adequate. Im teaching spinning and a boot camp aerobics class now! no races on the hoizon
thats about it
cheers!
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Disaster Averted
Well we got some really crappy news on friday night. Skybus tanked. Why did that suck for us? Did I own 50% share in the company and therefore lost millions???? Did I show up for work at columbus airport only to find my company was closed and my job vapor? No nothing drastically severe like that. However I did have my 4 round trip plane tickets become vapor in the space of a few hours and a couple of PR crafted e-mails. what really sucks is that our vacation is supposed to be next week and so getting notified that your airline tanked a week before you were set to leave totally bites. SO Lisa and I talked about it and talked and decided we were not going to go. That the cost of new tickets would be prohibitive as we are trying to pay some stuff off. However on Sunday night we were both still pretty bummed about not going on vacation anymore and we talked again and decided to bite the bullet and just go. I think we both need this week off a lot and with no other means of rest on the horizon this week had become very important to both of us. SO the good news is we are still going to Daytona. The bad news is - its costing us a whole lot more than we had planned. But in the grand scheme mental health is worth more than what those tix cost us so I think we made the right call. SO vacation is back on!
SO that means that in 5 days I will be at the beach with my babies and they will both be in bikinis and I will be very very happy.
Cheers!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
you say hello and I say goodbye!
Well after running windows Vista ultimate for roughly a year now I doing something that is becoming less and less uncommon. Thats right im downgrading (upgrading if you ask me) back to Windows XP. Why am I doing this. Let me sum up a few reasons.
My machines is pretty beefy with an intel pentium D proc and over 3 gigs of ram. I have a nice video card. Dual 17" displays two optical drives ( a cd burner and a dvd burner). And its current age is 2 years old. SO its no slouch and in genreal. However....
compared to an xp machine with lower specs or both proc and ram it takes me over a minute longer to boot than a lesser xp machine.
1.) I am using over 2 gigs of ram most of the time and am having issues with not enough free RAM
2.) My hard drive has become bloated to the point where I only have 2.5 gigs free of space. Vista seems to consume my hdd. just last week I cleared out a lot of stuff that I no longer needed and some stuff that I would have liked to keep but decided it was not critical and could be replaced. This got me to around 14-16 gigs of free space. Well now in the space of a week im back down to 2.5. When I search my drive I can find nothing that should be consuming this space. And when I went through my computer and backed up the files I wanted to keep including all my media I was only at around 17 gigs? SO where is the other 60?????
3.) Microsoft programs often crash while using Vista. This includes IE7 office 2007, even notepad crashed on me this morning. FREAKING NOTEPAD?????
4.) Vista ultimate is the biggest piece of skank ware I have seen yet. (if you dont know what skank ware is look for my wiki on it coming soon!!) I cant believe they charge more for this version. The only usable extra I have seen from it that I tried out was a crappy little texas hold em game. Thats it. Windows dream scene, which I did not plan to use but was excited to see, wont run on a dual monitor system like mine. there goes another feature. Oh and Aero often randomly turns itself off.
5.) programs hang all the time. ALL THE TIME.
6.) The sidebar is perhaps THE most pathetic attempt at copying something from apple. Their are like no real usable gadgets and they dont work as well as widgets do.
7.) It takes forever to do anything. I was trying to edit a photo awhile back and my machine kept crashing while doing a more complex editing option. Well after spending an hour trying I got fed up and decided to try it on my laptop. Ok if you have not seen my laptop its a mobile centrino proc with 512 of ram. it literally took me 30 seconds start to finish to do the edit I was trying to do!!!
8.) The security features serve only one purpose. ANNOYANCE! I only ever saw false positives from all the built in agents and the only person they stopped from accessing my machine was me.
9.) the last straw. today I was trying to upgrade to the newest version of Anti-Virus I have and it took me over an hour to uninstall the old version. Then it took a couple of re-boots before I could install the new ver. All in all took me about 1.5 hours to do. Brian in the next cube over. Same thing 5 minutes.
I am officially disgusted by this piece of garbage that Microsoft released.
My machines is pretty beefy with an intel pentium D proc and over 3 gigs of ram. I have a nice video card. Dual 17" displays two optical drives ( a cd burner and a dvd burner). And its current age is 2 years old. SO its no slouch and in genreal. However....
compared to an xp machine with lower specs or both proc and ram it takes me over a minute longer to boot than a lesser xp machine.
1.) I am using over 2 gigs of ram most of the time and am having issues with not enough free RAM
2.) My hard drive has become bloated to the point where I only have 2.5 gigs free of space. Vista seems to consume my hdd. just last week I cleared out a lot of stuff that I no longer needed and some stuff that I would have liked to keep but decided it was not critical and could be replaced. This got me to around 14-16 gigs of free space. Well now in the space of a week im back down to 2.5. When I search my drive I can find nothing that should be consuming this space. And when I went through my computer and backed up the files I wanted to keep including all my media I was only at around 17 gigs? SO where is the other 60?????
3.) Microsoft programs often crash while using Vista. This includes IE7 office 2007, even notepad crashed on me this morning. FREAKING NOTEPAD?????
4.) Vista ultimate is the biggest piece of skank ware I have seen yet. (if you dont know what skank ware is look for my wiki on it coming soon!!) I cant believe they charge more for this version. The only usable extra I have seen from it that I tried out was a crappy little texas hold em game. Thats it. Windows dream scene, which I did not plan to use but was excited to see, wont run on a dual monitor system like mine. there goes another feature. Oh and Aero often randomly turns itself off.
5.) programs hang all the time. ALL THE TIME.
6.) The sidebar is perhaps THE most pathetic attempt at copying something from apple. Their are like no real usable gadgets and they dont work as well as widgets do.
7.) It takes forever to do anything. I was trying to edit a photo awhile back and my machine kept crashing while doing a more complex editing option. Well after spending an hour trying I got fed up and decided to try it on my laptop. Ok if you have not seen my laptop its a mobile centrino proc with 512 of ram. it literally took me 30 seconds start to finish to do the edit I was trying to do!!!
8.) The security features serve only one purpose. ANNOYANCE! I only ever saw false positives from all the built in agents and the only person they stopped from accessing my machine was me.
9.) the last straw. today I was trying to upgrade to the newest version of Anti-Virus I have and it took me over an hour to uninstall the old version. Then it took a couple of re-boots before I could install the new ver. All in all took me about 1.5 hours to do. Brian in the next cube over. Same thing 5 minutes.
I am officially disgusted by this piece of garbage that Microsoft released.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Portal is the ROCKAGE!
Ok so I was talking to a couple of friends and had mentioned letting them borrow the orange box but before I could let it go for a small period of time I had to give portal a try. I have to say that this little concept game is one of the best games I have played in years. The aperture portal gun is simply brilliant and the physics behind the game are flawless. Any game that takes you a good couple of levels to really get your mind around what the heck you are actually doing, and not because of poor design, but because the concept is so new and fresh, is just so awesome. The levels are so well done and they scale in difficulty brilliantly. By the last couple of levels I could come up with a concept of what I would have to do pretty quickly but then the idea of "how the heck am I gonna pull that off" comes into play and makes each level a great challenge. I think whats also great about portal is that although it is totally linear, b/c of the portal system many levels have a number of different ways of reaching the goal. After beating Portal I went online and started to watch vids of how other people played levels and was really surprised at how different they were from my experience. Some did better others did worse but we all got through it. Other areas of note. The narration makes the game what it is. I wont go into too much details but this game has replaced my all time favorite line from a video game. Before this it was from the second nights of the old republic. There is a scene where you meet a new jedi named jolie and in the course of the conversation you have the option of saying "I hate you old man" to him. That used to be my favorite line. Now replaced with "oh come on we had fun didnt we? Like that time you thought I was going to murder you in the fire - that was fun right?"SO anyway if you have a 360 you need to buy the orange box. Not only is it the best deal in video game history - 5 games for $60 bucks but it includes portal. Did I mention portal rocks. If you dont feel like you can put out the coin for the game then at least go rent it. Portal takes about 4-5 hours on your first play through so its easy to get through with a rental.
BTW -- Portal rocks!
Cheers!
Friday, February 08, 2008
Somedays I feel like people can see right through me.
Oh wow I guess somedays people can see right through you and today is one of those days. I have been having a bit of pain in my right femur over the last month or so, so my doc suggested I go in and get some slides done just to be safe. I still have not heard the results yet but I will put the slides up here for your viewing pleasure!
Here we can see a nice cross section of my right femur. What is most interesting is if you blow up the picture you can see the shadows of where the screws used to be. Im not sure if this is quite normal or not but I have to say im not terribly thrilled about it. If you look in the top left of the slide you will see a little dot under the R. thats approximately where my bone is hurting. Oh Joy!
the hip bone is connected to the femur bone!
Here is a nice dead on straight shot that shows how much metal is still left in what is essentially my knee. Again I didnt realize it was this much and am not too happy about that. although it does help to explain my my knee hurts so much sometimes.
Well there ya go. A little up close and maybe too personal look into my leg.
Cheers!
Here we can see a nice cross section of my right femur. What is most interesting is if you blow up the picture you can see the shadows of where the screws used to be. Im not sure if this is quite normal or not but I have to say im not terribly thrilled about it. If you look in the top left of the slide you will see a little dot under the R. thats approximately where my bone is hurting. Oh Joy!
the hip bone is connected to the femur bone!
Here is a nice dead on straight shot that shows how much metal is still left in what is essentially my knee. Again I didnt realize it was this much and am not too happy about that. although it does help to explain my my knee hurts so much sometimes.
Well there ya go. A little up close and maybe too personal look into my leg.
Cheers!
Thursday, January 31, 2008
new phone on its way!!!!!!
well im super jazzed b/c this morning i placed the order for my new phone. its a xv 6800 by htc and it will have a full qwerty keyboard wifi and win mobile 6. so it should be pretty cool and i am hoping that its here by sat b/c i have been waiting a month for this. more when i get the phone!
cheers
cheers
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Vista sp1 rc1
so yeah right now im instaling sp1 for vista. why? b/c it cant suck any worse than vista does right now. so for the next hour or so my pc is unusable so im blogging from chiyo right now. Hopefully i will get my pc back soon and it will be working better.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Happy belated birthday to me
ok so i guess not quite yet but at the end of this week i will be finally getting my new mobil an i cant wait!!!!! if i get what i want it will me a new era of blogging for me as the phone i want runs win mobile 6 and has wifi so that means i can start to really utilize things like blogs and twitter more often. b/c i often have like 5 or10 min to kill and i am discovering that wifi is rather ubiquitous. So lets hope for a good late b-day for me!
Monday, December 31, 2007
10957 days without colour
I came acrossed this video today and it really spoke to me. Im feeling a bit more melancholy than usual and I think it has to do with the fact that in two days I will no longer be in my 20's and im less than thrilled about that. I have also come to another couple of conclusions over the past few days.
1.) I hate my grandfather wolf. - yikes! WOWZA! how can I say that?? Well I never met the guy (that I remember) and despite being an abusive alchoholic of a father and husband he only gave me two things. The first is the reason I shave my head. The second is a world without colour. Man I hate that guy.
2.) I have also grown to strongly dislike Shinobu Ishihara. If you have ever looked into a circle of coloured dots and seen a number you can thank him. If however you have ever looked into a circle of colured dots and seen only coloured dots you can thank him for helping to ruin your life.
Im thinking of designing a t-shirt to express my disgust for his lifes work and my rejection of his test. I have not been able to come up with a good idea though. I definitely want the text to all be in Japanese so I will be looking for help on this from those good with the jp speak. My basic idea is a test plate with some text like "dont label me" "you ruined my life" " you have crippled me" " I will hate you till the ends of the earth" that type of thing. but it should be clever and right now im just in angst mode so im not happy with what I am thinking thus far.
cheers!
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Some random fun
Now that the ironman is over everyone keeps asking "what next???" Maybe we will give this a try
Sunday, November 04, 2007
I AM AN IRONMAN!!!!!!!
Well its Sunday morning and I can finally say that I am an IRONMAN! The race was the longest thing I have ever done in my life and it was more pain and suffering than I think I have ever been through. But its over and im pretty psyched that I finished. Total time of 15:38:17. CRAP THATS A LONG TIME!
Well im going to give some brief highlights. I got to my bike to check the tires on race morning and the rear was flat again. SO I pumped it up and put 140psi in it so that it would have a bit extra. I figured that I would probably have to add air at some point on the bike course but that it would hold in general. I got everything else set up and went to go put on my wetsuit. I got to the start and seeded my self exactly where I wanted to be. all the way in the back on the inside. I wanted to swim as little as possible so I did not want to be far off to the right like a lot of people do. My thought was that if I was one of the last into the water I wouldnt impede anyone.
The Swim:
Things started really well and I felt great. The water temp was perfect and things were going pretty well. The swim for an ironman is nicknamed "the wash cycle" b/c thats what the ocean looks like when you drop 2300 people in it all swimming in the same direction. I got beat up quite a bit and had a really hard time finding open water to swim in. I made it out of the first lap in 43 minutes and was just so excited to be on track for my time goal of an hour 30. I got back in the ocean and just had a great second lap. The water was a lot clearer and I got to draft off of quite a few guys and that made my 2nd swim lap just as fast as my first but with less effort and thats pretty good to me. I got out of the water at 1:30 on the money and felt great
Out of the water onto the timing mat and then to the wetsuit strippers. WOW that was funny. Two guys told me to lay down and whooosh my wetsuit was off. At least they could have bought me a drink first!
T1 12:04
SO I come out of the water and I got my wetsuit and they hand me my t1 bag and im into the changing tent. I actually managed to find a seat! I quickly get all my gear on and my wetsuit and stuff is lying on the ground. I start stuffing it into the bag and a volunteer yells "let me do that you just get going!!!! SO out of the tent and they start calling my number for someone to get my bike. They kinda dropped the ball on this one as I was not supposed to have to go to my rack to get my bike but I basically did and when I got there I grabbed my bike and the first thing I did was check the rear tire. Which was dead flat. DOH. SO I ran to the mechanical tent and spent the next 8 min watching them change my tire out. So my t1 time sucked big time
The Bike 7:02:57
Well after the mechanical issue I was off and feeling really good. I was glued to my heart rate monitor and was sure to not go outside of my target zone. In the beginning I was being passed by a lot of people and just kept telling myself to ride this thing smart and to listen to my body.
Which I did. I was riding really solidly and was surprised at my pace which was around 17-18 mph. I just kept picking off mile markers and was having a total blast. At this point I was loving racing the ironman and was just having the most fun ever! I even came up with a little song that I kept singing to myself on the bike. It went like this
I love my softride it is really great
it smooths out the rough roads that other bikers hate!
I saw a lot of crap on the bike course that really surprised me. Bottles still in their cages. I saw one bike just on the side of the road and a ton of tubes and tires and stuff that people had not secured properly to their bikes that fell off. Well around mile 70 things started to go downhill for me. First my computer just stopped registering at all. I dont know why. I pulled over at the next stop and checked and everything was aligned properly but it just no longer was working. SO that stunk as I no longer has any clue how fast I was going. Then the first major issue of the day happened. I started to have an asthma attack on the bike. I had my inhaler with me and took a couple of puffs while riding but it just took too long be effective and I was really hurting. I was barely able to take a breath without my lungs hurting and burning and it just made the last 50 miles or so of the bike miserable. I still ended up avg like 15ish mph but had I not had breathing issues I could have maintained my original speed.
T2 7:22
I got off the bike and back into the change tent which was much less crowded this time and I just took a second to sit there and take it all in. At this point I was still not breathing all that well and my right knee was really hurting quite a bit. For those of you not in the know. I still have a rather large screw in my knee from when I broke my femur and it usually only hurts when I go long in workouts like the ironman. SO I was off the bike and not looking forward to the run at all. I got my socks and shoes on, put on my hat and headed out the door. I stopped to hit the port o potty and also to put sunscreen on. My neck and shoulders were pretty burned by this time as well despite putting sunscreen on before racing and re-applying once during the bike.
The run 6:45:33
As I was exiting the transition zone I look over to see my wonderful support crew of Iron spectators and boy did I need to see some familiar faces. SO who was there to support me? Lisa and Kaiya, Laura, Sara and Sue, And Chris and Kerry Wright. It was awesome to have so many people there watching and I really needed them. SO as im exiting I hear "Your a silly sausage" and " Its bumper to bumper on the rainbow bridge" Which I know sounds really random but it made sense to me and it made me smile which is exactly what I needed at the time. I ran probably the first mile and then I had to start walking. I was just in too much pain with my knee and I just could not breath. Plus the more I tried to use my inhaler the sicker to my stomach I got. At this point I had not eaten anything in about an hour and had, had very little liquid. I realized I was getting dehydrated and I needed calories and food. SO I started taking cola at the aid stations and cookies when they had them. Ahh cookies and coke! The combo that saved my ironman. I dont think I have ever wanted to quite something so much in my life as I wanted to quit right then. I was about mile 2, walking, in lots of pain, and the thought of another 24.2 miles just seemed like too much. It seemed impossible. But then I started to think about a conversation that lisa and I had a few weeks before. She asked if I had ever not finished a race and I said no. I have always finished a race and I have never dropped out. At that point I said to myself I am not going to let this race beat me. I am tougher and stronger than this race and I will beat this race it will not beat me. I then realized what the ironman was to me. It was not a race for time. It was not a shot at a spot for kona or an age group win. It was about me beating myself. Overcoming my physical limitations and finishing despite the fact that I probably shouldn't be able too. So then I shifted the focus inward. I told myself I couldnt run with my knee hurting AND not being able to breath but if I could overcome one of those I could run again. I knew I could not do much about my knee. I mean there is a big hunk of metal in there I cant change that. SO I started talking to my asthma. I told it that I would not let it beat me. Not this time. I told myself I was stronger than my asthma that I could do this without breathing and that if I had to I would. SO I kept walking and just told myself that every step was a step closer to the finish and that if I had to walk the whole thing I had enough time to do that. SO I kept walking and I made it to the turn around and that felt really good. It was starting to get dark and it was getting colder so I put my arm warmers back on and that helped a TON. I had talked to my bro Rich the day before and he had told me that whenever he was doing a run and felt like he couldnt go any farther that he would sing psalms in in his head and that always helped. SO I started singing the one he suggested (cant remember the #) and 119x I also sang be thou my vision to myself as thats a special one to lisa and me. About mile 8 I realized I was breathing pretty well and that my knee was no longer hurting that much. SO I started to run. I decided I wanted to finish this loop and run to the next turn around. I wanted Lisa and Kaiya to see my running and not walking. SO I actually ran the next 4 miles and kept a pretty good pace. Then the psychological warfare started. With about 1 mile till the turn around is also the finish and spectators dont know if you are on lap 1 or 2 so they all assumed lap 2. SO for like 15 min all I heard was good job your almost done. That was really hard knowing that I had another 13 miles to walk/run and that I wanted to be done so bad. I wanted to be on my second loop and I didnt want to be going back out into the cold dark night. Plus at this point I was close enough to hear mike reilly telling people they were ironmen and I wanted to be there. I wanted to cut the course and just run it in. Skip the last 13 miles. I figured hey I will cross the line get my pics and my medal. They will say im an ironman and give me my medal. It will be awhile till they figure out I skipped half the marathon. But I didnt do that. I saw lisa and she said hows it going. I replied "this sucks" I told her I was in a lot of pain and I didnt want to keep going. They all started to tell me I was almost done and not to think about how much I had left but how much I had already done. I really cant thank my family and friends enough for helping me get through this. SO I made the turn around and started my way back out into the night. I made another deal with myself. Walk a mile run a mile. Well that didnt happen I walked 1 ran a half and then ended up walking the rest. I was right back to where I was before. Burning and cramping in my lungs and my knee hurt so bad. I just kept thinking about the turn around and trying to make it there. Before I knew it I was there and I decided I wanted to try to be at 15 hours with 3 miles to go. I figured I could walk three miles in an hour and if I didnt I would still be in the low 16's. Well I was walking a lot faster than I thought I would be able too. 15 min miles so 4mph. Before I knew it I was at 15 hours with a little over 2 to go. I realized that I would finish in 15 hours if I just kept going. Those last two miles were really hard. I was so tired and just so worn out I wanted to just collapse on the side of the road and lay down. I remember thinking that I coulndnt stop for anything b/c I didnt think I would be able to start again if I stopped. SO I just kept going. As I approached the line I realized this was it. I was almost done. I had been walking with this really sweet girl and she said she was going to run the last bit in b/c she didnt want her family and friends to see her walking. She was also a first timer and we both agreed doing ironmans was really stupid and this was the last one for both of us. I let her go on ahead and kept walking content to walk across the line. But then as I got close I decided I wanted to try to run. SO I did. I got to the finish stretch and all the spectators were cheering and I no longer noticed that I couldnt breath or that my knee hurt. I just was so in the moment. I heard them say Chris 29 from franklin ohio YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!!!!
Post race:
SO I really thought as soon as I crossed the line I was going to just collapse but I didnt. I was ok. I could still walk a bit but much slower than before and I just went looking for my ultimate finish prize. A hug from Lisa and Kaiya!!!! After I found them I went for my post race massage and then to the food tent to eat some victory pizza.
SO the big question is do I think I want to do this again? HECK NO! That sucked and was too long. I think I am more suited for olympic and half iron distance but at least I can say I am an Ironman now and nobody can take that from me ever!
Again thanks to all my fam and friends who have supported me over what has been one of the longest most stressfull years of my life. You have all been super great and I love you all so much. Thanks for making this possible and for helping me fulfill a dream of mine that I have had for a long time.
Sorry no pics yet I have not gotten any but when I do I will post em.
Cheers!
Well im going to give some brief highlights. I got to my bike to check the tires on race morning and the rear was flat again. SO I pumped it up and put 140psi in it so that it would have a bit extra. I figured that I would probably have to add air at some point on the bike course but that it would hold in general. I got everything else set up and went to go put on my wetsuit. I got to the start and seeded my self exactly where I wanted to be. all the way in the back on the inside. I wanted to swim as little as possible so I did not want to be far off to the right like a lot of people do. My thought was that if I was one of the last into the water I wouldnt impede anyone.
The Swim:
Things started really well and I felt great. The water temp was perfect and things were going pretty well. The swim for an ironman is nicknamed "the wash cycle" b/c thats what the ocean looks like when you drop 2300 people in it all swimming in the same direction. I got beat up quite a bit and had a really hard time finding open water to swim in. I made it out of the first lap in 43 minutes and was just so excited to be on track for my time goal of an hour 30. I got back in the ocean and just had a great second lap. The water was a lot clearer and I got to draft off of quite a few guys and that made my 2nd swim lap just as fast as my first but with less effort and thats pretty good to me. I got out of the water at 1:30 on the money and felt great
Out of the water onto the timing mat and then to the wetsuit strippers. WOW that was funny. Two guys told me to lay down and whooosh my wetsuit was off. At least they could have bought me a drink first!
T1 12:04
SO I come out of the water and I got my wetsuit and they hand me my t1 bag and im into the changing tent. I actually managed to find a seat! I quickly get all my gear on and my wetsuit and stuff is lying on the ground. I start stuffing it into the bag and a volunteer yells "let me do that you just get going!!!! SO out of the tent and they start calling my number for someone to get my bike. They kinda dropped the ball on this one as I was not supposed to have to go to my rack to get my bike but I basically did and when I got there I grabbed my bike and the first thing I did was check the rear tire. Which was dead flat. DOH. SO I ran to the mechanical tent and spent the next 8 min watching them change my tire out. So my t1 time sucked big time
The Bike 7:02:57
Well after the mechanical issue I was off and feeling really good. I was glued to my heart rate monitor and was sure to not go outside of my target zone. In the beginning I was being passed by a lot of people and just kept telling myself to ride this thing smart and to listen to my body.
Which I did. I was riding really solidly and was surprised at my pace which was around 17-18 mph. I just kept picking off mile markers and was having a total blast. At this point I was loving racing the ironman and was just having the most fun ever! I even came up with a little song that I kept singing to myself on the bike. It went like this
I love my softride it is really great
it smooths out the rough roads that other bikers hate!
I saw a lot of crap on the bike course that really surprised me. Bottles still in their cages. I saw one bike just on the side of the road and a ton of tubes and tires and stuff that people had not secured properly to their bikes that fell off. Well around mile 70 things started to go downhill for me. First my computer just stopped registering at all. I dont know why. I pulled over at the next stop and checked and everything was aligned properly but it just no longer was working. SO that stunk as I no longer has any clue how fast I was going. Then the first major issue of the day happened. I started to have an asthma attack on the bike. I had my inhaler with me and took a couple of puffs while riding but it just took too long be effective and I was really hurting. I was barely able to take a breath without my lungs hurting and burning and it just made the last 50 miles or so of the bike miserable. I still ended up avg like 15ish mph but had I not had breathing issues I could have maintained my original speed.
T2 7:22
I got off the bike and back into the change tent which was much less crowded this time and I just took a second to sit there and take it all in. At this point I was still not breathing all that well and my right knee was really hurting quite a bit. For those of you not in the know. I still have a rather large screw in my knee from when I broke my femur and it usually only hurts when I go long in workouts like the ironman. SO I was off the bike and not looking forward to the run at all. I got my socks and shoes on, put on my hat and headed out the door. I stopped to hit the port o potty and also to put sunscreen on. My neck and shoulders were pretty burned by this time as well despite putting sunscreen on before racing and re-applying once during the bike.
The run 6:45:33
As I was exiting the transition zone I look over to see my wonderful support crew of Iron spectators and boy did I need to see some familiar faces. SO who was there to support me? Lisa and Kaiya, Laura, Sara and Sue, And Chris and Kerry Wright. It was awesome to have so many people there watching and I really needed them. SO as im exiting I hear "Your a silly sausage" and " Its bumper to bumper on the rainbow bridge" Which I know sounds really random but it made sense to me and it made me smile which is exactly what I needed at the time. I ran probably the first mile and then I had to start walking. I was just in too much pain with my knee and I just could not breath. Plus the more I tried to use my inhaler the sicker to my stomach I got. At this point I had not eaten anything in about an hour and had, had very little liquid. I realized I was getting dehydrated and I needed calories and food. SO I started taking cola at the aid stations and cookies when they had them. Ahh cookies and coke! The combo that saved my ironman. I dont think I have ever wanted to quite something so much in my life as I wanted to quit right then. I was about mile 2, walking, in lots of pain, and the thought of another 24.2 miles just seemed like too much. It seemed impossible. But then I started to think about a conversation that lisa and I had a few weeks before. She asked if I had ever not finished a race and I said no. I have always finished a race and I have never dropped out. At that point I said to myself I am not going to let this race beat me. I am tougher and stronger than this race and I will beat this race it will not beat me. I then realized what the ironman was to me. It was not a race for time. It was not a shot at a spot for kona or an age group win. It was about me beating myself. Overcoming my physical limitations and finishing despite the fact that I probably shouldn't be able too. So then I shifted the focus inward. I told myself I couldnt run with my knee hurting AND not being able to breath but if I could overcome one of those I could run again. I knew I could not do much about my knee. I mean there is a big hunk of metal in there I cant change that. SO I started talking to my asthma. I told it that I would not let it beat me. Not this time. I told myself I was stronger than my asthma that I could do this without breathing and that if I had to I would. SO I kept walking and just told myself that every step was a step closer to the finish and that if I had to walk the whole thing I had enough time to do that. SO I kept walking and I made it to the turn around and that felt really good. It was starting to get dark and it was getting colder so I put my arm warmers back on and that helped a TON. I had talked to my bro Rich the day before and he had told me that whenever he was doing a run and felt like he couldnt go any farther that he would sing psalms in in his head and that always helped. SO I started singing the one he suggested (cant remember the #) and 119x I also sang be thou my vision to myself as thats a special one to lisa and me. About mile 8 I realized I was breathing pretty well and that my knee was no longer hurting that much. SO I started to run. I decided I wanted to finish this loop and run to the next turn around. I wanted Lisa and Kaiya to see my running and not walking. SO I actually ran the next 4 miles and kept a pretty good pace. Then the psychological warfare started. With about 1 mile till the turn around is also the finish and spectators dont know if you are on lap 1 or 2 so they all assumed lap 2. SO for like 15 min all I heard was good job your almost done. That was really hard knowing that I had another 13 miles to walk/run and that I wanted to be done so bad. I wanted to be on my second loop and I didnt want to be going back out into the cold dark night. Plus at this point I was close enough to hear mike reilly telling people they were ironmen and I wanted to be there. I wanted to cut the course and just run it in. Skip the last 13 miles. I figured hey I will cross the line get my pics and my medal. They will say im an ironman and give me my medal. It will be awhile till they figure out I skipped half the marathon. But I didnt do that. I saw lisa and she said hows it going. I replied "this sucks" I told her I was in a lot of pain and I didnt want to keep going. They all started to tell me I was almost done and not to think about how much I had left but how much I had already done. I really cant thank my family and friends enough for helping me get through this. SO I made the turn around and started my way back out into the night. I made another deal with myself. Walk a mile run a mile. Well that didnt happen I walked 1 ran a half and then ended up walking the rest. I was right back to where I was before. Burning and cramping in my lungs and my knee hurt so bad. I just kept thinking about the turn around and trying to make it there. Before I knew it I was there and I decided I wanted to try to be at 15 hours with 3 miles to go. I figured I could walk three miles in an hour and if I didnt I would still be in the low 16's. Well I was walking a lot faster than I thought I would be able too. 15 min miles so 4mph. Before I knew it I was at 15 hours with a little over 2 to go. I realized that I would finish in 15 hours if I just kept going. Those last two miles were really hard. I was so tired and just so worn out I wanted to just collapse on the side of the road and lay down. I remember thinking that I coulndnt stop for anything b/c I didnt think I would be able to start again if I stopped. SO I just kept going. As I approached the line I realized this was it. I was almost done. I had been walking with this really sweet girl and she said she was going to run the last bit in b/c she didnt want her family and friends to see her walking. She was also a first timer and we both agreed doing ironmans was really stupid and this was the last one for both of us. I let her go on ahead and kept walking content to walk across the line. But then as I got close I decided I wanted to try to run. SO I did. I got to the finish stretch and all the spectators were cheering and I no longer noticed that I couldnt breath or that my knee hurt. I just was so in the moment. I heard them say Chris 29 from franklin ohio YOU ARE AN IRONMAN!!!!
Post race:
SO I really thought as soon as I crossed the line I was going to just collapse but I didnt. I was ok. I could still walk a bit but much slower than before and I just went looking for my ultimate finish prize. A hug from Lisa and Kaiya!!!! After I found them I went for my post race massage and then to the food tent to eat some victory pizza.
SO the big question is do I think I want to do this again? HECK NO! That sucked and was too long. I think I am more suited for olympic and half iron distance but at least I can say I am an Ironman now and nobody can take that from me ever!
Again thanks to all my fam and friends who have supported me over what has been one of the longest most stressfull years of my life. You have all been super great and I love you all so much. Thanks for making this possible and for helping me fulfill a dream of mine that I have had for a long time.
Sorry no pics yet I have not gotten any but when I do I will post em.
Cheers!
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Its almost time.
Well its tuesday morning and I swear I feel like im back in HS waiting on the last day of class before summer break. I just want to get out of Dayton and on the way down to Panama City Beach (PCB). Real quick reminder that anyone who wants to can keep track of me on race day via the Ironman website. You should just need to navigate to the Ironmanlive link and that should do it. I would link direct here but it wont be active till Saturday so this is the best I can do right now. Again my race number is #358 and you should be able to use that or my name to find out where I am. Lastly for anyone wanting to invest a wee bit more time they will have a live webcast going all day long with cameras set up at key points of interest. Mostly this includes the exit of transition and the finish line. SOOOO that means anyone on the net should be able to watch me finish if they want to. right now I think I will be finishing in the 13-15 hour range which puts me around 8-10pm CDT or 9 -11 EST.
Last minute prep is going ok. I am starting to stress a bit over all that has to be done before I leave and just worrying that I am going to forget something crucially important like my bike helmet or my bike! I realized last week that I had a tire issue so I went to the shop last night and my coach helped me swap out my tire and mount my spare. That went really well and I was feeling really good about it until this morning when I went out to the garage and the tire was totally flat. I had a 160psi (yes you read that right) in that tire and it was totally flat this morning and that shouldnt be. SO I pumped it up again this morning and we will see how it is when I get home today. Im hoping that its a temp / press change thing but that seems a bit drastic to me. SO im not happy about that. Also I have been trying to get arm warmers for like a month now and my coach finally got some and I forget them at the shop. DOH! SO lisa is going to pick them up for me or I might be making another trip out to the shop to buy a new rear tire. DOUBLE DOH! SO outside of the mechanical issues on the bike things are looking good. Im totally immersed in my taper right now and its driving me crazy! I just want to go out and workout and push hard but heres my schedule for the week
sunday - off
monday - off
tuesday - off
wednesday - 30 min easy ride
thursday - light swim in ocean
friday - 30 min easy run, light swim in ocean
saturday - BIG RACE DAY!
SO yeah im going a bit nuts since im used to working out for like an hour each day and now im just doing nothing. But I know this is very important as its time for my body to recover a bit from the training and re-energize!
Well I think thats it. I dont know if I will blog again before the race. I might who knows take some pre-race pics of the expo and what not and throw a quick post up, we shall see.
Real quick I just want to say thanks to everyone who has supported my journey here. The support from all my friends and family has been really great and despite being told "im totally crazy" more times than I can remember I know everyone is really excited for me with this. I cant believe its almost here. This has been one crazy long year filled with many ups and downs. Im just so thankfull that I am getting this opportunity and that I am healthy and injury free.
See you guys at the finish!
Cheers
Last minute prep is going ok. I am starting to stress a bit over all that has to be done before I leave and just worrying that I am going to forget something crucially important like my bike helmet or my bike! I realized last week that I had a tire issue so I went to the shop last night and my coach helped me swap out my tire and mount my spare. That went really well and I was feeling really good about it until this morning when I went out to the garage and the tire was totally flat. I had a 160psi (yes you read that right) in that tire and it was totally flat this morning and that shouldnt be. SO I pumped it up again this morning and we will see how it is when I get home today. Im hoping that its a temp / press change thing but that seems a bit drastic to me. SO im not happy about that. Also I have been trying to get arm warmers for like a month now and my coach finally got some and I forget them at the shop. DOH! SO lisa is going to pick them up for me or I might be making another trip out to the shop to buy a new rear tire. DOUBLE DOH! SO outside of the mechanical issues on the bike things are looking good. Im totally immersed in my taper right now and its driving me crazy! I just want to go out and workout and push hard but heres my schedule for the week
sunday - off
monday - off
tuesday - off
wednesday - 30 min easy ride
thursday - light swim in ocean
friday - 30 min easy run, light swim in ocean
saturday - BIG RACE DAY!
SO yeah im going a bit nuts since im used to working out for like an hour each day and now im just doing nothing. But I know this is very important as its time for my body to recover a bit from the training and re-energize!
Well I think thats it. I dont know if I will blog again before the race. I might who knows take some pre-race pics of the expo and what not and throw a quick post up, we shall see.
Real quick I just want to say thanks to everyone who has supported my journey here. The support from all my friends and family has been really great and despite being told "im totally crazy" more times than I can remember I know everyone is really excited for me with this. I cant believe its almost here. This has been one crazy long year filled with many ups and downs. Im just so thankfull that I am getting this opportunity and that I am healthy and injury free.
See you guys at the finish!
Cheers
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Bring on the Taper! +Take a # please!
I have my race number!!!! I am number 358! SO know you guys can track me online during the race!!!!
Well I did my "mega" workout this past saturday and WOW it was a total test of both physical and mental toughness. I went 5 hours on the bike and 2 hours of running, but its a little more interesting than that. Since I was going for a 7 hour workout and it does not get light here till 8am right now I did not want to start that late as it would put me finishing around 3pm and that would just take up to much of the day. SO I got my butt out of bed and on the indoor trainer at 5am. OITS! I can officially say that is too early to start working out. SO yeah I did 5 hours on the indoor trainer which my coach says that every hour on a trainer is like 1.5 hours on the road. SO that means my bike effort was equivalent to 7.5 hours of riding which is way longer than I project to be riding in the ironman so that is pretty darn cool. But WOW was that boring. I watched a TON of anime on my laptop and that is the only thing that kept me sane. Also I am officially sick and tired of gels, bars, and sports drinks. YUCK! SO that was pretty tough to just get through. I was getting so antsy by the end of the bike. I just wanted to get off that darn thing. SO I went for the run and I have to say my legs feel so fresh off the bike. I love riding a steep 78-80 degree seat angle, it makes a huge difference. SO I decided that I wanted to bonk on the run and test my mental toughness some more so I didnt bring any water or gels or anything. About an hour in I did in fact bonk and I pushed through it and kept running for the whole 2 hours. Do I think I could have kept running for another 3. Probably not but I do plan to keep eating and drinking on the run in the ironman and I do not plan to bonk. But if I do I am prepared.
SO all in all things are going well. Its 10 days to go and I just want to get there. I still have to much to do to pack and prepare and I just got my new wheels in yesterday so I have to get them mounted and take them for a few spins to get used to them. I have a 4.5 hour workout this saturday so that should be a good time for me to get a feel for them and break them in.
Well thats all for now
Cheers!
Well I did my "mega" workout this past saturday and WOW it was a total test of both physical and mental toughness. I went 5 hours on the bike and 2 hours of running, but its a little more interesting than that. Since I was going for a 7 hour workout and it does not get light here till 8am right now I did not want to start that late as it would put me finishing around 3pm and that would just take up to much of the day. SO I got my butt out of bed and on the indoor trainer at 5am. OITS! I can officially say that is too early to start working out. SO yeah I did 5 hours on the indoor trainer which my coach says that every hour on a trainer is like 1.5 hours on the road. SO that means my bike effort was equivalent to 7.5 hours of riding which is way longer than I project to be riding in the ironman so that is pretty darn cool. But WOW was that boring. I watched a TON of anime on my laptop and that is the only thing that kept me sane. Also I am officially sick and tired of gels, bars, and sports drinks. YUCK! SO that was pretty tough to just get through. I was getting so antsy by the end of the bike. I just wanted to get off that darn thing. SO I went for the run and I have to say my legs feel so fresh off the bike. I love riding a steep 78-80 degree seat angle, it makes a huge difference. SO I decided that I wanted to bonk on the run and test my mental toughness some more so I didnt bring any water or gels or anything. About an hour in I did in fact bonk and I pushed through it and kept running for the whole 2 hours. Do I think I could have kept running for another 3. Probably not but I do plan to keep eating and drinking on the run in the ironman and I do not plan to bonk. But if I do I am prepared.
SO all in all things are going well. Its 10 days to go and I just want to get there. I still have to much to do to pack and prepare and I just got my new wheels in yesterday so I have to get them mounted and take them for a few spins to get used to them. I have a 4.5 hour workout this saturday so that should be a good time for me to get a feel for them and break them in.
Well thats all for now
Cheers!
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Im almost there!
Well things really feel like they are coming together for me and my first Ironman Experiance. I will in no way be doing anything "Amazing" by other athletes standards but I think this is going to be a really good experience for me. Im really getting excited about doing this event which I have to say is really surprising me b/c a month ago I was in sheer terror about the whole thing. Now im so excited its like X-mas!!!!! SO let me give some highlights of what all has been happening:
Last weekends workout went really well. Despite terribly crappy weather 37 degrees at the start of my bike ride and me with little cold weather clothing I managed to still maintain 15 mph avg for the 3 hour bike and put in a solid 45 miles. Had it been warmer I could have gone a lot faster! Then my coach wanted me to run 4 5k's and negative split them.
5k #1
I started on the first 5k and it was purely awful. My feet were so frozen it was a good 2 miles into the run before I could even feel them so that 5k was pretty rough. A little bit of walking and stopping to try and stretch out my frozen muscles in an attempt to get them warmed up.
time of 38:50ish
5k#2
by this time my feet and legs were back in business and I was just fighting to not run faster. Really watched the HR and tried to stay in control and keep myself in zone 2 which is the zone I will spend most of the Ironman in. I felt great during this 5k and ended up with a time of like 38:30ish first negative split!!!!
5k#3
I decided that if I was going to negative split I needed to step up to zone 3 and turn off my heart rate monitors beep function and just ignore the fact that I was out of my "ideal" zone. I instantly picked up the pace and felt really good. I couldnt believe that I was actually accelerating after biking 45 miles and already running 6 but I was. I went entirely to fast and ended up running a 32:30ish for the 3rd 5k. WOW for super negative split
5k#4
I tried to keep up the pace of the last 5k but I just couldnt do it. By this time I was in the upper limits of zone 5 which is not where you want to be. I realized I really blew myself out in the last 5k and should have toned it down a bit. I could not get my heart rate to settle back down to even zone 4 so the last 5k was really hard but I kept running through it and just pushed through. end time of like 38:10ish -- not a negative split but more inline with what I need to be running.
SO yesterday I went and saw my coach and for the first time he was excited with my results!!! This is how our mtgs usually go.
Coach: Ok so how are your workouts going?
me: well I have gotten a few in but have missed these.
Coach: I cant believe you think your going to do an ironman. Do you realize how underprepared you are. Im sorry but your going to die out there. Do you have a good life insurance plan? Man you are going to be hurting bad I hope your ready for a long painfull day. Hey your about the same size as my wife. Can she have your bike when you die from being so out of shape.
me: ummm I dont....know....I guess.....maybe
SO yeah they are usually pretty depressing and he usually tells me there is no way I will make any of my current time goals and that im going to have a tough time even finishing. But after this past weekends workout he was really getting excited. He was all like WOW your going to do this and we did some figuring and if I can keep up the paces that im shooting for I might just be able to break 14 hours which would be sooooooo amazing. Im still thinking 14-15 is where I will be but if I can transition well I think sub 14 is a real possibility. Provided I have a great day and nothing goes wrong. But hey this is ironman racing what could possibly go wrong!
On another note my wheel situation has resolved itself in quite a wonderfull way. PRAISE THE LORD!!!! Here is the quick rundown. I put basically an SOS message on a tri forum that I frequent (ok I live there) sometimes and got a reply. What I have been offered is a pair of carbon fiber tri spoke wheels that retail for $1500 for the pair. Oh but it gets better. I asked the guy if they came with tyres. Long story about why that is important but it is. He said let me check. Oh yeah they come with Continental Competition tyres. I know that doesnt mean anything to any of you but they go for $85 a tyre. yes for 1. SO thats $170 worth of amazing hand made german rubber. SO thats a grand total of $1670 worth of wheels for the bargain price of $200 yes you heard me right. 2 to the 0 to the big ol 0 SO im sooo excited and I have wanted carbon tri spokes forever!!! SO this is really like the coolest thing ever for me.
Well thats about it. I will probably post again after my next workout. ITs a mega workout. 5 hour bike (on the trainer ZZZZZZ) 2 hour run.
Cheers!
Last weekends workout went really well. Despite terribly crappy weather 37 degrees at the start of my bike ride and me with little cold weather clothing I managed to still maintain 15 mph avg for the 3 hour bike and put in a solid 45 miles. Had it been warmer I could have gone a lot faster! Then my coach wanted me to run 4 5k's and negative split them.
5k #1
I started on the first 5k and it was purely awful. My feet were so frozen it was a good 2 miles into the run before I could even feel them so that 5k was pretty rough. A little bit of walking and stopping to try and stretch out my frozen muscles in an attempt to get them warmed up.
time of 38:50ish
5k#2
by this time my feet and legs were back in business and I was just fighting to not run faster. Really watched the HR and tried to stay in control and keep myself in zone 2 which is the zone I will spend most of the Ironman in. I felt great during this 5k and ended up with a time of like 38:30ish first negative split!!!!
5k#3
I decided that if I was going to negative split I needed to step up to zone 3 and turn off my heart rate monitors beep function and just ignore the fact that I was out of my "ideal" zone. I instantly picked up the pace and felt really good. I couldnt believe that I was actually accelerating after biking 45 miles and already running 6 but I was. I went entirely to fast and ended up running a 32:30ish for the 3rd 5k. WOW for super negative split
5k#4
I tried to keep up the pace of the last 5k but I just couldnt do it. By this time I was in the upper limits of zone 5 which is not where you want to be. I realized I really blew myself out in the last 5k and should have toned it down a bit. I could not get my heart rate to settle back down to even zone 4 so the last 5k was really hard but I kept running through it and just pushed through. end time of like 38:10ish -- not a negative split but more inline with what I need to be running.
SO yesterday I went and saw my coach and for the first time he was excited with my results!!! This is how our mtgs usually go.
Coach: Ok so how are your workouts going?
me: well I have gotten a few in but have missed these.
Coach: I cant believe you think your going to do an ironman. Do you realize how underprepared you are. Im sorry but your going to die out there. Do you have a good life insurance plan? Man you are going to be hurting bad I hope your ready for a long painfull day. Hey your about the same size as my wife. Can she have your bike when you die from being so out of shape.
me: ummm I dont....know....I guess.....maybe
SO yeah they are usually pretty depressing and he usually tells me there is no way I will make any of my current time goals and that im going to have a tough time even finishing. But after this past weekends workout he was really getting excited. He was all like WOW your going to do this and we did some figuring and if I can keep up the paces that im shooting for I might just be able to break 14 hours which would be sooooooo amazing. Im still thinking 14-15 is where I will be but if I can transition well I think sub 14 is a real possibility. Provided I have a great day and nothing goes wrong. But hey this is ironman racing what could possibly go wrong!
On another note my wheel situation has resolved itself in quite a wonderfull way. PRAISE THE LORD!!!! Here is the quick rundown. I put basically an SOS message on a tri forum that I frequent (ok I live there) sometimes and got a reply. What I have been offered is a pair of carbon fiber tri spoke wheels that retail for $1500 for the pair. Oh but it gets better. I asked the guy if they came with tyres. Long story about why that is important but it is. He said let me check. Oh yeah they come with Continental Competition tyres. I know that doesnt mean anything to any of you but they go for $85 a tyre. yes for 1. SO thats $170 worth of amazing hand made german rubber. SO thats a grand total of $1670 worth of wheels for the bargain price of $200 yes you heard me right. 2 to the 0 to the big ol 0 SO im sooo excited and I have wanted carbon tri spokes forever!!! SO this is really like the coolest thing ever for me.
Well thats about it. I will probably post again after my next workout. ITs a mega workout. 5 hour bike (on the trainer ZZZZZZ) 2 hour run.
Cheers!
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
T - 24 days and counting!
Well its a little over 24 days till the ironman and I have to admit Im starting to get pretty excited. I watched a video clip this morning from the 1986 ironman and it really helped to put some things in perspective. People have been racing this distance for years without all the high tech gear that we have today. Back then they did it on bananas and water. There were no specially formulated energy drinks, no powerbars, no gu, just normal people making a go of it. I feel that is a pretty good description of me. Just a normal guy making a go of it. SO I wanted to take some time to reflect on the past year. I have realistically done maybe 40% of the training I would have liked to have done. What does that mean? Well it means this is not going to be easy for me. It means I will more than likely be closer to the 15 hour mark of my 13-15 hour time goal. It means this is going to hurt. Im going to feel very alone and Im going to want to quit this more than I have ever wanted to quit anything in my life. But I wont. The Ironman means so much to me. Its a dream I have had for at least the past 10 years and is really symbolic of a lot of things to me. Its a journey that has been going on for a long time and it will be really nice to arrive at the destination. I have read a lot of stuff on positive visualization and I have to say I think its working. About a month ago I was feeling down right freaked out and like there was no way I was going to finish but I have since spent a lot of time just thinking about what its going to be like to be out on the course, how im going to feel and what im going to be focusing on to get to the finish. I think its working and I think I owe some of that to me feeling better about things. I also am starting to realize that I dont have as much to prove as I thought I did. I am not only an athlete but I am a long distance tri-athlete and im learning that my body is really well suited for that. If I had the time and a few less severe injuries in my past I think I could have actually been something maybe not so special but competitive. And im ok with that.
SO in 24 days I will be more than likely somewhere between the bike and the run and thinking about how cool it is that Im doing this. Im going to be hurting, hungry (sick of gels and bars), tired, but most of all I hope im really happy. But the coolest part of the day is going to be when I cross the line and get my congratulations hug and kiss from Lisa and Kaiya!
this is going to be soooo freaking awesome!!!!!
SO in 24 days I will be more than likely somewhere between the bike and the run and thinking about how cool it is that Im doing this. Im going to be hurting, hungry (sick of gels and bars), tired, but most of all I hope im really happy. But the coolest part of the day is going to be when I cross the line and get my congratulations hug and kiss from Lisa and Kaiya!
this is going to be soooo freaking awesome!!!!!
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